Rex
1yr ago
The interesting part of this to me more so than the loss f humanities a the surge of STEM majors. I guess students got the memo. I highly doubt this will work out like they planned. We will just turn STEM into what a college degree became. A bunch of middling graduates that are for the most part, not particularly useful to business and certainly not future members of the PMC.
Rex
1yr ago
I think this sentiment is universal amongst trump voters that are paying attention. I wonder if it will significantly demoralize and hurt turnout in 2024. I was significantly engaged with electoral politics till the 2020 election. Now I couldn’t care less about the latest Washington drama. I wonder if they will suck me back in once the presidential season commences.
Rex
1yr ago
I say rigged quite specifically. A game can be rigged without secretly changing the score.
Suggesting that the massive changes to mail in voting is just par for the course is intellectually dishonest. The total vote increasing something like 20 million is evidence that something significant changed in how elections were operated. The fact these were pushed through so quickly is another major problem even if in principle the concept is sound (in opinion, it is not sound).
I strongly disagree that all of my points are just a continuation the same old gaming of the system. But perhaps you are right and I am wrong. If that’s the case, perhaps democracy has always and will always be total bullshit.
Either way, they may have gotten rid of trump, but at what cost. This is not an ingediant for a stable political system.
Rex
1yr ago
The election was 100% rigged. It’s a real shame that we’re even talking about dominion machines changing votes and I don’t even know who to blame.
It was rigged because of widespread voting rules being changed unilaterally immediately prior to the election to facilitate mail in voting. I have no doubt that votes were harvested and the spirit of the law behind how voting works was violated in mass.
It was rigged because the media “fortified the election” with a deluge of lies and messaging about trump, as per the Time Magazine article.
It was rigged because intelligence community and deep state spent years lying about Russiagate and using every lever they have to oust trump.
It was rigged because Twitter and Facebook and nearly every other tech company used all of their institutional power to actively influence voters minds and hide relevant information such as the Biden laptop. They don’t even have plausible deniability on this. They actively mislead and lied to people.
Maybe there is no proof that election administrators in deep blue territory like Atlanta and Philadelphai were changing or finding votes at the last minute. And that’s a big maybe because I do believe that these administrators are both curruport and capable of actively rigging the results in their counties. These are true believer Democrats that have been told Trump is an existential threat to democracy and the free world. They have the means, motive, and incentive.
The fact that we’re talking about the dominion machines is a shame.
Rex
1yr ago
Thanks for the interesting perspective. I dont have much to add other than Rod Drehr isn’t what I would call dissident right. From what I know he is firmly in the old guard and on the way out.
Most of the newer voices explicitly talk about leveraging art to win or hold ground.
Rex
1yr ago
I’m also not suggesting it’s fair. But I think @walterodim’s opinion is very common.
Rex
1yr ago
This is all great for an employee. I'm suggesting that being married is an advantage for being invited to senior leadership.
Rex
1yr ago
Being taken seriously was poor phrasing. I was referring to a general advantage that married men might have in successful business relationships or other social interactions. I have no doubt that there are domains where marriage is not helpful. Perhaps 99th percentile philosophers or physicists are two examples. There are no doubt more.
Rex
1yr ago
I wonder if they still say this.
Is this kind of thing common knowledge that is just left unsaid? Was I just in some sort of bubble where I dont hear it, but everyone knows it?
Rex
1yr ago
I agree. And i think more men in my age cohort need to hear this. I know a number of single men in their 30s. I cant point to any character defects, but I agree that there must be something there.
Rex
1yr ago
Are unmarried men taken seriously in business and life?
I listened to Charles Haywood’s latest essay on entrepreneurship and he bluntly suggested that single men are not taken seriously in business. This is something I’ve long suspected, but rarely heard articulated. The only other time I can think of hearing this in media is Alec Baldwins character in The Departed saying something to the effect that you need to be married to: “let your bosses know your not a fag and that at least one woman can tolerate you”.
