How Nomadland shines a light on an ignored America.
Will watch this because Frances McDormand is in it, but it looks good otherwise, too.
Day: February 17, 2021, 1:37 PM
MCGA
How did Texas end up here? “The ERCOT grid has collapsed in exactly the same manner as the old Soviet Union: It limped along on underinvestment and neglect until it finally broke under predictable circumstances.” #ReinventingCollapse https://t.co/ruPCzliQt3
— Nils Gilman (@nils_gilman) February 17, 2021
Make Collapse Great Again!
Family Feud
I’m tired of reading about this, but this just isn’t true.
Scott Alexander built up a large and immensely influential readership completely on his own, writing a blog that, whatever its faults, stepped far outside of the narrow and parochial currents that Very Serious Media refuses to leave.
The real problem is that Slate Star Codex and the NYT were on the same beat, essentially. They were competitors. That’s why the viciousness of the feud! There were not really any unconventional views (as I think of them) on SSC, and everything was firmly within orthodox thought and convention, just as with the NYT. It was not nearly as deep as it appeared, though I did like some of the work on there — but every post needed to be thousands of words shorter.
Family feuds are always the most hard-fought ones. No different here.
6cm
So I’m not getting a vaccine next week – was feeling weird about why I’d been selected ahead of others so rang GP to check. Turns out they had my height as 6.2cm rather than 6 ft 2, giving me a BMI of 28,000 😂
— Liam Thorp 💙 (@LiamThorpECHO) February 17, 2021
Yeah, 28,000 BMI is not too likely in a non-American. Though I guess in the UK if you want to jump to the head of the vaccine queue, call up your GP and tell them you need to update your height to be 6 centimeters.
Good Cop
Bill Gates roasted for saying rich countries should eat ‘100% synthetic beef.’
Well, he’s not yet pushing the “eat bugs and live in the pod” narrative, but I think he’s supposed to be the mild face of that movement. The good cop. Other billionaires who are the designated bad cops will excecute the pincer movement from the other side.
Is it a formal conspiracy? Mainly, I want you to understand why that question doesn’t matter. Focusing too much on explicit intent rather than de facto outcomes means that you look at what people “really” mean to do, at what’s in their hearts, which is less than irrelevant. Who gives a rip what’s in their hearts, what they “really believe?”
What happens in the world is what matters, and formal conspiracy or not, these are the people who’d gladly have you subjugated and contained so they could stay as rich as possible. We’ve seen it with lockdowns of late and we’ll be witnessing much more of that in the very near future.
Regula
It's confirmed: The blackouts in Texas are primarily because of frozen instruments at gas, coal and nuclear plants — as well limited supplies of gas, according to Ercot.
Frozen wind turbines were the least significant factor.https://t.co/10L8Br20iY pic.twitter.com/MBoWt7BDmu
— Catherine Traywick (@ctraywick) February 16, 2021
This is because many of those Texas natural gas plants are are poorly-regulated and don’t have to comply with the typical regs that they be able to operate below certain temps. Minnesota, which also relies on natural gas, does not have power outages when the temperature gets below freezing. (Hint: it’s well-regulated there.)
Ya Z
The first ten on today’s playlist:
SSellent
Sticker Shock: Why Used-Car Prices Are So High.
Because of this, my Chevy SS, which I bought more than three years ago, is still worth within 10% of what I paid for it.
LARP
so my eldest brother, who is a moron, has been playing soldier with his moron friends in the deserts of texas for the last year preparing for the collapse of civilization if biden won (lol). they were burying food and ammo stashes out in the desert, running drills, crazy stuff
— Jean-Michel Connard (@torriangray) February 16, 2021
That’s what I’ve found with most of these people too. It’s just cosplay. None of them have the right tools or know how to do anything useful. Neither do I, mostly, but I don’t pretend to be a survivalist.
The Worsening
I’d seen a lot of writing about living alone during the pandemic and I felt the weight of that. Now the power is out and there’s nothing – no sound, no light, not even heat. And I’m left only w/thoughts of a federal and state government that has failed us on every level.
— Beverly Gooden 🥂 (@bevtgooden) February 16, 2021
Welcome to what it’s like to live in a failed state! It is only going to get worse.