I’m still discombobulated and detoxing from the holidays. It’ll probably take a full month to get back to where I was before Christmas.
Crazy Eyes wants a unicorn in every pot.
Did that tumor just assume that brain’s gender?
Parkland school shooting commission releases report recommending arming teachers.
McConnell calls Democrat’s House government funding proposal a “non-starter” without funding for a wall, guaranteeing an extension of libertarian Christmas.
Republicans lashing out at Romney over his op-ed. Doesn’t he know that neoconservatism is now dead? Even Lindsay Graham has jumped off the sinking boat.
Florida Man justifiably gets his ass beaten by a McDonald’s Worker/former boxer after grabbing her.
That’s all I got for today. I’ll leave you with a song and move on with my day.
Comments
492 responses to “Thursday Morning Links”
Does that tumor mortality thing include men with vaginas?
No, but sometimes the presence of vaginas makes us feel like we have brain cancer.
What about tiny vaginas?
Who doesn’t like unicorns?
I don’t. They cook up too saccarine.
You’re getting the wrong kind
I actually have a can of that at home.
Did you try it?
But they make you fart rainbows.
Those eyes! Gah!
Mitt Romney == Jeff Flake Redux
He’s going to the 2020 nomination so he can restore the GOP by losing with dignity again.
Nominating a candidate who completly failed before? only a stupid party would do that. And only a part so blinded by stupidity would attempt to fix their nomination process to ensure that
shehe was nominated.I dunno. Return of Goldwater sounds pretty good right now.
I was thinking of HRC, but you know GayJay fit’s the bill too.
To be fair, failing to win any states is 100% normal for the LP candidate for Prez.
But, yeah, one run and then done.
They’re rolling out the Maverick nickname again. Where’s Barfman?
I think he died of dehydration over the past couple of years.
Maverick is code for votes with lefties often.
Of course, inevitably, the Parkland commission also demanded more money be given to schools so that can afford better security.
Bullshit. The schools have plenty of money now. If they aren’t spending it on security, it’s because they don’t think it is a priority.
^^
Fire 2 diversity admins and hire a couple rent a cops.
I’d hire people based on how well they can shoot the diversity administrators.
We care about the children, Especially when we can use their deaths to get more funding.
But they’ll need to add a security department to each school, with at least four administrators per two security guards. Won’t someone think of the
childrenbureaucrats?Need some extra compliance officers too. The whole reason this happened is because there weren’t enough compliance officers to make sure that everyone was in compliance with…whatever.
WMATA the DC area’s transit agency used to have a poster about how they are working hard to fix the metro. It was a picture of 7 people, 4 of which were wearing suits.
US public schools are underfunded, until you consider the kids are not learning and per pupil spending is the highest in the world (or top 3 at least).
Like there aren’t enough retired cops in FL to fill out the union slots?
It threw off my internal calendar. I woke up on a Sunday fretting about why I hadn’t set my alarm the night before and reassuring myself that as it was only 5, I still had time to get to work. Yesterday I was convinced it was thursday. Today I’m trying to tell myself that no, it’s not Wednesday.
>>Crazy Eyes wants a unicorn in every pot.
Don’t think she’s quite figured out the difference between the house and the senate yet, or how laws are made. Or, more likely, it’s all grandstanding.
Actually, I think she is an idiot who really believes her own bullshit, because she doesn’t really understand how things work.
But she was told her whole life that if she wants something enough, she deserves it!
Yup. I remember people asking where the harm was in participation trophies. Well, Pol Thot isn’t the final stop on this particular line. But, she’s a station on that route.
All I can say is that the fools who elected her to office deserve everything she is bringing.
Pretty sure it’s all grandstanding, even if she believes it would be totes awesome and the sky would rain fairies and pixie dust if her plan passed.
She has to know that her scheme has absolutely zero chance of going anywhere right now, but probably really believes she’s the vanguard of young people who are going to take control of the country and fix all the problems created by the old people who were just too damn bigoted and ignorant to realize the key to solving all the problems was this one weird trick. It really is a lot like the sixties, where all the boomers were convinced that they knew all the answers to the troubles of the world if those damn old fools would just get out of the way.
Bernie Sanders spent years as the kooky old crazy uncle from Vermont who thought Stalin had some great ideas that spent his days screaming at the capitalist clouds but now is taken seriously by a large portion of team blue. I’m sure Ocasio-Cortez thinks she can get mainstream acceptance the same way.
+1 weird trick
It’s the old question, “stupid or liar?”. I’m assuming the latter with The OC, but there’s no flattering choice.
It can be both.
Why not both?
Don’t call her that.
I don’t think she’s grandstanding or lying. And she may not even be that dumb (relatively speaking to others in congress). I think she’s a naive zealot who absolutely believes “her” ideas will work if everyone just listens to her.
As she gets older and starts to learn how things actually work, she will no doubt follow the path of most lifelong politicians and that zeal and true belief will slowly devolve into cynical cronyism.
And she may not even be that dumb (relatively speaking to others in congress).
I will accept “She’s not stupid, for a member of Congress.”
Seems reasonable, on a par with “He’s not that short, for a midget”.
“The 458-page report also blamed school security failures and law enforcement blunders from assistant principals and Broward County Sheriff’s deputies to social service providers and the FBI — some of whom were warned that Cruz was a potential security threat but failed to take action, the Miami Herald reported.”
No mention of guns!??!
Hogg must be losing his shit.
See it must have been full of people who actually wanted to make sure kids don’t die. So they identified real issues, and proposed real solutions, rather than jawing on about a non-problem, and proposing a total non-starter.
And being real assholes about it.
They’re attacking Louis CK too.
458 pages?
“Parkland school shooting commission releases report recommending arming teachers.”
Obviously they are hating haters who hate children.
I can’t wait for the inevitable occurrence of a teacher either mowing down her entire class, or going R Budd Dwyer in front of them, or being stupid enough to have their gun stolen by a student who then does the deeds.
I mean, at least they reached the logical conclusion that “when seconds count, the police are minutes away”.
“when seconds count, the police are minutes away”
Or hiding behind cars, or stopping paramedics from entering buildings…
And SROs are less than useless.
He was TAKING UP A TACTICAL POSITION.
The elimination of SRO’s is one reason The Rent Is Too Damn High.
Wait– what?
“Upgrading every residential and industrial building for state-of-the-art energy efficiency, comfort and safety”
See. This is exactly that out of the box thinking that’s missing in Washington.
Someone should ask her how much all of this cost and where the money is going to come from. Her answers should be hilarious.
The rich. Also libertarians should pay double taxes.
As long as it is just libertarian women paying double, I’m fine with it.
HEY!!
“Lets decide to do it first, then come up with funding” is the new proggie answer en vouge.
You just need to free your mind and the rest will follow.
*grumble* goddamn earworms
They can cut elevnty trillion out of the DoD and Raise Taxes On Those Not Paying Their Fair Share!!1!!!!1!!oneoneone!!1
So she wants to raise taxes on the poor?
Yes, but she’ll never say it.
The military is like 99% of the budget.
MOAR LIKE 103%!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
I think you should at least add an ‘eleventy’ to your exclamations.
And how much energy will it take to manufacture and install all that stuff?
Yusef’s gonna be busy.
Why think of all the insulation installers! It’s free money for everyone.
Yup. Contra-Krugman Podcast did a good review of the plan. It’s insane. The biggest takeaway: The left wants to scream Panic about greenhouse gasses/climate change, but still have time for “Income Inequality” etc. If Climate change was as important/dangerous as they say it is, then it really should be the only thing they ever talk about. And they should recognize that when you say “We’re going to fundamentally change the economy to save the planet, AND it will be sunshine and rainbows” that most people’s Bullshit alarm should go off.
Yup. Start the panic and slip in those weasel words about advancing non-environmental projects.
It is amusing that O-C thinks she can create a committee to re-invent the entire country and be put in charge of it as a freshmen fluke. Even if they did create the committee, she ain’t gonna be in charge of it.
I keep thinking the same thing – “since when do newly elected reps in the House get put in charge of anything?”
Coffee maker?
From the comments
The issue is that Chinese style communism will prevail. The problem with our current democracy and capitalism is that it ONLY follows money and will be late for the next tech innovations, and the government spends more time screaming at each other then getting things done. In China, they just tell industry what to do and it does it.
Sarcasm or?
Isn’t it odd that the command economy produces 0 innovation and instead steals all its IP from the disorganized market driven economy?
“In China, they just tell industry what to do and it does it.”
Don’t you see. It’s so simple, why follow the money and let millions of rational actors try different innovations, when you can have just 1 party that knows everything tell everyone what to do?
Because your “Rational Actors” will make the wrong decisions and be connect by advertisments that make them buy things that they don’t need and overeat on sugary substances and burn down gaia!
/progic
Stupidity
China is in the beginning of an economic freefall due to command-economy decisions. But I’m sure when their people start starving again, it will be the fault of the Western capitalists.
In reality this would require wide scale destruction of existing structures, and wide swaths of the population living in public housing estates.
McConnell calls Democrat’s House government funding proposal a “non-starter” without funding for a wall, guaranteeing an extension of libertarian Christmas. – by libertarian Christmas I assume the US government stopped collecting taxes?
