taymonbeal

[taymonbeal]

What actually happened here is that somebody edited the article to replace "female" with "transgender", and then it was reverted a few hours later.

Canon mtf trotsky

[taymonbeal]

There's a problem with this concept: It only makes sense under the "original intent" version of originalism, which is out of favor these days. Now it's the "original public meaning" version that's favored, i.e., what matters is not what the Founding Fathers really meant, but what the general public at the time would have thought they meant.

So doing a séance with the Founding Fathers would be pointless. You instead need to do a séance with some random farmers from 1788.

One of the ways that people make fun of originalist interpretation of the constitution is "séance with the founding fathers", but damned if I don't think that's the coolest possible premise for a legal system.

There are a bunch of guys floating around in the afterlife, and the government has a whole branch devoted to communing with them to get their interpretation of an increasingly-distant society that has moved on in terms of science, culture, and demography? You have to explain to Madison what a router is? You sit Hamilton down and break the news of 9/11 to him?

So many places you can go with the idea, it's really solid from a worldbuilding perspective. There's even a term for it, necrocracy, rule by those who have died. And it bakes in all these conflicts about the direction of the world and who has the ultimate say in what happens next.

And every time I see someone deride originalism with "séance with the founding fathers" I get distracted by the worldbuilding of it.

[taymonbeal]

The Internet Archive confirms that this is an authentic excerpt from The Vegetable Expert, a 1985 gardening book published in England, and the other contents of the book do not appear to be sarcastic or satirical.

This screenshot from a gardening Facebook group has been on my phone for several years and I'm not sure I'm ever going to be able to delete it. Apparently it comes from a British gardening book from the 80s. I know we all joke that the English are afraid of flavor, but I assure you, you are not prepared for this.

GARLIC

Until quite recently, scientists smiled at all the wonderful medicinal powers claimed for garlic, but recent research has shown that there is some truth in a few of the old wives' tales. Garlic, of course, has an important role in Continental but not in British cookery — it really isn't worth growing unless you are a fan.

Any well-drained spot will do. Buy a head of garlic from the greengrocer or supermarket and split it up into individual cloves. Plant them 2 in. deep and 6 in. apart in March. Apart from watering in dry weather there is nothing else to do until the foliage turns yellow in July or August. Lift the bulbs and allow to dry under cover, then store in a cool, frost-free place.

If you are a beginner with garlic, you must use it very sparingly or you will be put off for ever. Rub a wooden salad bowl with a clove before adding the ingredients. Rub the skin of poultry before roasting and then you can try dropping a whole unskinned clove into a casserole or stew, removing it before serving. If by then you have lost a little of your garlic fear, you can try using crushed (not chopped) garlic in meat etc. as the Continentals do.

[taymonbeal]

(Epistemic status: Not a historian.)

As far as I understand it, this is not how it happened in the U.S. Here, schools came before libraries; the Puritans in Massachusetts instituted statewide compulsory education for children, at public expense, soon after they arrived in the 17th century, and in time it spread to the rest of the country. Early public libraries were more sporadic; Ben Franklin is commonly cited as having started the first one in 1790, though I think there were some earlier ones with clerical rather than civic backing. The point where public libraries really became commonplace was in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, when Andrew Carnegie, then the richest person in America, decided as an act of philanthropy to build a public library in pretty much every town that asked for one, almost 1,800 in all (plus a few hundred in other countries). I don't think any of these people would be called leftists in the modern sense.

I’m not objecting to the ideology at all, but I’ve always been fascinated by librarians absolutely ride-or-die commitment to libertarianism of information, or whatever you want to call it.

a very funny trait when combined with the other stereotype of librarians “middle aged woman who is quiet, politely professional, and sensibly dressed - to the point of near-frumpiness”. That that same woman will happily help you evade any and all government censorship attempts is amusing.

I’m aware that there are many non-stereotypical librarians, but it’s just a funny juxtaposition.

Baggy cardigans and anarchy for life

Like most people don't have a clue what a librarian is, tbh. They think anyone they can see working in a library is a librarian, which is a bit like thinking anyone you see working at a drug store is a pharmacist. A lot of places, the chances are that if you as a library user can see them, that's a library assistant. (But you also get a lot of librarians pitching in with that stuff on top of our actual duties, especially at small libraries.)

I don't actually know the history in the US but over here the first public libraries were started by leftists with the explicit goal of enabling class mobility before universal publicly-funded schooling was a thing.

[taymonbeal]

@another-normal-anomaly

joooo.ann__

[taymonbeal]

I initially skimmed this post without reading carefully and thought it was a new proposed version of "The Twelve Days of Christmas".

