Far too many of us seem addicted to downer, ‘we’re all doomed’ gloom-trips.
Only dig it, that foul habit doesn't make you sadly-wise. Rather, it debilitates your ability to fight for a better world. Worse, it is self-indulgent Hollywood+QAnon crap infesting both the right and the left.
In fact, we’d be very well-equipped to solve all problems – including climate ructions – if it weren’t for a deliberate (!) world campaign against can-do confidence. Stephen Pinker and Peter Diamandis show in books how very much is going right in the world! But if those books seem tl;dr, then try here and here and here.
In particular, I hope Jimmy Carter lives to see the declared end of the horribly parasitic Guinea worm! He deserves much of the credit. Oh, and polio too, maybe soon? The new malaria vaccine is rolling out and may soon save 100,000 children per year.
(Side note: Back in the 50s, the era when conservatives claim every single was peachy, the most beloved person in America was named Jonas Salk.)
(BTW solar also vastly improves resilience, since it allows localities and even homes to function even if grids collapse: so much for a major “Event” that doomer-preppers drool-over. Nevertheless, I expect that geothermal power will take off shortly and surpass solar, by 2030, rendering fossil fuels extinct for electricity generation.)
== Why frantically ignore good news? ==
It's not just the gone-mad entire American (confederate) Right that's fatally allergic to noticing good news. That sanctimony-driven fetishism is also rife on the far- (not entire) left.
“The Inflation Reduction Act is the single largest commitment any government has yet made to vie for leadership in the next energy economy, and has resulted in the largest manufacturing drive in the United States since WW2. The legislation has already yielded commitments of more than $300 billion in new battery, solar and hydrogen electrolyzer plants…”
And yet, dem-politicians seem to dumb to emphasize this manufacturing boom resulted directly from their 2021 miracle bills, and NOT from voodoo “supply side” nonsense.
Oh, did you know that: “Crime plummeted in the United States. Initial data suggests that murder rates for 2023 are down by almost 13%, one of the largest ever annual declines, and every major category of crime except auto theft has declined too, with violent crime falling to one of the lowest rates in more than 50 years and property crime falling to its lowest level since the 1960s. Also, the country's prison population is now 25% lower than its peak in 2009, and a majority of states have reduced their prison populations by more than that, including New Jersey and New York who have reduced prison populations by more than half in the last decade.”
Of course you didn’t know! Neither the far-left nor the entire-right benefit from you learning that. (Though there ARE notable differences between US states. Excluding Utah and Illinois, red states average far more violent than blue ones, along with every other turpitude. And the Turpitude Index ought to be THE top metric for voting a party out of office. Wager on that, please?)
Likewise: “The United States pulled off an economic miracle In 2022 economists predicted with 100% certainty that the US was going to enter a recession within a year. It didn't happen. GDP growth is now the fastest of all advanced economies, 14 million jobs have been created under the current administration, unemployment is at its lowest since WW2, and new business formation rates are at record highs. Inflation is almost back down to pre-pandemic levels, wages are above pre-pandemic levels (accounting for inflation), and more than a third of the rise in economic inequality between 1979 and 2019 has been reversed. Average wealth has climbed by over $50,000 per household since 2020, and doubled for Americans aged 18-34, home ownership for GenZ is higher than it was for Millennials and GenX at this point in their lives, and the annual deficit is trillions of dollars lower than it was in 2020.”
(Now, if only we manage to get rentier inheritance brats to let go of millions of homes they cash-grabbed with their parents’ supply side lucre.)
And… “In March this year, 193 countries reached a landmark deal to protect the world's oceans, in what Greenpeace called "the greatest conservation victory of all time."
And… "In August, Dutch researchers released a report that looked at over 20,000 measurements worldwide, and found the extent of plastic soup in the world's oceans is closer to 3.2 million tons, far smaller than the commonly accepted estimates of 50-300 million tons.”
And all that is just a sampling of many reasons to snap out of the voluptuous but ultimately lethal self-indulgence called GLOOM. Wake up. There’s a lot of hope.
78 comments:
The last thing uttered by:
- the space whale: "I wonder if it [the fast approaching ground] will be friendly?"
- the petunias: "Oh no, not again!"
I still roll my eyes at the lack of a launch apron for the first test (dudes, you are allowed to learn from other folks' mistakes), but they're getting there.
I don't think Musk's messing about with X should be dismissed as a side twinge, but a deliberate attempt to destroy its value as a social media news source and archive. (Who has 50 billion to burn to do this? Look at who underwrote Musk). How successful it proves to be depends on how quickly federated alternatives can route around the damage. I might add there's now a neat Firefox add-on which blocks both the ad-spam and the algorithm built, for you.
Still, while we're on reasons to be cheerful. That elephant in the exhaust filled room, China, is forecast to record a drop in the rate at which its CO2 emissions are increasing this year. Sure, I'd prefer to say that of actual emissions rather than the second derivative, but China has had its anchors fully deployed for a while now, so it's nice to report any progress.
A question, given that some investors wish to protect fossil fuel investments, are they exposing theirselves to something worse than a "Haircut" in the long run?
I'm not sure if there are any reasons for optimism:
First, there is the Politically Correct Left's DEI Agenda which seems specifically designed to overthrow the Western Enlightenment's united white christian majority while replacing it with disparate warring tribal factions, using the 'divide & conquer' method that our host describes in his 'Polemical Judo' how-to manual;
Second, the US continues to squander resources that it does not yet possess on an imaginary 'next energy economy', despite the tragic example set by the 2021 cold snap that collapsed a Texas Power grid over-reliant (>25%) on imperfect renewable technologies, just as the mild 2024 Chicago winter recently turned so many state-of-the-art EVs into inoperable scrap;
Third, recent decreases in US crime-rates are statistical artifacts, made possible only by a combination of 'decriminalization' (a process which functionally legalizes many felonies), plunging conviction rates due to social justice initiatives ('no conviction' being said to equal 'no crime') & a deliberate decision to eliminate certain crimes by not investigating them, as in the case of Seattle's 2022 decision to not investigate rape allegations affecting adult women; and
Fourthly, the so-called Biden 'economic miracle' never happened as GDP & personal income gains simply reflect simultaneous currency inflation & devaluation, as the cost of a McDonald's hamburger has TRIPLED over the last 2 years, official US job reports are so frequently subject to downward 'data revisions' as to be rendered nonsensical, and US household debt is now at all-time high in excess of $17 Trillion USD.
Lastly, since our once united republic has all but been reduced to separate tribes by the Left's incredibly effective strategy of turning women against men, citizen against non-citizen & race against race, there's literally no one left to heed your unifying call for 'All Hands on Deck' if & when an actual emergency occurs which (in part) is why US military recruitment has hit an all-time historic low.
On the upside though, I've been told that Haitian Barbecue is extremely cheap, highly nutritious & absolutely to die for, especially when paired with a few french fries, broccoli, the random parsnip & a nice horseradish sauce.
