Lmao pic.twitter.com/NLmeXipqE8

— 9 V O L T (@9_volt88) August 31, 2017

People believe in evolution, just not for humans.

Yep. Something I’ve been talking about for years.

The term “liberal Creationism” refers to the fact that on the cultural Left there is a strong belief in the concept of evolution on the whole, but in the case of human beings biological evolutionary processes are seen as marginal in comparison to culture. In other words, natural selection and adaptation explain the diversity around us in the animal and plant world, but can tell us little about human beings.

I’ve had liberals tell me fantastically ridiculous things such as that humans have no characteristics attractive to the opposite sex, and certainly none that evolved to be that way, and that evolution hasn’t happened to human in tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands of years, and that absolutely every human behavior can be explained by culture and culture alone. And more I am sure that I can’t recall now.

Liberal creationism is a bit better than the conservative kind, but no less stupid, really.

More identity essentialism that annoys me so much.

tiny brain: lord of the flies with girls

bigger brain: lord of the flies wouldn’t work with girls because they’d work together and get off the island

expanding brain: girls and women are capable of violence and cruelty too

galaxy brain: young girls could build an equally hellish micro-society but it would function differently from the original because of differing socialization and men aren’t qualified to write it anyway

universe brain: girls aren’t some enormous mystery, and one need not be female to write good female characters and to understand the experiences of women and girls, just not be a misognyist idiot. Yes, unfortunately, this excludes 97% of men.

I think the idea of LOTF but with girls is kind of a bad one (but could be done well), but I bet I could write a better version than most women or men if someone showed me the money.

I am an arrogant prick, but I am also very good.

Yes, the below bothers me so much, the idea that the Y2K bug was not a real threat. And the entire reason it didn’t end up being much of a problem is that hundreds of thousands of people spent many years and billions of hours working to correct it and ameliorate any potential issues.

This is a very important general point: people are far too inclined to believe that a crisis averted was never a crisis at all. pic.twitter.com/vuJNvid0Bb

— David Andress (@ProfDaveAndress) September 3, 2017

It’s a complete myth that the Y2K bug was not big deal. It simply was a problem that was fixed before the worst of it hit. Trust me, utility and private companies don’t just spend billions of dollars for absolutely no reason (not if they could hand it to execs instead).

With climate change, we are going to experience the opposite of the Y2K bug. Compare and contrast.

The reason you are seeing anti-fascists portrayed as terrorists, as worse than the Nazis and white supremacists, is because the anti-fascists are a threat to the existing order and the Nazis are essentially an extension of it — or at the least not a threat of any real sort.

The same thing happened in Germany during the 1930s and in other countries too. Many supported Hitler as they saw the Nazis as the best bulwark against Communists and other similar groups.

History as it often does rhymes.

If you believe that antifa forces are truly equivalent to Nazis, white supremacists and the KKK, you are quite susceptible to propaganda and you should really do something about that.

Ninety-seven percent of men make it really hard for the rest of us.

2016 made a lot more sense to me when I realized the US is a rich nation with the social problems of a much poorer one

— rain haver (@haircut_hippie) September 2, 2017

Just workin' on my cask… pic.twitter.com/zhji7pI32h

— joey alison sayers (@joeyalison) September 1, 2017

If cracking Nazi heads is wrong, I don’t want to be right.

It’s interesting that most history books take it as self-evident that tariffs which protect industries from foreign competition are beneficial to the country enacting them, while nearly all economics textbooks take the opposite tack, and pretty vehemently.

I suspect neither is completely correct all the time, but I think history books have it mostly right because they have no agenda in this regard.

I like that car people notice my car (even if they don’t know what it is) but normal people just see a boring family sedan.

In the drive-through line of a fast food restaurant today, a guy walked by my car and then literally did a double take. It was comical. Then he motioned me to roll down the window.

“Oh my god this car is sweet! What is it?” he said.

Even a lot of car people don’t know what the SS is. It’s never had any advertising nor much press, as I mentioned before. He probably just noticed that it had big fat tires on the rear, huge brakes, and of course the unmistakable V8 growl and grumble.

So I told him that it was a Chevy SS, really just a re-badged Holden Commodore, and that it had a 415HP Corvette LS3 engine in it.

“Damn, man, this car is awesome,” he said as he walked away.

It’s almost like driving an exotic — car people know it’s something unusual but don’t know much about it since it’s so rare. If there are any SSes left on the lots, that dude might be a buyer now.

Stock markets are a terrible way to fund companies but they are a great way for me to fund me.

Dirty Medicine. How medical supply behemoths stick it to the little guy, making America’s health care system more dangerous and expensive.

But according to inane fuckwits like the ones found here, the reason American medical prices are so high is “more expensive technology” and “as people become richer, they demand more/better healthcare.”

Sure. Sounds likely.

Economics as a profession needs to be burned to the ground.

No matter how it uses its power, Google might be the single most powerful corporate entity ever to exist.

In principle (and perhaps already has in practice) it could determine the fate of elections, of wars, of what we do or more likely do not do to combat climate change.

There is no part of the world unaffected, and a minor algorithm tweak affects billions of people — their opinions, their ideas, their very thoughts.

Used to be, power was in controlling bodies, determining who went where and did what. These days, it’s controlling the minds of who controls those bodies, including their own.

Google has a complete de facto lock on the information access of billions, and fighting for net neutrality will do absolutely nothing to help with this.

It’s weird how the justification for so much pointless math in school really always boils down to, “You’ll need it when you take another math class!”

My partner today said as we were discussing a similar topic, “I used to like physics before I took physics classes.” Her objection to all her math and physics courses was that they had absolutely no connection to the real world, and she never once learned at all how some disconnected equation had anything to do with anything. Luckily, she has some talent at math and actually has a minor in it, but she still despised just about all of her math instruction.

A survey of math is all that 95% of students need — knowing what tool to reach for is far more important than knowing how to use every single tool on the shelf, which is our frankly idiotic approach now.

Every student should be taught the basics. That is, math right up to algebra. Even algebra is useless for the vast, vast majority, so stopping there is the logical place.

Then, a few semesters of “Math Survey” and that’s it.

What a waste of time teaching so much math.