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big-city-gay


				

				

				

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big-city-gay


								

								

								
								
								

								
							
					
 
				


				

				
				
				

				

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					joined 2022 November 01 02:55:17 UTC
				


				
					

					
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				Culture War Roundup for the week of November 27, 2023
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Because that post posits an extremely unlikely scenario where people can actually vote for RFK.


You briefly, very briefly, mention ballot access. As if that isn’t the whole shebang right there. Even if he has some groundswell of support, what’s the plausible plan to find those voters, get signatures, get signatures in a way that comply with the arcane bits of local election law, and then defend against the DNC’s very experienced legal teams that know exactly how to stifle ballot access?


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of September 18, 2023
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
I'd like to drop a link this thoroughly researched and footnoted article about metabolic adaptation.


https://www.strongerbyscience.com/metabolic-adaptation/


This doesn't immediately support or refute the 300 calorie a day delta here…but it's within the realm of plausibility that when an obese person loses a lot of weight, their system down-regulates non-exercise activity thermogenesis by somewhere in that range.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of September 4, 2023
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
That's too much “Great Man of History” analysis. I think Disney was boned no matter what.


    

  • Huge amounts of Disney’s revenue came from linear commercial TV, which is dying, and big tentpole franchises like Marvel, which—no matter how brilliant of a creative team you hire—are going to get tired at some point.
    • 

  • They get plenty of cruise line and theme park revenue, but if you jack up the prices and/or degrade the service quality too much with nickel-and-diming with Fast Passes, demand shrinks.
    • 

  • It's incredibly hard to change the institutional culture of a company that is that big and that old.
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I doubt the DeSantis thing or the board room drama doesn't really mean a damn thing, versus the economic and cultural flow that's adjusting to a giant surplus of entertainment that's available everywhere all the time whenever you want it. Post-scarcity entertainment killed the music industry long ago, and now it's time that everything else gets shanked too.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of August 28, 2023
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


Now I think space frontiers should be explored, but we do run up against some pretty hard problems here.




Understatement of the millennium.


People will say “humanity needs to become an interplanetary civilization to avoid extinction”, even though Mars…


    

  • Has far less gravity
    • 

  • A thin, inhospitable atmosphere, with no plausible way to make it thicker
    • 

  • No magnetosphere
    • 

  • An unknown amount of geothermal energy, but presumably far less than Earth, and you'd have to drill way deeper to get at it
    • 

  • 44% less available solar energy than Earth, and that's the best case scenario, as what's atmosphere it as kicks up horrifying black-out dust storms for major portions of the year
    • 



The idea Mars would be some outpost of a catastrophe on Earth is farcical. We could fuck up the ecosystem good and proper, and at least Earth would still have gravity and a magnetic shield—we have absolutely no ability to create a sustainable biosphere on Mars.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of August 28, 2023
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


But you're right to point out that the important thing here is the change, the increase - why wasn't this as big a problem thirty years ago?




Wait, in the Senate? Did you never hear of Strom Thurmond?


The Senate is a bizarre institution, and extrapolating…anything…from an N=100 dataset is folly. Once you’re in the Senate, it takes a LOT to get you out of the Senate, as seen from this list. There’s only 2 Senators from each state, and once you’re in you immediately accumulate a huge amount of power but then also pretty much vote along party lines, and unless you do something truly wildly insanely wrong, your state party has no particular reason to kick you out.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of August 28, 2023
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Hell of a reach to say the President can micro-manage admissions at private colleges.


While almost all universities receive public funding in some fashion…Harvard, Yale, MIT, those are private institutions with great big investment funds. They aren’t government schools—the executive can't just unilaterally say that private colleges have to consider your Presidential Fitness Test scores.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of August 28, 2023
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
So you’re proposing recreating the mid-century Chicago political machine, but on a national level.


https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chicago-style_politics


https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Political_machine


There…are a few issues with that concept.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of August 14, 2023
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


Perhaps this is a sign of really good public speaking that he can be aggressive in one venue and come off compassionate in a different venue.




Or perhaps it's the sign of a grifter who views the circus of the Republican primary as a nice platform to set up himself up for a cushy consulting and lobbying gig, and he flip-flopped because it's good marketing to the base.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of August 7, 2023
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


I ask because there are a few really remote college towns, and if you've never been to one of them you might not understand just how isolated it can be moving there.




Welcome to the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, a truly notable research university with a rich history of computer and materials science, located in the middle of fucking nowhere.


    

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I don't even understand what the culture war aspect of "spousal hiring" is here. Yeah, there are a lot of land grant universities in the United States, they're in the boonies, so they create their own economic ecosystem around them to support the families of the faculty. And that's…bad? Good? Who cares?


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of June 19, 2023
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Ugh, you try to finish while rolling. Good luck.


I have definitely had “a complete sex act” while on MDMA with no orgasm for either person. (Persons, honestly.) If you go at it for a long while, but you never, uh, seal the deal, but you still have that connection and intimacy, I consider that a sex act.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of June 5, 2023
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Yeah, that’s some thin gruel from a leaker.


I am sure there’s some elaborate game theoretical reasoning as to why he wouldn’t reveal in-depth details right now, but really, nothing on that materials science thing? Not even one truly specific claim? Nothing like…


    

  • 

    Stable transuranic elements
    

    • 

  • 

    Novel stable isotopes of known elements
    

    • 

  • 

    Exotic baryonic matter/“strange” matter with some weird configuration of quarks
    

    • 

  • 

    New metamaterials. Hell, just claim “novel metamaterials”, which sounds super-scifi but then also plausible enough to make skeptics look up with interest
    

    • 



But no specific claims? Hmmmmm, Occam’s Razor time: we are being visited by alien intelligences across the vast reaches of space, or the guy is a nutter.