Monday’s Forum
Steven L. Taylor
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Monday, May 24, 2021
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162 comments
About Steven L. Taylor
Steven L. Taylor is a Professor of Political Science and a College of Arts and Sciences Dean. His main areas of expertise include parties, elections, and the institutional design of democracies. His most recent book is the co-authored
A Different Democracy: American Government in a 31-Country Perspective. He earned his Ph.D. from the University of Texas and his BA from the University of California, Irvine. He has been blogging since 2003 (originally at the now defunct Poliblog).
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Yo, Michael! Yo!
Specifically for @Reynolds, but any punk rock person should pay attention.
Fiddlehead is a group you def need to pay attention to. I found these guys last night by a recco from a friend. Holy crap! Blown away!
I have been listening to the Between The Richness stream released 5 / 21.
This is extremely reductive, but if you crave new Rancid, you are going to dig this guaranteed.
This was a stream of a brand new spanking new album. (There is back catalog to furrow through. I am very happy.)
Band of the day: Fiddlehead
10 songs 25 minutes. That’s a superb ratio of song length to album length.
Get in, do your business, get out. Clang, done.
I am really looking forward to listening to these guys back catalog.
My next few comments are continuations from the bottom of the Saturday open thread. I was not in the mood to really dig deep into much yesterday. I just didn’t have it. While explaining some operation involving infinity, my calculus teacher in high school described what happens if he thought too hard about its nature by making what morticians call a Q face except with bulging eyes, one smaller than the other.
That guy is interesting. Played offensive line at a D1 school with a prestigious academic pedigree and a not-so-good football team. He is a bear of a man. Studied EE. Hated being an engineer, so decided to teach high school math, coach wrestling, and coordinate the defense. Intelligent, great teacher, and hilarious. All his exams had quotes about hell at the top of each page–Johnny Cash, Dante, etc. Oh, he used to pick my grey hairs out during those tests. Trying to do intentionally tricky problems is hard enough, but much more difficult when the presence of a giant man disturbs the aether no more than enough to suggest an apparition
then…
PLUCK!
I can’t say I make his Q face when I think about the nature of consciousness, because that was humorous. This is not. I get a physical sensation in my brain. Not like Mimai’s brain tickle that engages thought processes. I hate being tickled and abhor itches, but that’s a metaphor. This reaction is not a mere literary device.
The best I can describe it is like nausea, but . . . brain. Not pain, vaguely illish discomfort. Only sometimes can I discuss the matter without it; other times, I can fight through it. But the third option is to stop thinking about it. That’s the option I took until late last night when the ebook I had on hold from the local library became available for me to borrow. Fitting to my discussion with @DrDaveT, the book is The Case Against Reality.
I found an oponion column that embodies the original meaning of the phrase, “Begging the question”. It’s from The Atlantic and concerns the Israeli debate and how it is not equivalent to the US Civil Rights struggle. Except it doesn’t actually demonstrate the differences. Instead it points out ways in which Americans think there is equivalence and mocks them, but doesn’t actually do anything to demonstrate that they are not equivalent.
@Mimai:
On Prince destroying Captain Kirk’s guitar:
Yes, I am aware of Prince destroying the prized guitar. Apparently, Kirk made a bunch of new friends with prominent musicians. Some offered to find a replacement or recommended trusted specialists to restore the mangle instrument. Others welcomed him to the club of fellow, respected musicians who have had their instruments destroyed by Prince.
Fallon’s reaction to the toss cracks me up. The guitar landed next to a stack of amps and created a bunch of feedback. The host looks at the wreckage, yells “Prince!” but the Purple One had already disappeared backstage. He looked unsure whether to laugh or not. Some people just make me laugh.
I was fortunate enough to see The Roots live in 2006. Most people I’ve spoken to about it have only seen them do short sets at festivals. They missed out. This show was bonkers. The first opening act was a woman with curly hair teased out wider than Warren Sapp’s ass . They call her the hip hop violinist, because she has played on some hit records. The one that comes to mind is Twista’s “Celebrity.” She was great. Her bow skills combined with the hair gave her performance a near-hallucinogenic haze.
The second opening act was a rapper by the name of Jean Grae. She has a verse on The Roots track “Somebody’s Gotta Do It.” The concert was general admission, and I was at stage right with no one in front of me. She played a song with the hook, “Clap mothafuckas {hand claps}/Dance mothafuckas.”
She gets the first lines of the hook out, “Whoa, whoa. Hold up! Stop the music! Listen up! All y’all mothafuckers clapped like I told you to. But then I told y’all to dance, and most of you didn’t do shit. So we gonna try this again. And when I say, ‘dance, mothafuckas’ :looks directly in my eyes: I don’t care if you the whitest boy in the place and got no rhythm. You dance…mothafucka.”
I danced. Well, more like a dance-esque shimmy.
The Roots played for 2+ hours. They covered “Shake, Rattle, and Roll” and “Black Betty.” After the encores, ?uestlove drew a quick self-portrait on one of his drum skins. He waved the crowd back like a kid with a football saying “go deep.” I got my hand on it, but didn’t want to destroy it trying to wrestle it away from the other guy who mad a play. But the memory is good enough.
“Hockey heats up!”
Washington Capitols vs. New York Rangers May 5: a travesty
13 fighting penalties, 6 misconduct penalties, 1 unsportsmanlike conduct penalty. I thought they had gotten away from the goon behavior and intent to injure.
Tom Wilson shook one player like a rag doll, banging his head on the ice!
Commissioner Bettman has lost control of the league. The coaches have lost control of their players. The referees have lost control of the game. We don’t see this violence in pro “Hockey heats up!”
Washington Capitols vs. New York Rangers May 5: a travesty
13 fighting penalties, 6 misconduct penalties, 1 unsportsmanlike conduct penalty.
Tom Wilson shook one player like a rag doll, banging his head on the ice! Players are being sent to the hospital, and early retirement.
Commissioner Bettman has lost control of the league. The coaches have lost control of their players. The referees have lost control of the game. We don’t see this violence in pro baseball, basketball, soccer, car racing, golf, tennis or bowling. Football seems to have got a better handle on this now.
Perhaps the Commissioner should get the players, coaches, trainers, and referees together to revisit the concussion issues, effects, and protocols. Bring in some retired players to talk about what there are experiencing. Maybe it is time to consider throwing some criminal charges in some of those games. Some players need to be out of the game completely. I can’t think of other sports where the players try to injure one another.
I have been a hockey fan for decades. The college and Olympic hockey does not have all this fighting, holding onto each other, and delays while the refs separate players. It is a faster, better game.
@Kurtz:
Interestingly enough, I’ve found thinking about extremely large numbers like Graham’s number puts me into a stranger place than thinking about infinity itself. My mind can’t get any concrete sense of infinity, but I can get an initial sense on building up Graham’s number before it explodes of out my grasp (power towers do that quickly). I think Douglas Adams refers to this wrt to the structure they found for making custom planets in his “Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy”, but I can’t remember (or find) the actual quote.
Today is Bob Dylan’s 80th birthday. May you stay forever young!
Trump’s legacy lives on:
Putin’s puppet in Belarus, whatever his name is, hijacked a Ryanair plane in order to arrest an opposition blogger.
This reminds me of the Saudis kidnap and murder of Kashogi. I’m laying some blame on trump, because the way he coddled those murderers as well as Putin has emboldened this kind of blatantly criminal action.
