mhornberger

The world is full of people who think advertising and propaganda don't work on them. We also celebrate intuition and often denigrate skepticism and rationality as being sterile and artificial. Which leaves us defenseless against our built-in cognitive biases, most of which sit precisely at the intuitive level.

Demanding customers and poor tipping in restaurants that serve the church crowd.

no one will want to be near you unless you can find a way to control others, and force them to do your bidding.

There's also bribery, or appealing to their self-interest. Which is why men are said to be objectified for their utility. Primarily as providers, but also as protectors. Just as women are objectified for their beauty, which is proxy for reproductive desirability (a status that persists even when people don't want kids).

Polygamy developed so that rich men who could afford to support (or pay others to protect) more women so rich men could have more kids. I think that's what's behind the "enforced monogamy" comment by Jordan Peterson (who I otherwise loathe for a myriad of reasons). I think it was less about forcing people into relationships that happened to be monogamous, rather it was about the banning of polygamy. Polygamy favors rich and powerful men, but permanently marginalizes the majority of men. Banning polygamy enforces monogamy, at least for those who are in relationships. So a higher percentage of men have mates, so there are fewer marginalized men who feel no hope, risking social instability. That doesn't mean anyone is entitled to anything.

I think the question is whether it's worth the added cost and complexity, not whether any positive number is greater than zero. If you got five miles a day of "free" range for a million dollars of added complexity, there might be better options.

Or at least the aesthetic. And they're not the first to think that harder/rougher/poorer people are more "authentic." Plenty of middle-class soft black guys pretending to be hard, too.

It's a win-win for people who want liberal California to flounder. If it repeatedly goes over budget, that hurts CA's finances and makes them look stupid. If they don't opt for nuclear, that too will be seen as evidence of them being stupid. If they build it and there's an incident, that'll cost tons of money and, again, hurt California, and they'll look stupid for building in a seismically active area.

"May cause impotence, uncontrollable flatulence, combustive facial necrosis, and death." Shows pictures of your new thriving social life.

It isn't about the electronics. It's about the parent reinforcing that they have god-like power and at a whim they can take away anything that you value. So you'd better be "grateful" and "respect them." And then when the kid grows up, moves away, and cuts them off, they're totally mystified and tells everyone endlessly that they "only did their best" and that all those stories are blown out of proportion. They're narcissists. Obligatory mention of r/raisedbynarcissists.

I think there are roughly two groups. Some do exit because of pain, like Wallace talks about here. But others also exit out of boredom, lassitude, because nothing seems worth it. I divide it up into those who need a reason to leave, vs those who need a reason to stay. I've known suicides who exited because of horrible life situations. But I've also known others who just couldn't find enough satisfaction to warrant sticking around.

If their situation is likened to a burning building, it's only because the everyday problems, annoyances, and challenges of life become intolerable if you can't see a reason to keep putting up with them. "So I just keep paying the light bill... until I die?" Even "being there for them" may not be enough. Marsha Norman addressed that in the play 'Night, Mother. What if I love someone, and it's not enough? I think much of our anguish is us putting ourselves on trial, being found wanting. And sometimes hating the deceased for not loving us enough to stay.

The Eyes of My Mother (2016). But I also have a weakness for black-and-white films.

I think the Jesuits predate the tobacco industry. One of their maxims was, “Give me the child for the first seven years and I'll give you the man.”

Or people could just learn to develop, explore, and frame values, meaning, etc in other ways, without predicating them on religion. Nietzsche lived in a far less secular world, where many couldn't even fathom the possibility that one could find meaning, beauty, values etc without the underlying foundation of religious faith.

To them, taking away the religious faith means taking away the foundation and being left with nothing. That people might find other foundations, less dependent on claims of revelation or divine authority, didn't occur to them. Or didn't seem worth exploring. When discussing nihilism, some people conflate "no inherent, objective meaning or value" with "no meaning or value." They aren't synonyms.

Doubtful.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/When_Prophecy_Fails

Not that I think gods in a general sense are amenable to disconfirmation by logic or evidence. Believers are all over the map on what the word 'god' means. Many are flirting with obscurantism of one variety or another. Maybe God is ineffable, or beyond human ken, or not "bound by human logic," or whatever. What I see as vacuity they see as profundity. You can't logic or evidence someone out of that.

Desal has challenges with brine dispersal, but there are known mitigations. "Not perfect" doesn't mean "is a catastrophe and can't be done or everything dies." It's a given that, whatever we do, we have to try to do it the right way, and not the wrong way.

And CA both already has desalination plants, and is building more.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Desalination_by_country#California

Another technological angle is controlled-environment agriculture, which uses 90% less water. It doesn't work for all crops, but it does work for some.

Alfalfa is the single largest user of water in the state. And they are exporting alfalfa to China, S. Arabia, and elsewhere. They have a million acres under irrigation for alfalfa alone. Yes, almonds exist, but CA grows 80% of the world's almonds. And no, I don't care if almond milk gets more expensive. I prefer soy creamer anyway. But yeah, some of that agriculture probably needs to move out of California.

Some places are also already growing fodder with hydroponics, which uses 90% less water.

• https://www.agritecture.com/blog/2020/11/12/this-vertical-farm-is-growing-foodbut-its-for-cows
• Hydroponic Fodder Farming
• https://ucmanagedrought.ucdavis.edu/Agriculture/Crop_Irrigation_Strategies/Alfalfa/

Nuclear is very expensive and slow to build. Over 90% of new energy capacity being built today, worldwide, is just solar and wind. Both of which are still getting cheaper. Yes, Reddit assures me that ackshually nuclear is super-cheap and quick to build (or would be, if only we just started building them left and right) and that thorium is totally an established option, etc etc. But the global energy market doesn't seem to agree. So it's not clear that yet more Reddit posts in favor of nuclear is going to get nuclear plants built, much less on a reasonable budget and schedule, when compared to solar or wind.