It seems completely obvious to me and was a source of anxiety for many years. I married in my mid 30s. It’s also completely antithetical to the dominant narrative and I reckon you’d find countless news and opinion articles arguing the opposite.
I also wonder how kids factor into this. I recall reading an analysis of honor culture and the three Ps: provide, protect, and procreate. I don’t have enough background to fully explain this theory but the just of it is that in order to be a man that is fully accepted in a honor culture, you must be competent to excel in one or multiple Ps. I suspect that this is linked to my original question and that having a wife and kids demonstrates competence in all of these dimensions.
Rex
1yr ago
I don’t want to spoil the plot for you. Suffice it to say that the creators of the show are the worst culture warriors in media. And the direction the show will likely go in season 2 is controversial to say the least. And not controversial like the gay episode 3. Controverisial insofar as many if not most people think the narrative choices are horrendous storytelling.
Rex
1yr ago
Thanks for the review. I follow video game news more than I play video games these days, but the Last of Us game and sequel are a particularly hot culture war flashpoint in the video game world.
The developers and creators of the game are some of the most subversive, degenerate, and outspoken culture warriors in the entire industry. I don’t think I can support the show based on what I know about the series.
The narrative of the first game (season 1) was well liked and hit on some timeless themes and archetypes. the sequel to the game has one of the most controversial narratives and is extremely heavy handed on culture war issues. Even beyond the CW issues, some of the choices seem to be optimized for shitting on certain types of people, as opposed to telling a good story.
Rex
1yr ago
I think this is the goal, not the state of current practice for lending. And EBIT wouldn’t consider it. It’s pretty much revenue less opex.
Could be some sort of selection bias. Craft your filters in just the right way. Easily within the capabilities of any Accenture associate.
Rex
1yr ago
If the vaccines caused noticeable health risks it would be absurdly easy to see a correlation. Vaccination=higher mortality. That correlation isn't there.
Do you know if there is a dataset where this would be visible? Or would you need to do a controlled study? If it’s the later, do you think anyone has looked? I imagine there would be a lot of hurdles to even ask this question. Sadly the experts have lost all credibility. I personally don’t think anyone would ask that question for fear of the answer. And even if they did, I’m not sure they wouldn’t mislead us to get the proper results.
Rex
1yr ago
Ackowledging I suffer from epistemic learned helplessness, have you considered that western propaganda is just that good? It’s easy to dismiss obvious propaganda in the opening weeks and months of the war. But when you have the entire western media ecosystem singing the same pro Ukraine tune for a whole year, I think most people just shrug and say “I guess Russia is a joke after all”
I’m not even saying Russia is doing well. I’m just suggesting that a year long propaganda campaign can work on even the most skeptical people.
Rex
1yr ago
Thanks for asking. I haven’t googled this in a while but it looks like the iron air battery projects are moving right along.
Here’s some detail that was just announced on Friday. It’s all moving very quickly.
https://www.utilitydive.com/news/xcel-energy-form-energy-storage-coal-iron-battery/641386/
Rex
1yr ago
Not really. It’s a known issue with some solutions that while not perfect, help quite a bit.
Offshore wind is much less volatile.
Distributed battery systems have started deploying over the last couple of years.
There’s some interesting applications of long duration storage tech. For example, I think there is a rust-iron battery that has very long and cheap storage where you rust and de rust iron.
Companies are actually deploying pilot storage tech right now.
We’re likely moving to a world where the sunny areas have solar plus storage. The east coast has offshore wind. And we have a large fleet of gas turbine plants that can be dispatched quickly when needed. Not exactly peakers, but flexible enough to support the intermittent resources.
SMR isn’t even on the map.
Rex
1yr ago
I’m talking tropical. The south generally still has winter where ag doesn’t work. Mexicos industrialization is a function of the US industry rather than home grown. Plus Mexico has significant European stock. The indigenous Mexicans are a different story.
Rex
1yr ago
Climate seems to have an impact. When you have long winters, you need to plan ahead and develope large ag or industrial capacity.