The US and EU should step up and inflict serious sanctions on Belarus and Russia, and demand the immediate release of Roman Protasevich.
@JohnSF: @Mimai: @Gustopher:
Those criticisms of Harari are more than enough to discount his books. The mention of Gladwell is interesting, because they are similar. Excellent writer. Great storyteller. Don’t take it too seriously. I have no problem reading them and praising the aesthetics of their work. And they’re clearly intelligent. But the criticisms require one to side eye it. You all are correct, but I still enjoyed reading them. I think, for me, regardless of the rigor of a work, it shakes loose other ideas that are tangential to what’s being read.
I like Harari for one particular insight that most of us here intuitively already kind of knew. But his framing made it easier for me to explain it to people in my life who approach the edge of conspiracism. His point about technology being the primary driver of globalization historically is a frame that has that quality of burrowing into the mind. Drawing those parallels gave me some ammo.
Like all arguments made to a conspiracist, it will bounce off the epistemological armor donned to protect the belief from a piercing blow. Unlike most other arguments, if phrased properly, it’s indirect but still obvious. It’s a wallflower. But as time goes on, as the person reads news about a new company with a unique invention, uses a new technology, or engages in social media, that quiet little thing finally says something. Does it always work? No. But those are the kinds of things that work.
I’ve written about this here. The more difficult to explain a scientific or social scientific, the easier it is to create misapprehension. This happens in introductory college classes often. And the most common occurrence is in journalism or in books written by professionals for the general public.
In journalism, everything is framed as a game changer. And the science behind it is going from a professional to non-experts explained by a person whose job is to write something that grabs attention. That’s a game of telephone.
One common issue I’ve often seen in debates about LGBTQIA+ matters is serious misunderstandings of evolution and genetics. I’ve seen Dawkins’s concept of the selfish gene misused so many times. And this sometimes happens when people take introductory science classes in college as well. The metaphor used to teach the basics about a phenomenon becomes identical to the object of study.
So someone says, “The fundamental driving force for an organism is reproduction; genes want to reproduce.”
Reply: “Genes don’t have desires. The genetics of complex behaviors and traits are not straightforward.”
Retort: “Who taught you biology? I’d like a word with that school and the teacher. Read The Selfish Gene by Dawkins.”
:facepalm: “Here’s a link to the interview wherein Dawkins explains that he regrets using that metaphor to explain his research, because people started assigning human motives to sequences of nucleotides.”
:crickets: from the person who made an ass out of themselves.
I was too involved cooking and watching season 1 of Farscape yesterday, so I didn’t get to reply to Michael’s post.
Boom has little say in how the interior of its hypothetical planes will be configured. That’s for the airlines to decide. However, the consensus in aviation and travel blogs is that the Overture will have 50 to 55 lie flat seats.
If this seems ridiculous in a supersonic plane that takes under 4 hours to go from JFK to London or Paris, that’s just because it is. But it would make some sense in longer routes, like say LA to Tokyo, which should take around 8-9 hours even at Mach 2.something.
Still, it’s indicative of how much premium seating has become as much a matter of status as comfort. Status tends to be rather wasteful.
As for travel by sea, there is one big issue:time. Not everyone who wants to go to Europe can take a few days just to get there.
I’ve heard, too, it costs more to sail from NY to the UK in a liner (there are still a few) than to fly on premium class. I don’t know if that’s so.
For some reason this made me laugh even though tax payers will get stuck with the bill.
Key impeachment witness Gordon Sondland sues Mike Pompeo and U.S. for $1.8 million in legal fees
@Kurtz:
I see Harari and Gladwell as intellectual entertainment. Michael Lewis almost makes it in this group, too, but he has better evidence for his notions, and tends to be more factual. Still, he depends much on narratives and often does not follow through.
A more dependable writer along such lines is Tim Harford, of the cautionary Tales podcast. He has a whole book, The Data Detective, about how to evaluate and research claims (well worth reading). More about him later. I’ve been catching up on his podcast, and he’s had some rather interesting things to say.
Yesterday was a long, hot day in the kitchen.
7 quarts of home-made saurkraut canned (first time making it (except as a kid with my parents), so we’ll see if it kills me).
3 cases of beefsteak tomatoes topped, skinned, sliced (enough to get them into the food processor), and cooked. 14 quarts canned, and I’m still not done. I know it’s exactly the wrong time to be creating a sauna in the kitchen, but at 79¢/lb (and case-price on top of that), I’m saving probably $100 vs. cooking them in January when I’m actually going to be using them.
@Mu Yixiao: Are you seeing big price increases in foods? Are you seeing shortages of certain foods? Around here we have had problems getting good lettuce, cabbage, and potatoes. The price of ground beef keeps going up. What is going on?
In the latest episode of Cautionary Tales, Harford touched upon the eradication of smallpox.
I was left with the impression that in the latter stages, it wasn’t so much a matter of vaccinating everyone in the world, though a vast amount of people were vaccinated, and then all children old enough to take the vaccine, though again this was done, as much as a matter of vaccinating people in areas or towns were outbreaks took place.
I need to look at this and confirm it. But, if it was so, then this is a hopeful development as regards COVID.
We know lots of people won’t take the vaccine. But once the vaccines are approved by the FDA and other regulatory bodies, it may be possible to compel people in areas with outbreaks to either take the vaccine, or lock down for a couple of weeks (especially with financial support*).
The major difference is the smallpox vaccine provided protection after infection, while the COVID vaccine doesn’t seem to do this.
*Yes, I’m aware of the issues here. The goal is to prevent the spread of COVID, and anything else is secondary.
@Tyrell:
The country is recovering from Covid. Accordingly, demand for gasoline has gone way up. So the price has gone way up, from $1.96 per gallon one year ago to $3.03 today. This makes shipping things much more expensive.
No the “mushrooms” photographed by the Mars Curiosity rover on Mars are not evidence of life.
https://www.cnet.com/news/sorry-nasa-photos-are-not-evidence-of-fungus-growing-on-mars/
@Tyrell:
There are definite increases in meat prices (I used to work in the meat dept at the store, so I’m more familiar with those prices). The reasons are multi-fold–some of which go back a year to when the slaughter houses and packing plants shut down.
Veggie prices seem to be around what they should be (79¢ for tomatoes is very good). Cabbage has been hovering around the same price, corn is 3/$2, berries are on sale. Package goods, cheese, dairy are all fairly normal.
There have, however, been shortages. The fact that there’s not also a significant price increase is a bit weird.
@Doug Mataconis:
You might need to have a discussion with your auto-correct. 😀
Samoan PM locks the doors to Parliament so new PM can’t be sworn in (she did it in a tent in the yard).
Teens defying their idiot parents and getting vaxxed
@Teve: Thanks for your attention to my inquiry.
It seems I went to sleep and woke up in 1978, right in the middle of the Carter administration.
Jennifer Rubin: If the GOP is now home to ‘evil lunacy,’ it’s time to leave
@Mu Yixiao:
LOL
@Teve:
I hit the paywall, but I think I can safely comment: “Now”?
@Tyrell:
The fighting is one of the reasons I don’t watch NHL games
@Kathy: yep. I remain unconvinced that the country will survive right-wing media.
