my only comment is, for the people who dont own bidets, have some respect for yourselves. you're really walking around like that? going out in public. interacting with loved ones. im disgusted.
There has never been a better time to be alive than right now. I write this as someone worried about climate change, income inequality and the state of our democracy. I can list out 1000 things that are wrong with this country and we could have the normal disagreements likely based on how you vote, but that doesn't change the fact that if I could pick any time to live in, it would be now.
I was born in the 70s. If I could choose I'd have been born in the 50s and on the way out before the shit really hits the fan. Sadly, I think I'll live to see the Great Smear. But otherwise I agree - we have it pretty damn good right now!
On the Brian Flores stuff, look I know most of us are anti-woke around here, but this is one of those situations where I'm with the mainstream media. The NFL is 70% black players, so it's ridiculous to have just a tiny handful of black head coaches. There's a lot of guys out there who deserve a shot to prove they can be leaders.
My hot take is that this is another one of many examples of manufactured racism.
1) If you have even a modicum of racism/prejudice, why would you want to own an NFL team, which as you say, is a sport dominated by black people?
2) NFL owners would sell their soul to satan if it meant winning a Super Bowl. So even IF an NFL owner was racist, are you telling me that they wouldn’t be open to hiring anyone who would help them get there?
I think it’s a garbage theory, that hurts black people to bring up significantly more than it helps them.
I agree to a degree. However I hate the stat that 70% of players are black. We are comparing 2 completely different job positions. Are 70% of applicants for head coaches black? The coaching breakdown is no where near 70/30 like the player makeup is. Should we have 70% black coaches? 12% (to make up the average demographics of the country?) What is the correct amount of black coaches? I don't know the answer to this but no one complaining is saying what the "right" number is, they just say its not enough.
There are zero female players, yet they are starting to get coaching positions. Should we not allow them to coach because they don't make up a % of the players? Rhetorical question as of course we should allow them to coach but this is the problem with this constant breakdown of % of X population making of jobs. The majority of teachers are female but a disproportionate % of principals are male. Are school sexist due to this?
It's also misleading to a degree to say there is one black coach. While technically true, a couple black coaches were fired this offseason and not all positions are filled.
I'm in Colorado so being a Bronco fan I find his claim to be interesting. One, the Broncos just fired a black coach (Vance Joseph). Regarding the claim that they are racist because they showed up an hour late and "disheveled". Obviously I can't speak to either of those claims and frankly it wouldn't surprise me. However, I'm not sure how that means they are racist if that did happen. Unprofessional? Rude? Stupid? Yes to all of those but racist? That seems to be a stretch.
Finally, a local sports reporter who has very close ties to the Broncos said the meeting was pushed to 7:30am at the last second to accommodate Flores practice schedule while he was with the Patriots. Who knows if that is true but the claims of being late and "disheveled" should be easily provable (or disprovable) IMO.
Black coaches have been given plenty of chances, some fairer than others. Like most of white coaches, they have failed, just more. For every Todd Bowles or Jim Caldwell, there’s a Mike Singletary, Hue Jackson or Steve Wilkes. It’s a difficult job that requires a dedication and effort level and love of the game few have. How many players who have made thousands playing are willing to grind as a go-fer/film nerd for years before working your way up to asst TE coach or deputy quality assurance play diagrammer?
The criteria for making the NFL playoffs should have nothing to do with Divisions, Conferences, etc. The only criteria should be win 10 or more games and you're in. Less than that, out. Any weird number of entrants can be fixed with first round byes so that the 2nd round is 8 teams.
Feb 5, 2022·edited Feb 5, 2022Liked by Ethan Strauss
Despite significant headwinds and skyrocketing prices, Single Family Residences for sale in the Bay Area will not drop in price even when the Fed rate hikes start in March 2022 (and march into the next 24 months) and will hold (insanely) high demand/market value through 2024 because there is no new SFR building permitted, there's a glut of highly compensated people wanting to raise kids here (near great schools), large employers give significant equity comp on top of W-2 wages, and who wants to buy a high rise condo near the CalTrain/Bart station without the rest of the "American dream" - your own patch of dirt/grass, an outdoor BBQ, and a patio garden area where you now call your "summertime-outdoor-office" for WFH life.
The giant elephant in the room of global humanity that no-one wants to acknowledge, let alone discuss, is the inherent unsustainability of the current global civilisation driven by an endless growth mentality of linear consumption and disposal. Based on broad, deep science from a wide range of disciplines, human civilisation is rapidly degrading the ecosystems, renewable and non-renewable resources we are completely reliant on - topsoil, biodiversity, fresh water, groundwater, stable climate, fisheries, and so on. Because these systems are complex, resilient, interconnected, and behave in a non-linear manner, on the surface they may appear unaffected and functional until, one day, they undergo rapid transition into system states hostile to human civilisation and impossible to reverse in human timescales. Disposable consumption is inherently unsustainable. Endless growth on a finite planet is axiomatically absurd. And yet we are all trapped in a system driven by these principles, itself highly resilient and repellant to any real change. Is it any wonder that sentience has been described as an evolutionary dead-end?
