Zompist Bboard Again

1° Life on a liveable planet is essential to the greater good. A common thread with pet issues is that the people who believe in them think that their issue is the most important issue, and furthermore that it is most important now . Globally, if we don't defeat fascism we will not have a liveable ...

Light reading: The Know-It-All, a comedy about an aging "smart boy in school" who decides to read the Encyclopedia Brittanica to reclaim his genius mantle. Super duper right-wing, but the author being a minority puts a cap on how much of an asshole he can be. What do you find right-win ab...

The June and July temperatures are similar between Glasgow and Sydney as is the total precipitation. This is quite ambiguous… do you mean June–July temperatures in Glasgow are similar to June–July in Sydney? If so that’s actually quite a difference, because that’s winter here but summer there. Yes,...

1° How do get the idea that Green-ness would be a pet issue? By "pet issue" I mean any issue which one is willing to sacrifice the greater collective good over. Take Gaza for instance -- while what the Israeli gov't has been doing there is horrific, being willing to risk getting Trump ele...

Glasgow is close to my hometown, Edinburgh, which is also a major city in Scotland. One of the most negative aspects of own current PhD is the sometimes somewhat erratic supervising so, if you have good news about the supervisor, that is important. The June and July temperatures are similar between ...

fair enough, i agree it's not a slam dunk but then again, why dismantle the apparatus of empire? Because of ideology. It's a mix of neoliberalism, libertarianism, fascism and Christian fundamentalism. Especially relevant are the first two parts that say "Big Government is Bad". That is of...

A lot of left-leaning thinkers today like Gabor Mate romanticize tradition and authority. I regard these people as more authoritarian than the Stalinists. You mean this Gabor Maté ? I admittedly know little about him but nothing is mentioned about political views and the only tradition is the use o...

Leftist media is supposed to be for the working masses. If it's fringe or for educated people, there's something wrong with its priorities. It needs to feature more exclusives on wrestling, strip shows or whatever until gutter rats are seen reading it. You can either appeal to school marms or the e...

The mistake everyone's making (including myself) is in believing the debate is about socialism vs. capitalism or conservatism vs. liberalism. I really thought so myself until recently. But I've come to realize this is entirely unimportant. The only political question right now is whether we still w...

Light reading: The Know-It-All, a comedy about an aging "smart boy in school" who decides to read the Encyclopedia Brittanica to reclaim his genius mantle. Super duper right-wing, but the author being a minority puts a cap on how much of an asshole he can be. What do you find right-win ab...

Derek Lowe has a good article on What's Happening Inside the NIH and NSF . I implore everyone in the US to write to your representatives as he requests at the end — this is some of the most scary stuff I've yet seen, and its consequences aren't restricted to the US. It is really quite disappointing...

Stop debasing yourself with the "but they too", it comes across as very infantile and it does nobody any good. Indeed, violence is part of the problem, as Martin Luther King noted in is 19657 book. It is somewhat fitting that the Trump inaugaration took place during MLK celebrations becau...

I read recently (but I have yet not found it again, I think it was by Ryan Holiday) that you can better tell the future of events by looking at similar past events, not by following the news. I therefore looked at summaries of Trump’s (ghostwriter’s) books to compare them to Hitler’s Mein Kampf, whi...

So, if I understand it, the Republicans are now defunding the police. https://www.axios.com/2025/01/31/trump-funding-freeze-house-democrats-ad And, even before that, there was a Republican to Democratic shift of 23 points for Democratic victory: https://www.radioiowa.com/2025/01/28/democrat-wins-iow...

Are you suggesting that all the news reports and such regarding the rise of reaction and its dire threat are simply wrong or exaggerated? No, please read what I wrote: Therapy is not a matter of someone telling you that there's nothing to worry about. It is a matter of discovering why you catastrop...

I'd love to this tested out sometimes, preferably not by Elon Musk. The other tech leaders are not much better than Musk. A lot of Silicon Valley supported the right because they think the left no longer supports tech. Unless I am mistaken, you often make Marxist-inspired arguments. Here they are r...

I agree with Torco that arguments are less original and I would relate this the current dearth of disruptive science: https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-022-04577-5.

I am not sure whether I enjoy arguments but they are certainly things that I tend towards and think about often.

However, nothing prevents us from substituting these with other sources. The sun can be replaced with thorium reactors. Ecology can be replaced with imported materials and artificial tools. If materials are imported from under the ground or outer space, it may technically no longer be a part of any...

You seem to be sceptical about that article. Is that true? If so, why? I can't speak for Travis, but I'm generally skeptical of "everything was better in the past" texts. And I find "those new ways of doing things are ruining everything" positions especially depressing when they...

Just making the comments does not count. What counts is having arguments and/or data to support it. Desmurget has both in buckets and spades. Sources include https://www.researchgate.net/publication/237109087_What_reading_does_for_the_mind , https://psycnet.apa.org/record/2017-47887-003 and https:/...