Interesting how violent racism and climate denial are both blamed on poor people yet perpetuated mainly by elites and the upper middle class

— Kate Aronoff (@KateAronoff) August 14, 2017

On a similar note, it’s all those hillbillies and Appalachians and the people with Southern accents who elected Trump!

Unless you look at a detailed electoral map, or read anything not in your filter bubble, or do anything at all sensible….

First 10 on today’s playlist:

These people are as likely to be found on the barricades as Bugs Bunny.

It’s all a joke to them, though they pose like it’s serious.

Reminds me of this garbage:

Not that I have done much, either, but at least I don’t pretend to be in some “resistance” while also supporting someone and an entire political system that had and has just as much to do with our current problems as Trump.

People like Scalzi aren’t the enemy, exactly — that’d be the Nazis. But they are not worth much other than as some peanut gallery content to go along until it threatens their pocketbooks or social status.

These first-stage landings continue to amaze me. They seem like pure science fiction. I keep thinking of Anne McCaffrey's brainships.

— Emily Lakdawalla (@elakdawalla) August 14, 2017

I’m with Emily.

I know, as a proper leftist I’m supposed to despise Musk, SpaceX, etc., but the rocket landings of the first stage booster is about the coolest thing I’ve ever seen in my life.

We need more outlandish projects like this, not fewer — but with more acknowledgement of how much government had to do with its success, and that benefit (directly and indirectly) more citizens.

Still, though, most criticism of Musk seems to consist solely that he has the gall of even attempting to tackle large projects at all rather than any particular effort.

It’s more that the — for lack of a better word — haters would resist anything challenging or world-changing of any sort, because, like, trying sucks, man. It’s not cool.

In other words, those who say that single payer is impossible and that we shouldn’t even try are from the same camp that believes that we shouldn’t even attempt to explore space or think about Mars colonies, etc., or what sort of world we’re building.

The centrist motto: it’s all impossible so we should just give up now.

Even though I think the neoliberal/leftist ideas of open borders and unrestricted immigration are terrible and terribly naive ideas both for the US and the emigrants’ countries, after seeing what’s happening in Charlottesville with the white nationalist clowns my first impulse is to say “screw it” and throw open the borders to any and all.

Unrestricted immigration is frankly an idiotic idea, but the alt-right people are far, far worse and pitting the two against one another, I’d rather do whatever harms those cretins the most.

This is in most ways a false dichotomy I realize, and I know if you don’t support open borders and allowing hundreds of millions to collapse all social structures and social programs you are an evil racist, but the future is far worse with the return of the Ku Klux Klan and its modern offshoots than any possible open borders scenario of the neoliberals/left, no matter how harebrained.

By the way, though it’s not that Trump and his election had nothing to do with it, I believe it’s a factitious narrative that this would not have happened sans Trump. Do you think the election of Hillary Clinton would’ve made these people less angry, somehow placated them?

If so, please explain because that doesn’t make a damn lick of sense.

Someone else noticed just how great Alexis Bledel’s performance was in The Handmaid’s Tale.

The episode mostly focused on her was very much worth watching, and I am glad I experienced it. However, I hope to never watch it again.

All the boring torture porn and jump scares in the world can’t compare to observing Bledel’s face as she experiences the destruction of self under the domination of the terrifying bureaucratized authoritarianism of Gilead — the destruction, and her anger and hopelessness and resignation and through that resignation, still resistance.

I’ve never cringed watching anything supposedly-disgusting or graphic on screen. But I cringed watching Ofglen’s reactions to the things she was experiencing and witnessing.

Damn, that is some skill.

Everyone might or might not be born to do something. Bledel, however, was born to play Ofglen. Shit, she is so good, people.

Those with well-developed social skills often have no idea the talents they possess, as they feel natural and self-evident to the possessor.

However, those with poor social skills have no doubt of their inability and ineptitude — those with good social skills won’t let them live down or escape their incompetence, and are punished for attempting to improve.

Having been on both sides of this, no one can tell me credibly this is untrue. I lived it.

It’s not the greatest issue of our time or anything, but I do find it darkly funny when those with high social skills condemn those with poor social skills while saying something like, “Of course a man shouldn’t talk to a woman in an elevator! I mean, DUH!”

But the thing is those with poorly-developed social skills would have no idea about this prohibition or why it exists. And even if they could reason it out later, it would not be obvious at the time.

