Item the 1st – With respect to a recent comment exchange twixt Gustave (?) and UCS regarding traffic circles and signals. As much as it pains me to side, once again, with UCS, the proper answer is always yes, signal your exit from a traffic circle. “Pointless and wrong” couldn’t be more wrong. And two wrongs make a right – with a proper turn signal. There’s no need to get into theoretical concerns about what constitutes going straight vs turning – if you want theory on straight paths, look into null geodesics. The core issue is “What is the purpose of turn signals on a vehicle?”. It is manifestly to indicate to others using the roadway what your intentions are – that’s the only purpose, whether legally required or not. Hence why there is a special place in hell reserved for those that don’t signal when transitioning to a turn only lane, but activate the signal once they are fully into the turn only lane (never mind taking 3/4 of the length of said turn lane to actually get into the lane, we’ll tack that charge onto their sentence). I needed to know your intentions when you were in the normal traffic lane planning to move into the turn lane, you jack-ass! Now that you are in the turn only lane, your intentions are clear and I don’t need your damn signal. An even specialer place in hell is reserved for those who turn on their signal after the turn is actually initiated. There’s no explanation for your tardness
So traffic circles – yes, absolutely signal an exit. It doesn’t matter whether exiting means continuing on your null geodesic or an actual turn. You are signaling to those around you, both behind and either exiting or continuing as well as those waiting to enter the circle at that point, your intentions. You are leaving the circle which means to those behind that you may slow down slightly and to those entering that they may, depending on overall speed, have a chance to enter the circle in the gap created by your exit. You are giving necessary information to other motorists that will help keep the efficiency, flow, and safety of the traffic. So yes, signal your exit, damn it. Don’t make me create yet another level of hell for you to occupy. Maybe not below ‘signal in the middle of the turn’ people, but low enough.
Item the 2nd – “Well, then you would want some manganese.” – Sheldon Cooper. Dr. Andrew Huberman was on in the background the other day going on about some nonsense. I’ll preface this by saying that good information can be gleaned from his podcasts, but all too often I find that it’s buried in so much tedious ‘detail’ so as to be largely useless. Why might I say that? Well in this episode, he was apparently hyper-focused on lymph nodes or some such. So he was going on about exercises. For you lymph nodes. Jump up and down in a certain fashion twice a day while managing your prostrate with your thumb at a precise angle of 2.5 degrees for optimal lymph health. Followed by a 20 minute advertisement for some large sequence of supplements with fancy sounding chemical designations in ultra-precise ratios that were absolutely essential to optimal human function.
Really? It struck me that a lot of people in the ‘new’ health space – keto, carnivore, workout, etc. – have fallen into this ultra-precise set of requirements for health. Rogan with his ‘red-light’ and cold plunges and vitamins supplementation and regular stem cell treatment. Exercise gurus putting stationary bikes at the bottom of a pool. Some, like Huberman, recommending a veritable pantheon of absolutely necessary supplements. Strangely enough, often times heavily monetized with ads and/or personal companies selling aforementioned products and processes. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t object to people making a buck off their expertise and willingness to talk to you about it. People like Ben Bikman, PhD have product lines and membership groups that they monetize. Shawn Baker hawks his health company, Revero.
And then I also wonder, ‘what came first?’ Are people like Huberman hawking every supplement under the sun because of advertising dollars or because they independently arrived at the conclusion that 57,000 supplements are necessary for humans to survive and the supplement companies came looking for them? With e.g. Bikman and Baker, they are directly hawking their expertise and providing a service, not just up-selling a bunch of supplements. Nor do they push the idea that you need to do a bunch of complicated things to be healthy.
What am I trying to say? I wonder that myself sometimes. But it basically boils down to: Evolution (or God if you prefer) already solved the problem of how to thrive for you and it can’t be that complicated or we wouldn’t be here. Eat decent species appropriate food, get outside from time to time, and move around a bit. We’re not going to change quickly enough at that level to make these behaviors unnecessary. Maybe some basic supplementation under certain conditions. But if someone is telling you to jump up and down while massaging your lymph nodes and mix exactly 3.14159 parts beta-hydroxyl-theonate-bicarbonate to 0.100100100 L3-triptophostate-theobromate to 1 part 9.5pH ultra hydrating water (if you use 0.999 parts of the water, you’ll lose all the benefit and probably die), then they are more than likely so far up their own ass so as to be full of shit.
