domain:arjunpanickssery.substack.com
Glassnoser
1m ago
The two questions I have are
- Did the study convincingly show a causal link?
- Is it a priori plausible that IQ is so sensitive to a naturally varying element which is sometimes found in much greater concentrations?
zeke5123a
8m ago
They wrote articles before the switch about her terrible of a candidate she was including how vapid she was.
sarker
It isn't happening, and if it is, it's a bad thing
9m ago
Covers still live. But also sampling serves a similar function.
Glassnoser
10m ago
Just walking around a seeing the number of old people who don't have any teeth makes me think cavaties are actually a massive problem, still, despite water fluoridation. I'm sure it would be much worse without it.
Glassnoser
14m ago
I think it's next Friday.
Glassnoser
19m ago
The original point was never to compare American workers to those across the rest of the world.
My point was that if the rest of the world gets by on much less, then they clearly get paid enough to keep up with basic necessities.
Wages are up, but the price of goods in the United States is outpacing that growth to the point that lower- and middle-class people making decent wages still can barely afford the necessities, e.g., rent, groceries, gas, childcare.
The word "real" means the numbers are adjusted for inflation, so if real wages are going up, that means that nominal wages are increasing faster than the price of goods. This is especially true for lower and middle class people. Their earnings have risen more than those of upper class people. The wages of the poorest have risen the most.
Swing state voters said this was their biggest concern and hope (and believe) Trump and the Republicans will come to the rescue.
If you look at polls that have been done over the last few years, most Americans say they're doing fine but believe most other people are not. These economic problems are completely imaginary. This has been the best period for the increase in the standard of living of the American poor in a very long time,
SubstantialFrivolity
I'm not even supposed to be here today
36m ago
For what it's worth there is a grid if you build on foundations. But I don't disagree that it's a hassle. Building stuff is a veritable chore in Satisfactory, not helped by the fact that the devs have refused to implement blueprints big enough to actually be useful.
TitaniumButterfly
43m ago
There's another level, which is that actually the thing I just said is the bailey and the real motte is spending money for the sake of it (for those who become enriched).
The_Nybbler
Does not have a yacht
44m ago
You don't have to convince people to go along. Just send cops to close down the businesses.
roystgnr
47m ago
Stop believing the propaganda.
This is a good message. I've called out more-liberal friends on this one, at least when the propaganda is really obviously objectively false, to good effect. I don't think I've completely convinced anyone that "the fact that someone as smart as you falls for this stuff so easily once you identify it as being on Our Side is also why you should cut Trump voters a little more slack about the stuff they fall for", but at least there's motion in the right direction. I think this comes easier from me (Libertarian voter, can steelman Trump but would still pick Harris for "lesser of two evils" if I was in a swing state) than it would from an actual Trump supporter, but if you actually cast your vote for Harris then you're in an even better position to insist that you're offering constructive rather than malicious criticism. When the Boy Who Cried Wolf finally gets eaten, IMHO it's perfectly fine to point out that his prior lies were part of the problem and that you don't have to be Pro-Wolves-Eating-People to notice.
We're not descending to Christian fascism!
Also probably true, and personally I'd note the "we have to take away Musk's companies" and "we have to ban The Misinformation" style left-wing fascism while I was pointing it out. But I've never gotten the chance, since I'm not friends with anyone this panicked, and if you do then being very careful about how you try to calm them down might indeed be the way to go here for the sake of the friendships.
We're not going to have a national abortion ban!
Maybe not? Probably not anything sweeping. But I wouldn't be surprised to see something relatively weak, third trimester with rape/incest exceptions or something. With a decent Republican lead in the Senate and probably a small lead in the house, there's at least a chance.
This will almost certainly not affect your life in any way!
And this is almost certainly wrong. It won't be the most important thing in most people's lives, but the federal government writes laws by the thousand and writes regulations by the million and spends dollars by the trillion. Even the second and third order effects on people not directly impacted can be huge.
2rafa
49m ago
I’m not saying they will, most aren’t even remotely intelligent or cunning to do so. But if they could swallow their pride, it has much more of a chance of working than a lot of conservatives would like it to.
MaiqTheTrue
Renrijra Krin
55m ago
Even at an unknown, the known negatives of lockdown are known — and the end dates given by the authorities are known to be suspect. If some government officials told you to lockdown for “two weeks” given what happened in 2020, very few people are going to believe that the lockdown is actually going to end within 6 months. They also know that they won’t get much in the way of support when the lockdown forces people into unemployment and to close businesses, or schools or forbidding social gatherings. And given that, and given the knock on effects of inflation and shortages, it’s going to be very very difficult to convince people to go along. Covid wasn’t exactly a nothing burger but it also wasn’t something that justified the extreme measures taken to slow the spread.
