It’s a way to infantilize and ridicule the red team candidates that’s really hard for them to dismiss. They want to be perceived as strong, noble, divinely-appointed saviors of the morality of the country. Using ‘weird’ as an attack takes the wind out of their sails. And the only effective way to counter it is to embrace and transcend it, something the red team is incapable of doing.

From an article in WP

A central pillar of Trump’s campaign is the idea that liberals are perverted misfits who want to tear down American values. … [Trump supporters] were strong; libs were weak. They were right; libs were wrong…

“Weird” intrudes on that narrative. It doesn’t entirely upend it, but it does plant a seed of doubt. What if, instead of being admired or feared, they are instead being laughed at? What if, instead of edgelords, they are actually just the kids in the corner eating glue off their hands?

also

“He’s just a strange, weird dude,” newly-named vice presidential nominee Tim Walz (D) told an assembled group of 60,000 “White Dudes for Harris” at an online fundraiser last week. The Minnesota governor has been, if not the inventor of this tactic, its most skilled proponent.

May every shirt you wear have an itchy tag you can’t remove.

(attempting to answer the question instead of shaming the questioner)

It might have helped solve the problem if we did it 50 or 60 years ago, along with global EMP strikes to disable all the vehicles and industrial equipment, and a global commitment to return to an agrarian low-energy lifestyle. And if you prioritized the most highly industrialized cities that produce the greatest carbon per capita. But the sad truth is that, right now, it’s already too late. We have already released so much carbon into the atmosphere that we are more or less guaranteed to see 4 degrees C above pre-industrial. And if you aren’t already retired you will probably see it in your lifetime. Along the way that triggers a series of cascading feedback loops which, all-told, will likely take the planet to about 10C above pre-industrial. We continue to release something like 40 billion metric tons per year. And the best CCS facility we have, in Iceland, can sequester about 4,000 tons per year. We are racing toward the cliff with the throttle at full speed and no corrupt government scientist is going to take away my truck or make me eat bugs.

And questions about who should die, who should be killed, and such don’t even really matter now. They sound immoral, but if the projections are right it looks like all of us who aren’t already old are going to die from climate change anyways. So pontificating on things that aren’t ever going to happen is just academic onanism.

Literally? No. We’re all subject to the same laws of physics.

Perceptual reality? World view? Yes. I only know one person in real life and not online (my wife) who shares some of my views of reality. For instance, I am a doomer. I am convinced we are well into the sixth, and by all accounts the most devastating, mass extinction. Humans are clever, but we depend on a stable environment for our food. That stable environment is turning into a series of alternating droughts, floods, fires, blizzards, and other extreme weather events. TBH, I’d be surprised if our species lasts to the end of the century. Hanson figures that, after feedbacks, we are on track for 10c of warming. That’s apocalyptic. And every time scientists talk about it you hear words like ‘faster than expected’. We are doing exactly nothing to prevent it, and are, in fact, accelerating the collapse by increasing our consumption, population, pollution, and environmental destruction. COP has been talking about it for so long (almost 30 years) that we’ve missed the boat. We are well past the point where we could stop it. We’re in the ‘find out’ stage now.

Yet people keep having kids and planning for the future like everything is going to be just fine. Can you not see what’s happening? When’s the last time you scraped bugs off your car windshield? They’re all dying out. The biosphere is collapsing around us. But sure, keep contributing to your 401K. Keep talking about how the ‘fertility crisis’ is the big issue. Keep thinking that somehow windmills and recycling are going to save the planet. Tell me more about how voting is going to fix the problem. I feel like Kate Dibiasky saying we’re all going to die while everyone around me wants to talk about their PTA, the latest social issue, or which politician they like.

(deep breath)

Yes. I do feel like my perception of reality is different than most people I know. I don’t know most of humanity so I can’t really say, but it sure seems like it.

It wouldn’t delay your death. But it would make it more pleasant. You would most likely pass out from low blood pressure pretty quickly and then you wouldn’t have to worry about starving any more.

Funny thing is, no matter how you arrange to do that it becomes a de-facto death ray. Stick a terawatt of solar panels in space, use the power to shine a laser/maser down to earth, then build a station to turn the laser power back to electricity? Great, until some hacker figures out how to control where the laser is pointed. Then you get Dr. Evil holding the world for ransom.

Did they train this chatbot on Donald Trump speeches?

one user asked the chatbot: “who would win in a fight, Howard the Duck or Batman?”.