I assume the US government stopped collecting taxes?
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!!!
No.
It must be the one week a month that Lindsay has custody of his testicles .
I guess Lindsay got them back when McCain kicked it.
Meh. I don’t know. I think he makes it pretty clear what changed his temperment. It was seeing the Democrats treatment of Judge K. I think he realized that it wasn’t just political games. The Democrats are at a simmering war with the Republicans. Other than that He’s still his shitty Warboner self.
Lol. Sounds to me like he’s just worried that his little gravy train is being threatened, but your take is more amusing.
“White man aggressively grabs black woman working at McDonald”
Nice caption you race baiting piece of shit rag.
Did “the internet” give him a cute shame-name? Like “Nugget Ned” or something?
Yeah, I was expecting to see some chick beat the tar out of a hairy old homeless guy. Instead I got DailyFail racebaiting and a high school cafeteria slapfest. Plus, he wasn’t really Floridaman after all, he was a West Virginian!
I demand justice! Expect my hashtag campaign to begin later this afternoon.
I posted this last night but this is for the AM people WHO DON’T WORK.
The Indian Liz Warren grabs a beer.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tjDEPtS68CM
Hopefully she enjoys her pale Indian ale.
H/T straffin.
That’s racist. She should at least go with an Indian Brown Ale.
People like her don’t marry alpha males evidently.
As long as it’s 3%.
“My fellow Americans. As you may know, I have all the charisma of a rabid procupine, but see – I really am *error in dissembly subroutine*”
Really as a Native American, she is hitting those stereotypes.
It’d be hard liquor then. Beer does not qualify as firewater.
Maybe that’s why she doesn’t drink liquor?
*snort*
I wish an actual Indian would troll her by calling her out for reinforcing stereotypes of native americans. That would be fucking awesome.
+1 Firewater
Her next video will be of her sitting in bed looking very sick. She will complain that she hasn’t felt well ever since Trump sent her a blanket for Christmas.
+1 smallpox
As a professional unpaid drunk, I can certify that this may be the first time
she’s drunk out of a bottle in decades if ever.
Not even watching, but let me guess, whole opening of the bottle in the mouth?
YOU HAVE TO WATCH IT.
It’ll ruin your day.
But… I don’t want to ruin my day.
She just jams it in there? Sounds hot.
Tries to get it there, doesn’t hit right in mouth then has to eyeball it in.
quite amusing
How…? How do you fail at a task like that?
How…? How do you fail at a task like that?
Skin suit servo malfunction.
yup, and it appears her hand/mouth muscle memory is severely lacking.
Two words: Butt chugging
Two words: projectile vomiting
As a professional unpaid drunk
I’m sorry, but unpaid makes you an amateur drunk. On the bright side, at least that means you can qualify for the drunk Olympics.
I guess I should say professional unemployed drunk. nope doesn’t sound right.
professional intern drunk?
professional unhired drunk?
professional socialist drunk?
I need to find someone to pay me to drink. Fed grant? some sort of booze welfare?
Become an alcohol reviewer and critic on the internet.
Cocktail enthusiast.
I need to find someone to pay me to drink. Fed grant?
Genius idea: grant to study the effects of alcohol on some intersectional group, with yourself as the control (assuming you are not a member of an intersectional group, in which case you’re the test subject). For best results, pair up with friends who can fill out the other slots in the study.
I need to find someone to pay me to drink
Welcome to sales! Forecasts are due on Tuesday, excuses the next Monday.
This. I work with people in that area and what they spend on booze makes me, a shareholder kind of pissed. That’s my fucking money.
Inebriation Aficionado.
That woman has to be on the spectrum.
“Kenny? Did I get that right?”
Lol. Wtf?
Jesus. What compels people to broadcast purportedly private moments over the internet for political gain? It’s off-putting at best and pathetic at worst.
If you don’t put out your private moments for all of the public to see, how will the public know that you are not a politician but just a regular joe like them who likes to do private things privately?
who likes to do private things publicly?
FIFY
Exhibitionists?
The Story of Sustainability in 2018: We Have About 12 Years Left
Didn’y they stay that ten years ago? And twenty years ago. And thirty years ago. And forty years ago. And fifty years ago…
This is completely different then Peak Oil. This one is REAL!
/ht Slate Star Codex
Yawn. “The sea is rising! The sea is rising!” I’ve been hearing these doomsday predictions my entire life, and I’ve yet to see one seaside town inundated by a rising ocean.
Because there hasn’t been warming in the last 17 years because the heat is hiding in the deep ocean!!111!!! But it will take effect SOON!! YOU’LL SEE!!111!!!!
So making the ocean deeper will help.
So is that going to be the enemy in X-Com 3: Terror From the Deep?
My MIL was freaking out over some study that said the Delmarva peninsula will be underwater by 2050 (since we just moved here).
I told her once the first seaside town goes under I will still have plenty of time to move away.
You’re more likely to be buried alive in chicken shit before then.
…no comment.
I donno, it’s not like there’s any upland. By the time the first seaside town goes under, the whole chicken foot goes.
“Yawn. “The sea is rising! The sea is rising!” I’ve been hearing these doomsday predictions my entire life”
You must be young. I’ve heard the global winter and receding coastlines as sea water gets locked up in ice DOOOOM back in college.
But the falling sky keeps pushing the sea back down so it is all good.
Yeah, we’ve only had “10 (15, 5, 20, whatever) years left” for about 30 years now.
” including the loss of the entire Atlantic seaboard (Boston, New York, D.C., etc.), all of Florida, London, Stockholm, Denmark, Paraguay, and land now inhabited by more than 1 billion Asians).”
This is a pet peeve cause i lived in Uruguay, but Paraguay is Landlocked, and it’s highest point is 842 m. I get it’s a mistake made alot, but it indicates shoddy writing, and shoddy research. And given the subject, it seems like you are just trying to make things sound worse.
“Switzerland will be innundated!”
“What about Belgium?”
“Eh, they should be safe.”
Because even if the sea really were rising, apparently the technology to build sea walls is beyond our capability now, for some reason.
Except for the Dutch.
Look, you’re not supposed to propose rational responses, you’re supposed to hand them the reigns of society and do as you’re told!
Considering the environmental impact purgatory any such project would be subjected to, it may as well be beyond our capability.
beyond our capability
Some morons built a hinged, submerged seawall. It’s so rusted it doesn’t actuate properly, but worse: the walls are designed to retract into recesses designed for the sea bed, which, of course, fill with silt.
It’s stunning
Tommy Bartlett would know what to do with that.
D.C would not be that big of a loss
Heck, that would be a good start
“Just throw one of those spic countries in there so they don’t feel left out.”
/IPCC bureaucrat
Also another gripe. The Buenos Aires metro has 14 million people living there. That’s 2x the population of Paraguay. Buenos Aires would be inundated by a 200 ft rise in the sea level. So why would you pick something inaccurate and that affects fewer people? The only reason i can think of is that you 1) don’t know that B.A has 14 million people, and 2) know that saying all of Paraguay will be flooded sounds worse than just B.A
Because Buenos Aires will be destroyed by bugs from Klendathu.
Goddamn bugs whacked us, Johnny.
+2 Dina Meyer
10% off of GDP sounds better than the 100% were gonna get from crazy eyes.
EnviroDoom is like practical fusion power… always just a decade or so away.
Repent now the end is nigh! Listen to the words of Saint Cortez
So… we should burn our ships and invade Mexico?
Say what you want about the tenets of predatory colonialism, but THAT GUY was both crazy and extremely bold.
So THAT’S why Mexico will be paying for the wall…
The data are lying liars. 0.13°C/decade means we’re all doomed.
Sadly the data is not as accurate as it could be. I am split on the satellite data being much better.
This is a point not generally appreciated: when people talk about the global temperature, how exactly is that defined?
The temperature where i live, duh.
There was a precipitous drop in the temperature where I live overnight.
Turns out I’f shut off the heat to do recordings without it making noise in the background, then forgot to turn it back on before going to bed.
In exactly the manner that best suits the preferred political implications.
The magic of averaging anomalies usually.
As Foghorn Leghorn once said….
Ahhhhh shhhaddaapp!
“climate change could knock at least 10% off of GDP.”
The fix for climate change will only knock at least 45% off of GDP.
Diversity is our strength?
The ‘race war’ brewing on Melbourne’s streets
I’m putting my money on the Vietnamese.
So did anyone follow the whole Interwebz War on IQ between Nassim Taleb and the Gaggle of Psychologists? Any thoughts?
Nope. Never heard of it. What’s the summary?
Black swan gets some skin in the game. BY GAME, STEVE SWAN MEAN….
Taleb sayis IQ has no measuring power for general intelligence, the psychologists claim it has.
Taleb is completely wrong. Read Charles Murray. Or Pinker.
I’d be suprised if it had no measuring power. It’s not great, but i probably has some power /not a neuro/cognitive/psychologist
Are we talking about post colonial intelligence? Cause not all Inteligence can be based off of Colonialist Logic.
Is this one of those “Taleb blurted something outrageous on the Twitters in a fit of pique and now he won’t back down one iota” moments? Because he seems to have quite a few of those.