If you can just pick fruit off a tree all year. No need.
It’s pretty hard to find any warm
Climate country that produces cars. Though I imagine there’s local South American brands I don’t know if perhaps.
Rex
1yr ago
I'll grant that are can be quite subjective. I'll also note that I'm not educated in art so I dont know if i have the tools to adequately explain this. But there is no doubt to me that there is a universal aesthetic that reflects beauty. This tends to come back to nature. Landscapes and vistas. The human form or even the animal kingdom in general. Fitness in the evolutionary sense. For a long time we became better at expressing this aesthetic in various mediums. Then we took a u-turn with modern art and focused on the most absurd, ugly, and unnatural things the human mind can create.
I dont think we need to turn this into a whole modern art debate, but there is nothing natural or beautiful about that video. In fact seems to optimize for the most unnatural and deranged movement and sound one could imagine.
To answer you question, I perfer whatever art is at the opposite end of the spectrum than what is in that video (modern art).
Rex
1yr ago
We recently had a main thread post on WEF and how ithe chatter around it is low status right wing conspiracy talk
This video popped up on Twitter, proportedly of a meeting from WEF23. (That could be Shwab and Gates in the bottom right there).
This is some type of art display.
https://twitter.com/clownworld_/status/1619297161589714945?s=42&t=x77Luz_3dCmZf-BkWgQzKw
I don’t know what this tells us. Maybe it’s just the apex of modern art. Maybe it’s a satanic ritual. Either way, it’s very disturbing that this is the type of thing that the leaders of the western world enjoy.
Rex
1yr ago
I work in the energy industry, specifically around deploying new power plants. The latest round of nuclear renaissance talk has been quite annoying to read about. I can say with certainty that the utilities and power generation companies have zero interest in this stuff for a few reasons. One, its way more expensive than wind, solar, and gas. Like north of $5/watt. The other tech is about $1 to $2/watt. Conventional nuclear is also big, so your talking tens of billions of capital on a single project. Second, its incredibly risky. And not just risky for a nuclear disaster, I'm talking risk of failure to even build. Something like 2 of the 6(?) nuclear units the US has tried to build in the last 10 years have failed and left the owners with $30 billion in sunk costs. Noone wants to make that bet.
Maybe SMRs change the equation if the total cost to deploy a few is cheap enough that some companies give it a try, but im skeptical. The industry has zero appetite for this stuff. They've decided to invest their capital in wind and solar. All this nuclear talk is exclusively coming from the media and academia. SMR might work on paper, but noone has commercialized it yet. Plus the fact that 15 years ago we went through this same nuclear renaissance talk, the industry bought in and was subsequently burned badly.
I have a lot more to say but ill stop here. Things like how the U.S. has pretty much lost the industrial capacity to even build nuclear anymore. How wind and solar is actually the right choice for investment dollars rather than nuclear. Etc.
I'll leave you with one thing. On Friday i was watching Bill Maher (who i do actually like) and he had a bit on how the country hasn't really done shit to solve the climate crisis yet. He showed a stat that in 1979 we got around 40% of energy from coal and in 2019 we got around 39% of our energy from coal. Implying that we've made no progress. That seemed wrong to me, so i looked up the 2022 stats from DOE. Coal as a percentage of total generation is down to the low 20% range. A ridiculous number of coal plants have been turned off over the last 4 years. And almost every remaining plant is set to be retired in the next 5 years. I wouldn't be surprised if were well under 10% by 2030.
Regardless of whether or not this particular group or ad worked, there does appear to be a wide scale attempt to infiltrate and subvert Christianity. It’s been around for a long time, but it seems like it’s been more intense over the last couple years.
On a unrelated note, I’ve recently learned a bit more about the Vatican II changes. I’ve been aware of VII for a long time, but after getting into it in more depth, the actual implantation of the counsel was worse than the suggestions. I only bring this up because it seems quite clear to me that loosening up doctrine is what is killing these regions. Perhaps someone should try going the other direction.
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