The "one day this apocalypse will occur, we just don't know when" trope has been used for millennia to get people to do things they wouldn't otherwise do because they make no sense. Human ingenuity is the key to our future, and there is unimaginable potential for humanity to flourish on earth. The prophets and high priests of the cult of climatology are preaching the opposite of what it'll take to achieve that potential. They're in it for the money, and they're making bank. Check out Alex Epstein, Bjorn Lomborg, Michael Shellenberger, et al.
I lectured in local and global sustainability, and your dismissal of climate science - which has far more evidence behind it than smoking causing cancer, for instance, and we know smoking causes cancer - shows your bias. I have read the cherry picked syllogisms written by your deniers, they ignore the actual evidence in favour of shilling for extractive capitalism and ignoring the very obvious fact that Earth's systems have limits and that we are rapidly approaching or have already exceeded many of them. You should start reading peer-reviewed journals and understanding earth system science.
Subsidizing solar and wind while taxing and restricting natural gas has nothing to do with science. Crony capitalists and corrupt politicians are lining their pockets while inflicting pain and suffering on the poor and middle class. Scientific research is an extremely valuable tool for humanity's technological advancement. Science has done immeasurable good for humanity, and will continue to do so, as long as it's free from corrupt politicians and crony capitalists. Earth's systems are incredibly complex and defy any models currently in use for accurate long-term predictions of how they'll behave and the effects of a wide range of variables. Pursuing more accurate and reliable models is worthwhile. Making economic policy decisions based on them today is foolish.
Fossil fuels are directly subsidised 4-6x as much as renewables globally, depending on how you measure the subsidies. And they have been indirectly subsidised to the tune of hundred of trillions of dollars over 7 decades by not having to pay a cent for the damage they have done to the atmosphere, land and water. Subsidies were used to kickstart the nascent renewable industries, as has been done with many important industries, but they are being phased out. Why? Because new build solar and wind are THE CHEAPEST OPTIONS AVAILABLE TODAY. Your arguments all come straight out of the 1990s denial handbook and bear no resemblance to reality.
As for not being able to model the climate system, you clearly know nothing about it. Models are developed and tested against actual observations, and with decades of data and the computing power available today we have an increasingly accurate picture. Even if you don't believe in modelling, we have real world obsevations of temperature, ice extent and melt, melting permafrost, disappearing glaciers, movement of species, etc etc from every discipline of science pointing to the same thing. Your denial is tired and weak, and only plausible to those who refuse to engage with the actual science.
The history of human conflict is intertwined with resource scarcity. In the next few decades, we may be mining asteroids for fresh water, precious metals, etc. For the first time in human history we may not be resource constrained.
The first sentence, absolutely correct. The second relies on the premise of a cheap, infinite energy source which we are yet to discover and probably does not exist. It also relies on the premise that those resources would be shared equitably, which is laughable given the current system in which wealth is concentrated among the uber-wealthy. This POV is called techno-utopianism, that more and better technology will save humanity. I believed in it before I started studying, and then teaching, global sustainability. Now I think better looking after what we have, and altering the economic system to share it around a bit better, is a more likely path to avoiding the disasters awaiting us later this century.
To be clear, I'm not saying technology isn't important on the path to sustainability - what I am saying is that it is not a be-all-end-all saviour. The idea that "technology will save us" without other changes to the linear-throughput, extractive system is a convenient lie we'd all like to believe. There need to be a raft of systemic social and economic changes accompanying technological advancement, such as prioritising efficiency of resource use and recovery, and recognising that ecosystem services underpin every civilisation rather than pretending they are immutable no matter how we treat them. A linear throughput, ever-expanding growth consumption model is inherently unsustainable.
I was so convinced that technology could save humanity when I started looking into global sustainability that it took a number of years to shift my belief. Firstly, I looked at the history of technological disruptions and found that with the benefits of every major advancement come the costs and unintended consequences, which often sprout into even greater problems. Then I looked closely at the numbers involved in addressing issues like the volume of waste we produce and getting to carbon neutral - while factoring in the ever-increasing consumption assumed by the current social-economic model - and it was clear that technology alone isn't a solution. I also looked into specific technologies like fusion power and talked to experts about it. and found it to be a mirage in the near term. The global sustainability issues we face right now are coming to a head this century, and dreams of infinite cheap energy are at this point just that - dreams. There is more to it, but I'll end there.
Do you value every human life equally? Does every human living today have an inalienable God-given right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, and freedom from government oppression? And do the billions of humans in Africa and Asia deserve the level of physical comfort and security that the millions in North America and Europe enjoy today? I believe they do, and that those promoting climate change policies believe otherwise.
What a load of bullshit. People like you love to wave your God and freedom banner when it has absolutely nothing to do with the subject at hand. The global poor are the first to be affected by climate change, they are already bearing the brunt of it. Switching energy sources from highly polluting to far less polluting has nothing to do with impinging on freedom. And frankly, I don't believe in your God and you should keep that to yourself as you don't have a right to inflict it upon anyone else. I'm not going to engage with your nonsensical framing any further.