2024 pond visit wrappup

you visited the pond: 231 times this year 🐸

you spent: 575 hours at the pond

you saw:

- one million billion cool insects

-112 painted and spotted turtles

-400 leopard and bull frogs

- 15 illegally dumped tank fish

-67 blue and grey herons

-13 types of songbirds

-2 bird nests

- so many snakes

- 2 otters (drawn by dumped fish)

- 1 muskrat

- ⭐️ 1 new resident beaver

- ⭐️ 1 ill-placed snapping turtle nest

- ⭐️ 5 foraged morels

- ⭐️ 3 new wild raspberry patches

- ⭐️ 1 nice encounter with fishing children

final score: pondtastic ‼️🔥‼️

[taymonbeal]

The more important objection here is that the claim in the screenshotted tweet is just completely false. Like, that statistic isn't based on anything, the tweeter just made it up. A less extreme but similar-sounding statistic occasionally makes the rounds, but is also highly misleading. The biggest problem is that it's possible for someone's net worth to be negative if their debts exceed the value of their assets, but they might still enjoy a high standard of living (and if their net worth is a large negative number then this is almost certainly the case). E.g., someone who just graduated from law or medical school, or Donald Trump circa 1990 when his businesses were failing.

This is why income is usually a better metric than net worth for evaluating standard of living. I can't find any information about the ten highest-income people in the world, because for some reason financial journalists don't obsessively track this the way they track the highest-net-worth people, but Our World in Data tells us that the highest-income 0.1% of people (note that this is about 8 million people, not ten) have about 8% of all the income. It's also worth noting that this number was even higher (i.e., the world was more unequal) from 1820 (the earliest date they have data for) until sometime in the 1940s, though it was then lower until 2006.

[taymonbeal]

an insane amount of Pokémon got retrospective fairy typings, surely way more than any other newly introduced type.

The first part of this statement is true, but weak. The only other types introduced after Gen I are Dark and Steel. 0 Dark-types and 2 Steel-types were introduced earlier and had their types changed retroactively, compared to 22 Fairy-types.

The reason for this becomes apparent when you look at the numbers. In Generation VI, which introduced the Fairy type:

The total number of Pokémon went from 649 to 721 (an 11% increase).

Of the 72 new Pokémon, 13 were Fairy-type (18% of new Pokémon, 1.8% of all Pokémon).

22 old Pokémon became Fairy-type (3.4% of old Pokémon, 3.0% of all Pokémon).

So there were 35 Fairy-types in all (4.8%).

This made it the second-rarest type, after Ghost, which there were 34 of (4.7%).

So if they hadn't changed the types of any old Pokémon, only 1.8% of Pokémon would have been Fairy-type. This would not have been completely unprecedented; Ghost and Dragon were at 1.6% each in Generation II. But it's my opinion that those games suffered from the rarity of those types; it's better when all types are common enough that you can get them all by midgame and have a whole bunch of choices by the end. The approach that (I think, I haven't done the math) has been taken since Gen III, where no types are all that rare, seems like the right one. And since 18% of new Pokémon all being the same type is already kind of a lot, that means changing the types of some old Pokémon.

(This post originally had a section about how Generation II, which introduced Dark and Steel, didn't need to change the types of many old Pokémon because the Pokédex was expanded by 66% instead of 11%, so they could get the numbers up with mostly new Pokémon. But when I sat down to do the math, it turned out that, while they could have done that, in fact they were so stingy with the new types that it didn't make all that much of a difference.)

I suppose you could argue with any individual change. The pink blobs make sense to me (although it makes it harder to keep them straight with the pink blobs that didn't change type, like Chansey), and Ralts and Marill were good changes mechanically (their evolutions had previously been totally unremarkable and the extra type gave them some needed juice), but I suppose they're a bit more questionable on aesthetic grounds.

the type interactions are extremely unintuitive and, did they change?? as well?? like i could've sworn fairy was weak to fire in Sword and it isn't in Violet?

Fairy moves are not very effective against Fire Pokémon; Fire moves deal the regular amount of damage to Fairy Pokémon. This has been the case since the type's introduction in Gen VI. (In fact, nothing on the type chart has changed since Gen VI, unless you count Stellar, which I don't.) I agree that this is one of the harder type interactions to remember. I think it was for game balance reasons; Fairy is very offensively strong and needed to be checked, and Fire is defensively weak and needed the help.

Somebody who's more of a remembering facts and numbers kinda nerd confirm this for me but I feel like everything's a fucking fairy now? like an insane amount of Pokémon got retrospective fairy typings, surely way more than any other newly introduced type. not only all of the Pink Blob Normals but a bunch of guys that already had a type and were fine that way. Ralts? Frickin Marrill? why not just make Pikachu electric/fairy while you're at it i guess

I wouldn't even mind but fairy is so OP and the type interactions are extremely unintuitive and, did they change?? as well?? like i could've sworn fairy was weak to fire in Sword and it isn't in Violet?

[taymonbeal]

Usually when people say things like this they're talking about the labor market, and at least in the U.S., the period from the end of the pandemic through the present has had the best labor market of the current century, especially for average and below-average workers. (Some industries, most visibly tech and media, have slumped.) It's rare to be unable to find some kind of job (which was definitely not the case even for some time after the Great Recession officially ended), and there's upward pressure on wages. Noah Smith cites a bunch of statistics but I think the most important one to look at is the first graph:

I think one factor that people underestimate in discussions of the economy is that a lot of people who came of age around the 2008 financial crisis seem to have internalized "the economy is bad right now" as like, just an eternal immutable truism.