@Tyrell:
Well, except that the average inflation rate for the Carter admin was 9.73% (source) and the April 20 to April 21 inflation rate was 4.2% (source). This is definitely a deviation from what we are used to, and may be a problem (or perhaps is a blip), but it is definitely isn’t the Carter administration (or the start of the Reagan admin).
1978 was 7.63%, btw.
@de stijl:
I’m on it! Thanks.
One of my former neighbors claimed he owned a coffee shop in Minneapolis and that Bob Dylan would perform there when he was still Robert Zimmerman. Turns out that my neighbor said a lot of things that weren’t exactly factual. More than once I heard his daughters reprimand him when his stories went wild.
John was a decent sort if you ignored his tales and it was a sad day indeed when he died several years ago along with a friend when his 2 seat antique airplane that he was piloting crashed en route to a fly in of some sort in Wisconsin.
RIP Neighbor John
A Hard Rain’s a Gonna Fall
On the subject of inflation, I’ll once again link to a scene from one of my favorite episodes of The West Wing.
@Tyrell:
What is going on?
Well, dude, there was this thing you may have missed called a pandemic. It shut down a lot of the world’s economy. Now, in fits and starts, the economy is waking up. But in a world of just-in-time supply lines we’re getting some temporary shortages and those spike prices. You know, as you would if you had just come through a pandemic.
Now, because I am a pedantic sort, I hope you’re learning something, to whit, that every time you come here with some bullshit from right-wing media it gets blowed up instantly by people with something right-wing media doesn’t offer: facts. A wise man might start to suspect his preferred media is lying to him.
@Mister Bluster:
In a similar vein: we’re taking a trip which will include a stop in Annapolis. We looked up a restaurant where my wife used to work in 1980. But in the ‘about’ section the owner claims to have opened the restaurant years after K worked there. It’s not a typo, it’s consistent through the piece. He’s openly, publicly lying about when he opened a restaurant and thousands of people know he’s lying. We’re mystified.
@Doug Mataconis:
Well, they would if they were mushrooms, or berries, not rocks.
So far, the closest we’ve come to signs of life on Mars was the famous meteorite believed to be of Martian origin, which appeared to contain bacterial micro-fossils (it didn’t), and chemicals associated with bacteria (it did, but these could be of inorganic origin as well).
We now Mars had flowing water (evidence of dried up rivers and lakes is all over the planet), and a thicker atmosphere (otherwise there’d have been no flowing water). So, two (2) of the conditions we think are needed for life to develop were present.
This means it was possible, not that it happened.
We know life, once it arises, is tenacious, and can spread to all sorts of hostile environments (like nuclear reactors!). We don’t know how commonly it arises. If we find any life on Mars, past or present, we’d have a better idea.
Rhode Island just passed a law that will raise the minimum wage annually, hitting $15/hr in 2025.
As per conservative economic theory, the state will now enter a decades-long Depression. Every business will shutter, and unemployment will hit 148%.
https://www.providencejournal.com/story/news/politics/2021/05/20/ris-minimum-wage-increase-15-hour-2025/5183683001/
I just want to underline that the pandemic that we went through is the biggest event – the one with the most impact – of my lifetime. I think WWII was bigger, but Vietnam was definitely not. Nor was 9/11. Most people just went on with their lives during both of those. Covid has killed more people than the VC ever did in ‘Nam. Covid has changed the course of more individuals daily lives than just about anything I can think of, with the exception of the WWI/pandemic double shot.
So, spinning things back up again – turning on a dime to do it – is going to be challenging. We’ll manage it, but it will be bumpy.
@Kurtz:
A friend of mine was getting a thorough work through by Prince. Remember when he was setting up new acts, farming out songs?
In Fight Club parlance, fucker was setting up franchises. Prince was a smart dude.
G had an awesome, classic R&B voice. He already had a snazzy gig 3 nights a week at club and a big local following. Seriously, who gets a steady gig? That’s basically unheard of outside of piano bars. G was an true up & comer.
G came from a very churchy and almost cloistered background. As a young black man his experience in the secular world was fairly constrained. He earned his bones in church choir.
He was a local neighborhood superstar from a quite early age. I believe northside.
G was a super good guy, but a bit naive. He did not realize he was bisexual. One semi-drunken carousing night he shared activities he had partaken of and I was faced with the dilemma of telling him these are activities straight guys don’t do, or just blowing by that and pretend to ignore it came up.
I decided to ignore; he was gonna figure out he was bi pretty soon. Someone was going to clue him in pdq, doesn’t have to be me – especially cis het me who might inadvertantly fuck it up.
The Prince gig did not come to pass. I was sorry about that. G was really pretty good at his job.
G had a fine local career. Man, that guy could sing!
I also semi knew a dude who got plucked out of fucking nowhere to be Prince’s mid-career keyboardist. That guy? No fucking way. You must be joshing me. Yep. That guy. Good on him. He made way more dollars and got super awesome gigs we could only dream of. That guy? Seriously? He played on some super crucial Prince records. Good on him, but, seriously, that guy? smh
@Kylopod:
CJ’s reaction to that was hilarious!
@Jay L Gischer:
Covid has killed more Americans than all of our wars except the Civil War and basically equals all the Americans who died in the Civil War. Those events occurred over a long period of time and most of the ways lasted several years. Covid-19 took one year and a few months to do its damage.
@Kurtz:
@George:
Thinking about quantum theory / reality is my trigger. To my Newtonian / Euclidian brain these things are unpossible. But they are, and provably so. It psychically hurts to acknowledge that particular truth.
It sucks to know all of my physical stuff I own is mostly just empty space between atoms. My brain rebels.
@Mister Bluster:
Why would you let something like facts get in the way of a good story?
So long as it’s not a harmful story, the daughter should just nod along and keep her mouth shut.
@Kurtz:
A drag queen / karaoke goddess shamed me into dancing from on-stage. She was right. My not moving was a low-key insult. I apologize.
Not moving and just looking is kinda creepy. She had a valid point.
Well, I’m not getting the second Pfizer dose this week.
I don’t think I will, until my age group gets through the first dose in either most of my state or most of the country. This makes sense, as more first doses help decrease transmission more widely than fully vaccinating fewer people. Unless your country has hoarded more vaccines than it can possibly use.
A rough guesstimate is sometime in the second or third week of June, between the 9th and 16th, as the latter marks six weeks from the first dose. The government’s technical sheets on the vaccines, states the second Pfizer dose is given between 3 and six weeks form the first.
@Doug Mataconis: Like I said, it seemed that they had gotten away from this in the last few years. Now it is bad as ever. One penalty box was filled up with players sitting on the floor and boards.
Demeaning, unprofessional, and dangerous. Many players go down hard on the ice in these fights.
@de stijl:
Perhaps you can take solace in the fact that if you can go through 99.9999% of your life not needing to make use of algebra, the portion of your life where you’ll need to make use of quantum mechanics is even smaller.
@Doug Mataconis: Battle of Shiloh: 24,000 casualties in two days! That is killed, wounded, missing. The generals had never seen anything like it. Unimaginable. “As if the gates of hell had been pried open”
@Kathy:
Gladwell’s statements about 10,000 hours for mastery is true and not true. It depends. On a lot of factors. But, it is still kinda true.
Gladwell was a very entertaining guest on Henry Lois Gates’ Finding Your Roots which is one of my favorite programs.
I am aware of Hariri, but not read. Anyone care to offer a concise review?
