Whatever any left argument for closed borders may have been at one time, ANYONE who defends closure of borders and reduction of migration today is a racist monster. I don't care what your intentions are; your position has consequences beyond what you may have intended.

— Laleh Khalili (@LalehKhalili) March 22, 2019

Guess I am content to be a racist monster, then. Despite the fact that I don’t want millions of white people to just up and immigrate, either. These days, it is possible to be racist against white people even if you are white, I guess. We do indeed live in strange times.

Some people want every country to fall apart rather than just a few of them. Seems smart to me.

This, though, is dead on:

Vehemently disagree. Open borders is not a left stance. It is a neoliberal one. You don't even have to be anti-immigrant to acknowledge and open border policy in the face of unequal states is not good policy.

— Nicholas Nowlin (@theTakeDownNick) March 24, 2019

Exercise adds up to big brain boosts.

I can feel it. I know it’s bad these days to talk about IQ, but I think I’d probably do 5-7 points better an on IQ test these days than I would have a year go.

And as the article discusses, my memory has also improved a great deal. I noticed that it had declined a bit since high school, where I had an absurdly great memory (I once memorized the entire periodic table in a weekend). Since working out heavily I don’t think it’s quite back up to that level but in cramming for a certification test recently, I noticed I had to study much less than I did a few years ago to memorize similar material — about half the time.

Nice to know that the cognitive benefits accrue over time.

Another usage change I’ve observed recently is “wrecking havoc” instead of “wreaking havoc.”

Kind of makes sense. Where else do we use “wreaking,” unless you’re me? Nowhere. Although “wrecking havoc” doesn’t parse all that well, it’s more familiar than the older usage.

Expect to see vegan and vegetarian foods pushed hard in the near future. Big ag companies have realized they can charge far more for those products than meat-based ones, and they cost vastly less to produce.

Companies go where the profits are. They care about nothing else, and no, this won’t save the planet etc.

Intelligence is an aptitude for winning games, primarily reputation games, and primarily by lying. Intelligence is a faculty for deception

— Zero HP Lovecraft (@0x49fa98) March 21, 2019

I agree. Here I quote my own bad self.

Rationality — to the extent that we engage in it — is our hoodwinking engine being repurposed from deceiving, manipulating and managing others to an attempt at understanding the mind of the universe. (And no, I don’t mean some wishy-washy conception of “universal mind.” I mean that our minds are engaging in animism about the universe as a cognitive tool.)

Of course, I got the idea from Peter Watts and modified it a bit. Not many new ideas out there, really. But intelligence and rationality had to evolve from something. Most likely we got to it via that path.

The Average Black Family Would Need 228 Years to Build the Wealth of a White Family Today.

I used to be against reparations. Now, I am mostly for it though the social consequences in other ways might be negative and hard to control.

Still, given the injustices not that long ago and still occurring, the case for reparations makes more sense than not.

Tech Twitter: Tell me about a time someone underestimated or dismissed you and what amazing things you’ve gone on to do since then?

RT for reach if y’all want a bunch of victory stories 😌💖

— Jessica Rose (@jesslynnrose) March 21, 2019

My father told me more than once that I was weak, pitiful and had no ambition and wouldn’t amount to much. Was quite a theme. (Funny all that coming from him, but projection….)

I became a paratrooper in the 82nd Airborne Division and am now the CTO of a small company.

You really called it, dad.