And speaking of haircuts:
We can resolve climate change in one fell swoop by eliminating +6 billion useless carbon units. Do you want to know more?
Best
Tim,
Good question. People like my father are happy be be told that bottom won't fall out of the market, and that solar is a flash in the pan, but a lot of his level of investors and up are looking hard at nuclear power diversification. No-one wants to be left holding rights to 100000's of barrels of crude that will never be pumped out of the ground. In the short term, he's right - still plenty of oil subsidies. In the long term - well, in the long term, my brothers and I may have to deal with some severely devalued stock left to us.
Pappenheimer
Ha ha! I saw the flower pot, but couldn't place the reference.
Nerds Unite!
Larry,
If I were writing Batman's lines I'd have him not kill Joker and mention what a spectacularly bad idea it would be to have a certain Kryptonian or Amazon Princess think he was part of the problem.
Yah. I know the pre-league versions didn't either.
One seldom runs into such awful journalism in an area of science. But this one praising and justifying the "Artemis" moondoggle aimed at destroying NASA's lead in space exploration is exceptional. Almost every single thing asserted here is either irrelevant or exaggerated or else - in most cases - diametrically opposite to true, The notion that China could "declare" The Moon their property when they imitate footprint stunts we did first - 55 years ago - is very cheap - bad - lurid sci fi.
https://www.cnn.com/2022/08/24/world/artemis-1-nasa-moon-race-china-scn/index.html
Tim H:
are they exposing theirselves to something worse than a "Haircut" in the long run?
"The National Razor cuts deep."
@Tony: Thanks for reminding me that the X-inator-in-chief did not act alone. I'm not sure the full list of investors was ever publicized, but it is known to include Bank of America, Morgan Stanley, Larry Ellison... and one al-Waleed bin Talal al-Saud.
@Dr. Brin -- I think you'd better explain about geothermal. Suitable locations are a lot more restricted than solar; you can throw solar up practically anywhere in the tropical or temperate belts. Biden *did* point out that the manufacturing boom is the result of the post-pandemic stimulus, but the connection to the failure of supply-side could be pushed harder. We can do what the zillionaires *can't*! (Or won't, but having had forty years leeway, it amounts to can't anyway.)
@Pappenheimer -- it's not that they'll never be pumped; it's that they won't be frantically pumped by an increasingly desperate society. Hydrocarbons have so many better uses than being consigned to flames, but none of those will keep the, ahem, "fever pitch" going. They didn't buy up those rights thinking that the profits would only be realized centuries later; they want their returns NOW!
I can't tell if locum is merely the credulous repeater of negative agitprop, or if he actually creates his just-so stories from their correlation-equals-causation fallacy elements. Since he asked nicely, though, I do present the link to the takedown of the Fremen Mirage aka the warrior mythos. And I must disclaim an honor he granted me; my service to Uncle Sam was civilian in nature.
I interacted with enough veterans, though, to demolish the false dichotomy of 'couch potato' vs. 'lean warrior'. There never was a legionnaire or salt-crusted deckhand that ever fought without a second army of far-less-athletic quartermasters, reeves, clerks, teamsters, and the like. One does not need the ultramodern mode of a pilot at a desk in Tampa guiding a drone in Central Asia to know that the experience needed for war comes in all shapes, sizes... and degrees of athleticism.
Two of Kittenfish's great-grandfathers fought in the last Great Antifa Action. One was an infantry officer; the other, a mail clerk. We do not consider either one's service a whit more or less honored or valuable.
Alfred Differ:
If I were writing Batman's lines I'd have him not kill Joker and mention what a spectacularly bad idea it would be to have a certain Kryptonian or Amazon Princess think he was part of the problem.
I wouldn't have had Batman kill the bad guy the first time he encounters him in Batman #1 (1940). But after the villain kills people over and over and over again and escapes from prison or Arkham Asylum so often that even a Democrat would understand that only death can stop him from killing again and again and again, I'd forgive a cop or a superhero for doing the obvious thing.
As to whether a hero crossing the line to take out one particularly egregious villain in defense of others after agonizing over the decision makes him "just as bad" as the villain himself, Captain Kirk had the obvious retort. "You offered me...the lives of my crew."
* * *
But I'm actually more interested in the train of thought that brought me to that discussion--whether Luke should or should not kill the Emperor in Return of the Jedi. I never thought of it this way before, but I'm now thinking that scene makes so much more sense if only it were intentionally set up that the Emperor required a Jedi to kill him in battle in order to achieve Kenobi-like transcendence and, in effect, become The Force. Thanos without requiring no stinkin' Infinity Stones.
Recalling that Ben Kenobi died in a lightsaber battle with Darth Vader, perhaps only certain types of death bring about that transcendence. That would explain why the Emperor couldn't just off himself, or why Vader's tossing him into a reactor thwarted Palpatine's plan. He needed to be killed with a lightsaber and possibly by a Jedi, of which few were available in the galaxy.
This would make Vader's statement that "The Emperor has foreseen..." that Luke could kill him more important than it seemed. That is, the Emperor has foreseen this possibility and is actively trying to bring it about..
And if this were the case, then cliche as it may be, Luke made the right call by not giving in to his anger.
Meh. I got to the part in the CNN article where they were quoting Bill Nelson and had to repress an urge to throw something heavy at my monitor.
He is a bit more than 'part of the problem.'
Catfish,
I should have been more careful in my wording. Assets that won't or can't be used immediately are devalued. Assets that probably won't be used in your lifetime have a value converging on zero.
I do also enjoy the good Prof. Deveraux's work, particularly his takedown of the Spartans' self-generated Myth and his analysis of Tolkien's grasp of military reality compared to the movies. Tolkien was a demobbed Western Front officer and student of the Dark Ages*, so the tactics and strategies of the War of the Ring require far less suspension of disbelief than the works of writers with no military experience. Patricia Mckillip is a wonderful, emotive author, but I'd want Elizabeth Moon in charge of my unit.
*The action on the Field of Pelennor and the breaking of the Siege of Minas Tirith is lifted wholesale from the Battle of Chalons, with Rohan as the Goths, Gondor as the Romans/Alans and Army of Mordor as the Huns and their allies and tributaries**. Theodoric = Theoden, the king who died on the field under his horse.
** No mumakil were harmed in the actual battle
Pappenheimer
@catfish David Roberts has recently done a piece on geothermal. He shares David's high opinion of its potential. (It was being mooted in Australia about 15 years ago as drilling for 'hot rocks')
I suppose it is a form of nuclear energy since much of the Earth's inner heat is provided by radioactive decay. Then again, solar and wind energy also derives from nuclear reactions.
Apart from its potential, I suspect another reason for its attraction to some investors is that, like nuclear and unlike solar panels on roofs, the means of production stays firmly in corporate hands.