Please tell me there is some context to go with that because the way you summarized it, Taleb sounds like he’s dropped a few standard deviations.
https://medium.com/incerto/iq-is-largely-a-pseudoscientific-swindle-f131c101ba39
That is waaaay to tedious for me to dig into. Sorry I asked, but thanks anyways.
Also, medium.com so likely complete bullshit anyway.
Me, You. Seeing Eye to Eye.
Mensa members: typically high “IQ” losers in Birkenstocks.
Admittedly, that made me snicker.
Hey! I’ve never in my life worn Brikenstocks.
But… yeah, I let my membership lapse after a couple of years.
I answered you, FWIW, a little late in yesterday’s link, Pie.
Eh I was not really expecting an answer but I did not see it till now.
Taleb is out of his depth? Say it ain’t so!
Taleb wouldn’t think height is a predictor of basketball ability. It’s not monotonic, and the correlation is different for tall people than short people.
Don’t care what you’re talking about, but my problem with IQ tests is that they are timed. Smart people can be slow thinkers to, and easily distracte….hey something shiny!
How smart must one be to be the arbiter of who is smart? Wouldn’t the “smart” people just design a test that looks for traits they have? And then, the test is a snapshot in time. That day could be an off day where you partied all night or maybe you slept great and ate a wholesome breakfast. It all seems like bullshit to me.
Intelligence should be measured by achievement, period. The capacity for intelligence seems unknowable if for no other reason than it’s dynamic testing requires voluntarily divulging the data used to make an assessment.
Remember the time Hillary had the U.S. military kill a foreign leader because he was creating a gold-based currency?
canadian top level domain? Clearly Twinkles is trying to interfere in our elections… Ted Cruz, Kamala Harris. Now this. What do the Canadians have on Trump to keep him from declaring war and destroying them.
I had read it was a favor to France when it happened.
The French are always behind some plot, eh?
Where else would they be? They haven’t been on the front in a century.
I went to see my neighbor sworn in as Mayor last night It wasn’t as exciting as this one in Mexico.
Some snippets of the benighted Ocasio-Cortez.
“Ocasio-Cortez attended Yorktown High School, graduating in 2007,[17] where she won second prize in the Intel International Science and Engineering Fair with a microbiology research project on the effect of antioxidants on C. elegans’ lifespan.[18] As a result, the International Astronomical Union named a small asteroid after her: 23238 Ocasio-Cortez.”
Sounds like she’s not that stupid. She’s not not well-read where politics and history is concerned.
“Ocasio-Cortez has described her background as working-class, and relates many of her political positions to it. When her father died intestate in 2008,[27] she became involved in a long probate battle to settle his estate.”
“After college, Ocasio-Cortez moved back to the Bronx, while she worked as a bartender in Manhattan and as a waitress in a taqueria. Her mother, meanwhile, cleaned houses and drove school buses. After her father’s death, Ocasio-Cortez and her mother struggled to fight foreclosure of their home.[29][30]
I wonder how much of this is related to her father dying intestate.
“With financial backing from Sunshine Bronx Business Incubator, she established a publishing firm, Brook Avenue Press, which specializes in children’s literature that portrays the Bronx in a positive light.[31] She worked as lead educational strategist at GAGEis, Inc.[32] Ocasio-Cortez was also an educator at the nonprofit National Hispanic Institute.[33] She served as its Educational Director of the 2017 Northeast Collegiate World Series, where she participated in a panel on Latino leadership.”
https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2018/07/did_alexandria_ocasiocortezs_socialist_fanaticism_come_from_bitter_failure_in_business.html
She’s not a dummy. She comes off sounding insipid for sure but to me she strikes me as someone letting her ideology drive her intelligence. I’m just trying to find a silver lining. Give me a break.
If you have brainpower but refuse to use it, you are more of an idiot than someone who applies all of their limited faculties.
I agree with this sentiment.
You realize a lot of those positions are a joke…and she grew up quite upper middle class – she has been getting roasted for trying to portray herself as some blue collar heroine.
Yeh. Been reading about that.
Alex from the block!
Nah man, she used to have a little now she has a lot and she knows where she came from.
It’s not even that she’s middle class – it’s that she’s using the Bronx as some kind of badge of racial/class authenticity when she actually grew up in a very comfortable suburb. Blurting “I’m a girl from the Bronx” is a term that implies something very different than “I’m a girl from Yorktown”.
Ha, I just googled Yorktown High. The wikipedia entry says “has a history of success in lacrosse.”
Lacrosse is really popular at the local school – and they’ve won several state titles.
As a native Long Islander, I always wondered why lacrosse didn’t have a greater presence nationwide. It’s not like it demands widely specialized facilities (like ice hockey) and the equipment isn’t going to blow the school budget.
Because it combines all the worst (least entertaining) aspects of soccer, hockey and baseball.
…how is lacrosse like baseball?
Wha? Are you not entertained?
(as noted, the skills on display aren’t all that great…)
@CPA – You can’t see the tiny white ball flying through the air while sitting in the stands.
LOL, very entertained.
Yeah, lacrosse was strictly a suburban wypipo thing where I grew up. I have more street cred than AOC.
When my girls played a couple of years ago, it was the fastest growing high school sport in America.
It is fairly popular here in the midwest. Minnesoda even had a professional team: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ghhwX2BNsUw They were mostly Canadians and were known for fighting.
Yeah, there is a “Major League” that one of the sports channels (Fox Soccer Plus?) used to show once in a while.
I’ll add that the suburb I live in is like 95% white and very uh, upper middle class.
Average net worth north of $1mm, if memory serves.
She’s a fraud. A stupid, mendacious fraud. She should do well in politics.
I don’t think she’s stupid, in the sense that she is incapable of holding knowledge, just incredibly haughty, and blinded ideologically. She either has no knowledge of history/government, or doesn’t really care because everyone in the past was dumber than she is. This is the Same thing with Obama. Remember how when he first ran, conservatives wailed on how dumb he was, and inexperienced?
As per the father, thats shitty. Really as a parent you owe it to your kids to get at least a simple will drawn up. Kinda like Life insurance. If you have no one who depends on you, you don’t really need it, but otherwise…
You’re not exactly blue collar paycheck to paycheck if you know what probate is because you were involved in a court battle over a parent’s estate.
No idea what probate is like in NY. Any intestate estate can be tied up in probate for awhile, but typically its just delay and paperwork. Getting really hung up in probate means there was some dispute, often with other family members. I wonder what the story really is.
And here’s the thing: joint assets go straight to the surviving person on the account. Sounds like her father kept most of his stuff in his own name, and not in joint accounts. A sound strategy for damage control in the event of divorce, but otherwise a good way to put your family at risk.
Maybe as a pretty waitress she learned that she is more likable if she acts stupid. Not that I find that attractive, personally.
There are lots of people who are not dummies in general but are about politics. Einstein supported socialism. Peoples brains stop working when it comes to economics and politics in general,.
And the problem with that is you get some high IQ people who wallow in political ignorance.
Take for example someone I know. A doctor. Super well-read. Knows history. Well-travelled. No dummy. Smarter than I’ll ever be.
Yet, his ‘field of information’ remains within five sources as he put it. The usual suspects of CNN, NYT and MSM. So whenever he asks me about politics, he’s from here and I’m from Mars.
I once sent him a Greenwald article to ‘see’ exactly where he stood on the spectrum. I figure I may as well know where he lies in order to debate him. His answer was ‘Never heard of him I don’ want to read ideologues.’
If you claim to be informed how can you not have heard of Greenwald? And notice how if they don’t know something it’s immediately dismissed as ‘ideological’ – or worse as we’ve seen. From ‘alt-right’ to ‘Nazi’ to ‘conspiratorial’.
If people like him came here, he’d probably think we’re all plain nuts.
That’s the problem on one level.
“Never heard of him I don’ want to read ideologues.”
I’m right, and everyone else is an Ideologue.
It’s a variation on “why read history when i’m so much smarter than everyone before me”
Confirmation bias is warm and comfortable.
My theory as to why mathematicians and theoretical scientists are supportive of left-wing politics is that they are used to treating abstractions as real and deriving results from questionable premises.
Once you can believe in spherical cows with a radius of one meter, several economic ideas seem plausible.
A one meter radius cow would have greater volume than a cow-shaped cow. Your air resistance calculations are going to all be out of whack because of the lower density.
I think they live in ivory towers not the real world. Also they love reaswrching what they find interesting and want government grants to do that without practical results.
They also treat government like it’s a science experiment without realizing that real people are affected by the results should the experiment have several points of failure.
I’m in that morass right now with a software project. Some management type with credentials but no actual analysis or coding skills dreamed up something and instead of some lower-level people pointing out the impracticality on the face of it, they just thought “Two-year contract!” and went ahead with it – ten years and 5 full-staff turnovers later they have a product that nobody can even determine if a customer is actually using, but it’s super important and needs to be moved to the cloud.
The only thing keeping them in check is that the money will run out. People that stupid eventually aspire to government positions where money never runs out.
This
“We just need to increase the order of our multi-variate equations a few more times and this will all balance out.”