Most “foodie” culture is just classism in disguise. All PMC and higher seem to do is good out to eat and talk about going out to eat. My personal belief is this is bc it’s a way to have “good taste” without any intellectual rigor.
Ethan, Would you consider adding weekly links you found interesting to the weekend thread?
Oakland Coliseum is a great place to watch a ballgame. A's fans are passionate, and the stadium itself is charming -- plain and basic, no superfluous nonsense. The focus is on the gameplay. Newer ballparks all feel like soulless malls.
We need to have more empathy and better understand the science before claiming that "bears shit in the woods." And if studies show that Bears do in fact, shit in the woods, we need be very careful about releasing those in the wild, as it could inflict great harm on the Bear community and its collective psyche. Bears are already greatly discriminated against. 1 in 4 Bears in their lifetime will try to steal a pic-a-nic basket or commit suicide. Within 2 years of retirement, 78% of Bears are broke. (Source: Pablo S. Yogi, 2009)
Most of you are as performative and full of shit as the (left or right) biased news sources that you decry. Ironic because both sides are working in concert to keep everyone divided and by engaging in this nonsense you are actually carrying their water as much as their most ardent and loyal followers.
Or perhaps there aren't just two sides to everything? Perhaps most things are not black or white, red or blue, but a spectrum of subtely but important differences. And perhaps the ones working to keep everyone in two camps, fearful, divided and combative, are the ones benefitting from it?
The 2022 Beijing Olympics are the moral equivalent of the 1936 Nazi Olympics. A brutal regime that terrorizes and abuses their own population, especially an ethnic minority, and threatens peace and democracy in the rest of the world, is using an international sporting event as a propaganda tool.
I’m beginning to feel like *I’m* the crazy crank, but I feel like we’re no where near as disturbed about our entanglement with them as we should be. I feel like we should be making an effort, that’s as serious and urgent as our WW2 buildup, to get ourselves out of this position in which they control so much of our supply chain that we have to placate them.
Genuine evil, with designs on meaningfully controlling the world. Not in terms of conquering territory, in terms of making countries so reliant upon them that they can call the shots.
Our entanglement with them invalidates our passion about whatever the silly moral concern of the day is.
I suppose this is my hot take. And I know that, again, I sound like a crank. But we really, really need some urgency here.
Ron Unz’s American Pravda series makes some excellent points (including plenty of “left-wing” ones). This struck me recently: RFK Jr.’s book on Fauci has been a gigantic best seller, and may surpass 1 million copies sold. He devotes hundreds of pages, with detailed evidence, to supporting HIV / AIDS hypothesis as a money-grabbing hoax. He also has detailed his belief Sirhan is innocent of murdering his father. Shouldn’t this be a bigger deal? Why the media focus, when they give him any attention at all, on his opinions about vaccines?
Anyone can write whatever they want in a book, and number of copies sold is irrelevant as far as truth or fact is concerned. But you know where you can't write without deep and extensive fact-checking by experts in your field from across the entire planet? Long-standing peer-reviewed journals. Peer-reviewed science is not perfect, but it is the best fact checker we have, and it usually exposes the frauds pretty quickly. I know who I believe.
ADL et al. ain’t fools, as Ron has stated, treating him as Voldemort is their only strategy until the truth is ready to storm the walls of our elite’s sandcastles of lies
People spending too much time on Reddit trying to correct the opinions of others are missing their calling. They should be answering calls from the Indian call centre that insists my social insurance number is in arrears and that I may appear before a judge if I don't provide my credit card number pronto.
The right type of screen time is GOOD for kids. Kids shoes can be intelligently designed to teach them language, colors, shapes, etc. In a manner that's more effective than the average parent who has no experience or training in how to teach.
I know this is just a place for hot takes, but I wanted to jump in on this one ... I don't think there's any valid argument that all screen time is bad. As a parent, to me, there's nothing inherently bad about most of things that my kids do on digital devices. In fact there's a multitude of things that are far better learned on digital devices than any physical medium that has existed prior. For me, the main drawbacks are opportunity cost(what other more productive play activities they could be doing) and the desensitization effects(once you go digital, most/all non-digital activities may become boring). In the long run you can't ignore these negative effects. Like everything else, it's a balancing act.
Cultural appropriation is the most stupid issue to be debated. I have never understood why people are strongly opposed on how others learn about other cultures and monetize it. We pick up so many new things from each other, and this hand-wringing is just a way to make everything exclusive.
(I love this blog, but) defectors from the current prestige media orthodoxy won't be able to move the needle whatsoever. What's going to do it is the more adult-in-the-room insiders who slowly introduce antibodies to the pathologies of the culture. One example: the recent Jessica Bennett NYT article on the concept creep of words like "trauma" and "harm".
It's not like there's no awareness in those paces of the dysfunction and absurdity, it's that it can't be addressed except by people who read as friends and allies.
Hotter supplemental take: this will work and we'll have a lovely Hegelian synthesis of good old fashioned liberalism and the strongest woke critiques of it by 2030. By 2040 the 2010s and 2020s will all have been a bad dream.