@david first it was ClarkesWorld... That CNN article echoes a fast developing trend of AI being used to submit scientific papers of the most egregious quality, and in such volume that reviewers can't keep up.
When Starship is fully operational the cost of an orbital solar farm beaming microwaves back to the surface may be low enough to be competitive.
“I’m not sure...”
But you are sure that there’s no reason to be optimistic, aren’t you? Isn’t that the impression you give?
Or, you simply don’t know what to think about all this...
@Larry: Your proposal sounds very much like the plot-patch actually applied in TRoS: that the Sith is a chain of liches, a 1000-year body-surfing collective. As you surmise, being struck down in hate and anger is the key to the lich-transfer. The Rule of Two facilitates and insulates the lich life cycle: each apprentice builds power and envy, then strikes down the master, only to become the N+1th mind of a group-possession instead.
It's a clever plot hack, in that it explains most- but not all- otherwise inexplicable actions by Palpatine. Despite Maul's survival (per the declared-canon Clone Wars series), Sidious gave him the boot, ostensibly for losing to Jedi- actually because bisection made him an unsuitable host. Dooku was never a prime candidate, but a tool to prep Anakin's and the galaxy's corruption.
Vader was the intended next host; Obi-Wan put a stopper in Plan A by immolating him. That's why Sidious saved him when he didn't bother with the prior two: this time, no better host was pre-prepped. It's also why Sidious wasn't originally worried Vader would choose family over power: in Plan A, Vader would quickly strike down Sidious down and be taken over by the collective.
Plan B: Sidious stuck Vader- still a terribly powerful apprentice- in a life support suit while he worked on alternatives. Hence letting Vader try to corrupt Luke: in the throne-room scene, Palpy treated Luke as Anakin 2.0. In terms of the Jedi/Sith dynamic he was right; Obi-Wan and Yoda were still making the same mistakes, and Luke was rebelling just as Anakin had. Whether Luke fells Sidious, or Vader and *then* Sidious, the Sith lich-collective wins.
But Luke has his mother's self-control, and rejects the gambit. Having suddenly learned of a *second* possible host (Leia), Sidious comes up with Plan C on the fly: declare Luke a Jedi, kill him (trusting in Vader's hatred of the Order), and let Vader try again with Leia (who he believes to be captured). Cue Anakin's turn: he self-sacrifices to take out Palpatine for love of his son, meaning the lich maneuver doesn't work.
Palpatine being Palpatine, he has a Plan D. With stolen Kamino clonetech, he's used his time making an alternate way to get lich-bodies. The Rule of Two would thus no longer be the critical path for Sith immortality. But it only barely worked. The Sith-lich winds up stuck on Exegol in a life-support structure- ironic karma for what was done to Vader- and must work through flawed proxies and telepathy.
In many other ways, Sidious thinks they're still ahead, and does correct for past errors. He gets into Ben's head at a very young age (correctly deducing that he started on Luke's far too late). Plan D has Ben scheduled as the next host, but then Plan E arises when his "imperfect" Force-insensitive clone has a Force-sensitive daughter. Since "family" caused powerful loyalty, and the collective can't comprehend self-sacrifice, Palpy theorizes that corrupting his own granddaughter will work even better. Hence the otherwise boneheaded reveal at the start of Ep IX: they need a new body worse than ever and he can get either Ben's or Rey's.
However: the Sith have never known of Qui-Gon's discovery of Force immortality. The collective still expect to overpower Rey; moral reinforcement from thousands of past Jedi is unimaginable to them. Palpy's genuine when he makes his last boast, "I am all the Sith!", and is truly shocked and outmaneuvered when Rey responds, "And I am all the Jedi." That connection makes it possible for her to self-sacrifice in a safely defensive move, while the backlash destroys the collective's last host-body.
Is it a fixup? Is it a retcon? Is it a patch on a truly horrible series of plot holes? Yes, yes, and yes. But props to whoever came up with it -- it does work, at least as well as anything could.
Catfish 'n' Cod:
they need a new body worse than ever and he can get either Ben's or Rey's.
I'm not an aficianado of the later films, let alone spin-off series and fanfic. My love of Star Wars begins and ends with the 1977 original. Empire and the first 40 minutes of RotJ were fun as further adventures of the same characters, but I'd not have been disappointed if the first film was one and done.
That said, you remind me that the interplay between Ben Solo and Rey reminded me immediately of the Bene Gesserits' desire to "heal the breach" by mating a Harkonnen boy with an Atreides daughter. And Dune wasn't even particularly front of mind at the time.
* * *
Dune was front of mind for me in the summer of 1980 because I had just read it for the first time in a college science fiction class that past semester. So when the Millennium Falcon blasted off from a meteor just ahead of the mouth a colossal Nematode whose gullet it had just been hiding in--that was our first cinematic look at a sandworm, right? Or at least inspired by the concept?
I ve seen commentary elsewhere that a lot a Star Wars imagery is pulled from Dune - everything from the obvious (every hero's favorite stopping point is H20-impaired Tatooine, which now, by canon, has sandworms/sand dragons) to personal duels deciding the fate of empires. I can't disagree. Both are pretty low on the Mohs scale (try to calculate how much friction a giant sandworm would actually generate at a significant speed, unless it is somehow emitting enough gas to fluidize the medium.) Don't much care; Shai-Hulud = much cool.
Pappenheimer
P.S. catching up with favorite harpist, who was telling me about the time she got purple hair instead of being paid for a gig...
Catfish…. Geothermal is a matter of tech . Planty of places where a deep enough hole can circulate hot water. If you perfect the circulation system to resist corrosion etc, it is almost eternal and runs day & night. But yes, solar for individual homes takes us out of the grid crisis.
LH: “ that scene makes so much more sense if only it were intentionally set up that the Emperor required a Jedi to kill him in battle in order to achieve Kenobi-like transcendence and, in effect, become The Force. “
Never thought of that one! But. Doesn’t a Jedi kill him minutes after that?
Catfish that is an amazing Jedi exegesis! If I cared about that crap universe, that is….
SW makes a lot of sense when viewed as a sort of 'Force for Darthula' franchise.
No wonder Chris Lee got pulled into it.
'Excluding Utah and Illinois, red states average far more violent than blue ones, along with every other turpitude. And the Turpitude Index ought to be THE top metric for voting a party out of office.'
But, which party? ;)
Dr Brin:
But. Doesn’t a Jedi kill him minutes after that?
Grabbed from behind and dumped unceremoniously into a machine. That might not count as the kind of death in battle that Force transcendence requires. Maybe it has to specifically be death by lightsaber, of which there are also very few in the galaxy at the time.
But them JJ Abrams waves one hand and in less than 40 seconds kills a quadrillion people... then with the other resurrects an emperor who not only fell lethally down a pit, but was blown up with the 2nd death star. Ah... the power of the Lost. (Get it?)
Dr Brin:
resurrects an emperor who not only fell lethally down a pit, but was blown up with the 2nd death star.