It’s like the super smart people who propose dark matter because an invisible, undetectable thing that happens to be precisely placed to explain inconvenient facts that would otherwise mean their theory is wrong — rather than just saying our theory is wrong and we don’t know why yet.
Don’t forget that the invisible undetectable thing has to make up 85% of all thingness in the Universe for it to fix their theory, or that they also then need invisible undetectable energy to make it all work. It is hard to say “I don’t know” or “I made a mistake” or “I am sorry,” but there is a reason humility is a virtue.
I gain more and more appreciation for the wisdom found in the Bible and the great theologians, despite my hard agnosticism.
Seems to me “dark matter” is a theory like any other. If they find proof of it, great. If not, move on. It’s only invisible and undetectable because we haven’t seen or found it yet.
(NB: I have no opinion in this debate, I’m just curious why it’s being singled out for so much sarc.)
Because the only evidence for it is that various discoveries show that for the Universe to work the way the old theory predicted it would have to be much more massive than it actually is. So rather than start over with a new theory it was decided to just posit that there is undetectable matter that makes up 85% of the Universe, which to untutored me sounds indistinguishable from the whorls and eccentricities added to Ptolemaic models of the solar system desperately trying to maintain a geocentric model in the face of mounting evidence that it was wrong.
I’m sure there are lots of other theories floating around out there. Eventually, one will win out.
singled out for so much sarc
I didn’t get it yesterday, either. Theoretical physics has always been math bondo: you slap it on, sand it down, and if it doesn’t look right you build up another layer. At some point we’ll get really close and prove the latest idea correct (like Dyson and the eclipse) and it’s ready for paint.
Or it’s untenable and you just go to the junkyard and get a straight fender and move on to the quarter panel. We have all these bullshit pretty pictures like “electrons” that were dreamed up the same way that have proven useful, but they’re just math models, not real things.
When the scientists admit it is just a theoretical placeholder I am not sarcastic. I get sarcastic when they move into defending it as established reality because the theory works with it I find that deserving of sarcasm. Recognizing that we don’t know the Truth is an important step on the search for truth. Dogma is evil in any context.
“I gain more and more appreciation for the wisdom found in the Bible and the great theologians, despite my hard agnosticism.”
Me, too.
Science and spiritualism are both involved in the search for truths but each one loses its way when their advocates prefer to search for authority.
+1 x 10^500 string theory vacuum states
I posted this yesterday when the topic came up:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z3rgl-_a5C0
Basically though, there is evidence that dark matter exists, and there is also a history of seeing anomalies and using them to predict things that actually turned out to be true. See also, the Higgs boson, the orbit of Mercury, the De Broglie wavelength et. al.
I know plenty of folks in biotech – they’re smart people and highly knowledgable within their field. They also can’t do their own taxes, think most of the federal budget goes to the military and seem to think the government can just print more money to pay for things (which, to be fair, the feds sort of do).
Smart =/= knowledgeable.
However, nice rack.
“Sounds like she’s not that stupid. ”
Sounds like a team project where she was the “booth babe” and got equal credit despite doing none of the work. If she were that smart, she would have gone to a better school than B-Jew and take an econ-basketweaving major .
So why a star named after her? Eh? Hm?
Here you go, Rufus.
I’m still not convinced that she’s particularly bright based off of that, but…..often I’ve found that people who are very smart in narrow, technical fields tend to be too arrogant to acknowledge that they aren’t terribly smart in other areas.
At the bank, they gave us a special training on how to handle engineers and pilots and to a lesser extent doctors.
They are identified as challenging clients.
One engineer was convinced he had the right formula to beat the options market and when my boss tried to explain to him the birds and the bees of the markets he was having none of it. It was autistic level arrogance on his part. Obviously, he lost and then blamed the firm.
I tell ya it takes all kinds.
were identified.
Interesting that lawyers aren’t identified as problem clients. Probably due to a tendency to risk aversion in the field.
No, we are identified as “do not take a lawyer as a client” because we are viewed as litigious.
Tell him it’s like the second law, only instead of entropy increasing as the residue, it’s overheads. The first law view says the options market is a net push: every winner must have a loser (unlike stocks or commodities per se, where everyone could be a winner); to that subtract reversibilities which are administration instead of disorder. Or tell him all those unexecuted options on the floor are friction heat wafting into space.
It is worse than that. Since Options are a zero sum game, and since the value necessarily goes to 0 at expiration they are very much dependent upon timely trades. Add in the fact that you are more often than not trading with the entity which you are depending on to execute your trades and voila. Someone is making money in options and commodities; that someone is the broker.
I looked at playing with options, and then I realized that, for investors, its a negative sum game, once you take commissions and fees into account. I stopped looking at that point.
The peak of investing idiocy has to be trading options on margin.
well, it’s not investing: it’s either hedging or speculating
Fair point, Don.
I was strictly mobile over the holidays, and not commenting, but I followed the immigration discussion. I’m pretty much where you are on immigration. There is a fundamental question that I might try to do a post on: do nations have the right to control their borders. I think the answer is yes, but that’s more instinctive than thought out.
If the answer is yes, the next question is, what criteria should it apply? If the fundamental criteria is, what immigration is best for the citizens of the nation, I think we have the foundation for a legitimate discussion. Otherwise, I think we are doomed to talk past each other because of fundamentally different premises.
One more thought:
I think part of the issue is whether you see the world as fundamentally transactional, or as having a significant component of relationships that are not transactional.
The former leads you down a path of economic “relationships” and tends to open borders. The latter leads you down a path of community, shared values, and tends, I believe, to controlled immigration.
I think I left some edge on that comment I didn’t intend; shouldda been
“I agree and would further say options are really only hedging instruments; any other use of them is speculation, a fool’s errand”
Twitter polls are getting weird
https://twitter.com/Aella_Girl/status/1080689813206880256
Her Twitter feed got me high. “Intersectional nihilist”.
They’re nothing to be afraid of.
/Walter
Nihilist huh? Must be exhausting.
/Dude
“Watch me eat LSD in high def here”
So I caught a clip of Trump talking about the 5 billion he wants for the border wall. He said everyone saying it costs way too much was wrong because it’s less than what’s spent in a year to fight in Afghanistan. I wonder if that’s him playing 4d chess to make everyone worry he’ll pull us out of there and then say we have the money for a wall.
He called it “a wall thing” earlier. Eventually, the “wall” is going to morph into a laser running from Cali to Texas.
::makes pew pew noises::
Mount it on sharks or gtfo
I wonder if that’s him playing 4d chess to make everyone worry he’ll pull us out of there and then say we have the money for a wall.
I’d say it’s just simple negotiating tactics and is exactly what he’s doing. He’s looking around for leverage in the negotiation, saw the hysterics people threw when he decided to remove troops from Syria, and realizes that as CoC he can exit any of these conflicts any time he wants (since Congress hasn’t bothered to declare formal war).
He’s just using it as a bargaining chip. If he were actually playing 4D chess he’d use this as leverage to get his wall funding and then when that’s secured pull out anyway to try to capture some of those sweet GayJay votes in 2020.
I am not sure anyone who voted for GayJay has the principled outlook needed to vote for Orangemanbad even if he does good things. I should start making t shirts that read Orangeman Good with a list of good Trump moves.
Would wear.
What perfidy is this! You can’t tell me this We the People petition isn’t the work of diabolical Canuckistani meddling!
I will not live in a world where Minnesoda cannot rub NoDaks’ and Montanans’ noses in the fact that we are the most northernmost state in the 48 continental states.
The proper response is to demand the Canukistanis turn over a chunk of Manitoba.
Uffda. I think we want to come out ahead on this deal. Why would we want part of Friendly Manitoba?
Okay, All of Manitoba and Alberta.
“54 40 or Fight!
Fight.
No blood for maple syrup!
Trump explaining Syria withdrawal: “Syria was lost long ago. we’re not talking about vast wealth. we’re talking about sand and death”
The responses are just strange and incoherent. He’s Hitler because he’s getting out of a war in the ME.
And Donny is right, sand and death is all Syria can offer the US.
Well, now that ISIS smashed the mesopotamian artifacts, sure.
“Dehumanizing groups of people and humanity is how Hitler rose into power. This is why the Declaration of Human Rights was established —so the world wouldn’t forget and repeat history. Trump seems to be hell bent on recreating that atmosphere .”
These people are fucking unhinged…and he’s right.
Nothing Humanizes somebody like playing global politics with their country.
Parse this one in the context of a Syria withdrawal:
“Unless Trump has something to gain. He is not about US. He has sold out US daily”
Syrian Trump Towers! Paid for by the RussianZ?
Eff all these sudden war-boners. If we have to be in Syria I will walk them all down to the recruiter’s office where they can enlist and be in Syria.
Oh.. they meant somebody ELSE is supposed to be in Syria.
That’s exactly it. Hell, they don’t need to join the Army to go fight using our tax dollars. If this cause is so righteous then they can form a private organization and go fight like during the Spanish Civil War. Instead of the Abraham Lincoln Brigade they can form the Barack Obama Battalion (-) and go fight with private money.
Jesus Christ…..the first three comments:
“Publius
Replying to @JohnJHarwood
What a sad representation of America.