I’ve lived in various big cities around the country all with different characteristics (both coasts & the south, left and right skewing populations, R and D leadership, more segregated and less segregated, etc) and they’re all pretty much the same. Everyone complains about the same things, they all have good food, etc.
My hot take is that there is a conspiracy theory I honestly fully believe: that Elon Musk and Tesla don’t just not care about pedestrian deaths but that they see a *benefit* to them.
Consider that Tesla lets owners beta test its Autopilot feature on residential streets. Musk—against the advice of many of his engineers—decided Teslas would handle autonomous driving solely with cameras, and without radar or other sensors commonly used by Tesla’s competitors. It lets drivers play video games while driving, on an enormous touchscreen on the car’s dashboard. All this indifference to safety features that other manufacturers include has already contributed to a body count: at least 12 deaths in recent years from distracted drivers in Teslas.
Throughout all this, safety experts and engineers seem a little baffled as to why, exactly, Tesla would do such flagrantly dangerous things. Why? “Given what we now know about the limits of automated driving, why might a car manufacturer continue to overhype its capabilities, introduce it to urban roads that it's particularly unsuited for, and intentionally remove safeguards against its well-documented limitations? They may want the fully automated driving future to come into existence even with the full knowledge that the technology doesn’t work. If you were a renegade automaker who is both aware of the actual history of American urban transportation and something of a sociopath, the fact that autonomous driving is clearly unsafe might actually present an opportunity.”
“A car manufacturer could make a bet that by intentionally making his vehicles more dangerous, particularly to people outside of them, regulators and states and municipalities will respond not by punishing his massively over-valued company but instead by attempting to further limit opportunities for Teslas to come into contact with non-drivers. That is, by walling off the streets, giving more space to cars, and making all roads more freeway-like. A true believer might come to think that causing more mayhem will only accelerate the speed with which this transformation takes place. One reason to make that bet is because it is essentially what happened with automobiles themselves…”
I brought this up on one of the callins but here it is- a mid-season tournament would be great for the nba. January through March is pretty rough to watch most of the time. Imagine the grizzlies or bulls being able to win a trophy this year. I think it would be really exciting
Well I'm hoping you have a good Olympic take coming soon, I saw someone report that the opening ceremonies were down 43% or something like that. I can tell you I plan to watch none of them, and I like some sports during the Olympics but I'm disgusted by how corrupt the IOC is and the CCP. People got on SLC case when they blew open the bribe scandal for their win, but that's how the game is played, there's a reason dictatorship's keep winning the Olympics. Be nice if the democracies that came up with the Olympics had a pair and stopped giving them to corrupt countries.
The former Arizona basketball player and Knicks draft pick. Played almost exclusively in Europe. Long story is that someone posted a pic of one of the Arizona squads of his era on a College Basketball Classic account. I can't sleep so I start tracking down the guys on the team to see where are they now. I come to Wright and discover that he was drugged and axe murdered by an older man he lived with and left in his car in Brooklyn. The guy gets arrested in 2016 and then there isn't really any news. I haven't found anything on motive, relationship, etc. It's just really strange.
Thoughts on the eternal hot mess that is my home town team - Redskins/WFT/Commanders, worst owner in sports, sexual predator Danny "Kim Jong-un" Snyder?
my only comment is, for the people who dont own bidets, have some respect for yourselves. you're really walking around like that? going out in public. interacting with loved ones. im disgusted.
After living in a country that has the bum-gun next to any toilet, I'm never going back to TP again
Is it really that good? My wife bought one over a month ago but it's just sitting in the box. Why can't wipes be flushable?
Even a room-temp (i.e., no electricity) bidet is better than no bidet. And yes, it shows respect for yourself, your family, and your community.
Trying to convince my wife to install one 🤣
There has never been a better time to be alive than right now. I write this as someone worried about climate change, income inequality and the state of our democracy. I can list out 1000 things that are wrong with this country and we could have the normal disagreements likely based on how you vote, but that doesn't change the fact that if I could pick any time to live in, it would be now.
I used to say this loudly. Until 2020. Now I think we peaked in 2019.
yeah 2019 was peak. 2022 could have gotten back on track but covid restrictions are now a religion
I was born in the 70s. If I could choose I'd have been born in the 50s and on the way out before the shit really hits the fan. Sadly, I think I'll live to see the Great Smear. But otherwise I agree - we have it pretty damn good right now!
On the Brian Flores stuff, look I know most of us are anti-woke around here, but this is one of those situations where I'm with the mainstream media. The NFL is 70% black players, so it's ridiculous to have just a tiny handful of black head coaches. There's a lot of guys out there who deserve a shot to prove they can be leaders.
My hot take is that this is another one of many examples of manufactured racism.
1) If you have even a modicum of racism/prejudice, why would you want to own an NFL team, which as you say, is a sport dominated by black people?
2) NFL owners would sell their soul to satan if it meant winning a Super Bowl. So even IF an NFL owner was racist, are you telling me that they wouldn’t be open to hiring anyone who would help them get there?