Again, that's the influence of superhero comics.
When I was barely a freshman in high school, Spider-Man was forced to battle a clone of himself. An explosion killed both the clone and the villain who created it. Afterwards, the surviving Spider-Man couldn't be sure that he himself was the original, so he stashed the clone's body away until he could prove to himself that he was the real Peter Parker. Then, we'll he couldn't have a Parker corpse around to invite questions, so finally (days if not weeks later), he takes the body to an incinerating plant and drops it down one of the smokestacks.
Twenty years later, the latest Spider-Man writers decide to revisit this as if it were an unresolved plot element. So they attempt to establish that not only was the "clone" actually the real Spider-Man all along, but that he is still alive. The discarded corpse has been operating under an assumed identity, and the Spider-Man whose adventures we've been following since 1975 is actually the clone. The flashback "explanation" was that after the living Spider-Man abandoned the supposed-clone, he simply awoke a bit confused and walked away.
Never mind that the supposed-clone had been:
+ dead after the explosion (I presume someone had checked for breathing and pulse)
+ left for an extended period without food or medical attention for the explosion effects
+ dropped down a smokestack that would have been high enough to kill anyway
+ ...into a live incinerator
It used to be the case in comics that no one was dead if you didn't see the body, but since about the mid-1990s, even seeing the body isn't sufficient.
I was taught recently to see all sequels as adaptations. One doesn't need perfect alignment between them all... because one never gets that with adaptations.
Struck me as lazy, but then I thought about the original Planet of the Apes movies. There was no way they could have done sequels any other way. So... when someone throws enough money at you, an adaptation screenplay becomes the obvious result. It becomes the producer's problem if they spent their money unwisely.
This is true.
Professor Xavier was disassembled at a molecular level and STILL came back iirc.
On the other hand, in the Forgotten Realms, the ne plus ultra malus wizard Manshoon had stashed multiple stasis clones all over Faerun and actually got permakilled. Think he ticked off the wrong goddess(es)
Pappenheimer
Re: voting based on moral turpitude, the kid in Hamlet, on being told that wicked men outnumbered good ones, asked why the wicked men (instead of waiting around to be hanged) didn't gang up and hang all the good men instead. This seems to be a possible ending to the US's current political issues.
Pappenheimer:
The wicked, being wicked, can't gang up on the good. They fall to fighting each other before they can complete operation Kill All Good. The good can gang up on the wicked, being good enough to cooperate for a good cause; but not all of them believe that Kill All Wicked isn't itself wicked.
Alfred Differ:
I was taught recently to see all sequels as adaptations. One doesn't need perfect alignment between them all..
Perhaps "retcons"* is a better word.
I do enjoy a well-written multi-part story where the parts are faithful to each other, but as you say, they're not all going to be like that.
The tv series Enterprise can only be considered as a retcon of established TOS and TNG history, like the 22nd century Enterprise encountering both the Borg and the Ferrengi. Yet, TNG itself seemed to operate well as a true sequel to TOS.
I've come to see Return of the Jedi as a retcon of the earlier Star Wars movies. Luke and Leia being siblings was not in the writers' (or viewers') minds in those earlier movies, most especially when Leia kisses Luke full on the lips. And the contorted explanation of why Ben told Luke that "a young Jedi named Darth Vader" betrayed and murdered Luke's father just doesn't work ("Certain point of view," my ass!). The way I reconcile it is that the prequels and Return of the Jedi function as a unified story, but they've retconned the backstory originally established in the first two movies.** They are not faithful to the films that came before. YMMV as a viewer how important that is to your enjoyment.
* short for "retroactive continuity".
** In the retconned universe, maybe Greedo really did shoot first. In the original, no way.
I had to look up "tl;dr". But I have read Pinker.
From the last thread:
DP I get that Frank made the Fremen supermen.What a yawner. There’s no reason for that to have been true. IF IT WERE TRUE…. Then the Fremen would have been asked to name their own Duke and be treated as a member of the Landsraad and that would have been that! Rent out soldiers to all the Houses, as Viking Varangians served as bodyguards all across the world in the 1300s But HERE is the problem… the same Huge Problem as in AVATAR.
WHO WERE THE FREMEN FIGHTING ALL THESE CENTURIES TO MAKE THEM SUCH WARRIORS?
(Likewise the Na’avi?). Obviously each other.
The super-soldier is an SF trope as old as time, Herbert wasn't te first and won't be th last to use it.
But yes, the Fremen tribes were fighting each other (the Jacurutu Fremen were especially nasty, called "water stealers" by the other tribes who banded together tried to wipe them out, see Children of Dune) as well as the Harkonnens for the centuries that they owned the planet. Add BG infighting skills and the Fremen exceed the martial prowess of the Sarduaker from their prison planet Salusa Secundus.
Herbert probably modeled the Sarduakar on the French Foreign legion, made up of cut throats and rogues escaping justice by in listing.
But Paul is obviously TE Lawrence, uniting the bickering Arab/Fremen tribes against the decrepit Ottoman/Padishah empire, learning to ride a camel/worm in the process. Technically Paul like TE Lawrence was a bastard (Leto never married Jessica), and like TEL was a military genius who thought outside the box. "Lawrence of Arabia" came out in 1962 and Dune was published in 1965. Mind expanding drugs like LSD/Spice got their first clinical use in the late 50s.
The parallels and sources are there for anyone who grew up in the 60s.
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/03/15/opinion/columnists/trump-biden-rematch.html
...Lozada, who also notes that the Heritage [Project 2025] vision “portrays the president as the personal embodiment of popular will and treats the law as an impediment to conservative governance.”
That is tragically ironic, considering that Democratic presidential candidates of this century have won the popular vote all but one time (2004).
Alfred Differ said...
"The only sane way forward is to create something of a hybrid. A centaur. Rely on those high-tech tools, but understand their capabilities and limitations."
This brought to mind a long "conversation" I had on the CosmoQuest forum many years ago. It was about a small start-up trying to make a gyro stabilized motorcycle, their idea being that you wouldn't need to learn how to operate a motorcycle to use it, and you'd never have to worry about it falling over. There have been a few tries at something like this and I can't remember offhand which one this was.
Anyway, I started out making some comments about how, judging from an interview, the builders didn't understand the dynamics of two wheeled single track vehicles, which somehow lead to discussion of whether or not knowing how a motorcycle works (dynamically) would be of any use to a person riding a gyro-motorcycle on which all of the handling was taken care of automatically via the gyros. I opined that of course it would be of benefit, which really offended another commentor who adamantly opined that it would be useless to a rider to know anything about motorcycle dynamics generally or how the gyro-motorcycle worked because the goal was for the machine to be fully automated.
I still can't really understand the mindset that knowing how something works offers no advantage to a person using the thing. Necessary? No. We try hard to minimize the knowledge and experience necessary to use things so that ideally anyone can use it. But of no benefit? Of course it is. That's why to be a US Army helicopter pilot entails training that is equivalent to at least a couple of bachelor degrees worth of education to enable a certain level of understanding of the complex aerodynamics of helicopters, even though their helicopters are nearly all flown by a computer.