@Gustopher:..keep her mouth shut…
It was two adult daughters. They were clearly embarrassed by their father’s mendacity.
Like others that I have known that seem to think it is a good idea to lie all the time to get around in life this guy didn’t need to. He was intelligent and witty and did not help himself by lying.
It was a hard lesson for me to learn but my ex-wife was like that. She had done many really good things that I could actually verify but in the end it was impossible for me to believe a word she said.
@Kathy:
I try not to he too hard on communicators. Sagan got guff from the hard core guys.
Gladwell is really, really good at his job. He does have a tendency towards unsupported / semi-supported postulation that nears speculation he touts hard.
I am currently withholding judgement, but dude is definitely line stepping pretty hard.
@de stijl:
I don’t think Harari and concise can coexist in the same universe 🙂
@Kathy:
This is very true.
It bums me out my stuff is mostly empty space, though. No fooling. It really does bug me.
I can tap on a thing and hear the thwack. That means something, right? That has to have some bearing. Solids are solid; it is their nature.
That solids are mostly unsolid is unsettling. It freaks me out a bit.
@Kathy:
Point taken.
I will research for my ownself. Somethings cannot be conveyed easily.
Seriously, what did we do before Google? Libraries are so inefficient.
(Actually, I love libraries.)
@Doug Mataconis: I think the reason some people don’t worry that much about the death toll from COVID is that they think the bulk of the deaths are people in nursing homes who aren’t contributing to society anyway so no biggie. Also, chances are high that “it’s not them” that will die.
@Mu Yixiao:
Meat prices are weirdly high. I got pork going crazy back April / May last year because of the shutdowns. Pork prices are rational now.
But beef base prices are pretty high now and I do not have any idea as to why.
@Tyrell: “It seems I went to sleep and woke up in 1978, right in the middle of the Carter administration.”
Actually it was worse than that. You actually woke up in 1974, at the beginning of the Ford administration, which is where the inflation that ran rampant over the next half decade started. I’m sure you of all people must remember WIN buttons.
@Mister Bluster:
I’m just hearing that the stories weren’t good enough to justify the sacrifice of the truth…
If the story is just that little Bobby Zimmerman played there, it’s not a good story.
If the story is that little Bobby Zimmerman played there, and the guy telling the story just shook his head and thought the dude would amount to nothing, well, now we are getting somewhere — it needs more, but it’s a step in the right direction. There needs to be some follow through, up to the present day, with the guy telling the story being the punchline — I’m thinking a surprising discovery that he actually likes the Bob Dylan Christmas album, along with singing a few verses of “Must Be Santa”, which is a genuinely awful song (and one of the few Christmas songs to namecheck Nixon and Reagan).
@de stijl:
When I do karaoke I am entirely inside my head. I listen a bit because I get pitchy weird when I go high so I have to regulate.
But mostly I just go for it.
Earlier, when I did stuff onstage I was mostly, and tried super-duper hard to remain within my head. Screaming is easy. Punk singers are given that out.
Looking at and acknowledging audience was a difficult reach for. If so, it was one person. A proxy for the whole. Fixate on that one.
Not that we had big audiences. We did not. We sorta sucked, actually. And it was entirely my fault. We were fundamentally derivative. Inalterably so.
@de stijl:
The following two respected commenters did a fine job criticizing Harari, giving reasons why you may want to avoid. I don’t go as far, but their comments should be kept in mind upon reading his work.
@Gustopher
@JohnSF
The same thing can be said of fetuses. Pro-life my ass.
Florida governor signs law to block ‘deplatforming’ of Florida politicians
DeSantis knows it’s unconstitutional. But he’s playing to the elderly dolts.
@de stijl:
Commodity pork is rational–that’s the stuff that’s been sitting in freezer warehouses for a long time. Fresh pork is high. Pork butts are currently at $3.49. Even the sale prices on boneless loins is higher than I would expect it to be.
As for beef, I think it’s because there was a smaller calving last year (because of fear about packing plants remaining closed). I don’t have solid facts, but I heard a few people speculating that farmers didn’t want to be stuck with large herds they couldn’t sell.
I would not wish to inflict this on anyone, but getting to know my ex would certainly give you an entirely different perspective on the value of reality.
@Kathy:
Were you thinking of any particular country/ies when you noted that exception?
@Kathy:
It’s just comfort for me, if anything sitting in the front – or lying flat – makes me squeamish. All those accusing stares as the cattle are herded aboard and see me with my glass of Champagne.
But once I was able to penetrate the Class Curtain I just decided that there’s nowhere I need to fly so badly that I’d spend long hours cramming 6’2″ and 220 pounds into a standard seat.
Taking the Queen Mary across the Atlantic is admittedly not the quickest way. But if you’re going on vacation the trip can be part of the pleasure. I’m also up for a Zeppelin. Preferably not one using hydrogen.
I haven’t even listened to the last Fiddlehead album, but it clocks in at 24:17.
I cannot tell you you how cool I find that length. Lotsa people equate length to value and they are fools.
Bang it out. Moping about lollygagging is stupid and antithetical to the genre.
@Kathy:
“In America, you hijack plane. In Russia, plane hijack you.”
@de stijl:
I suppose if you were to hold a gun to my head I might sing karaoke. I kind of like watching it, though.
NHL fights have dropped dramatically over the last 10 years, and are continuing to do so. From 40%+ of games with a fight to roughly 15%. Still too many–but anyone who enjoys hockey and is skipping watching the best in the world engage in it because of “too many fights” hasn’t kept up with the current game and is missing out on some extraordinary play and players.
TRUMPWORLD’S JASON MILLER MUST PAY GIZMODO THOUSANDS FOR ACCURATELY REPORTING INSANE STORY ABOUT HIM
@grumpy realist: @Doug Mataconis: In addition, even though the raw number is high, the scale is still dramatically different. The United States where the same number of people was killed during the Civil War was just roughly on tenth the population of the one now. Duplicate the scale of the death and come back to me if people are still “hey, no big.”
@OzarkHillbilly:..
OzarkHillbilly says:
A mere thumbs up is not enough support for this statement so I thought I’d run it again.
GB
@Tyrell:
In January we were clocking ~4000 dead Americans a day from Covid for weeks at a time.
Monday 4000
Tuesday 4000
You get the idea.
We had a 9/11 equivalent every day for a month.
@Michael Reynolds: I’m curious: What’s the restaurant? I lived in Annapolis (actually Crownsville) for several years.
@Teve:
How the heck would you enforce this anyway? At least with the EU telling Google they have to respect the privacy of their citizens Google implements a solution that applies to multiple countries so perhaps doable but still costly. Does DeSantis think he has the authority to force folks like FB and Twitter to create a FL intranet version of their platforms, with special credentials to log-in if you reside in FL, or any other Red State that wants to emulate what DeSantis is trying to do?
And how would that help with amplifying the crazy? News Orgs would have to go through hoops to get credentials to log-in to the Red State intranet version of FB and Twitter if they wanted to be able to verify whatever lunacy they are reporting on being found on the Red State version of the major social media platforms.
With TFG on Twitter pre-banning it was crazy easy to report on his Twitter tantrums, etc., and that ease just spread the misinformation around, it was too easy.
I get what DeSantis, and the folks in TX blocking talking about Racism are trying to do, they are trying to implement policies that spread across the nation (in particular “Blue” states), but FL and TX are not CA, where if something is implemented in CA it gets other states to go hmmm, we should look into that (like stricter air quality standards, that even the car companies got behind).