I think it’s a garbage theory, that hurts black people to bring up significantly more than it helps them.
That’s not true at all. Most owners just want to make money.
Just ask the Fords in Detroit
Both things can be true. Next Sunday, there will be 30 other owners watching the game with extreme envy.
Those two things are so similar, it makes me rethink everything I’ve ever believed in.
I think the obvious difference here is that one used slave labor and the others pays people millions of dollars to play a game 20ish times a year.
I agree to a degree. However I hate the stat that 70% of players are black. We are comparing 2 completely different job positions. Are 70% of applicants for head coaches black? The coaching breakdown is no where near 70/30 like the player makeup is. Should we have 70% black coaches? 12% (to make up the average demographics of the country?) What is the correct amount of black coaches? I don't know the answer to this but no one complaining is saying what the "right" number is, they just say its not enough.
There are zero female players, yet they are starting to get coaching positions. Should we not allow them to coach because they don't make up a % of the players? Rhetorical question as of course we should allow them to coach but this is the problem with this constant breakdown of % of X population making of jobs. The majority of teachers are female but a disproportionate % of principals are male. Are school sexist due to this?
It's also misleading to a degree to say there is one black coach. While technically true, a couple black coaches were fired this offseason and not all positions are filled.
I'm in Colorado so being a Bronco fan I find his claim to be interesting. One, the Broncos just fired a black coach (Vance Joseph). Regarding the claim that they are racist because they showed up an hour late and "disheveled". Obviously I can't speak to either of those claims and frankly it wouldn't surprise me. However, I'm not sure how that means they are racist if that did happen. Unprofessional? Rude? Stupid? Yes to all of those but racist? That seems to be a stretch.
Finally, a local sports reporter who has very close ties to the Broncos said the meeting was pushed to 7:30am at the last second to accommodate Flores practice schedule while he was with the Patriots. Who knows if that is true but the claims of being late and "disheveled" should be easily provable (or disprovable) IMO.
> The NFL is 70% black players
What's the statistical likelihood of this outcome? Clearly this is racism, right?
White Cornerbacks Matter (#wcbm)
Black coaches have been given plenty of chances, some fairer than others. Like most of white coaches, they have failed, just more. For every Todd Bowles or Jim Caldwell, there’s a Mike Singletary, Hue Jackson or Steve Wilkes. It’s a difficult job that requires a dedication and effort level and love of the game few have. How many players who have made thousands playing are willing to grind as a go-fer/film nerd for years before working your way up to asst TE coach or deputy quality assurance play diagrammer?
Amen. https://newsletters.theatlantic.com/the-third-rail/61fc2e3b6c908600204d373a/nfl-brian-flores-discrimination/
Here’s my hot take: if you’re posting links to the Atlantic in general or David French in particular, you’ve already lost.
Good to know. I would hope Ethan thinks a little deeper than that, but perhaps not...
Dopamine addiction is ruining society.
The criteria for making the NFL playoffs should have nothing to do with Divisions, Conferences, etc. The only criteria should be win 10 or more games and you're in. Less than that, out. Any weird number of entrants can be fixed with first round byes so that the 2nd round is 8 teams.
Despite significant headwinds and skyrocketing prices, Single Family Residences for sale in the Bay Area will not drop in price even when the Fed rate hikes start in March 2022 (and march into the next 24 months) and will hold (insanely) high demand/market value through 2024 because there is no new SFR building permitted, there's a glut of highly compensated people wanting to raise kids here (near great schools), large employers give significant equity comp on top of W-2 wages, and who wants to buy a high rise condo near the CalTrain/Bart station without the rest of the "American dream" - your own patch of dirt/grass, an outdoor BBQ, and a patio garden area where you now call your "summertime-outdoor-office" for WFH life.
The giant elephant in the room of global humanity that no-one wants to acknowledge, let alone discuss, is the inherent unsustainability of the current global civilisation driven by an endless growth mentality of linear consumption and disposal. Based on broad, deep science from a wide range of disciplines, human civilisation is rapidly degrading the ecosystems, renewable and non-renewable resources we are completely reliant on - topsoil, biodiversity, fresh water, groundwater, stable climate, fisheries, and so on. Because these systems are complex, resilient, interconnected, and behave in a non-linear manner, on the surface they may appear unaffected and functional until, one day, they undergo rapid transition into system states hostile to human civilisation and impossible to reverse in human timescales. Disposable consumption is inherently unsustainable. Endless growth on a finite planet is axiomatically absurd. And yet we are all trapped in a system driven by these principles, itself highly resilient and repellant to any real change. Is it any wonder that sentience has been described as an evolutionary dead-end?
The "one day this apocalypse will occur, we just don't know when" trope has been used for millennia to get people to do things they wouldn't otherwise do because they make no sense. Human ingenuity is the key to our future, and there is unimaginable potential for humanity to flourish on earth. The prophets and high priests of the cult of climatology are preaching the opposite of what it'll take to achieve that potential. They're in it for the money, and they're making bank. Check out Alex Epstein, Bjorn Lomborg, Michael Shellenberger, et al.