But it wasn't just that. This person was outright contemptuous of me having a detailed understanding of a technical issue. That was the first time I'd really ever directly encountered such contempt for knowledge, and it was on a website dedicated to science! Since them I've had my nose rubbed into the fact that there are many people that think knowledge is not only not necessary, but something to be made fun of.
Darrell E:
I started out making some comments about how, judging from an interview, the builders didn't understand the dynamics of two wheeled single track vehicles, which somehow lead to discussion of whether or not knowing how a motorcycle works (dynamically) would be of any use to a person riding a gyro-motorcycle on which all of the handling was taken care of automatically
...
another commentor who adamantly opined that it would be useless to a rider to know anything about motorcycle dynamics generally or how the gyro-motorcycle worked
It sounds as if even within the context of their POV, they missed your point. They're insisting that a rider doesn't need to know how the motorcycle works as a rejoinder to your assertion that it would be helpful for the builder to know. I would think that the latter is close to self-evident.
Darrell E people that think knowledge is not only not necessary, but something to be made fun of
Story of my life. The single best argument I have in my citizen science work is this: I'm not a shill for academia (they've been quite mean to me actually), so lower your shields.
Darrell E,
My first thought to your story with the gyro stabilized motorcycle is that the wheels ARE gyros or a sort. Then I kept reading and saw where you were taking the story. 8)
When I first learned to ride a bicycle, I was told 'just try' by my parents. Lots of kids around me had it figured out within a day. Took me four days, but I got it. Many years later I learned physics and finally understood what my muscle memory model had acquired without a deep understanding.
I think it IS possible to learn to ride motorcycles without deep understanding, but riders with no understanding are heading for a lot of pain. I did my graduate school years at UC Davis. It's a bicycle town for a large fraction of the university population. Every fall we'd have an influx of people who could ride, but didn't really understand much about riding in groups or in traffic or in mixed traffic.* Every fall we'd have a lot of those newbies wind up in the campus emergency room getting patched up. One of my roommates was a paramedic and brought home a story of one hitting the ground chin first. That poor guy's shattered teeth were found at quite a distance.
I'm generally FOR automation on vehicles but AGAINST willfully ignorant vehicle operation. The less I have to know details the better, but only in the sense that I don't have to know how my heart beats. That it does and its general care instructions are still important to me.
* Even years later I was still doing stupid stuff like riding without a helmet. I'm lucky to be alive after the head injury I received. I have in my research journal the before and after periods around the 'accident', so I can look back from today and see how impacted my brain was even after I was healed in the externally visible sense.
Alfred Differ:
Many years later I learned physics and finally understood what my muscle memory model had acquired without a deep understanding.
When I ride a bike today, making slight turns feels like it's happening by magic. As if I simply will the bike to make the move.
I think it IS possible to learn to ride motorcycles without deep understanding, but riders with no understanding are heading for a lot of pain
And I still say that the people arguing with Darrell E weren't advocating for riders with no understanding, but for motorcycle builders with no understanding. A different thing, almost the opposite thing.
* * *
My own "lot of pain" bicycle story happened on the University of Illinois campus. I saw the other bike headed straight for me, but couldn't get out of the way. All I could do was plant my legs and brace for impact. My injury was limited to a really deep scrape on one knee, and I happened to work at the Water Survey lab at the time, so I decided to apply some of the hydrogen peroxide that I knew they had on hand. What I didn't realize was that theirs was not the 3% retail solution, but the pure stuff. All I can say is that I'm pretty sure no infection stood a chance.
Larry,
And I still say that the people arguing with Darrell E …
That might be the case. I'm not sure, but I've seen too many internet 'discussions' where people talk past each other to discount the possibility. I'd say making that mistake is as easy as falling off a bicycle, but we eventually learn to stay on them. 8)
...making slight turns feels like it's happening by magic.
It is. 8)
I learned my undergrad physics in a small school where TA's were in very short supply. Shortly after passing the first few physics classes, the department hired me to be a lab TA. That gave me full access to the equipment room and that was a HUGE benefit in my future classes. I could play with the flywheel and feel the torque in my hands. I could mess around with current carrying wires and watch the magnets. Play is the primary technique for building intuition and I got to do it. No grade pressure.
What I find so neat nowadays about bicycles is those tiny shifts in weight that create the torques fly under our awareness. When I was told 'just try' that is exactly what my parents were aiming to build even though they had no deep understanding of either subject. Humans do a whole lot of things with tiny bits of knowledge flying well below our levels of awareness. That's a kind of magic. 8)
———
OTC H2O2 is about 3% and will sting.
I think one can buy H2O2 at about 35% for industrial uses.
It will 'burn' organic material without combustion.
It's not difficult to distill the industrial stuff to higher concentrations, but newbies who do often die in flash fires with the last thought passing through their heads being "What catalyzed that!?"
Wonderfully dense stuff when stable, but super-heated steam in an oxygen rich environment otherwise.
I don't mess with it anymore.
Assets that won't or can't be used immediately are devalued. Assets that probably won't be used in your lifetime have a value converging on zero.
Then there is a failure of the market mechanism. By that logic, hardwoods can never be cultivated for the market, or anything that has a lifespan approaching that of a human. I appreciate the devaluation that long-term asset freezing causes, but that should only be approaching zero if the harvest time is not only far away but unknowable.
Pumping out oil barrel X for use in plastics, carbon fiber construction, biomass for terraforming kits, etc. may be much further out in time, but it does have value. It just isn't enough for their voracity.
@Dr. Brin: (Now, if only we manage to get rentier inheritance brats to let go of millions of homes they cash-grabbed with their parents’ supply side lucre.)
I was under the impression that at least as much of the problem was the use of US real estate as a store of value and rentier income by oligarchs -- Russians, Chinese, r'oils, and others who prefer 20-fold nested shell companies and anonymized bank accounts.
Which is much of a muchness, of course. It's still underappreciated how much of the fall of the Roman Republic -- much less that of the Western Empire -- was caused by "r > g".
Alfred & Larry,
To clarify, the other guy was indeed arguing that riders would not benefit from understanding how things work. Note, I was not arguing that understanding was necessary, which it very obviously is not. I was simply arguing that understanding the dynamics of motorcycles in general and this gyro stabilized gizmo specifically would be of benefit in operating the thing.
Speaking of which, the dynamics of single track vehicles is quite different from two track vehicles. The self-stabilizing they exhibit when moving above a certain moderate speed is not due to gyroscopic forces generated by the spinning wheels. In fact motorcycle manufacturers do all they can within the cost constraints they have to minimize gyroscopic forces produced by the wheels because they are quite detrimental to good handling. This amounts to making the wheels, tires and brake discs as light as possible.