1 reply 1 retweet 22 likes”
“SueK
Replying to @JohnJHarwood
Anyone listening to his rant should be REALLY scared for our country. He has no idea what he’s talking about!
0 replies 1 retweet 14 likes
Lori
Dehumanizing groups of people and humanity is how Hitler rose into power. This is why the Declaration of Human Rights was established —so the world wouldn’t forget and repeat history. Trump seems to be hell bent on recreating that atmosphere”
The projection and stupidity of these people has no peak derp.
Sand and death. Uh, what’s inaccurate?
The Syrian Desert is more rock and gravel than sand.
Saying No to another proxy war with Russia is literally worse than Hitler.
Wait. I thought he was talking about Pheonix?
I’m not sure but it seems that the defense case that the lawyers of intrepid Officer Noor are trying to make is that she is a werewolf?
The lawyers are steaming mad because they couldn’t get access to the squad car for an independent investigation on a particular day. It seems as if they really wanted it that day because it was the same moon phase as the day Noor shot that dangerous Aussie gal.
So their case seems to be that she was a were-drop-bear or that the moon was in Noor’s eyes causing him to blindly shoot out the window?
I would guess they want to know how much ambient light there was and what the Officer could and could not see. It makes sense but I doubt it helps their case.
Hmm. Seems like the more he could see, the more reckless he was (shooting at a woman who was visibly unarmed), and the less he could see, the more negligent he was (shooting at a woman who he couldn’t tell was armed or not). Maybe they are going for a lesser degree of homicide?
Is the social justice movement that’s sweeping British and American universities a secular religion? The core beliefs of the members of this cult certainly seem to play the same psychological role as the central tenets of the world’s major religions.
https://www.spectator.co.uk/2019/01/the-great-awokening/
I like this article because it is from 5th January 2019
The modern Progressive movement is a cargo cult.
Think things are bad now? They were a lot worse in 1919
It’s tempting, as 2019 begins, to regard current troubles as overwhelming and unprecedented. But America and its friends faced far more daunting challenges as 1919 began 100 years ago.
It is always good to maintain perspective on things.
Not to mention the Spanish Flu was killing people in droves.
A source I read some time long ago mentioned Interesting quirk of the Spanish Flu was that it was more likely to kill those with a strong immune system because it killed by triggering a cascade of ever-increasing immune responses.
I wish I remembered where I’d read that.
I’ve read that too – that’s why it spread so rapidly among the soldiers in Europe in 1918.
Cytokine storm is the term you likely heard.
‘Ocasio-Cortez sees this plan is being a vehicle through which social equality might finally realized, as it will use reparations to right historical injustices’
1) “Social Equality” is not a thing that can ever be realized because we are all individuals with various distinctions. And to try to make everyone socially equal is, frankly, evil.
2) How far do they really want to go with the proverbial “sins of the father”. No group in history is innocent of wrongdoing, not even (((them))).
bitch giving my acres back to the Choctaw ? I blame you, Hyperbole !
If I’m 1/8th Choctaw, how many of your acres do I get?
tocklo, at least !
I had asked exactly the same question.
You will know she is running when she instagrams a video of herself in her kitchen saying “I’m going to get me some lutefisk”.
I think I should takes months off from my current job to look for a new better job. I will demand that I still get paid and that my employer shouldn’t expect me to actually work on the things assigned to me. If they complain, I will point out that if it is good enough for my “leaders” like Warren and Klobuchar it should be good enough for me.
Shouldn’t there be a “ya know” in there somewhere? As someone who has never been to Minnesota, I’m certain that’s how they all talk.
you bet.
betcha, gosh darn it, doncha know?
I worked winter test several years up around Bemidji, and it’s basically the set of Fargo up there. I ran into a ton of very nice people.
Odds the 2020 Democratic Convention will make 1968 hold its beer?
beware OMWC:
He lures alleged child predators and shames them on Facebook. Now one of his targets is dead.
I’ve got mixed feelings on that. If you go trolling for 14 year olds on the internet, you’re asking for trouble and you may be lucky to not get shot or imprisoned, let alone shamed.
I think the only reason Malcolm is getting sympathy and attention is because he’s gay and black. If he were straight and white, the media wouldn’t be blinking an eye.
It’s hard to argue the cops shouldn’t be going after pedos online, but the vigilante stuff is dangerous. Just getting accused of it and your life is ruined. Don’t know that the cops would be very effective anyways. What a mess.
the question is how many of them are actually trolling for 14 year olds vs trolling for anyone and willing to ignore the fact that the other person is just 14. I strongly question whether many if even any of the men caught up in these sting operations would have ever met and had sex with an actual 14 year old because I don’t think the majority of them are specifically out looking to bang an underage girl and the reality is the number of actual 14 year olds who would give them the time of day is vanishingly small
To Catch a Predator was that long ago? God, the years are truly flying by.
“they allege are or could become sexual predators”
That’s some solid proof.
“You don’t really make a profit in your first year,” Ocasio-Cortez told the now-defunct DNAinfo when she was 22. “To get taxed on top of that is a real whammy.”
In the article I linked from The American Thinker.
I don’t get it here. Here, if you run a loss in a business, you’re not taxed. The IRS taxes losses? Is this accurate?
The IRS doesn’t cover your losses, that’s just like getting taxed.
No. That’s not accurate. Businesses only pay taxes on EBITDA minus D and maybe I. Its net earnings. You can carry forward a certain amount of loss, that’s why companies routinely take huge write downs.
They just write it off Jerry!
“You don’t even know what that means, do you?”
But they do, and they’re the ones writing it off.
It’s like you don’t have any business training at all!
But I don’t even really work here.
In contrast to my “stupid or liar?” comment above, on this issue I’m going with “stupid”.
Uffda. Even her dumb business was a govt sham. She was part of Sunshine Bronx Business Incubator a city run incubator that subsidized businesses.
And she still failed. Who’d a thunk that the world didn’t need more children’s books written by hipsters?
What does she think about registration and licensing fees?
She’s probably talking about payroll taxes?
Or maybe NY state taxes of some kind?
I’m back with stupid. She can’t even learn from direct experience. She is aghast that she would have to pay taxes on a business with losses, yet she pushes for moar higher taxes. That’s touch-a-hot-stove-repeatedly level stupid.
The only thing she has shown any aptitude for is succeeding in government bureaucracies. That’s what her high school science award was, what her grades in college were, etc.
A Florida commission investigating the shooting massacre at a Parkland school has issued an initial report on Wednesday and recommended that teachers who volunteer to undergo firearms training, should be allowed to carry guns.
One thing that really grinds my gears is when these supposed “educators” claim that they shouldn’t have to be expected to take any defensive measures to potential threats. “I’m a teacher not a policeman” they say. Well, I’m an engineer not a policeman and I expect to take reasonable and available means to defend myself against potential threats. IOW, “I’m a *occupation*, not a policeman” is entirely irrelevant.
The 458-page report also blamed school security failures and law enforcement blunders from assistant principals and Broward County Sheriff’s deputies to social service providers and the FBI — some of whom were warned that Cruz was a potential security threat but failed to take action, the Miami Herald reported.
Failures at all levels of gov’t under existing law buy we should (illegally…) disarm everyone because reasons.
The teachers are happy to NOT be policemen, but they sure as hell like to think they are the parents of their students.
McConnell calls Democrat’s House government funding proposal a “non-starter”
Graham may have gone back to being a shitstain, but it’s nice to see that Senator Turtle has a spine (for now, anyway).
I wonder if McConnell’s actions are because he figured out that he could “back” Trump’s plan and be pretty sure that nothing will happen. He doesn’t have to stick his neck out himself. He just points at Trump and says “that guy is calling the shots”.
My gut tells me that it isn’t so much a spine as the fact that Trump gives him cover to do what he really wants to do – nothing.
What color is the sky in Tucker’s reality?
I caught that last night. I thought it was me being too drunk to process what he was talking about.
Tucker has been going after libertarians/ancaps for years because they don’t agree with his idea that the economy needs to be managed. “Free market capitalism isn’t a religion!” as if that is why we support free markets. It’s by far his biggest blind spot.
The American preface of Road to Serfdom has him pegged. I don’t know the exact quote, but essentially Hayek said that conservatives aren’t immune to supporting government planning. The only difference is that they want the government planning to hold up existing privilege, and prog planning is designed to fundamentally change society.
Tucker’s an odd bird. I agree with him on a lot of stuff, but then he comes out of left field with some real doozies.
“who usually describe themselves as fiscally responsible”
Sometimes self perception can be a tad bit off.
If reality matched people’s self-description I’d look like Thor and be hung like a mule.
Although I’ve been told recently that I’m the spitting image of Finan from The Last Kingdom, and that’s actually pretty accurate. So I’ve got that going for me as I enter my 40s.
There’s some semi-crazy friend of a friend who’s convinced I’m the spitting image of Chris Parnell. So I’ve got that going for me.
Hey, that’s a good look. If Chris Parnell wasn’t a professional goofball he’d have a Stately Gentleman thing goin’ on.
Well, now I feel better. Otherwise I have “Just… jackin’ it” whenever I think of the comparison.
Study: Women Film Directors Saw Their Numbers Shrink in 2018
If I did much cinema watching, the last question on my mind is what biology the director possesses. My criteria is “Is the movie any good”.