CA is not going to look at what DeSantis and politicians in TX are doing and go wow, those are some good ideas and we should copy them in our great state of CA, which of course drives folks like DeSantis and his puppet master TFG nuts.
As everyone likes to note, if CA were its own country even with the financial hit from the pandemic, we would probably be the worlds 5th or 6th largest economy (which still sounds nuts no matter how often I say it or type it out), so when we propose tighter air quality standards, etc., a lot of other states and even some countries perk up their ears and listen to what is happening in CA, not so much when DeSantis proposes something that is only designed to make TFG happy.
I know it feels maddening that at times it feels like the GOP is sometimes all Teflon all the time and nothing hurts/sticks to them, but if you pile up enough crazy on your floor boards eventually the floor will collapse.
North Korea learned this lesson when they collapsed a freaking mountain(!), granted it took too many nuclear tests in one location to collapse the mountain, but collapse it did. The crazy is just being piled on the GOP’s platform planks, and it may not happen soon, but it is inevitable that eventually all of this crazy weight will cause the boards to crack and splinter and collapse.
At one point, I thought that McConnell had enough foresight to see this coming and try to get ahead of it, but based on his inactions to fix the GOP post 01/06/21, I no longer feel confident that McConnell can keep the GOP from eventually collapsing/imploding on itself.
@Mu Yixiao: Costco large boneless pork shoulder pack was $2.29 last week. Made some good gochujang pulled pork out of it.
@Mister Bluster: I went to Winter Carnival in St. Paul in 1966. Every attractive woman claimed to be The Girl from the North Country.
@Michael Reynolds:
I can’t argue with that, and it’s your money (or miles) to waste as you want.
There’s one thing I don’t complain about travel reviews because I read them voluntarily, but it grates on me every time. That’s when a review says the very comfortable premium seat does not (gasp!) offer direct aisle access. You know, a 2-2-2 configuration, or, enough to reach for a fainting couch, 2-3-2 configuration (the horror!)
Ok. I’m done with that.
I can’t see myself paying those prices for a flight which doesn’t last that long. Yes, I know sometimes there are bargains to be had. And I don’t object to others doing so. In particular I think it’s wasteful on short flights, say under 80 minutes long.
@MarkedMan:
Café Normandie. The owner (same guy my wife worked for) claims he was just immigrating from France at the time she was quitting with the spirited, if unoriginal, suggestion that he take his job and shove it up his ass.
Our best guess is it’s cover for an immigration issue.
I used to wait tables at Middleton’s back when we’d do a lot of tableside dishes, Caesar salad, Spinach salad, cherries and bananas. In fact I helped build the outdoor patio with another waiter.
Later my wife was at Armadillos when it was in a sort of Hooters mode requiring waitresses (all young, attractive women) to wear tight jeans or shorts.
@OzarkHillbilly:
My entire family history is a set of tall tales passed down and greatly enhanced. We all take it seriously, but not literally.*
It always surprises me when we get a little bit of evidence that anything is actually true.
—-
*: A fine approach for the family folk-tales, not a great approach for a presidential candidate…
@Kathy:
I’ll do up to an hour and a half in coach.
Perspectives change, and relative wealth corrupts. I used to laugh at people who bought new cars. Ha ha ha, dumb bourgeois posers. . . then, it was, ‘I’ll take that gorgeous new S-Class.’
@Michael Reynolds:
Add 4 inches and 45 pounds. I just can’t fit in coach without spending a few days in pain afterwards. If I can’t fly first class, I just don’t fly.
@Scott:
That would be a non-sale price. Around here, they don’t buy until you get to .99 or less.
What’s really funny is we have a guy who used to be a pig farmer–and he bitches about the high price of pork.
@Kathy:
I don’t see why people wouldn’t travel to such a hypothetical country to get their second shot. Even if they were to lie, and claim it was their first shot, and then vanish before getting the third shot and messing up the statistics.
You know, if there was such a hypothetical country that had more doses than it can use, and a large population that is not bothering to get vaccinated.
As the man said in the first episode of Futurama: “Ya gotta do whatcha gotta do.”
@Gustopher:..not a great approach for a presidential candidate…
I’ve only been married once but I’ll take truth over lies in a spousal relationship.
@Michael Reynolds:
You reminded me of an idiot idea I had some time ago.
A helium filled balloon floats in air because it’s less dense (“lighter”) than the atmosphere around it. An air filled balloon does not float because it is denser (“heavier”) than the air around it (the balloon, while light, adds to the density of the whole),
So what’s lighter than helium or hydrogen, the two least massive atoms in the universe?
Easy: nothing.
So why not fill a balloon, or Zeppelin gas envelope, with nothing?
Because any material strong enough to contain a large volume of vacuum, which is what’s meant here by “nothing,” would be too heavy to be less dense than air and float.
But materials with all sorts of unlikely properties have been developed over the past few decades. Maybe in a few more we might have a light fabric-like material that might enclose a lightweight aluminum frame, which could contain a vacuum against the full pressure of the atmosphere.
Not likely, but, IMO, not impossible.
@Michael Reynolds: I think I’ve had a drink at the bar there, but never a full meal. It does seem an odd thing to lie about.
If you find yourselves in Baltimore on the trip, I’d be happy to buy you a drink. We are right near the Inner Harbor, a block from Camden Yards.
@Mister Bluster: It’s only a lie if people believe it is an accurate depiction of reality. Sometimes stories speak to a higher truth than mere facts.
It’s the lie vs. bullshit distinction from The Blues Brothers.
Do I believe that my ancestors changed their name when coming to this country because of their fears of rampant anti-semitism which they somehow believed was a hatred of the Dutch? No, of course not. And when I tell the story, I always tack on a “this is what I was told, and I refuse to look up the truth because it’s probably not as good.”
But it tells a higher truth — I am descended from idiots.
Move over Led Zeppelin. Here’s my new favorite band.
Poser
Blockhead
Riffraff
Jerkface
@Michael Reynolds:
You might enjoy it.
It is liberating. I like the feeling of finishing a karaoke song and going back to my table and sipping my beer and my dudes / dudettes telling me I rocked when I demonstrably did not.
Granted, I got my start at this weird joint on University in St. Paul that was the world’s most supportive punk rock karaoke bar. It was quite the scene. I lived a half mile away and could easily walk.
A killer’s row of then or future superstars pwned that stage. I got to know so many people there. It was freaking awesome.
The price was to humiliate yourself by singing something awful. (But fun that everyone liked but was too ashamed to admit to liking it.)
I like Stand And Deliver. It’s an easy song and so fucking cheesy. I had to preen, but if you never look or see, no one judges. I gave it my all.
High enough I had to watch for pitch badness at times.
I met amazing people there. Some are still friends.
I have a rich history with karaoke you do not share.
I highly recommend.
If you need a safe entry point be a backup. Lots of B-52 songs have Fred as backing / supporting and the girls have full reign.
If you got girls to support you Love Shack is an easy entry song and just be Fred. Any fool can croak out “Love Shack, Baby!”
Sing a song you know and choose the least challenging for your voice.
I strongly recommend trying. The high afterwards is addictive.