What makes motorcycles self-stabilizing is that absent any steering input from the rider the steering head naturally reacts to any lean by deflecting towards the lean, which causes the motorcycle to lean back towards being upright. Absent rider steering inputs the steering head of a moving motorcycle is continuously making these little corrections, back and forth, back and forth.
And trying not to write a wall of text, above a certain slow minimum speed leaning is what makes single track vehicles follow a curved path. To turn them you have to make them lean. You can make them lean in a number of ways, even simply hanging off the side and yanking them over, but there is a best way, called counter-steering. Deflecting the steered wheel on a single track vehicle doesn't directly cause it to change direction, like in dual track vehicles, what it does is cause them to lean, and the lean is what causes them to turn. And the reason it's called counter-steering, if you want to turn right then you deflect the front wheel towards the left, which causes the motorcycle to start leaning towards the right, which causes it to turn right.
Another difference is that unlike a car in which you continuously point the front wheels in the direction you need to go while turning, you don't keep the front wheel turned on a motorcycle, because as long as the front wheel is turned the lean angle will continue increasing, until you lean right off the tires and hit the ground. Any given turn takes at least 2 separate steering inputs. An ideal left turn would be, deflect the front wheel towards the right until you reach the appropriate lean angle necessary for the turn, allow the front wheel to return to pointing straight ahead, which it will do naturally by itself, move through the turn, and then as you exit the turn deflect the front wheel towards the left (into the turn), which causes the motorcycle to lean back towards upright, and then stop steering when you are again straight up and moving in a straight line.
All that just to say, the self stabilizing happens because, absent rider input, the steering head naturally reacts to the forces it is subjected to when perturbed by executing that second counter-steering input described above, the one you make as you exit a turn in order to stop turning and go straight again.
It's a bit harder to see this behavior as clearly on a bicycle because the ratio of rider weight/machine weight is so much higher, the tires so much narrower, much slower speeds, that just moving your body weight around has a much bigger impact. But you can clearly see it. Get up to a decent speed someplace you have plenty of room and then deflect the front wheel towards the right (gently!) and you'll clearly see that the bicycle will turn towards the left, quite abruptly.
Darrel
It's quite difficult to "understand" what is happening with a bike - your body movements obscure what is actually happening - but you can get a radio-controlled motorbike.
If you operate one of those the whole counter steer, then steer bit becomes very obvious.
IMHO a gyro-controlled bike could be handy for when stationary and moving slowly - as soon as you are above about 5 mph its unnecessary.
“ the ne plus ultra malus wizard Manshoon had stashed multiple stasis clones “
See HARRY POTTER & THE METHODS OF RATIONALITY.
“I've come to see Return of the Jedi as a retcon of the earlier Star Wars movies.”
Threaten the cosmos with a planet killer gun… ‘solve’ by flying a little ship inside the big one, shooting the reactor and flying away REAL FAST! Count em up.
Oh, in DUNE 2: “Your father didn’t believe in revenge.” There’s a whole scene in the book & 1980s flick where Leto sends a message swearing can-li or vendetta.
Heh. This all reminds me why I surrendered my motorcycle to someone else. As I was trying to learn how to ride a small one, I was using the intuition I built riding bicycles. It wasn't working which made me a danger to myself and those around me. The final straw occurred when I tried to stop by planting my feet on the ground. I brought it to a halt successfully (it was a SMALL bike), but my muscles screamed at me for days.
Best decision I ever made I think... including getting married. Even my wife would agree I'm sure. 8)
Catfish said something roughly like:
They didn't buy up those rights thinking that the profits would only be realized centuries later; they want their returns NOW!
and Pappenheimer responded
Assets that won't or can't be used immediately are devalued. Assets that probably won't be used in your lifetime have a value converging on zero.
———
Doesn't it all mean the same thing?
An asset with no immediate use has a value near its NPV.
Investors holding that asset think in terms of the rate of return implied there and compare that to other rates they'd receive on different assets.
If owning future oil doesn't offer the rate they want (beating some kind of 'safe' bond) then it was a bad idea to buy it. We help create this situation with regulatory changes, so the usual mix of politics and finance gets tossed into the policy battle.
ALfred,
Some women, I am told, are attracted to men who ride motorcycles*, and the first thing they try after they marry these men is to do is to stop them from riding motorcycles*.
Are you sure stopping was your idea?
Pappenheimer
*because it's dangerous
duncan,
I agree. Gyros on a motorcycle is mostly a solution for a problem that doesn't really exist, or at least is very minor. But as technology progresses and the costs to add some additional sophisticated gadgetry goes down, I guess if people want it, why not?
One of the major Japanese manufacturers, can't remember which one offhand, made a prototype motorcycle that was self stabilizing even in the zero to very slow speeds regime without using gyros. They did it by automating the steering head and the height of the suspension. Not sure how effective it was, but there was some video of it that looked pretty impressive.
Dr Brin:
There’s a whole scene in the book & 1980s flick where Leto sends a message swearing can-li or vendetta.
And the terms of Kanly played a role in two scenes which were absent or altered in the latest films. The Atreides pull a raid on Geidi Prime and destroy the Harkonnens' spice hoard. And Kanly is what allows Paul to call out Feyd-Rautha for a personal fight while Feyd is part of the emperor's retinue.
Alfred Differ:
As I was trying to learn how to ride a small [motorcycle], I was using the intuition I built riding bicycles. It wasn't working which made me a danger to myself and those around me. The final straw occurred when I tried to stop by planting my feet on the ground.
Heh. I had pretty much the same experience, and for the very reason you cite. Too used to a bike.
I didn't try to stop with my feet, but I did try to steady myself while coming to a stop. Not quite as bad as your thing, but close enough. Never tried a motorcycle again.
Stopping a bicycle with your feet? Much better to use the brake, then put your feet down. Countersteering also works well on bicycles, especially when one's in a hurry.
Concerning motorcycles, even when one comes to grips with their use, they're uncomfortable for long trips. Speaking of long trips, an incident on one such gave me a great story to go with some "Road rash", so as not to bore anyone, I'll just call it "Bambi vs Suzuki", the punch line was supplied by the Mother of a friend; "Don't you know you're supposed to do that with a gun?".
"Is this thing on?" Just checking.
Tim H:
Stopping a bicycle with your feet? Much better to use the brake, then put your feet down.
Pretty much what I do, except that I'm impatient, so my feet touch the ground while the bike is still in motion. Not so bad on a bicycle, but not recommended for a motorcycle.
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/03/18/us/politics/trump-israel-jewish-voters.html
Former President Donald J. Trump accused Jews who vote for Democrats of hating their religion and Israel, reviving and escalating a claim he made as president that Jewish Democrats were disloyal.
I'm confused. Wouldn't someone who hates the Jewish religion be an ally of the Nazi-adjacent Republican Party?
No dark player has yet pocketed him for a measly half billion. Unexpected.
