About the below, sometimes I literally find a college class’s syllabus and then just read everything on it. Here’s a good start for what Angie is talking about.
Why spend $4,000 when you can just do that? I can’t understand.
Month: September 2020
Class Clowning
I never took a women or gender studies class (really) in college. And that was considered "not serious" by a lot of folks, at least for resume purposes etc. But I think it would be a lot easier to understand the world right now if I had.
— Angie Schmitt🚶♀️ (@schmangee) September 23, 2020
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
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
Modernity knocks the fun out of life.
It optimizes the knowing for the not knowing.
And the reality is the 'not knowing' is where the fun is at.
The texture of life.
Modernity optimizes the wrong thing and removes the right thing.
Does it backwards.
— Paul Portesi ูโ (@paulportesi) September 23, 2020
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.
Burger Kesey
This house is an acid flashback to the domestic nightmares of the 1970s https://t.co/kMrG5ggFdi
— Nils Gilman (@nils_gilman) September 22, 2020
Lord. The bunker part looks like The Brady Bunch meets Burger King staffed by the Stepford Wives, all in a Ken Kesey novel.
Not Sure if Joking
I’m not a “free thinker.” Whatever that is.
I’m a very restricted thinker. I try to restrict myself to thinking the correct things.
MiGod
Trump ad asks people to support the troops. But it uses a picture of Russian jets.
Yep, them are MiGs. That’s hilarious.
May Him
@nytimes has a piece today explaining "honor culture." It is amazing, and telling, that in the year 2020 the newspaper of America's literati apparently haven't absorbed the basics of the culture that a ton of Americas were raised in, including me. 1/https://t.co/cEBqnAHBTU
— Christopher Sprigman (@CJSprigman) September 16, 2020
Great thread. I also grew up in an “honor culture,” of course. It’s still very much alive in me, as it is with Christopher. Where I grew up, tolerating disrespect was the ultimate sign of weakness. It was something you did not do if you wanted to have any sort of viable social future. I learned that lesson early, that it was better to fight and lose (which I did, often, before I got good at fighting) than it was to back down or just take it stoically.
To this day there’s still part of me that feels more comfortable with violence than with just letting things slide. To be clear, I don’t resort to my fists now and I haven’t been in a physical fight in two decades. But still…the violent disposition, however small a voice it becomes, is always there; it feels like home in a perverse way.
A friend of mine once asked me how many fights I’ve been in. I literally could not remember, it was so many. That’s how I grew up, and how you experience the world as a child and young adult doesn’t just go away, as convenient as that would be.
Re-field
If by "not correct" you mean "unbelievably crazy and misguided," then yes. The Fed is literally printing money and handing it to asset managers. https://t.co/1cQubjpEFP
— David Dayen (@ddayen) September 16, 2020
My salary is not small but it appears I still went into the wrong field.
Like a Vandal
Those of you who are #WFH. Is there such a thing as a microphone that limits the ambient noises in the background?
— J. Lam (@zengarden17) September 16, 2020
Get yourself a Schoeps CMC64 Set Modular Small-diaphragm Condenser Microphone with Cardioid Capsule.
Good general-purpose and the cardiod capsule suppresses noise from other directions besides (mostly) right in front of the mic. What, you don’t have a spare $1700 lying around to spend on such a mic? Buddy, that’s your problem, not mine. ๐
Mask-scare-a
When the pandemic ends, wearing a damn mask will continue as a liberal virtue signal. I hate the fucking mask, so this is terrible for me. But I know this is going to be true.
You hate to see it.
Chop
But there's a few more!
Chopper Commando, for example. pic.twitter.com/HIFEtKvrIX— foone (@Foone) September 15, 2020
Chopper Commando! I used to play that. Had totally forgotten about that game. It was pretty fun for an hour every so often.
Act and Eff
The idea that South Park and Archer are responsible for the rise of Trumpism is one of those bizarre takes that I regularly see normal folks espousing on this platform…it just seems like it couldn't possibly be true… https://t.co/SBWDyzsPSH
— Noah Smith 🐇 (@Noahpinion) September 15, 2020
Yeah, it’s total horseshit. The left believes in the infinite power of words, as if Cartman is some sort of 12th Century magician-alchemist.
The economic and political environment explain 99% of the rise of fascism and fascism-lite, though. If South Park had anything to do with it at all, it was extremely negligible. Actions and effects in the real world are vastly more powerful than what some cartoon character screams about on some TV show.
Capabull
Almost certainly wrong for most people. Unfortunately, contra liberal comfort beliefs “hard work” is not enough for many people — though it’s not all genetics, of course. Development environment, brain injuries (including from lead), and other factors mean that not everyone is endowed with enough ability to perform well in math.
There is certainly nothing more I could’ve done to be any better at this and there are many people like me out there. The “hard work” myth is a pervasive one, though. But there is only so much time in the day, and only so much ability people have. That’s a hard truth, but the way it is.
Accust
Being strong and relatively agile is so superior to being weak and fat.
How do people live like that? Suppose you get used to anything. I did.