Another good choice is Barbie Girl if you have girls as a front. Any idiot can do
C’mon Barbie /
Let’s Go Party/
Ah Ah Ah
You get like bonus points for doing stupid songs, weirdly.
Random people will walk up and want a high five.
Karaoke is awesome.
@Kathy:
According to physics, I know that a “vacuum balloon” should float. But something in my head keeps saying “NOPE!”
I think it’s left over from when I was a little kid and I imagined that Helium “pushed” the balloons up.
@de stijl:
The 8th circle of Hell is a KTV.
@Michael Reynolds:
Spot on.
We won’t be able to judge what the longer term economic position is for at least 3 months, more likely six.
In addition to the pandemic, Europe has been hit by the Suez Canal blockage, which has buggered supply chains for at least another month of lag.
And in the UK we’ve got our own self-inflicted Brexit hit to numerous supplies and demands.
And there’s the global microchip shortages (partly due to Bitcoin idiocy sucking up specialist chipsets).
I’m currently in need of replacing my main PC ,and in a mood to punch both Brexiteers and Bitcoin bros.forecasting spiking prices, ignoring the fact that current spending increases are
@Mister Bluster:
Gotta love the truth stretcher.
They are not lying so much as they enhancing life and making it livelier. God bless ’em.
@Kurtz:
IMHO the best place to start with Dawkins is The Extended Phenotype rather than The Selfish Gene; harder work, but worth it.
@Mu Yixiao: If you want it be.
Granted, I’m talking America karaoke.
@JohnSF:
Was Lloyd Cole ever a thing in England? Re: 90’s.
Here, it was only amongst the cognoscenti where he was a thing.
Thinking back it might’ve been late eighties.
Regardless, Lloyd Cole fucking rules.
@JohnSF:
Bitcoin bros are entirely smackable. No shame at all.
@de stijl: Lloyd Cole and the Commotions were a thing in Germany in the early ’80s–that’s when/where I became a fan.
I love Lloyd Cole.
Under the heading of IT AIN’T JUST TRUMP, Digby has a post which reminds us of Mann and Ornstein’s 2012 WAPO essay Let’s just say it: The Republicans are the problem.This partisanship and division started long before Trump rode down the escalator. I’ve gotten to where every time I see some version of ‘we must find common ground” I want to scream, “NO, we must destroy the Republican Party.” It won’t reform until it has no choice.
In my slow transition away from being tracked by Google, Facebook etc, I’m now trying out Proton VPN. So far it’s easy peasy.
https://protonvpn.com
@Jen:
Lloyd Cole and The Commotions are freaking great.
Jennifer In Blue
Rattlesnakes
Perfect Skin
My memory is shaky. That was the eighties.
@Mu Yixiao:
All other things being equal (ie the mass of the airship in question), a vacuum zeppelin would lift 14% more mass.
If the old science fiction staple force field could exist (spoiler alert: bloody unlikely), you could have vacuum balloons as big as you wanted. Attach a collapsible one to a plane, and it can take off and land, climb and descend, vertically at will and without using up fuel. Collapse it in order to fly horizontally.
de stijl:
re. Lloyd Cole: He must have be at least a bit of a thing, as I’ve got three of his LP’s: Lloyd Cole and the Commotions Rattlesnakes, plus solo albums Lloyd Cole and Don’t Get Weird on Me Babe
Good stuff.
Not listened to in many a year, though
In my defence, I have about 2000 odd CD’s and LP’s, so some things don’t get a regular listen 🙂
@JohnSF:
Also he is English, of course.
IIRC at least a couple were top 20 LP’s.
@Kathy: when you expand the vacuum you’re doing work against the air pressure.
@de stijl:
I had a work friend named Jennifer. I also knew and side-gig worked with her beau. They were with other dudes Dander, a short lived punk pop group out of Minneapolis.
I used to send Jennifer songs about people named Jennifer.
Jennifer She Said by Golden Smog
Jennifer In Blue by Lloyd Cole
I ran it by Shane first to make sure it was not going to taken as flirtatious, but as a celebration of her Jenniferness. That was kinda awkward. We were basically work spouses.
It was all cool in the end.
@JohnSF:
Give em a go. Lloyd rocks.
@Kathy: I was intrigued by an article I saw decades ago for a dirigible with sort of a hot air ballon principle for propulsion. Called the somebody-or-other pumpkin seed. The idea was to join two streamline shape, teardrop, dirigibles at the nose, in a vee, then skin between them to make a delta wing shape. The outer skin of a dirigible doesn’t contain the lift gas. There are “balloonettes”, giant bags suspended within the structural frame, that contain the gas. The idea was to fill the balloonettes with enough helium to lift the thing. Then burn fuel to heat the gas and expand it so the thing would rise. You trim it nose up so that rising will cause it to move forward. Once you reach your max altitude, you trim nose down, open vents to cool the balloonettes, which contract, and it drops and moves forward. Rinse and repeat as long as you have fuel for the heaters. Propulsion with very little fuel use. At first blush it sounds like a perpetual motion machine, but a sailboat is probably a better way to look at it. I did a little sailplane flying as a student. You can go for miles and hours just using the natural up-currents.
@Kathy:
That’s what the science says. But the little boy in the back of my brain still keeps screaming “NOPE!” 😀
@de stijl:
If I was to make it very short, and try to be fair, it’s that a primary driver of human history is a capacity to generate consensual “fictional realities” as a basis for cooperative action.
OTOH he seems to also view these as having damaged human relation to nature.
And cultural achievement is driven by a creative elite rathe than the summation of society as a whole.
(IMO there’s a definite hint of cheap-jack Nietzcheanism to Harari. Not to mention his rhetoric of persuasion over analysis. Or maybe I’m be unfair again. “He tasks me, he tasks me”.)
@de stijl: It was the ’80s… but Lloyd Cole just put out a new album. And I saw him at the 100-seat City Winery here in NYC a few years back. He still sounded the same…
@de stijl:
Digging them out now.
Though Rattlesnakes I can’t play; that’s on LP and my hi-fi amp is currently out of action (I’m having a bad few months fore electronic devices 🙁 ); the CD’s I can still play on the blu-ray player and speakers though.
@gVOR08:
I wonder if you can just stick sails on an airship and have it propelled by the wind…
I figure something that simple has either been proposed and shown not to work, or tried and shown not to work.
@JohnSF:
2000? I have not counted up. I have walls full of music. A metric shit ton, I reckon. Last time I moved it was a pain and a lot of boxes. 6 cubic feet of vinyl weighs a fricking ton. Thank god for leverage.
Not enough, though. I need more.
A shitty thing about today is you only get bookmarks as opposed to physical media. I like physical stuff as a concept, but queueing up a killer soundtrack for a lazy Monday morning off my phone is really cool.
I do miss the touching though. Remember when we had to de-gauss albums with dodgy gadgets?
@Gustopher:
Because travel takes money, and for some it takes weeks (and more money) to get a tourist visa from this hypothetical country’s embassy. Not everyone can afford it.
@Kathy: you can use the jetstream to push airships around the world in 2-3 weeks. The big problem with airships is that helium is very spendy.
@JohnSF:
Thank you very kindly for the effort, but it is clear I am going to have to read some Hariri to figure out his thang. I do appreciate it. Seriously.
My local library was closed until May 1. Probably 14 months. That made a huge difference in my life to the negative. Library access during Covid was a huge bug-bear for me.