@scidata,
Watch for Putin or Saudi Arabia to step up.
And, it's not just me saying that:
https://www.electoral-vote.com/evp2024/Items/Mar20-3.html
At this point, assuming a lender does not come forward, Trump has three basic options that he might pursue. The first would be to get a well-heeled "friend" to front him the money. Vladimir Putin could do it; so could Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman. Alternatively, a U.S.-based businessman might do it, although Elon Musk clearly said "no" already, and there aren't too many other Trumpy billionaires who can lay out $500 million without blinking. Further, it would be nearly impossible for Trump to hide where the money came from in this scenario.
I'm cautiously optimistic about Trump. Like the loser he had always been even before his foray into attempting to turn the US into a banana republic, it looks like he has destroyed his chances of winning a second election. There is still time for some real or wholly fabricated event(s) to turn things around for him, but as of right now all signs are that Trump is going to lose, significantly.
Pretty much every single Republican primary election exit poll (historically the most accurate type of poll) has shown a significant loss of support for Trump among RP voters. Significant percentages, in the teens and higher in some cases, that say they will not vote for Trump, and even that they will vote for Biden instead if Trump is the RP nominee.
Trump campaign donations have apparently tanked across the board, from small individual donations on up to big money backers. Rumor has it that some of the big money that was behind Nikki Haley are thinking about supporting the Biden campaign. In any case, The Biden campaign picked up more in one day recently than the Trump campaign did over the entire previous month. And of course, with the law coming after him for $600 + million the world is starting to see that Trump doesn't have that kind of money, unless other people give it to him (like Putin, or the Saudis). I think money in politics is a very bad thing, but there is no denying the correlation between campaign funds and winning elections.
And then there's the whole losing his marbles thing. Trump's mind, never anything to impress at its best, is very visibly degrading and it has gotten so bad that even major media has been disturbed from their long fixation on Biden's age and is starting to mention it. Finally. Even the NYT who, judging by their reporting over the past several years swore off their long history of liberalism and has secretly been on the Trump campaign's payroll. Worse, (Or is that best?) it is certainly impacting his support among voters and donors.
I really hope he keeps this momentum going until November.
“ the ne plus ultra malus wizard Manshoon had stashed multiple stasis clones “
The greatest crime of the Forgotten Realms IP holders was and is not killing their beloved pet NPCs, even if the timeframe already covers hundreds of years.
Except Mystra, the Goddess of Magic. They murder her almost in every new edition of the D&D game. (Wonder why there are still people in the realms taking that job).
It is sheer intellectual lazyness.
@ Dr Brin, from the last thread:
The Citizen Fleet is a galaxy wide Jihad to eliminate midichlorian parasites, a foul disease plague responsible for a quadrillion deaths. Every ‘Jedi’ is offered a choice… vaccinate now or die.
The main villain (spoiler alert) of the Knights of the OLd Republic games was the main protagonists own companion and mentor, Kreya/Darth Traya, who had been both Jedi Master and Sith Lord, shared that view and came to hate the Force so much that she planned to kill it.
And then there's the whole losing his marbles thing.
I wonder if there should be, instead of presidential debates, there should be a game-show type of televised spectactle wherein the candidates are challenged with simulated events and have to react to them. An AI and a council of human experts then report the likely consequences of the decisions.
Question:
Isn't the SCOTUS decision of siding with Texas being allowed to "protect their own borders" a very dangerous one, enabling de-facto secession?
For example: A state could ...
... Disallow pregnant persons to leave the state to avoid abortions.
... force LGBTQ persons, Jews, Non-Whites to register when entering the state, or disallow them to enter;
... pass a law that bans persons named Donald Trump or Joe Biden to enter the state;
... confiscate books labeled "dangerous to children"
... barr federal agencys from entering or operating in the state by holding them up at the border
... threaten federal agents with imprisonment because of "helping illegal immigrants"
... and so on?
Blogger Der Oger said...
"Question:
Isn't the SCOTUS decision of siding with Texas being allowed to "protect their own borders" a very dangerous one, enabling de-facto secession?"
SCOTUS hasn't really sided with Texas, yet, or really sided against them, yet, either. They are pathetically trying to not lose favor with their Republican Party supporters, while also trying to avoid looking so obviously illegitimate that the voting public becomes motivated enough to vote enough of the right people into the houses of Congress, and the White House, to expand the size of the SCOTUS and thereby render the current Trumpian majority irrelevant.
There problem is that the Texas law in question is unambiguously unconstitutional and without precedent.
Interestingly, when the Texas law in question was first passed the Mexican government immediately contacted the Texas government and told them that they would not accept any deportees from them.
Der Oger:
Isn't the SCOTUS decision of siding with Texas being allowed to "protect their own borders" a very dangerous one, enabling de-facto secession?
For example: A state could ...
With the caveat that one never knows how far this particular supreme court will go to advance Republican priorities, I don't think they're claiming a right to "protect their own borders" from within the United States. Only their border with Mexico.
Then again, if the novel The Grapes of Wrath is accurate, the state of Arizona in the 1930s tried to make sure that Okies bound for California kept going to California and didn't overstay their welcome in Arizona. So states have indeed done that sort of thing in the past.
Would a ruling this contra-Constitutional be grounds for impeachment?
Der Oger:
My head-canon is that the kid at the end of Episode 8 is a harbinger. What if Force powers become available to all? Let's say that a youngling escapes from Jedi camp, and meets a ragtag gang of sympathizers. They extract some of her midiclorians, grow them by the vatful, and sell the injections for $19.95, plus a few hundred for training. The Jedi and the Sith get wind of this, declare that only elites like them should have Force powers. That sets up the dramatic conflict: in this corner, the Jedi and the Sith, together at last; in that corner, the People. Pow! Bang! Whoosh! In the end the People win, but a Sith warns them that their troubles are just beginning. Cue the sequel.
You can do a similar story for superpowers, or magic powers. In the latter case, Hermoine is the logical revolutionary, as she has a foot in each of Muggle and Magical worlds.
I call this trope "the democratization of magic". It naturally comes as a trilogy. Movie 1, "Superpower to the People!", is summarized above. Movie 2 is a policier, set in that world, struggling to define and enforce laws suitable for a superpowered public. Movie 3 is a rom-com, with superpowered doofuses in love making a super mess of things until they straighten out.
No doubt that our gracious host realizes that Enlightenment science and technology have precisely 'superpower to the people' as its central goal.
Paradoctor:
Would a ruling this contra-Constitutional be grounds for impeachment?
As with the president, it would require 2/3 of the Senate to actually remove an impeached judge. Not going to happen.
“No dark player has yet pocketed him for a measly half billion. Unexpected.”
Actually, the NY AttyGen seizing Trump Tower fits the narrative. Big bad government taking away a man’s pride & joy and personal property.
“They have to line up paths for masking it. And oligarchs have another big reason to do the Howard Beale maneuver. God Bless the US Secret Service. (GBUSSS)
“as of right now all signs are that Trump is going to lose, significantly.”
