DradisPing
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User ID: 1102
DradisPing
4d ago
In "Mean Girls" Lacey Chabert's character kept using "fetch" as an adjective, trying to start it as a trend. Eventually Rachel McAdams' character came at her with "Stop trying to make fetch happen, it's not going to happen."
DradisPing
4d ago
I've wondered if people who started plunking with pistols as children developed intuitive aiming.
On the other hand I've heard that the M1 Carbine was developed as an alternative for guards that wouldn't be issued M1 Garands (too heavy for infrequent use) after they were unable to find any record of a guard successfully killing an enemy soldier with a 1911.
DradisPing
4d ago
I think he had the view that the FBI just had a few bad apples to find.
The reality is that it's impossible to go into a job like that alone. He needed to come in like a hostile lord taking over during feudalism. He needed to bring in about 20 loyal people to protect him and keep an eye on things.
As things went down he was completely outgunned. The long term FBI employees know all the rules so they can slow walk his requests, try to trick him into breaking the law, drop hints about things they can charge his family members with, etc, etc.
With the poor Epstein handling he was just sitting there watching his credibility with his audience being destroyed while he was stuck in an office unable to accomplish anything.
DradisPing
5d ago
Billionaires seem to most commonly marry someone they knew from college or earlier. Being married is just a huge time saver.
DradisPing
5d ago
Jeb strikes me as a case of someone on the spectrum who's had a lot of training for public speaking.
He didn't date in high school and seems to have married the first girl he slept with.
Columba's history is kind of interesting. Her mother came from a well connected family, but married a dashing low status man. As a result she lived in poverty.
So Columba was basically raised to be on the look out for dorky men from upperclass families and do whatever it took to get that ring.
It doesn't sound romantic when I describe it like that, but they are both fully committed to making the marriage work.
DradisPing
6d ago
There was a case years ago where a shop in Vegas was in court with the IRS because they were paying employees in silver coins and listing the face value for tax purposes. I'm not sure how it turned out.
So I think this parallels Pareto's Foxes and Lions theory / metaphor. Lions can take bold action. Foxes are clever and can see ahead. To function institutions need a mix of both. Over time Foxes push out the Lions using clever tricks. Eventually the Foxes face a problem where clever tricks don't work and it becomes a major crisis.
My own thinking is that people who are too physically comfortable tend to become purely socially focussed. This leads to things like "I choose the bear" where they haven't really absorbed that bears are real and can kill them.
Colder climates used to have a check with weather. The winter kept people aware that too many wrong moves could lead to their death. Technology has mostly solved that for people living in cities.
California is a good example. They decided to abandon their long term plans to expand the reservoir system as the population grew. Victor Davis Hanson talks about this frequently. There's not really a counter argument to the point that "more people need more reservoirs". But that involves giving money to the wrong sort of people to do the wrong sort of work. So they always seem to start screaming about how it's pointless due to climate change.
I don't really think the change needed is a deep shift to something like a warrior ethos. However something much smaller like a major grid failure that cut off power to Sacramento for two weeks would teach some important lessons about keeping institutions functional to all the government workers.
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