I lectured in local and global sustainability, and your dismissal of climate science - which has far more evidence behind it than smoking causing cancer, for instance, and we know smoking causes cancer - shows your bias. I have read the cherry picked syllogisms written by your deniers, they ignore the actual evidence in favour of shilling for extractive capitalism and ignoring the very obvious fact that Earth's systems have limits and that we are rapidly approaching or have already exceeded many of them. You should start reading peer-reviewed journals and understanding earth system science.
Subsidizing solar and wind while taxing and restricting natural gas has nothing to do with science. Crony capitalists and corrupt politicians are lining their pockets while inflicting pain and suffering on the poor and middle class. Scientific research is an extremely valuable tool for humanity's technological advancement. Science has done immeasurable good for humanity, and will continue to do so, as long as it's free from corrupt politicians and crony capitalists. Earth's systems are incredibly complex and defy any models currently in use for accurate long-term predictions of how they'll behave and the effects of a wide range of variables. Pursuing more accurate and reliable models is worthwhile. Making economic policy decisions based on them today is foolish.
Fossil fuels are directly subsidised 4-6x as much as renewables globally, depending on how you measure the subsidies. And they have been indirectly subsidised to the tune of hundred of trillions of dollars over 7 decades by not having to pay a cent for the damage they have done to the atmosphere, land and water. Subsidies were used to kickstart the nascent renewable industries, as has been done with many important industries, but they are being phased out. Why? Because new build solar and wind are THE CHEAPEST OPTIONS AVAILABLE TODAY. Your arguments all come straight out of the 1990s denial handbook and bear no resemblance to reality.
As for not being able to model the climate system, you clearly know nothing about it. Models are developed and tested against actual observations, and with decades of data and the computing power available today we have an increasingly accurate picture. Even if you don't believe in modelling, we have real world obsevations of temperature, ice extent and melt, melting permafrost, disappearing glaciers, movement of species, etc etc from every discipline of science pointing to the same thing. Your denial is tired and weak, and only plausible to those who refuse to engage with the actual science.
The history of human conflict is intertwined with resource scarcity. In the next few decades, we may be mining asteroids for fresh water, precious metals, etc. For the first time in human history we may not be resource constrained.
The first sentence, absolutely correct. The second relies on the premise of a cheap, infinite energy source which we are yet to discover and probably does not exist. It also relies on the premise that those resources would be shared equitably, which is laughable given the current system in which wealth is concentrated among the uber-wealthy. This POV is called techno-utopianism, that more and better technology will save humanity. I believed in it before I started studying, and then teaching, global sustainability. Now I think better looking after what we have, and altering the economic system to share it around a bit better, is a more likely path to avoiding the disasters awaiting us later this century.
What specifically pushed you away from the more techno-utopian perspective?
To be clear, I'm not saying technology isn't important on the path to sustainability - what I am saying is that it is not a be-all-end-all saviour. The idea that "technology will save us" without other changes to the linear-throughput, extractive system is a convenient lie we'd all like to believe. There need to be a raft of systemic social and economic changes accompanying technological advancement, such as prioritising efficiency of resource use and recovery, and recognising that ecosystem services underpin every civilisation rather than pretending they are immutable no matter how we treat them. A linear throughput, ever-expanding growth consumption model is inherently unsustainable.
I was so convinced that technology could save humanity when I started looking into global sustainability that it took a number of years to shift my belief. Firstly, I looked at the history of technological disruptions and found that with the benefits of every major advancement come the costs and unintended consequences, which often sprout into even greater problems. Then I looked closely at the numbers involved in addressing issues like the volume of waste we produce and getting to carbon neutral - while factoring in the ever-increasing consumption assumed by the current social-economic model - and it was clear that technology alone isn't a solution. I also looked into specific technologies like fusion power and talked to experts about it. and found it to be a mirage in the near term. The global sustainability issues we face right now are coming to a head this century, and dreams of infinite cheap energy are at this point just that - dreams. There is more to it, but I'll end there.
Do you value every human life equally? Does every human living today have an inalienable God-given right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, and freedom from government oppression? And do the billions of humans in Africa and Asia deserve the level of physical comfort and security that the millions in North America and Europe enjoy today? I believe they do, and that those promoting climate change policies believe otherwise.
What a load of bullshit. People like you love to wave your God and freedom banner when it has absolutely nothing to do with the subject at hand. The global poor are the first to be affected by climate change, they are already bearing the brunt of it. Switching energy sources from highly polluting to far less polluting has nothing to do with impinging on freedom. And frankly, I don't believe in your God and you should keep that to yourself as you don't have a right to inflict it upon anyone else. I'm not going to engage with your nonsensical framing any further.
Most “foodie” culture is just classism in disguise. All PMC and higher seem to do is good out to eat and talk about going out to eat. My personal belief is this is bc it’s a way to have “good taste” without any intellectual rigor.
Ethan, Would you consider adding weekly links you found interesting to the weekend thread?
Maybe, but I’m not sure I read enough internet for it.
I am here to normalize wearing jeans, inside at home. It is my anti-sweatpants, leisure wear movement.