[taymonbeal]

I don't think that's actually right, though? It does help any. Just not enough to be worth paying huge personal costs. You have to weigh the benefit to others against the cost to yourself. That's Kelsey's point.

I do think everyone should be more specific about how it helps or doesn't help, i.e., what mechanism they have in mind. The one I have in mind is the PTA; a fair number of problems at public schools that poor kids go to are caused by resource constraints that rich highly-involved parents can help solve, and (if decently coordinated) are inclined to help solve for the sake of their own children, and that has positive externalities for the kids whose parents aren't rich or aren't highly involved. Matt Y wrote about this in the context of his own kid's school: https://www.slowboring.com/i/136492940/schools-are-complicated

Ayn Rand was wrong about many things but she nailed it with her villains

[taymonbeal]

Only about half of Weird Al's output is direct parodies of existing songs, or polka medleys. The other half is original songs, mostly pastiches ("style parodies") of musical genres or particular artists. This has been true throughout his career, and he's done quite a wide range.

[taymonbeal]

This is misinformation:

de Vries' AI energy estimates are only a small fraction of the 620 to 1,050 TWh that data centers as a whole are projected to use by 2026, according to the IEA's recent report. The vast majority of all that data center power will still be going to more mundane Internet infrastructure that we all take for granted.

Re: that last paragraph, that's a meaningless comparison because it's comparing per-household numbers to absolute numbers. ChatGPT had 200 million monthly active users a year ago (it probably has more now), so if that 17,000 number is right, each user accounts for 0.0085% of a household's electricity use.

[taymonbeal]

Possibly dumb question: Are there countries where this is less true than in America? I.e., where the flag is routinely worn or displayed by normies who aren't trying to make a political statement? That was definitely true in my American small town when I was growing up (which admittedly was a less polarized time).

[taymonbeal]

Seveneves (moon explodes with no explanation at the beginning of the story; this event triggers the rest of the plot)

List Of Media Where Something Fucked Up Happens To The Moon

despicable me (moon theft)

miraculous ladybug (moon split in half)

hermitcraft (moon big)

feel free to add

[taymonbeal]

Context, as best as I can tell:

From Clinton, in 2019 and 2020 (the context typically doesn't make totally clear exactly what kinds of complaints or allegations she's talking about):

"I think it's also critical to understand that, as I've been telling candidates who have come to see me, you can run the best campaign, you can even become the nominee, and you can have the election stolen from you."

"I believe he knows he's an illegitimate president. He knows. He knows that there were a bunch of different reasons why the election turned out the way it did, and I take responsibility for those parts of it that I should, but Jane, it was like applying for a job, and getting 66 million letters of recommendation, and losing to a corrupt human tornado. And so I know that he knows that this wasn't on the level. I don't know that we'll ever know everything that happened, but clearly we know a lot and are learning more every day, and history will probably sort it all out. So of course he's obsessed with me. And I believe that it's a guilty conscience, insomuch as he has a conscience."

"The one thing that Trump is fearful of, when it comes to his being president, is that finally we will see how illegitimate his victory actually was. And how he was involved in the seeking of foreign help and the utilization of it. And how Roger Stone was critical to that."

"No, there was a widespread understanding that this election was not on the level. We still don’t know what really happened, Isaac. I mean, there’s just a lot that I think will be revealed. History will discover. But you don’t win by three million votes and have all this other shenanigans and stuff going on and not come away with an idea like, 'Whoa, something’s not right here.' That was a deep sense of unease."

Pelosi said "I just don't even know why there aren't uprisings all over the country. Maybe there will be." at a 2018 press conference, in response to Trump's family separation policy.

I can't find context for the claims about Waters or Pressley.

Hey remember when Al Gore demanded a recount and no one was put on trial for insurrection?

[taymonbeal]

I think the actual reason is (somewhat boringly) because it makes a good hub, on account of being right in the middle of the western U.S., reachable by a shortish flight from anywhere west of the Mississippi.

@lovelanguageisolate, whom I'm in Denver with: fun fact, the Denver airport is the third largest one in the world by geographic footprint

me: huh. no offense, but why? This isn't exactly a place I think of as A Destination

LLI: Denver is a tech city that lots of people move to for the climate. It's also got some of the world's best aerospace and atomic and optical physics research. Also the world's most accurate clock. My professor is a Nobel laureate who prepared the first Bose Einstein condensate

me: huh

LLI: people in Denver built a lot of the internet backbone for airlines to communicate with each other. If you look at very early ARPANET maps in the 70s, there's a key link between the east and west coasts in Boulder

LLI: Denver is a Bay satellite like Austin, and if you look at cities by world economic impact, Denver is in the same tier as Seattle and Austin

me: I feel like I'm five seasons into a sci-fi show and the galactic superpower got retconned as having a significant territory that we've somehow never heard about. This is the hurried exposition we get before the protagonists set course for it