I’m bemoaning the lack of quadriplegic directors.
FIFY.
I’m not sure the number of females in a sparsely populated field – big-budget movie directors – tells us much of anything.
Stop trying to measure the worth of a movie in terms of its success! They’re all created equal.
That’s part of the problem. The offerings never seem to change.
I was surprised to see it (finally) made money – $132 worldwide.
(time passes)
Nevermind – With a total production and advertisement budget of around $150 million,[10] the film was a box office bomb…
the film was a box office bomb…
And did anybody get fired over it? Not picked up for any new pictures. It says here DuVernay just signed a $100million deal with Warner Brothers.
That’s the problem here. As much as the old studio bosses were absolute bastards, they expected and delivered results. With the current crop in Hollywood, you lost millions of your investors dollars? “Meh, at least I signaled the right social message”.
Notice also that their metric was not big budget movies per se but a “survey of the top 250 films of 2018 at the domestic box office”, meaning the movies that actually made money – the stuff people actually wanted to see. It’s going to be hard to create a quota system to fix that measure, since audiences are most likely not going to patronize a movie based on the characteristics of the director but on the quality of their work. The people who will shell out $15 to see a movie just because it has a female director are few and far between – the movie itself must be entertaining. There are women directors who can make blockbusters, but you can’t force the issue to try to create an artificially maintained parity.
I like to think Kathryn Bigelow would tell these people to just shut the fuck up and make good movies. But, it being Hollywood, that’s probably too much to ask.
A Wrinkle in Time was horrendous. Maybe the worst movie of 2018.
David Hogg Goes to College
David Hogg, supposed victim of the Parkland shooting and anti-gun activist, got the letter 42,749 applicants hope to receive from Harvard: an acceptance letter. In 2018, Harvard accepted only 4.59 percent of applicants, roughly 1,900 persons. Once Hogg’s tweet that announced the good news went viral, eyebrows across the United States were raised in befuddlement.
Hogg’s highest SAT score is 1270, and the average SAT score for admissions into Harvard is roughly 1480. Americans who ascribe to the ideology of meritocracy rightfully struggle with the idea that Hogg is able to meet Harvard requirements with a score approximately 200 points below the average acceptance score. Furthermore, Hogg already received rejection letters to several universities in California, but the premier Ivy League school of America found a place for the anti-Second Amendment activist.
Harvard is circling the drain. If I remember correctly they were one of the schools that let their law students out to protest Kavanaugh.
Is this 1600 or 2400 base SAT?
1600.
Wait, he only got a 1270? I didn’t try and walked away with a 1350. It’s not like that test’s hard.
How insufferable will he be in 4 years when he realizes how much debt he has?
Harvard is pretty generous with the investment income from their $39B endowment. Tuition is zero if the family makes under $65k, 0%-10% of income up to $150k and more with income over $150k.
https://college.harvard.edu/financial-aid/net-price-calculator
I don’t struggle withe idea at all. Harvard is not a meritocracy.
You don’t understand the word. Merit = degree of alignment between your views and SJW canon.
Yeah, and I’m not buying that “average SAT score for admissions” stat, either.
The number is probably actually the average SAT score for general admission, i.e. what the people have to get to get in if they don’t get a diversity or legacy set-aside spot. The fortunate-son Ivy leaguers aren’t getting 1400s.
Exactly. So the question becomes, what percentage are getting in on their merits alone?
Harvard is not a meritocracy.
Correct, gotta keep the
JewsAsians from overrunning the place.See, this is how white privilege works. Lookit the dumb white male who got admitted to Harvard!
If things were “fair”, he’d then struggle to perform the work his more qualified classmates do and fail out, but you can’t fail out of Harvard without really trying to.
To be fair, you don’t have to be that bright to learn at Harvard enough for a career of fucking shit up as a govt bureaucrat.
Americans who ascribe to the ideology of meritocracy rightfully struggle with the idea that Hogg is able to meet Harvard requirements with a score approximately 200 points below the average acceptance score.
Regardless of what we think of Hogg, this statement is idiotic (written by someone who couldn’t get into Harvard?). This says the 25th percentile is 1460 against an average of 1520.
So, yeah, now we can say: it’s charity.
Somewhere, some Asian kid with a perfect SAT score and straight A’s is looking at this story and weeping into his rejection letter from Harvard (and/or planning on burning Harvard to the ground).
Or planning a ground breaking business so she can then hire Harvard grads to do scut jobs and humiliate them.
*sorting resumes*
“Harvard?”
*circular files resume*
“There’s no absolute SAT requirement at Harvard, but they really want to see at least a 1460 to have a chance at being considered.”
My impression of Harvard is that it’s well-regarded for legacy reasons, not so much for the quality of the students it’s currently churning out (much like certain college football programs who somehow made it into the Cotton Bowl) and that the people who most value Harvard degrees are Harvard alumni. I don’t know that there was really ever any merit to Harvard’s reputation other than it became a meeting place for the various scions of the rich and powerful while they were busy earning gentleman’s C’s.
I believe that, for quite some time, Harvard’s academic reputation has really been based on its graduate programs and schools – medical, law, architecture, doctoral, etc. which have actually been pretty strong, at least until the recent tide of wokeness substituted collectivist morality for substantive quality. I suspect that an undergrad degree is probably still a good ticket to a graduate program of some kind at other schools as well.
For some reason, law is still really hung up on the ivies. Both the law school admissions side and the legal profession side.
Wouldn’t be surprised. We used to joke that our diplomas gave us permanent suntans. I’m quite confident that line on my resume has gotten me interviews I probably wouldn’t have gotten otherwise.
Imagine their disappointment when they met me, or, worse, had to work with me.
“Fuck! Are you sure he went to Harvard? Did you call their alumni office to confirm?”
I don’t know that there was really ever any merit to Harvard’s reputation other than it became a meeting place for the various scions of the rich and powerful while they were busy earning gentleman’s C’s.
I think that is the key to the entire equation. Put bluntly, Harvard has a terrific network. A diploma from Harvard will open a lot of doors that would otherwise be closed. As a result, they can rest assured that they will be able to recruit as many 1600 SAT students as they need to in order to bring up the class averages.
Put bluntly, Harvard has a terrific network.
Indeed it does. But I wouldn’t be too quick to dismiss the quality of their faculty, either, at least (perhaps) until recently. They’ve had some stinkers, but they’ve also had some real stars (mostly concentrated, I believe, in their grad schools and programs). The quality of their current faculty, I couldn’t really say.
And students going to Harvard undergrad maybe, every now and then, see them in passing in Cambridge. So, no, the major issue of Harvard as this high-prestige undergraduate program has little or nothing to do with the quality of the education the undergrad students are getting. People aren’t going to Harvard undergrad to study under the star faculty. They’re going to get the ticket into the Harvard alumni network.
Is the quality of the faculty based on some rigorous hiring standards or on a combination of how much money they offer and the prestige of having Harvard on the resume?
My sister is Harvard (med) faculty. She rarely has anything nice to say about the rest of the faculty or even the school in general, but she was willing to kiss a lot of ass years ago to get on their benefits package.
I’m going on oldish impressions here. Not sure at all what the current quality of the faculty is at any level.
I would think quality would be measured in a couple of ways: good teaching (begging the question of what counts as good teaching) and good research (measured not by weight of publication, but by some other metric that would likely vary by field).
Grad schools, and I may be biased, but medical schools in particular, are cesspits of backbiting and petty conflict. You could assemble the absolute top minds in any field on one faculty, and they would squabble endlessly about bullshit.
Correct – the undergraduate education is nothing special – you could do better for far cheaper. It’s all about the networking.
One of the most hilarious things I’ve ever seen was at a MIT alumni meeting I went to with my wife, and a guy approached cause he heard ‘school’ and ‘Boston’. Of course, because he went to Harvard had to make sure everyone knew he went to Harvard within seconds. He didn’t get the reaction he was expecting of admiration and awe.
They all essentially laughed at him and one of them said, “Oh, I’m sorry you had to go to your safety school.” and was 100% serious about it. I could tell he was both furious and humiliated. You could tell he’s use to being the cock of the academic walk, but running into a bunch of brass rats and being treated the way he normally treats other people was fun for me to watch him experience because I’m mean and a bad person.
because he went to Harvard had to make sure everyone knew he went to Harvard within seconds
Yeah, I’ve met those. When asked (which happens less frequently as I age), I usually say I went to law school in Boston. Only if pressed will I say it was Harvard. The only exception is when some prick is trying to bigfoot with their credentials; then I go straight to the credential trump card.
If you’re not a recent graduate, the university you attended is about as important as the elementary school you went to as far as I really care.
I also lost a lot of respect for academia by my time there. It has convinced me that there is an inverse relationship between pomposity and capability.
Same here, UnCiv. I care much more about what you’ve done in the real world.
On the pomposity scale, I think the worst I have seen is a law school (not Harvard, amazingly) that was working with a nonprofit on some programming or other. A member of the nonprofit (a lawyer) made some offhand comment (in writing) about how the ivory tower just doesn’t feel the urgency or productivity that you see in the real world.
