Jesus Christ, when I think about it, I can’t believe I did shit like drive all the way across Egypt with no map, no GPS, no weapons, no cell phone, all in a vehicle with a broken fuel gauge.
Wild that I’m not dead. Good but unlikely.
Month: August 2022
Grow
My Job Is to Police Energy Use in My Office. Here’s How We Got to Net Zero.
This is not the path. Degrowther nonsense only hurts everyone. As is completely obvious in this article, people like this find great joy in taking away things from people. We can’t let these types get the upper hand. We have no future at all then.
Big Animals
is it too simplistic to imagine global warming renders Canada and Russia the inevitable eventual superpowers?
— Steve Randy Waldman (@interfluidity) August 22, 2022
That’s not what will happen.
If global warming/climate change is as bad as projected, Russia will essentially be overrun/bought/invaded (probably some combination of all three) by China, and thus has no future. Most Russian people will be displaced and/or genocided by the CCP and most of Russia will become “New China,” with a small Russian rump state remaining in the west of the now-extant territory.
It’ll be much the same for Canada and its surly neighbor to the south, though probably not quite as violent. The US will soft invade Canada and essentially take it over. Seems unlikely now? Just wait. It is the obvious and easy move and that’s usually what occurs. (Not judging it morally — it’s clearly wrong. But realpolitik is never moral.)
Long Longing
Constant use of long Covid, particularly inflated risk, to support individual views & broader public health advocacy isn't helpful to the crucial need for greater LC understanding & improved care.
— Greg Dore (@GregDore2) August 22, 2022
Wasn’t everyone in the universe supposed to have Long Covid by now? That’s what I heard from the Covidians anyway. Doesn’t seem to have materialized. I think 99% of the Long Covid studies are complete bunk and conflate “I still cough once in a while” with a lifelong and life-changing disability.
Gonna be a lot of money in “treating” Long Covid, so that’s one reason you’re seeing this. Big Pharma loves it.
Wrong Direction
With the surveillance nightmares phones and computers are now, we’d be better off not having them at all. It pains me to say that as I’ve been such a tech-head my whole life but it is nonetheless true.
We’ve created the panopticon and most people believe there was no choice in the matter. But there was always a choice. We just chose poorly.
Not That One
Absolute mad lad https://t.co/NIEgPrB7ut
— Faine Greenwood (@faineg) August 21, 2022
Not possible. That plane has a range of less than 800 miles.
Baskslide
I wonder how many FtM folks transition back to female because they quickly realize how much it fucking sucks dating as a man? Probably a pretty large percentage.
Who would want to date as a man? It’s unbelievably and vastly terrible.
Numbers End
The first ten on today’s playlist:
UttIn
Information Hygiene: The ability to tell the difference between spin and propaganda, between unknowns and fiction, to make probabilistic assessments when confronted with confusing contradictory ideas instead of falling into conspiracy theories or cults. pic.twitter.com/dphAcB3XEB
— Barry Ritholtz (@ritholtz) August 21, 2022
The problem: most people (I’d say 95%) are utterly incapable of this. This brings up thorny questions about censorship and who gets to control information.
DeGo
there's an interesting phenomenon where most of the degrowth movement comes from wealthy western countries that have by and large greatly benefitted from increases in production and believing this shouldn't be extended to developing countries https://t.co/H25TawG3Gs
— S.H. (@upzone_CA) August 20, 2022
A 30% decline in world GDP would kill 1-2 billion. Not hundreds of thousands.
Degrowth nonsense gotta go.
They Lied? Really?
I dont wanna be a hijabi anymore.
Huh. I was told wearing a hijab or burqa was always feminist. No? LOL.
CoLost
The Covidians lost. Nothing would’ve ever been enough for them. We shouldn’t celebrate — after all, more than a million people died — but it’s still a good thing they didn’t cripple society for the next decade or more. Still, we should’ve pushed for better ventilation and air filtering — but the ZeroCovid nonsense made that a difficult sell, too.
1992
obviously there’s the confound of having been young. but i’d say no, despite some material improvements, life was broadly better in 1992, it was a calmer, more hopeful, more directly sociable time. (i might weigh things differently if i were eg trans, though.)
what do you think? https://t.co/XVij8YFsSi
— Steve Randy Waldman (@interfluidity) August 17, 2022
Agreed. Life was better in 1992, for most people, even black people. Exceptions are gay and trans people, depending on location.
Reasons:
1) People were more open/sociable generally.
2) Prudishness was far lower; the left had not moved to sex-hating Puritanism.
3) Welfare had not yet been eviscerated.
4) Republicans had not gone full fascist ghoul.
5) Identity politics had not yet destroyed any possibility of factional unification.
6) Riot Grrrls!
7) Surveillance was still extremely minimal.
8) Corporate monopolies didn’t exist to the same extent.
9) Computers still did what you told them to do.
10) It was a time of very high optimimism that pervaded the entire culture; much more pleasant to live that way.
Not that everything was perfect then. But many things were a lot better, and are continuing to worsen even now.
Should Do
this is fucking cool design. actually interesting!! what a concept! https://t.co/XT9hauVSI5
— Amy Hoy (@amyhoy) August 20, 2022
Whoa. I love it. Yeah, we don’t really do any interesting or innovative design any longer. We have so much potential power and we’re told every single thing must the be the least-useful, most lame-brained piece of worthless shit ever so that some meth-addled douchebag with the IQ of a rutabaga can use it — or that all features must be removed for “security.” That latter lie never fails to delude the average bozo and even the “smart” people.
More of this, less shit-for-brains clowns dictating a computer must work like a Speak & Spell so their 87-year-old gramma won’t send her life savings to Nigeria for the fifth time this year.
We can do better. We should do better.
Sex-Phobic
Overall not a very thoughtful column, but the below is heinous.
But it is a retrograde step. Dating apps are prone to abuse, particularly by young men craving sex, but they also have considerable benefits.
This is in itself retrograde. There is nothing wrong with young men (or young women, or old women, or old men) craving sex. What the fuck is up with these idiot mooks?
Why is it automatically “abuse” to crave sex? Keep me away from these fucking non-fucking people.