My eyes are burning from the heat of this take.
Oakland Coliseum is a great place to watch a ballgame. A's fans are passionate, and the stadium itself is charming -- plain and basic, no superfluous nonsense. The focus is on the gameplay. Newer ballparks all feel like soulless malls.
I love the Treehouse
Novak Djokovic is a hero.
"The United States is also a one-party state but, with typical American extravagance, they have two of them." - Julius Nyerere
Well said. Or it is Zaphoid Beeblebrox - one body (Big Money) with two heads feeding off it.
We need to have more empathy and better understand the science before claiming that "bears shit in the woods." And if studies show that Bears do in fact, shit in the woods, we need be very careful about releasing those in the wild, as it could inflict great harm on the Bear community and its collective psyche. Bears are already greatly discriminated against. 1 in 4 Bears in their lifetime will try to steal a pic-a-nic basket or commit suicide. Within 2 years of retirement, 78% of Bears are broke. (Source: Pablo S. Yogi, 2009)
Most of you are as performative and full of shit as the (left or right) biased news sources that you decry. Ironic because both sides are working in concert to keep everyone divided and by engaging in this nonsense you are actually carrying their water as much as their most ardent and loyal followers.
Or perhaps there aren't just two sides to everything? Perhaps most things are not black or white, red or blue, but a spectrum of subtely but important differences. And perhaps the ones working to keep everyone in two camps, fearful, divided and combative, are the ones benefitting from it?
No perhaps about it my pessimistic friend
The 2022 Beijing Olympics are the moral equivalent of the 1936 Nazi Olympics. A brutal regime that terrorizes and abuses their own population, especially an ethnic minority, and threatens peace and democracy in the rest of the world, is using an international sporting event as a propaganda tool.
I’m beginning to feel like *I’m* the crazy crank, but I feel like we’re no where near as disturbed about our entanglement with them as we should be. I feel like we should be making an effort, that’s as serious and urgent as our WW2 buildup, to get ourselves out of this position in which they control so much of our supply chain that we have to placate them.
Genuine evil, with designs on meaningfully controlling the world. Not in terms of conquering territory, in terms of making countries so reliant upon them that they can call the shots.
Our entanglement with them invalidates our passion about whatever the silly moral concern of the day is.
I suppose this is my hot take. And I know that, again, I sound like a crank. But we really, really need some urgency here.
If you feel like this already then don’t read Chaos Under Heaven by Josh Rogin. It will horrify you.
Also, when the Nazis hosted the Olympics they weren’t actively running concentration camps yet.
2022 China is worse.
Most people don't read: https://jakeseliger.com/2022/01/31/most-people-dont-read-carefully-or-for-comprehension/
Ron Unz’s American Pravda series makes some excellent points (including plenty of “left-wing” ones). This struck me recently: RFK Jr.’s book on Fauci has been a gigantic best seller, and may surpass 1 million copies sold. He devotes hundreds of pages, with detailed evidence, to supporting HIV / AIDS hypothesis as a money-grabbing hoax. He also has detailed his belief Sirhan is innocent of murdering his father. Shouldn’t this be a bigger deal? Why the media focus, when they give him any attention at all, on his opinions about vaccines?
Anyone can write whatever they want in a book, and number of copies sold is irrelevant as far as truth or fact is concerned. But you know where you can't write without deep and extensive fact-checking by experts in your field from across the entire planet? Long-standing peer-reviewed journals. Peer-reviewed science is not perfect, but it is the best fact checker we have, and it usually exposes the frauds pretty quickly. I know who I believe.
ADL et al. ain’t fools, as Ron has stated, treating him as Voldemort is their only strategy until the truth is ready to storm the walls of our elite’s sandcastles of lies
Steph is winning finals MVP this year
People spending too much time on Reddit trying to correct the opinions of others are missing their calling. They should be answering calls from the Indian call centre that insists my social insurance number is in arrears and that I may appear before a judge if I don't provide my credit card number pronto.
The right type of screen time is GOOD for kids. Kids shoes can be intelligently designed to teach them language, colors, shapes, etc. In a manner that's more effective than the average parent who has no experience or training in how to teach.
I know this is just a place for hot takes, but I wanted to jump in on this one ... I don't think there's any valid argument that all screen time is bad. As a parent, to me, there's nothing inherently bad about most of things that my kids do on digital devices. In fact there's a multitude of things that are far better learned on digital devices than any physical medium that has existed prior. For me, the main drawbacks are opportunity cost(what other more productive play activities they could be doing) and the desensitization effects(once you go digital, most/all non-digital activities may become boring). In the long run you can't ignore these negative effects. Like everything else, it's a balancing act.
Armed boomer democrats protect our nation's gas pumps and ATMs from Biden "I did that!"stickers.
Pancakes are best served with crispy edges and a gooey inside.
WHAT ABOUT THE BRIAN FLORES SITUATION ETHAN!?!?!?
Cultural appropriation is the most stupid issue to be debated. I have never understood why people are strongly opposed on how others learn about other cultures and monetize it. We pick up so many new things from each other, and this hand-wringing is just a way to make everything exclusive.