FCfromSSC
Nuclear levels of sour
58m ago
Dyson Sphere Project had a respectable pseudo-3d grid system, made somewhat annoying by the wierdness of mapping the grid to a sphere.
gattsuru
59m ago
They’ve since added an optional (hold Control) ‘world grid’ to Satisfactory, which helps a lot with alignment. But it definitely does get overwhelming still, and not a problem specific to just this game: Manufactio and Space Engineers struggle a lot because of it.
sun_the_second
1hr ago
I briefly tried Satisfactory and trying to align the machines in gridless, first-person 3D was too much of a hassle.
faceh
1hr ago
Literally as I read this comment I am listening to a reggae-fied cover of the Gorillaz song Punk.
The "Laika come Home" Album is pretty damn good.
I've also spent a good portion of this year searching up Metal or Hard rock covers of popular older songs and finding that this has been a burgeoning area/genre, and there is a lot to choose from!
Mostly for my gym playlist. But there's covers of songs like Running up that Hill and "Lose Yourself" that are just GREAT MUSIC on their own merits, because they are remade by talented artists who can maintain the basic structure of the original but give it a distinct feel and play around with the architecture. That is to say, not just slapping on a new paint job.
Feels like this is an ample vein to mine, to get distinct sound out of well-known songs by converting them to a differing genre.
I'm reminded of how The Animals created a massive hit out of their cover of a folk song "The House of the Rising Sun" back in 1964.
Writing 'new' songs is probably overrated, since you're just adding a few footnotes to an insanely large library of material. But talented artists don't need to be entirely novel to make great works! Fork off an existing property, make it their own, and it could be a hit too.
Also, I genuinely believe that we've mostly 'tapped out' the possible genres of songs that can actually become popular, there doesn't seem to be much room left for any distinctly novel style of music that has heretofore been untapped. I'd blame the rise of electronic music for rapidly squeezing out the entire space of 'sounds it is possible to produce' and so even if we haven't tapped the entirety of all musicspace we're going to have a harder time finding ones that have mass appeal.
naraburns
nihil supernum
1hr ago
Does your Trump theory have any predictive power?
Sort of? I'm trying to anticipate their strategy for undermining Trump, on the assumption that they will indeed have (at least!) one.
Specifically, I'm wondering about a possible echo of something like this. Only instead of (or perhaps in addition to) race, a relentless stream of dubious abortion tragedies and sex and sexuality discussions. Many commentators here and elsewhere have observed a recent "cooling" of Wokeness in public discourse; was that just a rush to centrism in an effort to get Kamala elected? Does Trump's victory raise the culture war temperature?
The local site with the similar spin is not surprising; the spin is largely self-executing in this case. The decision to elevate any particular assault to national news, however, requires some conscious decision-making.
edmund-nelson
Filthy Anime Memester
1hr ago
I had some fun trying out some of the army field manual on homemade explosives at the local bomb range. (didn't make all of them but made a few of the ones I've never seen before) I gotta say these instructions are dangerous though less dangerous than the Anarchists cookbook but boy safety was definitely not their top priority.
blooblyblobl
Battery-powered!
1hr ago
Any minute now, the Democrats will bend the knee to Donald Trump, their sworn enemy, tripping over themselves to recant each of their decade-long records of anti-Trump rhetoric, so they can tell him he's the greatest thing since sliced bread. The likes of Oprah and George Clooney and Obama can surely overcome these unfavorable initial conditions to convince The Rockstar Formerly Known As Orange Bad Man that the people definitely don't care about that whole tidal wave of illegal immigrants thing that happened for the last few years. Taylor Swift will dramatically un-endorse Kamala Harris, acknowledge that he kinda had a fair point with the childless cat lady thing, and lay the groundwork for some progressive Supreme Court justice appointments. I bet Kathy Griffin will convince him that proudly holding his severed head on a magazine cover was actually a sign of respect.
Fortunately, JD Vance appears to have first dibs on this strategy, and seems more than willing to swallow his pride.
felis-parenthesis
1hr ago
In the particular case of fluoridating water, the ruling elite had a good story. Scientists knew that naturally occurring levels of fluoride varied from place to place. Did it matter? They did the epidemiology thing and decided that less than one part per million made tooth decay noticeably worse. More than four parts per million caused dental fluorosis, but nothing else showed up strongly with natural levels of fluoridation. So topping up fluoride to bring low fluoride water up to one part per million seemed super safe; lots of people were already living with 1ppm. And had been for their entire lives. It was a rare case where we have data (albeit epidemiological) on all cause mortality, due to pre-existing "natural experiments".
