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Mole

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Everything posted by Mole

  1. On a less trivial note, I suspect that in the coming years and decades, we'll see many medical advances directly developing from this one moment. Having the entire world working on one problem has its advantages.
  2. These particular tweets look pretty vapidly flip-floppy without a good explanation, but in general, changing your opinion based on new information or even reconsidering old information is a good thing. The cultural resistance to “flip-flopping” is a celebration of rigid thinking. If your first opinion about everything never changes, there’s probably not a lot of deep thinking going on. Of course, changing opinions isn’t necessarily a sign of deep thought. The issue of celebrating rigid thinking has only become worse now that we all have the ability to instantly publish our poorly formed thoughts to a worldwide audience. “I changed my mind” are four powerful and liberating words.
  3. Grocery pickup has improved greatly. I may never go back into the store.
  4. This stuff becomes too personalized. Some cops are bad, some are ok, some are great, but the system and culture perpetuates and defends the terrible behavior of the bad group. In some cases, it turns the non-bad group into bad actors as well. Whether or not the good cops are good because of their great intentions or bad because they participate in an oppressive system is an irrelevant distraction. The problem is the system and culture, not the individual cops. Of course murderous cops should be removed immediately. Some people associated with the BLM movement are criminals, some hold radical political beliefs, and some are regular people of all colors that want the system and culture to be reformed. Focusing on the radical and criminal elements at the expense of the much larger movement only serves as a distraction from the problem that is clear to pretty much everyone. The criminals should face the criminal justice system though. They shouldn’t be ignored, but they also shouldn’t be weaponized to delegitimize the movement, which is happening pretty widely these days. Competing whatabouts only perpetuates the status quo, which we all agree is unhealthy. The problem is the culture and the system.
  5. I’m telling you, COVID really isn’t a big deal. Even the deaths are temporary.
  6. Highlight the otherness and make her seem more foreign by stumbling over her name.
  7. Put her in charge of a police reform task force and have them push for real, meaningful, nationwide reform. Don’t call it defund the police.
  8. Humans aren’t very good at intuitively understanding numbers once they reach a certain size (both the humans and the numbers). It shouldn’t be a surprise that we aren’t accurately estimating how bad it is because that’s something we’re bad at. Even smart, mathematically literate people are bad at this. I’m not sure we should read into these kinds of surveys beyond this.
  9. Operation Eisenfaust would have terrifying.
  10. One case for a third party vote is that over time, popular third party ideas can be taken on by the major parties. I think the Bernie approach has been more effective in shifting the national consciousness, but some ideas and personalities might not fit within a major party at this time. I’ve voted for numerous third party candidates under the belief that certain non-mainstream ideas should be elevated. This is a long term strategy that the fringe but good ideas of today might eventually become mainstream. It’s effectiveness is debatable, but it’s a coherent approach. This year, it seems like the national question is whether or not we should continue to destroy the country. Given the dire situation, it seems ill advised to play the long game of supporting fringe ideas.
  11. Once we all get COVID, no, probably not.
  12. That antifa/Nazi trick-or-treat gone bad is wonderful example of how powerful a lack of context and effective framing can be. We really have no idea what’s going on because we have no idea what led up to it. In the close up video, little miss Nazi pushes an antifa first before Mr. Antifa aggressively tries to borrow her armband. Of course, her push is proceeded by lots of shouting and laser beams in little miss Nazi’s eyes. So violence and aggression begets escalating violence and aggression. Nothing new. The implication in the tweet is that the antifa hordes are now roaming residential areas looking for more indiscriminate violence. I think the Nazi arm band is a pretty good indication that the tweet isn’t honestly framing the issue. Whether anyone is in the right here or they all are terrible is up for debate since we only see a small slice of this wonderful meeting of the minds, but the idea that antifa is on their way to your neighborhood for riots and violence doesn’t seem well supported by a front porch squabble with a Nazi where there is no evidence that anyone was actually hurt. The armband may have been damaged and you can’t just get those of the rack at Montgomery Ward anymore, so I guess there will be some repair costs.
  13. You don’t get the extra points for putting them in the correct order. Person woman man camera TV.
  14. Hurt the Bible, hurt God... I think he’s misquoting Circle Jerks lyrics: no religion to comfort your mind, the Communist Manifesto will be read all the time. It’s also one of the most transparently pandering statements I’ve ever heard.
  15. The quantity of first-person getting killed videos on this thread is a bit upsetting.
  16. The job market at least in my corner of academia has been terrible since 2008. Any full-time position can start to look appealing compared to the piecemeal adjunct life. Crazy with salary and benefits has its appeal, even with year-to-year contracts.
  17. The escalation from discussing the minutia of the budget of a hypothetical person to everyone calling each other racist was impressive. Good work everyone.
  18. I order my groceries on an app. The next day, I drive to the store, pop my trunk, and then they load my groceries and sign for me. If I lived in a less rural area, they'd deliver my groceries by mail. If the grocery store will accommodate basic and reasonable precautions for my liquid smoke order, surely the government should do the same for something as sacred as the right to vote. Using COVID to accelerate the systematic disenfranchisement of large portions of our country is just another cynical and disgusting sign of our times.
  19. If Georgia has to resort to intimidation, then the voter roll purges were failures. It’s far easier to quietly send people home for not being on the list. Kemp “won” his election without any implied violence, just purely bureaucratic power.
  20. Define peaceful transfer of power. Post-election politically motivated violence seems almost inevitable. Everything is so ramped you right now and it seems likely to become more intense. I’d expect a fair amount. No matter the result of the election, mainstream voices will be calling it illegitimate. No matter the result, foreign countries will keep picking at everything and amplifying the chaos. We’ve already seen that Trump largely traffics in conspiracies and division and I’d expect a Biden win would only intensify this. At a minimum, multiple acts of “lone wolf” violence seems like a sure thing. That’s a bit different than Trump’s secret army trying to capture Biden, which is pretty unlikely, but no longer completely impossible.
  21. I can’t remember most of my login info. That’s what password managers are for.
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