Cool

Write On

Chill Cool, Killin' It

What’s a sentence a girl told you that is still stuck in your head to this day?

When my partner said to me about some complexly-propounded post on philosophy I’d written that, “A wizard uses precisely the word he means to.”

I couldn’t give less of a crap about what some random mook thinks about my writing. I care deeply, though, about her opinion; she’s my audience when I write anything on this blog. I already know I’m a good writer. It is a different thing altogether when someone you respect enormously and hold in the highest regard calls you a “wizard.”

That means something.

Trypan Out

Chill Cool, TV Shows

The most evil TV villain ever? Alien: Earth’s ‘demon sheep eye’ is a work of true genius.

That thing is pretty damn chilling. Though it’s physiologically utterly implausible, it works on screen. I also like how they incorporated a little physical comedy into its methods and interactions. That is rare in anything that tries to be as serious as Alien: Earth does.

Trypanohyncha ocellus is better than the boring xenomorph by far.

Survive All

Chill Cool

Much more of this please.

If Europe and much of the West wants to survive. Does it, though?

Miracle Go

Chill Cool

It is a miracle. And the evil degrowthers relish the thought of taking that away from everyone so so much.

I hate them all.

Port

Chill Amusing, Cool

Me too.

And now a million clown-ass degrowthers are weeping into their kombucha. This makes me happy.

Lose Your Shirt

Chill Cool

If we still made and sold shirts made using Medieval-level technology, a single one would cost around $5,000 if the spinners and weavers made only the US federal minimum wage of $7.25 an hour.

Yes, those Middle Ages shirts would be higher quality. Not enormously so, but they were designed to last for obvious reasons.

Automation and technology can now create a shirt that costs ~$25. No matter what degrowther nonsense you believe, that’s amazing.

Fee Fees

Chill Cool, Political Economy

Trump imposes $100K fee on H-1B visas in new immigration action

That’s awesome. H-1Bs are used to suppress American wages and so that the plutes can have an obeisant slave class of coolies1.

H-1Bs should be banned altogether, but that’s a good first step.

  1. Yes, I use this term deliberately and intentionally.

Prep

Chill Cool, Cute

Definitely not “grotesquely emaciated.” I’d say extremely thin. But look at her arms! They are fuckin’ jacked. No one with arms like that is anywhere close to emaciated.

All that’s going on here is someone who was already fit and skinny and prepped to look like that in the outfit she wanted to wear. Still not that healthy, all told, but not that bad. Prep == eating a bit less for a few weeks and then dehydrating yourself for a couple of days before the event.

Again, no one actually emaciated would have such nice arms. It’s just not possible to do. At all. It’s just the FA nutters and women’s intrasexual competition reacting to someone who looks great. And they are burning with envy and hatred.

Whale Expedition

Chill Amusing, Cool

The 1996 Cadillac Fleetwood Brougham, ladies and gentlemen:

Back when cars were still cars!

  • Turn radius: Ocean liner equivalent
  • Back seat: Orgy-ready
  • Grille: Larger than most European nations
  • Chrome: More than a trashy Las Vegas casino
  • Trunk: Body transpo for even the most prolific serial killer

What a classic. What a legend. I’d own one but don’t want to maintain a 1996 car.

Big Stop

Chill Cool

777 Stopping.

So that’s a maximum-energy landing test. That means flaps down, but no thrust reversers.

In that test, the plane takes off, climbs, and then comes back around to land at a chosen high landing weight and velocity. It touches down at a speed near the maximum operating landing weight and then the pilots apply full braking. The purpose is to simulate the worst-case kinetic energy the brakes must absorb after a heavy (can’t dump fuel, full cargo), high-speed landing.

If I remember right, it must sit there for a certain number of seconds before the brakes are allowed to catch fire. And they absolutely 100% will catch fire after a landing like that.

A lot of factors matter here (temperature, speed, etc.), but a plane like the 777 should be able to stop in about 4,000 feet.

But it fucks up the brakes, tires, and potentially other things too.

Comm Math

Chill Cool

I’ve taken a similar course. It was great!

In that class I learned Excel skills (and I was already decent with Excel) that I use in the business world to this day. People notice and call me an “Excel guru.” Not really, but the class taught me more about Excel in four months than I’d learned in two decades of using it prior. It also did a good job of covering various types of elections and how they work mathematically, compound interest, probability, some logic, and statistics. It was not nearly as basic as I thought it’d be when I signed up for it, partially because it attempted to teach an extremely wide range of topics to a fairly deep beginner level.

The course was infinitely superior to any math course I had in high school and actually connected the sterile math to the real world. I will never be a math guru and have absolutely no interest in that, but if any of my math instruction in high school or middle school had been like that course, I would’ve done far better.

Alas, I will never understand the quadratic equation, though.