(I love this blog, but) defectors from the current prestige media orthodoxy won't be able to move the needle whatsoever. What's going to do it is the more adult-in-the-room insiders who slowly introduce antibodies to the pathologies of the culture. One example: the recent Jessica Bennett NYT article on the concept creep of words like "trauma" and "harm".
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/02/04/opinion/caleb-love-bombing-gaslighting-trauma.html
It's not like there's no awareness in those paces of the dysfunction and absurdity, it's that it can't be addressed except by people who read as friends and allies.
Hotter supplemental take: this will work and we'll have a lovely Hegelian synthesis of good old fashioned liberalism and the strongest woke critiques of it by 2030. By 2040 the 2010s and 2020s will all have been a bad dream.
I’ve lived in various big cities around the country all with different characteristics (both coasts & the south, left and right skewing populations, R and D leadership, more segregated and less segregated, etc) and they’re all pretty much the same. Everyone complains about the same things, they all have good food, etc.
Also Ethan curious if you saw this article? Would love to get your thoughts https://www.salon.com/2022/02/04/stop-scolding-joe-rogan-progressives-must-reclaim-the-of-pleasure/
Can you write for Klay Travis and Outkick?
My hot take is that there is a conspiracy theory I honestly fully believe: that Elon Musk and Tesla don’t just not care about pedestrian deaths but that they see a *benefit* to them.
Consider that Tesla lets owners beta test its Autopilot feature on residential streets. Musk—against the advice of many of his engineers—decided Teslas would handle autonomous driving solely with cameras, and without radar or other sensors commonly used by Tesla’s competitors. It lets drivers play video games while driving, on an enormous touchscreen on the car’s dashboard. All this indifference to safety features that other manufacturers include has already contributed to a body count: at least 12 deaths in recent years from distracted drivers in Teslas.
Throughout all this, safety experts and engineers seem a little baffled as to why, exactly, Tesla would do such flagrantly dangerous things. Why? “Given what we now know about the limits of automated driving, why might a car manufacturer continue to overhype its capabilities, introduce it to urban roads that it's particularly unsuited for, and intentionally remove safeguards against its well-documented limitations? They may want the fully automated driving future to come into existence even with the full knowledge that the technology doesn’t work. If you were a renegade automaker who is both aware of the actual history of American urban transportation and something of a sociopath, the fact that autonomous driving is clearly unsafe might actually present an opportunity.”
“A car manufacturer could make a bet that by intentionally making his vehicles more dangerous, particularly to people outside of them, regulators and states and municipalities will respond not by punishing his massively over-valued company but instead by attempting to further limit opportunities for Teslas to come into contact with non-drivers. That is, by walling off the streets, giving more space to cars, and making all roads more freeway-like. A true believer might come to think that causing more mayhem will only accelerate the speed with which this transformation takes place. One reason to make that bet is because it is essentially what happened with automobiles themselves…”
Stole all this from (https://theap.substack.com/p/losing-a-street-fight-to-elon-musk) but man I believe it.
I brought this up on one of the callins but here it is- a mid-season tournament would be great for the nba. January through March is pretty rough to watch most of the time. Imagine the grizzlies or bulls being able to win a trophy this year. I think it would be really exciting
2038 bugs will be more disruptive than y2k bugs because there isn't going to be as much investment in cleaning that up.
Carbonated Mineral Water makes you cum harder.
Newest hot take - we don't actually need NBA GMs anymore. Players+Agents can just decide where they want to play.
Well I'm hoping you have a good Olympic take coming soon, I saw someone report that the opening ceremonies were down 43% or something like that. I can tell you I plan to watch none of them, and I like some sports during the Olympics but I'm disgusted by how corrupt the IOC is and the CCP. People got on SLC case when they blew open the bribe scandal for their win, but that's how the game is played, there's a reason dictatorship's keep winning the Olympics. Be nice if the democracies that came up with the Olympics had a pair and stopped giving them to corrupt countries.
It is easier to believe charlatans who tell comforting lies than experts who tell uncomfortable truths.
What really happened to Michael Wright?
We talking actor or Spurs reporter?
The former Arizona basketball player and Knicks draft pick. Played almost exclusively in Europe. Long story is that someone posted a pic of one of the Arizona squads of his era on a College Basketball Classic account. I can't sleep so I start tracking down the guys on the team to see where are they now. I come to Wright and discover that he was drugged and axe murdered by an older man he lived with and left in his car in Brooklyn. The guy gets arrested in 2016 and then there isn't really any news. I haven't found anything on motive, relationship, etc. It's just really strange.
After the buy of the athletic will the nyt become a media company and start to become a sports tv rights owner in the future?
That MIT study predicting global systems failure around 2040 is coming 5-10 years earlier than predicted.
It likely won't be one great collapse but a steady series of systems collapsing regionally in cascade over decades. And yeah, it is on the way.
Thoughts on the eternal hot mess that is my home town team - Redskins/WFT/Commanders, worst owner in sports, sexual predator Danny "Kim Jong-un" Snyder?