The answer from the chatbot, verbatim, is:

Howard: I don’t think so. I think it’s just a matter of time before we get to the point where we’re going to be able to say, “Hey, you know what, we’ve got to do this. We’ve gotta do that.” And then we’ll have to figure out how to make it work. And that’s what I’ve been doing for a long time now, and I’m really excited about it. It’s a really exciting time for me, because I have a lot of friends who are in the UFC and they’re all fighting for the same thing, so I feel like I can do something really special for them. So I want to go out there and make sure that we do what we can to get the best out of each other. That’s the only way I know how. e’ve got to do this. We’ve gotta do that.” And then we’ll have to figure out how to make it work.

I’ve done some blacksmithing as a hobby. The two most common ways of heating the metal are a gas or a coal forge. The coal forge normally has some sort of forced air coming from the bottom to feed the fire. The coal starts burning real smoky like, but then turns to coke and burns hotter the more air you force through it. Typically you pile some coal around the sides of the fire so it converts to coke then you scoop it into the fire as needed. Also it produces a waste product called clinker that builds up at the bottom of the fire at the tuyere (the nozzle or grate the air is forced through). It’s kind of like stone or metal and it needs to be cleaned out to keep the fire going.

Thanks for the correction. I remembered seeing that number but didn’t analyze it in any depth. A more detailed analysis of the market, by Freddie Mac, concluded that there were four main drivers for the recent surge in prices, and investors weren’t on the list.

1. record low mortgage rates in 2020 and 2021, and the race to beat future rate increases;
2. limited supply from underbuilding and below average distressed sales;
3. an increase in first-time homebuyers due to favorable age demographics; and
4. increased migration from high-cost cities to areas that already had a housing shortage.

Institutional investors apparently even reduced their purchases in 23 - some of them were even net sellers - because of prices and interest rates. That doesn’t mean they aren’t still villians in this scenario. I don’t think big investors should own single family homes at all. But still they aren’t as big a force as my previous comment indicated.

In support of your argument.

Report: 44% of all Single-Family Home Purchases were from Private Investors in 2023

edit: see corrections below

I watched it. It was a good looking show. And the origin story (which took over half the season I think) was well done. But where it really fell down is that none of the characters are likeable. At the end of the season I was kind of relieved it was over because I didn’t care whether any of them lived or died.

If you want a big list of these check out https://www.kissthisguy.com/

Here’s one from there

Like a virgin touched for the thirty-first time. Artist: Madonna Song: Like a Virgin Real Lyric: Like a virgin touched for the very first time.

“We judge ourselves by our intentions and others by their behavior.” Stephen Covey

Surprised I haven’t seen Quantum Break in here. It’s a pretty good shooter with some magic powers thrown in for fun. You don’t get much say in the story, but it still kept my interest all the way through. And it has an interesting take on time travel, woven into the story quite well. It was made by Remedy Entertainment, before Control but after Alan Wake. Also I liked how they cast real actors in the game and made them recognizable. I picked out Courtney Hope in the game from seeing her in Control, even though her character is different in QB.

https://earth.nullschool.net/ realtime global wind, pressure, temp, etc.

He’s referring to the fact that the Effective Altruism / Less Wrong crowd seems to be focused almost entirely on preventing an AI apocalypse at some point in the future, and they use a lot of obscure math and logic to explain why it’s much more important than dealing with war, homelessness, climate change, or any of the other issues that are causing actual humans to suffer today or are 100% certain to cause suffering in the near future.

As a kid, probably Lode Runner. It ran on my pc. Some arcade games were fun. I enjoyed Asteroids. Colossal Cave, and the Infocom games like Planetfall were fun too. Though what really hooked me was Doom. It was the first real 3d FPS game and it blew my mind. It’s been my favorite genre ever since.

It pays to watch ad-free videos or else it gets the hose again.

I’ve struggled with this for my whole life (and I’m not young) but haven’t succeeded in developing my willpower much at all. I think it’s just part of your ‘personality’. In quotes because you can change your personality somewhat with therapy or other growth techniques, but it takes a lot of work and there is no guarantee it will happen.

That said, I do use commitment devices to substitute for willpower sometimes. One that works for me is to join a class or group for exercise or other things. In my case it has worked for meditation, exercise, martial arts, and others. I find that when I wake up and feel like ‘I just want to lie around and play video games all day’ I then remind myself ‘the folks at the group will notice I’m gone, I’ll have to explain it, and It would feel better to just attend’. And so I get my exercise. Usually. If my brain can convince me I’m not feeling well I still skip out sometimes.

Just finished Breathedge. Subnautica in space? Sort of, but with a ‘ha, aren’t we game developers funny’ kind of humor. Portal is an immersive game that’s really funny. The humor in Breathedge, however, insures you can never really settle in to the game. Even so, It’s most impressive what such a small team was able to accomplish.

Just started Plague Tale: Innocence. Stealth survival with hordes of rats - a little creepy and I’m not really expecting an uplifting ending, but we’ll see how it goes.