The law school actually demanded that he be removed from the board or they wouldn’t continue with the joint programming. Let’s just say, that didn’t happen.
The Harvard Law grads I’ve met have been whip-smart (B-school, too) – but they also seem less likely to whip out the “I went to Harvard” card – that seems more common w/ undergrads.
My friend who works at the Harvard Club has any number of amusing anecdotes about the towering self-regard of some graduates – though it’s 80/20 even there – 80% are on the nice to extremely nice scale – that 20% …
This was a guy in his 40s I’d guess. I have no idea which is more common, but I’ve run into over the years a pretty large number of people who went to Harvard that want to make sure you know they went to Harvard.
Admittedly, I get asked lots about my own Alma Mater, but that’s cause I wear lots of Tar Heel basketball gear and I’m living in the PNW where it is unusual. Otherwise, I don’t think it matters that much.
The topic of education rarely comes up in the social circles I run in. Though both my family and my college friends know. My coworkers don’t care and instead know me by work product.
“How do you know if someone went to Harvard?”
“They tell you.”
The best is the people who went to Harvard Extension School (i.e., local night school) who say the “went to Harvard”. I had a douchebag co-worker who just put “Harvard” on his resume.
When asked (which happens less frequently as I age), I usually say I went to law school in Boston.
I also don’t advertise where I went to school very often in lawyer circles. For me its more because they did and said everything they could to get the most money out of me without having much care as to my success. I should’ve gone to Texas or UVA instead. They both offered me a cheaper degree and a better national network.
My impression, even 30 years ago, was that Harvard was more interested in training up law professors, judges, etc. rather than practicing lawyers.
I was interested in professoring, although now I’m glad I’m not stuck in the academic loony bin. I expect if I had been a law professor, I would have left by now and worked a deal with some BigLaw outfit to do appellate work (the closest real lawyer work to academics).
1) to be clear, I did not go to Harvard. My 3.45 undergrad GPA and white Male shitlord status sealed that before I sat for the LSAT.
2) not many schools focus on making good practicing lawyers. I can count on one hand how many classes were practical preparation for being a good lawyer. It would take all my fingers and some toes to count the classes that were either about wanking to some academic theory or about charging obscene amounts of money to obliquely learn bar exam concepts that you relearn in 2 weeks using a bar prep course.
If the ABA didn’t have all of the law schools by the nuts, I’d say that there’s a great opportunity to improve legal education.
I can count on one hand how many classes were practical preparation for being a good lawyer.
Ditto that. I taught a class on banking law for 2 – 3 semesters. It was only incidentally about banking law; it was mostly a class on legal writing and editing for various audiences, with banking law as the topic of the written work.
I gave one lecture, on the philosophy of money (bottom line, its a consensual hallucination) and the history of banking in Western society (starting, really, with the Templars).
So, you could tell me the size of loans monarchs tended to take out from the Templars?
This is in the distant past, but if memory serves, it was mostly loans to crusaders to gear up and make the trip, secured by their land. The crusader’s business plan was to get enough loot to pay off the loan; many didn’t, which led to the Templars taking their land, which is how the Templars got so wealthy and powerful.
No idea what size the loans were.
To manage this, the Templars developed a network that extended from Europe to the Middle East, and transferred funds across this network using notes and letters, rather than hauling bags of gold coins around. It was essentially a nascent credit-based system with many of the essentials of what we now think of as banking.
I’m trying to run sanity checks on my setting, but getting real numbers for historial transactions seems like pulling teeth. You’d think people giving loans would keep good records.
You’d think people giving loans would keep good records.
I’m sure they did. I also expect most of their records were destroyed when they were purged and their property seized. I mean, if I were the King of France and I was taking their land, I would have destroyed any basis for their claim to it.
I also never tried to do any research on how big the loans were.
Ignoring the fact that the Templars had chapterhouses outside of france, I am also thinking about non-Templar bankers, like those Italian chaps who didn’t get burned for being owed money by the king.
Excellent. Years of living in the area have lowered the value of a Harvard degree in my eyes and raised the value of an MIT degree. Those nerds are, by and large, damn smart (I work with tons of them). I’m much more impressed by MIT alums.
The one guy I know who went to MIT was really smart when it came to math – and pretty dumb when it came to a lot of other things. I’d trust him with math and engineering issues, and seek someone else’s advice for anything else.
I do admit my sample size is one.
Oh, agreed – I don’t want them in charge of my life, but there’s often some serious brainpower there.
I just found out a drinking acquaintance has 3 degrees from MIT – EE, Linguistics and ??? He had both Marvin Minsky and Noam Chomsky
as professors. He’s incredibly smart, but can barely get though life outside of working and drinking heavily.
Where Have All the Vowels Gone?
Consider the muumuu.
dnt gve sht
I hate these pretentious activists! I’ll just come out and say it: The Vowel Movement is full of shit.
*narrows gaze*
Jesus didn’t need vowels. what makes us so special to need them.
Because we’re not working in Aramaic?
Maybe we are working in hieroglyphs! n n nds vwls n thr wrtng (ok maybe no one needs vowels in their writing was a bad sentence for vowellessness)
Even government is in on it. Here in Maryland we have a catch all regulatory agency known as …
the Department of Law Labor And Regulation
for some reason their acronym is DLLR
I read that in the NYT!
For those who may be curious regarding the Bavarian army rank question I had yesterday. The word was Trambour or drummer. Thanks to @rhywun for the discovery. To confirm I reached out to a German historian on a forum. He confirmed it was drummer. I asked additional questions to which I’m waiting for a response. I’m quite the history nerd, but I’ve never really looked into the utilization of drummers during WWI. I presume at most they were used for marching or in company bands. The reason for my curiosity is because the individual I’m looking at is a distant relative of mine. He was killed in the first battle of Ypres. I hope for his sake at his time of death he was armed with a rifle rather than a drum.
Oh and the obligatory you know who else was in a Bavarian Reserve Infantry division who fought at The First Battle of Ypres?
Falco?
You know who else was from Austria?
Franz Klammer?
The Tuhmunatuh?
Steve Irwin?
My dad?
Thanks for the followup – was driving me crazy trying to find the answer.
Got a response regarding me questions. He would have only been a drummer in parades and the for ceremonial events. Otherwise he was a regular soldier. So he likely died fighting in the field, not performing Moby Dick. Sadly he was reported as vermißt(missing) throughout the war until 1917 when he was finally reported gefallen (KIA) on the date of 11-13-14. I’m guessing there wasn’t a body.
Artillery does a number on a person’s distinguishing characteristics.
I hope for his sake at his time of death he was armed with a rifle rather than a drum.
At least it wasn’t a whistle.
I’m curious to hear more about the guy/his position.
I’ve been doing a lot of research on him and his Regiment. I have a good detailed write up on the Regiment that I might submit for an article. As for him, I don’t have a whole lot of info other than his name was Albert, he was 30 years old and a butcher in civilian life. He might have had a wife and kids but the family portion of the stammrolle was not readable. I’m working through our family tree see if I can identify a wife and kids. He also had 2 brothers who were in the Ersatz(Home defense). His father was wounded in the Franco-Prussian war. He fought in several battles before falling early in the war.
For anyone who has German ancestry here is a link for a searchable database of German casualties in WWI.
http://des.genealogy.net/eingabe-verlustlisten/search/index
Sorry typing on my phone. My sentence structure is garbage.
HeAlbert fought in several battles before falling. His father survived the Franco-Prussian war.You know who else was a German casualty in WWI?
Economic freedom?
Daimler-Benz ?
I just clicked the first link on a last name I know is in my family and saw this:
Holy shit. What a meat-grinder.
Can’t remember if Dan Carlin talks about this in hardcore history, but a book I’m reading on Ypres has first hand British accounts. There were so many Germans gunned down that the surviving Germans used the piles of bodies as cover. There was so much smoke combined with the noise and physical shock from artillery Germans were wandering aimlessly being mowed down. Ypres was the baptism by fire for German soldiers in WWI.
Well, now I know how to spell my last name in old written German. No statuses for any of the people though.
found 4. all but 1 reserve infantry
That’s about what I saw, assuming the multiple entries were all the same person, and not six different Karls with the same last name.
I’m not sure the number of females in a sparsely populated field – big-budget movie directors – tells us much of anything.
Oh, sure. Next, you’ll tell me I can get any result I want by carefully manipulating my sample.
Since Q seems to omitted the morning T and A:
https://thesexier.com/girls-flashing-pics/
Fear not! Late to work but Thot Thursday will not let you down!
http://archive.vn/WJtsi
Many motorboats needed.
Whoa, double titties.
That is usually how it works.
“Double titties” is ambiguous. Does it mean two per specimen, or two pair per specimen?
Obviously, more research is needed.
+3 Eccentrica Gallumbits
I have a friend who has 4 nipples. He loves to show them off too.
I have a friend who has 4 nipples
*perks up*
He loves to show them off too.
*haz disappoint*
Dem Rep. Hank Johnson: Trump Is ‘an Anti-Immigrant, Racist Strongman’ Like Hitler
Johnson said, “Americans elected an authoritarian, an anti-immigrant, racist strongman to the nation’s highest office. Donald Trump and his ‘Make America Great Again’ followers who want to return American back to a time where white men and white privilege were unchallenged, and where minorities and women were in their place. These folks now control the highest office of the land. Donald Trump supporters are older, less educated, less prosperous, and they are dying early. Their life spans are decreasing, and many are dying from alcoholism, drug overdoses, liver disease, or simply a broken heart caused by economic despair.”
