durdenhobbes
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User ID: 1307
durdenhobbes
15d ago
One aspect of Trump that I feel like is under-discussed is his abstinence from alcohol and other drugs throughout his life. Close to 70 percent of American adults drink alcohol (and knowing a fair cohort of baptists and Mormons who drink semi-regularly, but would never self-report, I expect this number is actually higher), making him something of an outlier. Could it have any explanatory effect on his seemingly age-defying stamina and energy? His resilience in the face of social/legal/political headwinds that would sideline most men half his age?
Having made the recent decision to eliminate alcohol from my life, I've noticed immense dividends in terms of my own personal health both physically and mentally. Particularly when it comes to attacking difficult problems head-on, rather than kicking the can down the road. In conjunction with the RFK MAHA agenda, I wonder if a further shift toward tee-totaling (which Gen Z seems to be steering toward already) could be a side effect of Trump's second term.
durdenhobbes
15d ago
I keep seeing this PMC acronym, and I must've missed when it entered common parlance. Could someone please enlighten me? My search engine was no help.
durdenhobbes
15d ago
Do you mean you made a crypto bet, or you just expect crypto markets to respond positively to a Trump win?
durdenhobbes
16d ago
I think USA Today or 60 Minutes would be closer to mainstream than NPR. I tend to think college professors (or those who envision themselves as their peers) as the prototypical NPR listener.
durdenhobbes
16d ago
Given the relative outcomes in terms of higher educational attainment, life expectancy, suicide rates, gender-specific advocacy/scholarships/celebration, etc., I can't believe there are still men who feel compelled to give up anything to further support women in 2024.
durdenhobbes
17d ago
-- Eat something you hunted/fished yourself, immediately, without intervening storage.
I took a bite out of a silver salmon that I had just pulled out of an Alaskan river, just because I saw Bear Grylls do it and thought it looked cool.
It was incredible. Core memory.
durdenhobbes
21d ago
A comedian calling West Virginia a mountain of white trash wouldn't make anyone bat an eye.
durdenhobbes
21d ago
Agreed. You didn't antagonize anyone specifically, you made factual statements with references, and there was no rule broken that I can identify.
durdenhobbes
21d ago
But the reason why it matters is not because the country needs to have an alert, mentally healthy person in the chair of the chief executive. It really doesn't.
That's one of the key underpinnings of the Trump/MAGA movement, though: it should matter. While the average voter (or even the above-average) has no real idea of how government functions on the daily, they still would like to believe that they have a vote that matters, and elected officials who represent them. If it's all unelected bureaucrats/deep state running the show, and everyone knows it? The show is over.
durdenhobbes
29d ago
Has Musk's star been waning? The Starship booster landing the other day was probably the technological achievement of my lifetime.
durdenhobbes
1mo ago
I could be wrong, but I feel like an officer would probably look you up with the number, but then chide you with a "you need to carry your license when you drive" before he sent you on your way.
durdenhobbes
2mo ago
This is pretty off the reservation, and I'm sure would have major drawbacks, but I was thinking about how much I hate the end of close football games. Specifically, the point at which the game becomes more about gaming the clock than it does playing one's opponent to the best of your ability. (This usually happens somewhere between 10 and 2 minutes remaining in the 4th quarter).
The only way I could think to solve this problem would be to eliminate the game clock entirely, and switch instead to a possession clock. Each team would get a pre-determined number of possessions, and would have, say, 3 minutes to score or punt. Clock stoppage would work basically the same as it does in the last 2 minutes of the current game (out-of-bounds, incomplete pass, penalty. Probably want to add stoppage on first downs like in college) and you'd get an elective stoppage or two per possession (to allow for running plays near the end of the clock). Turnovers don't count as possessions for the recovering team, so they become way more valuable as you'd be able to score and then immediately get the ball back.
No more useless kickoffs. No sitting on a small lead and milking the clock. Just balls out football from start to finish, unless it's a complete blowout, in which case the game wouldn't have been compelling anyways. Tell me why this would suck.
durdenhobbes
2mo ago
I reject the terms "terrorist"/"terrorist attack" on the basis that they are wielded entirely on the basis of who presently holds political power and who does not. (e.g. your "terrorist attack" is another man's "mostly peaceful protest", etc.)
durdenhobbes
2mo ago
Gaza is roughly 141 square miles, with around 15.6k inhabitants per square mile. It's not like they'd have room for a military base even in the upside-down world where Israel allowed them to. They've been fenced in and treated like literal prisoners. So obviously any militant uprising is going to be near civilians by virtue of having zero alternate choices.
None of this should surprise anyone, and none of it should have happened in the first place.
durdenhobbes
2mo ago
What war has ever contained enemy combatants entirely separately from the civilian population? Even when a massive percentage of the military is deployed to a warzone, there are certainly plenty of personnel who still go home to their families each night.
It seems to me that the real argument becomes what qualifies as a warzone, and when.
durdenhobbes
2mo ago
I had the same thought, although from the looks of things there were absolutely explosives planted in these pagers; batteries don't just explode like that.
Has anything noteworthy improved in the world in the past 10-15 years?
I've wondered if it's just a natural product of depression or aging, but I was thinking recently about how absolutely everything feels as if it were so much better a few short years ago. Housing/food/necessities more affordable, political discourse less toxic, the internet was both more wild west but also more self-regulating, TV was in its golden age (Breaking Bad, The Wire, Mad Men, etc.), sports felt more like an escape than circus, technology still held promise of a brighter future rather than potential enslavement of humanity, people still talked to one another without being addicted to smartphones, the media was still somewhat believable, medicine was still a respected profession by a wide margin, college was the smart choice for many/most young people... I could go on but you get the idea.
What has actually improved in the time since? Uber? Starlink? That's all I can think of, and I don't use either one.
durdenhobbes
2mo ago
The Industrial Revolution and its consequences have been a disaster for the human race.
durdenhobbes
2mo ago
it might make sense to consciously get people to adopt non-zero-sum measures for status.
Is this even theoretically possible, though? Status is a relative position, and a rising tide does not lift all boats. It'd be akin to raising everyone's SAT scores—you're still going to have a 99th percentile and a 5th percentile, along with the correlated benefits (or lack thereof).
durdenhobbes
2mo ago
I mean, sure, but we're talking about the average person, who is always going to take the path of least resistance. So it should concern us that said path is heavily tilted toward one worldview.
durdenhobbes
2mo ago
Because Wikipedia is usually the first search result for any random thing any random person wants to research on the internet.
durdenhobbes
2mo ago
10 years ago I'd have said Reddit, but that hasn't been true for a long time now.
durdenhobbes
2mo ago
It wouldn't help to pretend not to be together, since single people are also faced with additional tax.
durdenhobbes
2mo ago
I can't believe we even have doctors, given this system. I wouldn't live like that for 5 years even if the payoff was a trillion dollar lump sum.
Feels like a poison-the-well tactic, no pun intended.
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