Much of the “obvious” in the world of social relations isn’t as glaringly so as those who wish to punish the less socially developed make it out to be.

Again — been on both sides. It’s true whether you want it to be or not.

I decided to try Firefox 57 (nightly) to see how many of my current add-ons would still function after Mozilla decides to destroy itself.

And it is a grand total of 2 out of 39.

Yep, that is right. Two. Just two.

Firefox is so, so fucked.

I can’t easily screenshot all of my add-ons as I have too many (don’t feel like stitching images), but those marked “Legacy” in yellow? Yeah, those won’t work after 57 is released.

This is almost comedic in the fail train this will end up being. I would spew more invective and expletives, but it’s pointless. This kind of incompetence takes care of itself.

Firefox will be utterly useless to me after 57 is released. What a bunch of wankers who don’t know how hard they’re about to fail.

Even if the Google manifesto writer were correct about all of his suppositions, that implies that tech would still be 40-45% women, instead of less than 20%.

Though all of his points weren’t as prima facie absurd as made out to be (though some were indeed huge fails), I think tech would be better for the world and for humanity if it were about 70% women — not due to any biological differences but because women are socialized to be more well-rounded people than most men.

More well-rounded people == better outcomes.

Also, at the least women wouldn’t insist on making only huge phones no one smaller than 6’2″ can hold in their hand. That is a pet peeve of mine.

Most of the time, I am very good at restraining what comes out of my mouth at work. Most of the time. I do this by not saying anything at all unless it’s one of my “work scripts.”

But the other day, I slipped up. Someone was doubting the cleanliness of glasses in restaurants and I opined before examining what I was about to say, “You know, the amount of times that water has passed through a fish’s butthole is probably about infinite.”

Oops.

Well, at least it was funny.

Fellas, thoughts on your woman walking down the aisle in this? pic.twitter.com/nTO9KLBOVX

— Tons of Fun (@tokenbeigechick) August 7, 2017

Without the veil, yes. Do not like the symbolism of veils. That is a great outfit, though.

Hey, cool, another person who doesn’t exist! Rick Perlstein is also deficient in math but widely considered not a dumbass.

I know this for a fact. I share something in common with the daughter of Carrie Buck: both of us got Ds in math. Mine was in fifth grade. I had always been deficient in math. And yet, by the second grade, I had also earned a reputation as someone who was extremely intelligent. In the “tracking” educational system I was raised in from second grade through high school, that was that. I was “placed” in the “high” classes: reading, social studies, science—and math, in which, I don’t know, maybe I cheated to get by? Then came fifth grade, when I earned that D. Maybe it was a D-.

According to STEM types, if you are not good at math, but are facile with other topics and with concepts, you don’t exist. But Stephen Wolfram and Rick Perlstein do exist. As do I.

So here’s to not existing! It’s pretty awesome!

About my post on immigration a bit below, I don’t think it’s just the one percenters who wish to disrupt social relations. It’s the left as well. Strangely, many feminists support huge amounts of immigration (especially in Europe) from countries with highly patriarchal cultures that would destroy feminism if allowed in the numbers they espouse.

I don’t, however, think immigration is the main issue or main problem at least in the US. It just exacerbates other difficulties and is used as a cudgel by both sides for different purposes to achieve other policy goals.

The goals of the right with immigration are to lower wages, weaken societal and social relations, to break unions, etc. — whatever makes liquid capital more able to flow and to flee if needed.

The goals of the left are less clear (as the left itself is less unified and less ideologically cohesive) but they mainly seem intent on assuaging white guilt, enacting “punishment” on themselves and their culture for past sins by allowing in more “authentic” people to destroy the offending culture (their own), actual humanitarian reasons (a small but important component absent from the right) and like the right, the left wishes to transform society and its relations.

I’m more interested in these other policy goals than the immigration itself, but we are getting into dangerous territory as there is and will be a huge nativist backlash once the non-native-born level gets above 15% or so.

Has happened before, will happen again.

I used to love using Firefox, but now it just makes me angry.

It’s really difficult to stop using a piece of software you’ve used for so long, but in the next few weeks it’ll be time to make the switch to Chrome/Chromium.

End of an era and all that.

We allowed PH.d economists to conduct UBI for the rich under cover of monetary policy. Trump is a consequence. There will be more.

— Lizzy (@lizzie363) July 20, 2017