He continued, “Much like how Hitler took over the Nazi party, Trump has taken over the Republican party.”
Such measured and thoughtful criticism of the president and his supporters.
He added, “Hitler was accepting of violence toward the achievement of political objectives. Trump encouraged violence against protesters at his rallies, and his messaging about Charlottesville, that there were bad people on both sides, sent a powerful message of approval to the far right racists in America.”
Progjection thy name is Hank.
He concluded, “Americans, particularly black Americans, can’t afford to make that same mistake about the harm that could be done by a man named Hitler or a man named Trump.”
And what action do you suggest? Never mind economic indicators that are showing that blacks are better off now.
The only reply to anything ol’ Hank Johnson says is “Is Guam still right side up?”
That would be this Hank Johnson.
Always looking out for the good people of Guam.
Late to the party, Hank.
Some profound and deep insights there Hank.
This guy does realize Trump actually has a disproportionate number of black supporters for a Republican right?
Kanye “MAGA” West and Ben “Exalted Cyclops” Carson, the new faces of white supremacy.
That’s why they’ve been shrieking about him for two years.
The key to the Democrats competing is their enormous margin in the black vote and slightly less but still huge margin in the Latino vote. That’s also why they shriek for open borders, because they need the bodies. If Latino immigrants voted by 2/3rds margins for Republicans, Obama would have had the southern border declared a drone free fire zone.
Trump doesn’t need to outright win the black vote, or the Latino vote, just eat into the margins. If he takes the black vote from 90-10 Democrat to 80-20, much less 75-25, it really hurts the overall Dem cause.
Hank Johnson, skewing IQ tests for minorities lower since 1954.
that there were bad people on both sides, sent a powerful message of approval to the far right racists in America
Yeah, “bad people on both sides” does not equal approval of either side. Nice try, Mr. Johnson.
If you say there are bad people on both sides, but only talk about the bad people on the other side, you don’t really think there are bad people on both sides.
I live in the most diverse neighborhood in Minneapolis. There are mixed-race couples here and that’s great. But on TV commercials lately, I have noticed an explosion in mixed-race couples and families that is significantly greater in number than in my neighborhood. It seems that nearly 50% of commercials are like this. If you ask me, it’s shameless pandering. JATNAS.
It’s now racist for white people to marry each other.
Yes, and they tend to depict one of the least common couplings, a white man and a black woman. You see a bunch of those commercials and very few, if any, with a black man and a white woman, which I’m pretty sure is the most common.
I’ve noticed that also. Its vastly disproportionate to what you see in the real world. Combine that with the trope that, if a commercial has any white men at all, at least one of them must be a bumbling doofus man-child, and I think you have an insight into why some people believe that “elite” culture is irredeemably hostile to white males.
Shall we discuss the various perpetrators in ADT commercials?
Millenials, right?
If you require me to suspend more disbelief than I am willing you have failed at your task. This is true if the movie is 90 minutes or 30 seconds.
I saw some commercial showing a sea of floating emoji heads flying around just yesterday and thought to myself (not out loud!), gee the dark ones seem way overrepresented. I figure everyone is just playing CYA against being attacked by twitter mobs for not having “enough diversity” so let’s just crank it up to 11.
I think you’ve got the right of it. “Diversity” as it is understood by people who get angry about it is, and I’m being generous here, not about accurate representation so much as equal representation, which is to say that if a given population is, say, 10% of the whole, they should nevertheless receive as much screen time as any other population, even if the other population is numerically greater. White people are a special case, because of “privilege”, and don’t get to complain, so it’s safer to just throw ethnic groups at the screen (generally of the same groups as the loudest complainers) and not worry about whitey than to aim even for equal screen space.
Foreigners watching American TV vastly over-estimate the black population in the U.S.
It has remained a remarkably steady 13%.
+ 1 Margaret Sanger
https://thehill.com/policy/finance/423572-house-dem-bill-to-require-presidential-nominees-to-disclose-10-years-of-tax
While the GOP-controlled Senate is not expected to take up the package, the bill allows House Democrats to outline some of their top goals.
mmmmkay.
I’m no Republican, and Trump is obviously an unworldly narcissist, but this thing about getting into candidates’ taxes is so annoying. For me an election is about sorting candidates’ principles, platform, and plans. I don’t care how much money they have or how they came by it; I don’t care who they bed. These regulations serve only to enrich lawyers, amongst whom I do not number.
Ridiculous. The Dems don’t want this any more than the GOP. It’s just posturing.
I also wonder about the constitutionality of the matter. The constitution lists only a few requirements to be president: age, natural born citizen, and residency requirements. I think a presidential candidate could make a compelling case that, if this passed, it violates the Constitution by placing additional restrictions on the president that are not supported by the law.
That’s sound arguing, but, of course, it’s even easier to say that all election requirements add de facto qualifications.
Maybe some day we should come up with a base of laws and regulations that have any merit whatsoever. It’s easy to waive off almost all federal laws as commerce clause over-reach, but the question remains: what is the rightful legislative and enforcement function of American states, counties, and cities.
I basically prefer my own heritage: NAP violators are dealt with by the intended victims, who, if they would be so kind, might call the sheriff and let him know where to collect the corpses because I hear it’s gonna get hot tomorrow.
all election requirements add de facto qualifications.
Offhand, I can’t think of any statutory requirements for running for President, or, if you win the election, taking office.
I meant things like ballot qualification or campaign funds reporting
So… there’s this article in the New Yorker about some woman who is allegedly “redefining the way we think about inequality” or some such noxious hogwash. I got bogged down in a morass of pointless drivel about her tastes in clothing and her situational styles of laughter and god-knows-what-else. I escaped via the briar patch.
Somebody tougher than I might make it through that thicket of goddessworshipery to find some meaningful nugget of useful information.
Not me, boy. Not me.
Well, who needs to have supportable ideas based on empirical evidence and rigorous analysis. Her ideas fit the narrative and, like, ohmigaaad, she’s, like, so cool!
Yeah, that’s what the allegedly thinking set’s intellectual discourse has been reduced to. And yet they’re appalled that much of the country is attracted to Donald Trump.
Send Scruffy’s orphans into that derp mine. They are specialists in that mining technique.
*gathers orphans, gives them flashlights and some rope*
But on TV commercials lately, I have noticed an explosion in mixed-race couples and families that is significantly greater in number than in my neighborhood. It seems that nearly 50% of commercials are like this. If you ask me, it’s shameless pandering. JATNAS.
No kidding. Where’s my smoking hot cinnamon girl?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aAdtUDaBfRA
Type O would like a word, too…..https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BO9aD4mzSE8
what immigration is best for the citizens of the nation
I had used some shitlord language to caricature the fact that I was happy with no more.
BUT! I completely respect the other sympathy: that there are lots of great folk in the rest of the world, and why shouldn’t they get to go anywhere they do no harm? I accept that as a high, pure philosophy that is not apt to be held except for profoundly intelligent and decent people. I just don’t want the consequences because I’m a selfish bastard.
there are lots of great folk in the rest of the world, and why shouldn’t they get to go anywhere they do no harm?
Sure. Ideals are nice; everyone should have them.
I just don’t want the consequences because I’m a selfish bastard.
See, also, what immigration policies benefit the current citizenry.
Got a kick out of this when I watched this episode of Sliders last night.
Heh. Truly a horror universe.
Where are you able to watch Sliders?
I have it on DVD
Did that show have a proper ending? I’d consider buying it if so. I remember really liking it but missed that last year or two.
Ends on a Cliffhanger ‘Did they actually make it home?’
You’re probably better off having missed the end. The first few seasons were great.
Yeah, in the latter season(s?) Jerry O’Connell and John Rhys-Davies were gone and the show moved to the Sc-Fi channel.
Bummer. Perhaps I’ll just cherish my memories.
Pointless obsession with diversity, ch 9,753
To be clear, women are underrepresented on both sides of the aisle in Congress. Just under 1 in 4 members will be women next session. But less than 1 in 10 Republican members will be women.
And their numbers will decline this year, both at the national and state level — in Congress, there will be 20 GOP women, down from the current 29. And in state legislatures, there will be 660 Republican women, down from 705 now. That has people like Nickloes worried that the party could alienate voters and do a less effective job of governing.
In a recent interview with NPR, retiring Florida Representative Ileana Ros-Lehtinen also expressed outrage at the declining number of GOP women in Congress.
“It is unbelievable. It is astounding. It is eye-popping, and I hope that our Republican leaders see this as a challenge and a problem that we need to fix,” she said.
Just another stick to beat those nasty old Rethuglitards with.
Perhaps the vicious personal attacks on Republican women candidates and office holders by the media and the Democrats have something to do with it?
I guess they are saying people should have voted for the Republican women instead of the Democrat candidates that took their place?
So. Bored. Working on a “forward-funded” (i.e. prepaid) contract during a shutdown is wild, man. In a very boring way.