@de stijl: Wow. Our local library was only closed for about 2 weeks until we were able to establish an order online/touchless pickup and a routine for sanitizing and quarantining books when they were returned. And even during that time you could still check out books if you had an e-reader through Overdrive.
You couldn’t go in and browse, but you could access the entire library catalogue by logging into your account. They reopened for browsing with limits and an appointment schedule early last summer. I cannot imagine being without a library for that long.
@wr:
I envy you.
@Kathy:
Well, it would drive you a bit faster in the direction the wind was blowing you anyway, all else being equal.
But hopeless for off-thrust axis movement: no workable keel or rudder.
With a ship sails overcome the tendency just to bob about rather sadly; and even simple sails, steering oar, and hull effect, as in most basic early sail craft, get some some off-axis handling.
Sophisticated rigs/keels/rudders get a lot more.
An analogy might be a boat with sails dipped in the sea to catch a current. 🙂
@Teve:
And there’s a limited amount of helium on Earth (it tends to escape the planet, and, honestly, can you blame it?)
@JohnSF:
Like sails on a submarine?
@Kathy:
Perfect analogy.
Wish I’d used that.
(“You will, Oscar, you will.”)
@de stijl:
I spent an Audible credit on Harari’s “Homo Deus.” I don’t regret it, but I wouldn’t spend a penny on him after that. On my Scribd subscription, which allows for unlimited downloads, I got “Sapiens.”
@Jen:
That time-line was true for my library too. I was too dismissive.
I am an in-person, touch, feel person. Smell, even.
When I need to get a book I want to physically go and get it. So I underplayed my library’s amount of services offered during the pandemic. My fault.
I like the physical access. Even though at times you have to ask a librarian for a particular book.
Librarians are superstars.
@Mu Yixiao: Well certainly an object of some sort filled with vacuum should float–provided, as Kathy noted, that the container was both lighter/more buoyant than the air surrounding it and sturdy enough to contain the vacuum without rupturing. Theoretically anyway. The devil is in the details, as always.
@Kathy:
1. Figure out nuclear fusion
2. Use waste helium from fusion to build zeppelins
3. Use waste lithium from fusion to make batteries
4. Use electricity from fusion to charge the fusion-waste zeppelins.
@Stormy Dragon:
A perfect circle.
@Stormy Dragon:
Sounds good; but IIRC fusion not on a “Big Bang” scale and energy levels is not going to produce much lithium. In fact I think a lot of current deigns envisage using lithium in a fuel-breed role.
And I’m not sure (IANA physicist), but I suspect you might get residual lithium being a tad radioactive.
@wr:
I have a strong notion that Lloyd got chubby.
He was a fleshy dude back in the day.
Nothing wrong with that. We need chubby rock stars.
@JohnSF:
Nope, both isotopes of Lithium are stable. =)
@Stormy Dragon:
There are a few radioactive forms of lithium, but their half lives are less than a second
@Stormy Dragon:
Looks like I was being Mr worry-wart again; just looked it up and the radioactive isotopes you might get are so short lived as to be not worth worrying about:
lithium-8 839.4 milliseconds
Lithium-9 178.3 milliseconds,
lithium-11 8.75 milliseconds
Lithium-4 …. 9.1×10−23 seconds LOL
When Matthew Sweet started strutting about acting like he was Prince of sweet pop, I was all Yo! Yo dude. Yo!
You owe a bounty and a fee to Lloyd Cole and The Commotions.
He plowed these rows before you and likely better than you. Pay the duty.
(I do actually like a lot of Matthew Sweet. I was being hyperbolic.)
I am also fascinated with “Yo!” today for no particular reason.
@Stormy Dragon:
@JohnSF:
You have to factor in tritium contamination. Tritium is radioactive before it decays to helium-3, and it can be trapped in bubbles inside lithium.
The good news is that tritium is very valuable, so there’s an incentive to separate it. It’s also not that radioactive. It’s used in instrument faces, watch dials, and thermonuclear weapons.
@Kathy:
I recall years back a guy who knows a lot more about things nuclear than innumerate little me (CEGB engineer on the AGRs) saying the main (but far from insuperable) problem with a practical fusion plant would be secondary radioactivity induced in the materials holding the lithium breeder blankets.
Assuming that’s the design you use, of course.
@Kathy:
No.
Balloons are already propelled by the wind, they have no choice but to be. Sails need apparent wind, so when you are drifting with the wind, completely immersed within it, there is none of that to be had.
@Teve:
People who do not adjust for inflation are flat out lying.
Congress assholes claiming they got by on min wage and college too on $5.15 an hour are fucking lying to you straight in your face and fuck them.
@de stijl:
I’ve been baffled over the years by how much bad analysis is out there that fails to adjust for inflation. I’m not just talking about the minimum wage–I’m talking about all sorts of things. For example, the way the Hollywood press reports on box-office gross. They do it that way because it allows them to claim box-office records are constantly being broken.
Conservative pundits do this all the time when talking about the national debt or tax increases.
It’s playing on people’s economic illiteracy, yet sometimes I find it hard to believe people really are that ignorant. Inflation is one of the most intuitive economic concepts around–3rd-graders can understand it.
@Kathy:
I expect that the cheapest, simplest way to keep the bladder from collapsing is to fill it with hydrogen or helium though…
Ok, here’s the bit of physics that I never understood: the ideal gas law.
PV=nRT.
Pressure * Volume = number-of-molecules * Constant * Temperature
It all depends on the same number of molecules of any gas taking up the same amount of space under the same conditions. It seems absurd that Helium and Oxygen (which ends up with two atoms per molecule!) and water vapor (three atoms per molecule!) would all take up the same space (or close enough for this equation).
Even if it’s all based on the collisions of the molecules… wouldn’t it be easier for bigger molecules to collide with each other?
RE: the price of beef, you guys would be absolutely astounded at the difference in price between what we get paid on the producer end vs. what you pay for what we raised and you buy at the grocery store. I discovered this last year that it’s much more lucrative for my own personal herd (I have 30 or so of my own, the ranch has roughly 500) to raise “ranch raised” freezer beef that I feed/finish myself and sell as whole/halves/quarters on Facebook. The buyers are still paying less than what they do at the grocery store, and I’m making more than if I sent them off to the sale barn. Plus they get better quality beef, cut how they want it.
COVID and Trump’s tariffs have increased all of our expenses, from the price of gasoline/diesel to run the equipment to feed the animals, the cost of new equipment, the cost of seed, feed, and fertilizer has increased 3 and 5 times what it was two years ago in some places, and God forbid you need lumber or wire to fix any fences. One mile of fence used to be about $4,000, this year they’re estimating $18,000.
I mentioned a couple days ago that we were having to tear up the headgate works on our reservoir dam. It’s been incredibly difficult for the engineer and the contractor to source the parts necessary, particularly 160 ft of 25 inch Schedule 40 epoxy-coated steel, or similarly rated HDPE. The original estimate of what it cost 2 years ago was roughly $35,000, this year it’s going to be over $100,000, and it’s used pipe. It’s insane. I’m seriously tempted to request an extension from the state water engineer to see if prices go down next year, but I doubt they’d grant it.
@de stijl:..People who do not adjust for inflation are flat out lying.
Are you sure that they’re not just “enhancing life and making it livelier”?