... without facing widespread riots or resistance is just insane ...
Your confusion is the result of a garbled account of events. That is bad in itself, but I want to make the case that it is important to say that "topping up" and "adding" are different and that the claim that we "add" fluoride to the water supply is a lie.
First I will offer paradigms of "topping up" and "adding" and then make my case that things can go horribly wrong if we tolerate people confusing them.
Topping up Measure the level. If it comes in at 0.5 ppm, add enough to increase the level by 0.5 ppm. Measure again. If it is in the range 0.9 to 1.1 ppm declare victory. If outside that range, find out why, and adjust appropriately.
Adding Don't bother measuring, or if some-else has measured, just ignore it. Add enough to increase the level by 1 ppm. Continue to fail at measuring and be smug that the level is at least 1 ppm because our addition guarantees that out-come.
Now picture a town debating water fluoridation. Why? Well, Mr Bad Guy hopes to get kick backs from the contracts for fluoridation equipment and chemicals. He persuades his fellow citizens to top up fluoride levels at public expense. They vote for it. Mr Bad Guy sets it in motion. The measured natural level turns out to be 1.3 ppm. There is nothing to be done. No contracts, no kick backs. Mr Bad Guy looks around and notices that nobody is watching. He arranges contracts for equipment and chemicals to add enough fluoride to increase the levels by 1 ppm. He pockets his bribe money. Fluoride levels increase to 2.3 ppm. Mr Bad Guy feels safe. No-one will notice 2.3 ppm and if he falls under suspicion for corruption, he can always say that he misunderstood.
Later Dr Nerd measures the fluoride and checks the records of the old measurements. Dr Nerd is unhappy about the waste of public money, or about the dangers of fluoride, take your pick. He tries to "blow the whistle". But what language does he speak? If he uses the vernacular he complains that we are adding fluoride to the water supply and we shouldn't be doing that, we should instead be adding fluoride to the water supply [sic]. Nobody understands his point. So he switches to Nerd-speak and complains that we are adding fluoride to the water supply when we should be topping up; very different. Topping up is free! But the towns-folk don't speak Nerd-speak, so Dr Nerd still fails to make himself understood.
Talking about topping up fluoride levels using the word adding is bad. It covers up corruption and is why we cannot have nice things.
TequilaMockingbird
1hr ago
Yes, California's ruling class has been quite vocal in their repudiation of the low-key barstool populism of men like Nixon and Reagan. How has that been working out for them? You want to see what the "third-worlding" of America looks like in practical terms? California is your patient zero.
The 'browning of America' counts everyone who is not white.
Yes I know. It's also a rather stupid and Unamerican way to frame things, which is why I made the point to say the "Asiaing" or "South Americaing" of America. Because you see, the problem is not white people brown people or blue people. (that's the woke mind-virus talking) The problem is the importation of parasites and social dysfunction from Asia and South America.
You see, the specific corner of the US I am in has a sizeable black/brown population that's been here since the 18th century. In short, my America isn't "browning" so much as it is brown and has been for longer than anyone can remember. It is also obvious at a glance that it's not these people who are the problem. You want to see the problem? look to California, look to the Northeast. There is your problem.
edmund-nelson
Filthy Anime Memester
1hr ago
Jake Paul manages to do his can crushing in fun and exciting ways by fighting old people who used to be good, MMA fighters who can't actually box as well as you'd expect Though now that he's lost his 0 (Honestly I fucking hate how Boxers value the "undefeated" mantle so much it doesn't mean much other than you ducked good competition) he seems to be more willing to fight real boxers.
Also isn't it next week?
MaximumCuddles
1hr ago
You know when you’re watching a movie and a line of dialogue includes the title of the movie?
Same energy as this comment.
LotsRegret
1hr ago
Sure.
Here are some examples of the extra legal and other groundwork the GOP/Trump did this time to prevent a 2020 repeat.
https://www.foxnews.com/politics/gop-prepared-pivotal-court-battles-could-decide-2024-election
https://apnews.com/article/trump-rnc-jan-6-legal-team-lawsuits-13d24822cc4899e5934a07661fe649e3
I would say almost everyone. I almost exclusively drink tap water.
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