Yes and hence the Howard Beale option. But they will first try everything to get the US left to betray the only coalition that can save the world… as they succeeded in 2000 and 2016. Their big maneuver happened on Putin’s birthday (a day after mine!) when Hamas ignited war with Israel. Their biggest play is the Border. But there will be more.
AOC/Liz/Stacey/Bernie/Jaime et al have real work cut out for them, herding those sanctimony-junkie cats.
RFKJr have proved more of a draw on the right. And Cornel Est fizzled. So what else will they try?
A major wild card will be if Romney’s machinations for a New GOP reach sufficient critical mass for him to finally rise up and make the declaration. My Doonesbury Daydream is that he makes the announcement with Melania by his side.
Der Oger: Biden should say “I’ll debate you, knowing you will howl and caper and froth and interrupt… so before we debate, let’s take that cognitive test on live TV first?
Sorry, but none of your extrapolated implications of the Texas Border Bill are on any plausible horizon, even of this illegitimate court..
Paradoctor of course your "everybody gets 'em!" scenario is how I rock n' roll!
Dr Brin:
RFKJr have proved more of a draw on the right. And Cornel Est fizzled. So what else will they try?
The latest thing that liberals were freaking out over this morning was that an RFK Jr or a "No Lables" candidate might cause no candidate to get 270 votes, throwing the election to the House of Representatives. But that would take one of those other candidates actually winning states. Somehow, of all the possible underhanded ways Republicans might win, that one isn't top of my mind to worry about.
Pappenheimer,
Are you sure stopping was your idea?
Hmm. Now that you mention it, I did surrender it shortly after deciding to pursue the woman I wound up marrying. 8)
*because it's dangerous
Yah. Damned dangerous… doubly so when your intuition is honed for a bicycle.
———
Der Oger,
de-facto secession
That won't really be the problem assuming things went that far… which is highly unlikely.
Secession will be among the smaller concerns because that is civil war territory. The danger isn't about confiscated books. It's about us showing the world what really modern warfare REALLY looks like.
Not many think of this in detail, but our civil war had many of the same modern lessons emerge (a few decades early) as WWI. In the unlikely scenario where we repeat something that stupid, we'd wind up showing the world what "new modern" means. For example, those million bullet caches some of our crazy neighbors have really won't matter.
Still… stay calm. The provocateurs want us all fearful and frothing at the mouth. Way, way too many Americans don't want a repeat of old stupidities. We just hope we don't have to shoot anyone to stop it. This isn't the first time we've frothed and NOT erupted in hot violence.
———
RFK Jr is an embarrassment. Let him be Trump's VP choice to provide a capstone to it all.
Thank you for your answers!
Der Oger: Biden should say “I’ll debate you, knowing you will howl and caper and froth and interrupt… so before we debate, let’s take that cognitive test on live TV first?
Saw a satire show yesterday:
"After conducting medical tests on Trump and Biden, the doctors decided to become candidates themselves."
Stonekettle on Threads, referring to Peter Navarro:
"the challenges conservative Americans, Christians, and Trump supporters face da..."
Stop. Right there. Those three groups are the LEAST persecuted people in history. These people walk down the street wearing a MAGA hat, open carrying, and sporting a cross around their necks without a second thought. The only "challenge" they face is figuring out how to force their beliefs on all the rest of us -- or in lieu of that, eliminate us completely.
You're not martyrs. Quit your fucking whining.
The Rational West is gaining strength daily. The "Science Meets Parliament" model* has now spread from its Australian roots to the UK, EU, Canada, and Spain. US ambassador Caroline Kennedy said recently about the US-Aussie cancer moon-shot, "We do these things not because they are easy, but because they are hard."
* A wee bit high-brow for my grass roots citizen science sensibility :)
scidata:
US ambassador Caroline Kennedy said recently about the US-Aussie cancer moon-shot, "We do these things not because they are easy, but because they are hard."
I couldn't tell from your post whether you are aware of this or not, but it sounds as if Caroline Kennedy is quoting her famous father talking about the original moon shot.
Stonekettle is good: “You're not martyrs. Quit your fucking whining.”
But I still say what demolishes their preening-masturbatory pretenses at macho is their cowardice toward wagers, over verifiable/falsifiable facts.
“The Rational West is gaining strength daily. The "Science Meets Parliament" model* has now spread from its Australian roots to…”
in Polemical Judo I suggested next time a Pelosi becomes speaker, fund every House member to pick a Science and Facts adviser from their home district. Those can meet and argue what’s factual in sort of a Fact Congress… while the regular one argues policy and law. It will put MAGA dopes like MTG in a bad spot. Either they shame their home district by refusing – implying they can’t find anyone -or pick a flaming/raving moron… or else pick someone with knowledge and reputation… and face facts and embarrassment with “Sir that’s not true.”
Wanna know who the most powerful science advocates are? Converted confederates.
Brilliant people who feed me optimism and southern biscuits.
I've come to a remarkable conclusion about Social Collapse while crossing the American West:
Western Society has already collapsed, but most haven't noticed yet.
It was a combination of evidence that led me to this conclusion, not the least being a kindly Salt Lake City bus driver who burst into happy laughter when I tried to pay my fare because (in her words) "nobody pays", a fact that I later confirmed as I rode along, which coincided with the rampant thievery that I recently witnessed in California.
For whatever reason, western media has most often chosen to describe social collapse in terms of a frenetically murderous auto-da-fé replete with high-energy lawlessness, mass starvation & an economic implosion replete with cavorting methamphetamine junkies & repressive totalitarian holnists.
Of course, the American West has ALWAYS been rather collapsed, although decidedly not 'frenetic', as even our most lawless towns from Dodge City to Tombstone still had shops, mercantiles, food, restaurants, saloons & vigilante justice even way back in the 'bad old days'.
In terms of Social Collapse then, there appears to be absolutely no reason to panic as things really haven't changed all that much, aside from a few technical details, giving me reason for cautious optimism about our current & future state of affairs.
And this, my friends, is how I learned to stop worrying and LOVE our ongoing social collapse.
Best
Is he still here? A 2-second skim: I didn't read the post but did notice the grump "social collapse."
The driver of 'social collapse' is what it was for 6000 years, till our Enlightenment Experiment: feudal lords grabbing everything. Weralth disparities are skyrocketing - as they did in the 1850s when a few hundred plantation families drove most white southerners int poverty.... and the Gon With The Wind nobles egged those suckers into blaming Northern abolitionists.
But the Union is roused. We're coming. Not for you willing/eager slaves, but for your masters.
Geez man prescribe yourself some Xanax?
onward
onward
N. England (founded by Puritans) is fairly civilized; the rest of the nation is not. For your next voyage, why not travel to N Hamphire, VT, Maine, Massachusetts, Rhode Island?
So fossils like you will go extinct?🤔
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