@Gustopher:
For now…
I vaguely recall from high school physics, that gasses always take up the whole volume of their container, regardless of the mass of gas present or the size of the container. I had a lot of trouble with that subject, beyond being bad at working out the math involved.
@JohnSF:
If the creative fiction is greater than the individual, then you’re going to get a situation where certain people are incredibly important for creating the fiction and popularizing it.
Yeah, this is kind of where he is shit.
I kind of suspect that his ideas might be better explored in fiction than in his non-fiction. I’m not sure if someone else could write better non-fiction of it, or whether the Big History stuff is doomed to have this problem.
I also think that there’s something else there that I want someone smarter than me to begin to work out, and which Harari doesn’t really touch — are we stepping into a change similar to the jump from single-celled to multicellular organisms?
Simple algae is a collection of single celled beasties straddling the line between plant and animals. And there are limits to what they can do alone. They cluster in colonies, but don’t have a lot of interaction with each other. On the other end of the spectrum, you have a squirrel, where there are countless cells with countless specializations and whole colonies of foreign microbes living in their guts. And, we have all sorts of different levels of integration of cells on the from algae to squirrel.
But, squirrels basically barely interact with other squirrels. There are no squirrel herds, no squirrel tribes, and any squirrel religions seem to be pretty solitary things.
We also have herds and packs of animals (antelope, wolves), and small complicated groupings (apes) and then us, building structures of organization that outlive us, and which dominate us. And Harari is looking at people and saying “oh, we have the tools to create these structures” without really looking towards what those structures might become.
Harari irks me. 10% less imaginative, and he would take the time to back up his claims better. 10% more imaginative, and he would be asking better questions and coming up with (inevitably wrong, but interesting) answers.
@Gustopher: And I messed up my blockquoting… that double-blockquoted bit shouldn’t be blockquoted at all.
Competence is hard.
@Mister Bluster:
I think it gets down to intent and result. Is a painting a lie? Go look at John Mallard William Turner’s “Yacht Approaching Coast”
https://ericwedwards.files.wordpress.com/2013/08/yacht-approaching-the-coast.jpg
Now, that’s clearly not what a yacht approaching a coast has ever looked like. But, it’s wonderful.
I would be terrified if that painting were ever used for navigation, or to help determine the placement of lighthouses, however.
On the other hand,
@Gustopher: there are more elaborate formulations of the gas law that take into account the volume occupied by the particles and some other corrections. But I don’t think people mess with them very much because the ideal gas law is kind of a half-assed approximation which fits a lot of gases. It’s really more useful as a teaching tool for chemistry and thermodynamics. If you’re working with a specific gas you have curve fits for pressure and temperature, adiabatic expansions, knowledge about the particular Degrees of Freedom, and so on.
@Teve: So, the ideal gas law is a lie then!
I’m just baffled that it can be close enough for anything. And yet, it basically is close enough for almost everything.
One time I was 9/10ths of the way to my work and I had a hallucinogenic flash from previous experiences. I was perma-pissed because I was living downtown and they were making work in the fucking ‘burbs. I was not in a happy space. I was bored and lonely and in a new town / awat from home.
I was listening to either Lloyd’s Jennifer On You or Marching Bands Of Manhattan or perhaps The Replacements Unsatisfied.
Whichever it was a a song I had a strong personal and psychic attachment to.
I had a minute long full-blown trance where the sky was full and meaningful and trace lines were pointing to source that could eplain it all to the northwest. Somewhere near Rapid City.
I could see the lines in the sky. An interconnected skein. Literally see them. I was at my exit. Work was a minute away where I could park in a reality based parking lot and go to a real job where I was paid a ridiculous salary.
If I continued on instead of pulling off I would hit Omaha in 2 hours and Omaha to Rapid City is what 4 or 5 hours? Be there by early afternoon easy.
Suddenly deciding whether or not to pull off and go to work or to drive on was a life test.
I drove on. I called in and claimed bad allergies. Easy to fake as I was crying. Bad excuse, but fuck them. They were fucking me so pfft in their general direction.
This was madness. Chasing a foci that does not exist. Why am I doing this? A focus point of what exactly?
The urge was powerful and strong. I stopped half the way to Council Bluffs. I walked around an empty parking lot. I cried like a baby. I had no idea what I was doing.
The urge had left me and I was in a truck stop in nowhere.
I drove home. No music not even classical. I think I just crashed when I got home. No memories of that day except the exceptional side trip to nowhere that I had to do or hate myself.
An alternate reality where I pull off and just go to work is a reality where I hate myself always. I sorta needed that very weird day.
Apparently I needed to go to an empty parking lot in western Iowa and cry.
I know the skein lines were not there but it seemed so real. The sky was a map.
@Mister Bluster: Point to you sir.
@Gustopher:
“All models are wrong, but some are useful.” -George Box
Science is about building abstract models of phenomena. The Ideal Gas Law, Ohm’s Law, Quantum Mechanics, all are imperfect, but useful.
@de stijl:
If it makes you feel better, that empty space between atoms isn’t really empty, its full of virtual particles (that’s admittedly a very sloppy way of describing it, but any non-mathematical description of quantum mechanics is sloppy), with a non-zero vacuum energy density.
This leads to problems in theoretical physics like the cosmological constant problem, where the difference between theory and observation is roughly 120 orders of magnitude (ie a factor of more than a Googol).
@de stijl: I had a similar experience that started in Alexandria, Minnesota, and ended in Coos Bay, Oregon. I followed the cheshire-cat moon and the skeins of stars west…brief stopover in Butte, Montana where I stopped and a lady insisted I eat a hearty meal and get some sleep….then onward to the ocean. Life-changing experience.
Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds…..
@Jax: What’s the filing fee for the extension? It might be that the cost of filing relative to the benefit versus (or should that be vis-a-vis?) being told no is negligible.
@Doug Mataconis: I was thinking more worldwide than the US. One source says 75 million people died worldwide because of WW2. Covid has killed about 3.5 million. The US was lucky with WW2, because the war did not really reach our civilians.
@Just nutha ignint cracker: I don’t think it’s a matter of a filing fee. It’s that my Dad’s a “Da Gubmint ain’t gonna tell me to do shit!” when they warned him 5 years ago we had a leak, and he ignored them, so now they’re pissed. It’s a high hazard dam, now, thanks to that. Not sure they’ll be willing to let it go another year.
@Just nutha ignint cracker: If it wasn’t my own personal life, I’d consider it karmic on the anti-gubmint shit. Now I’m just rolling my eyes and telling him he better get with his Farm Service Bureau people to see if there’s any funding available. He won’t do that, either, because they want conservation easements and public access and all that if they’re gonna fund it.
@Jax: Still doesn’t cost anything to ask…
@Kathy: Tritium is a weak beta-emitter, a hazard if taken internally. It’s not a serious contamination hazard. In its elemental form, it can be removed from the body by peeing (drink lots of beer while you’re doing this). OTOH, if it bonds with any form of water, it’s dangerous.
@SC_Birdflyte:
I don’t know if tritium occurs naturally. I suppose it does in stars, but the half life is only about a dozen years, right? None would make it to planet formation.
So we haven’t had to contend with heavy urine yet.
@Kathy: Good point. The radiological half-life is 12.3 years.
@Jax:
God damn, you’re just as crazy and stupid as me.
Bless the crazy and stupid. We need extra help because on our own the likelihood of fucking it up is pretty fucking high.