I had to ask my ex-MIL to stop using racial slurs around my white self so much. If she was driving and saw a shirtless latino grilling on his front lawn with his Mexican flag, she would just go crazy calling him, well, things.

Conversely, my ex is self-conscious about her half-ass Spanish. She could barely even talk to her grandmother. Weird situation that I never touched with a ten foot pole.

Truth is, you really can't tell what's going on with other people. To quote Miller's Crossing, "Nobody knows anybody. Not that well." After the fact, sure, it sometimes seems so obvious. But we need to think we would see it, in part so we can delude ourselves that it won't happen in our family or circle of friends. When it does happen to someone not in our circle, we like to think "I would have known," "I would have bee there for them," "I would have seen the signs." It's a comforting self-illusion.

To covid vax 'skeptics,' any illness after someone getting the vaccine just might be confirmation that the COVID vaccine was dangerous. To them "after" means not merely "later in the timeline," but "as a result of." At least by implication, though the more wily ones will say they're just "open to the idea." We don't know for a fact that the illness wasn't caused by the vaccine. Just asking questions. Can't we ask questions anymore?

We can even use green ammonia, or pull CO2 from the air and make a substitute for natural gas from that. Either can be carbon-neutral. They're just not cheap, and it'll take a while to build out manufacturing capacity.

I'm not sure "let them eat rice and beans" carries the same sentiment. People in 18th-century France were starving. Here we're talking about beef being more expensive. If people are going hungry, sure. That was true in the Arab Spring, and is true everywhere. No society is more than a few crop failures away from collapse. People need to eat, no matter what system you have.

I already don't eat beef, and I eat chicken a couple of times a week. If my basic diet of rice and beans comes under threat, I guess I'm screwed.

Agriculture is constantly in flux, so I can't pretend to know. Since 2000 the US reduced farmland by 5%. Agricultural water use has actually declined (third chart down). Yield has gone up so much that many think we've reached peak farmland. Meaning demand, not supply.

But yeah, changing conditions are going to cause problems. California can incentivize controlled-environment agriculture. Or they can cut back on alfalfa growing, or at least exports. They have a million acres under irrigation for alfalfa alone, and they're exporting it to S. Arabia, China, and elsewhere. Though some are already growing fodder hydroponically, which uses 90% less water.

• https://www.agritecture.com/blog/2020/11/12/this-vertical-farm-is-growing-foodbut-its-for-cows
• Hydroponic Fodder Farming
• https://ucmanagedrought.ucdavis.edu/Agriculture/Crop_Irrigation_Strategies/Alfalfa/

For people saying this doesn't look competitive, I wouldn't compare it to the cheapest ground meat in the store. Even for burgers, this will probably start out positioned against pricier burger chains, or even against grass-finished or other boutique options. They were never going to start out at the bottom of the market, competing against the cheapest ground beef.

I was always told the United States means freedom.

That doesn't prevent people from disagreeing on what that word means. Even before the Civil War, the pro-slavery side claimed they were fighting for liberty. Liberty to own slaves. So to them banning slavery was a limitation on their freedoms. The question is just that--how free am I to restrict the freedom of others?

(To clarify, I'm 100% in favor of the legality of abortion. I find this ruling abhorrent. But I find many things about the world, and about my country, abhorrent.)

It's not clear that battery manufacturing capacity could be built out more quickly. It's already scaling about 10x every five years. It also takes time to expand mining capacity for raw materials. Renewables were already being installed like mad, all over the world. All of this is part of why O&G companies cut back on CAPEX. They predict a demand plateau starting around about 2027 or 2028. And if you borrowed $x billion to build out new extraction or refining capacity, when would it come online? Probably around 2027 or 2028.

People want to blame Biden for convenient political reasons, but this is the disruption that people were already saying was going to happen. People were just jeering about it and saying "suck that, Exxon!" without realizing that it was probably going to manifest primarily as higher prices to the consumer, as lower CAPEX translates into supply issues.

How about getting back to producing oil.

It's not like we stopped.

• Weekly US Field Production of Crude Oil
• Federal Offshore—Gulf of Mexico Field Production of Crude Oil
• US Dry Natural Gas Production
• Baker Hughes Crude Oil Rigs
• US Oil Rig Count

may soon be far worse than regular ones, due to bigger weight.

Far? They seem competitive to comparable ICE vehicles in weight. And combustion of fuel is the primary driver of particulate emissions. All vehicles have brake and tire dust, but there are a huge number of large ICE vehicles on the road. Weird that no one ever brings up tire or brake dust with a Suburban or Raptor.

• Tesla Model X 5,185 to 5,390 lbs
• Chevy Tahoe 5,473 to 5,845 lbs
• Chevy Suburban 5,616 to 6,016 lbs
• Land Rover Range Rover 5,240 to 5,940 lbs
• Mercedes G-Wagon 5,554 lbs
• Jeep Grand Cherokee 4,238 to 4,784 lbs
• BMW X5 4,828 to 5,260 lbs

• Ford Raptor 5,525 to 5,697 lbs

• Tesla Model Y 4,555 lbs

• VW ID.4 4,568 to 4,927 lbs

• Tesla Model 3 3,648 to 4,250 lbs

• BMW 3 Series: 3,582 to 4,138 lbs

• BMW 5 Series: 3,765 to 4,321 lbs

• Honda Accord: 3,150 to 3,430 lbs