Day: September 23, 2020, 11:43 PM

Sweden the Deal

Chill Uncategorized

I was always deeply suspicious of the liberal smugness and virtue signaling about the Swedish model of handling the pandemic.

It does not seemed to have helped their economy much, admittedly (so far). However, my guess is that until a vaccine is found the virus will keep resurging in economies that had a severe first-wave lockdown, as already seems to be occurring in many places. Further, that means the death toll and infection rate will probably equalize over time.

Sweden, to the derision of “live in the pod and eat bugs” libs, was concerned with total public health, not just hiding indoors forever. That means they wanted to spare the psychological harm and other debilitations of a protracted lockdown. If only Sweden had done a better job with their care homes, their death rate wouldn’t be much worse than their neighbors.

Anyway, every country, even the vaunted “Nordics,” is a bit different — but the Swedish model is probably the only viable one long-term for most places.

Jumping Queue

Chill Uncategorized

I don’t like rating people on the 1-10 scale of attractiveness as I think it’s pretty dehumanizing, but to use that framework for a moment losing weight (if you are a woman) is the one way you can jump three points (say from a 6 to 9) with one relatively simple (though not necessarily easy) action.

For a man, losing weight to get in the normal weight range only nets you about 1.5-2 points — but that’s still a lot. It’d take plastic surgery to do that otherwise. If you lose weight and get relatively buff, then you can jump three-ish points as a man.

Want a real life hack, there you go.

Class Clowning

Chill Regular-ass Post

The same books, articles and essays they’d teach in those classes are available to read any old time, many of them for free.

Want to learn something, there’s nothing stopping you now except the will to do so.

The Imposs

Chill Regular-ass Post

I know I’ve observed this before, but I really do wonder how much of the “it’s impossible to ever lose weight” belief is itself responsible for people being unable to lose weight. If instead we had a culture of, “Here’s how you lose weight, it’s not that hard, etc.” I bet many, many more people would be successful.

Of course, other cultural-level changes would be needed and nothing happens in a vacuum, so there’s that.

Quanto

Chill Uncategorized

This is a macro view of what I’m on about when I discuss the poverty and barrenness of algorithmic dating and algorithmic everything. For some reason, indiscernible to me, people (mostly liberals) believe if they have “all the data,” then the decision wil be obvious and correct.

But the decision isn’t in the data and has little to do with it! The data captures only a very small fraction of the real factors present and those are mostly non-quantifiable — even in principle. So it’s all a waste of time and an illusion, but it’s one that way, way too many people are completely convinced of.