Month: September 2024

Run Water

Chill Clowns

Degrowth is clownish. And every time anyone criticizes degrowth, there’s the perfunctory “that’s not the good kind of degrowth” response. Yet any time I see anyone point to the so-called “good kind” of degrowth, it’s just like the above, except they want to take away your refrigerator and running water too.

I believe degrowth is like communism. There is some mythical version done correctly, but no one has ever seen it nor will they ever.

Realities

Chill Sex

The myth is that men are sex-obsessed beasts who can think of and are concerned with nothing else.

The reality for most men: “This woman is naked with her legs spread and she’s pulling down my pants. Maybe she’s just tired? Or doesn’t like my pants? She probably doesn’t actually want sex. This is a trick or something. I better not chance it. Don’t want to be a creep.”

The above (only slightly exaggerated) happens so very often to men who are only used to disdain and rejection from women.

Causal Agents

Chill Culture

The culture of the future should be a billion-year-long quest to conquer the galaxy and defeat death.

Anything that doesn’t violate the laws of physics we can do, given time1. Let’s get the fuck started.

  1. No matter what the liberal naysayers claim.

Chill Links

Apple Mobile Processors Are Now Made in America. By TSMC.

The Double Irish Dutch Sandwich: End of a Tax Evasion Strategy.

Larry Ellison’s AI-Powered Surveillance Dystopia Is Already Here.

Millions Have Amnesia About the Worst of Trump’s Presidency. Memory Experts Explain Why.

Miscellany № 103: calculators!

A culture that arguably began in the crucible of progressive spaces has metastasized; today, there is no corner of the political landscape that has not devolved into a Manichaean clown show, all weaponized gossip and vacuous partisanship and recreational demonization of the outgroup.

Ukrainian drone attack triggers huge blasts at Russian ammo depot.

‘Pig-Butchering’ Scams Cost Americans Billions. This Lawyer Is Taking Them On.

Climate change is making home insurance costs more expensive. These maps show prices and weather risks in your state.

At least 63% of workers who filed a complaint eventually lost their job. That number was even higher for workers who filed a disability-related claim, at 67%.

Bless her heart: Gossip phrased with concern provides advantages in female intrasexual competition.

Tupperware, no longer a kitchen staple, files for bankruptcy.

New cosmic distance catalog could unlock the mysteries of universe formation.

Why Europe will not catch up with the US.

Chaos Agents

Chill Politics

Support Trump or not, it’s clear that the media enables him. They allow his campaign to get away with saying and doing things that would immediately lead to any Democratic candidate being torpedoed and tossed out of the race. There are dozens of examples and they are not hard to to find, so I won’t enumerate them all here.

This is, largely, because doing so makes the media orgs more money. It’s also about fear, too, but for my entire life the Republicans have been held to much lower standards of behavior and policy clarity. That has only worsened with Trump.

Cat-eating Haitians? Come on. It not possible to stoop lower than an attempted coup, but that’s pretty low.

Belief Doesn’t Matter

Chill Regular-ass Post

Whether or not you believe in climate change, the insurance companies certainly do. And they are basically never wrong about such things (in fact, they often misprice risk on the low side, so if they are wrong, it’s more likely to be worse than they currently think).

Your beliefs don’t matter. Climate change is happening and if I didn’t buy it for any other reason, I’d do so because the insurance companies are demonstrating they know that it is.