Item the 3rd – Make your Liar Music Choice. And in the realm of ‘what came first, the idea/conviction/belief or the desire to fleece people’, the recent new that Bill Gates had sort of deviated from some of the catechisms of the Church of the Holy Climate Change, got me thinking along the same lines, about him but also more generally about the idea of dismissing someones idea if they are making money off it. I’m the last person to defend Bill Gates and I generally believe he falls more directly in the realm of dedicated, cynical grifter, but I think one needs to give him the same consideration: Did he arrive at the conclusion that fossil fuels and meat consumption and illness in Africa were a dire threat to humanity and therefore invest billions in green energy companies and pharmaceutical companies? Or did he see an opportunity to make money and so cynically adopted the trappings of those beliefs? What is the direction of the arrow of causality? Maybe both are true at the same time; one starts off a ‘true-believer’ but over time becomes a cynical grifter.
A similar situation arises in politics in general. I often hear anti-freedom, I mean anti-gun, groups complain that senator X or congressman Y is in the pocket of the NRA. They get all kinds of contributions from the NRA and then vote against gun control. See, money is corrupting our pure politicians to do the evil will of the NRA. Now hold on a second, which comes first? In cases involving the NRA, it’s almost always the support of gun rights that comes first. I know that if were ever to give money to a politician (I won’t, but that’s besides the point; I will, occasionally vote for one, and that’s sort of like money for them), I’m certainly going to seek out one that supports gun rights. Gun rights organization work the same way – their going to support politicians who support gun rights. It’s not the contributions that make senator X vote against your latest anti-freedom bill. Senator X is pro gun rights and is going to vote against it on principle – the NRA makes a campaign contribution to him because of that vote. The direction of causality is Principle -> support, not money -> buy a vote.
If I can make that distinction with gun rights, I have to give the same consideration on the other side. Yes, even when it comes to pharmaceutical companies. What came first? Do pharma companies donate to a politician to buy their vote, or do they donate to politicians that genuinely believe in better health through dosing and believe that the government buying (the illusion of) health care for people is a legitimate function of the state and dosing them is part of that health? There are people who genuinely believe those things and many of them run for office. Do green energy companies or NGOs or “philanthropic” groups donate to politician to buy their vote on Church of Climate Change legislation, or donate to politicians who already believe that? Funding for mutilating children under the guise of gender “care”?
Obviously, in some cases, the arrow of causality DOES go in the opposite direction and maybe it’s a bi-directional arrow in many cases. Maybe when you see ‘blanket’ donations across a broad spectrum of politician (which is often the case with e.g. pharma), that’s a big clue that the arrow is largely in the direction of buying support rather than ideological sympathy. But I think one should also be careful – don’t assume that because someone is getting support from (or supporting/investing in some sector of the economy) some ideological group or business sector, that their support is being bought or that they are cynically investing in something they don’t believe in just to turn a profit. Their position may be driven by belief and conviction, and people and organizations will obviously preferentially direct their resources and support to people of the same belief system. It is dangerous for us to assume it’s all a grift; that’s susceptible to child-like solutions – “We need to get the money out of politics!” as well as mis-underestimating how far gone some of our fellow citizens and institutions are.
Always cause and effect and which is which. In the case of the political, the answer is to limit what the state can do. Then trying to figure out which is which, what is regulatory capture and what is ideological agreement, becomes, if not unimportant, at least less important. It’s unfortunate that societies too far above the Dunbar number can’t seem to consistently limit others power over individuals. Fucking people.
Shorter Article: Damn kids, get off my lawn!!1!
Thanks, BADBEEFx16 for saying the things nobody else would.
His last two words are the essence of the article.
Well, at least it’s not sheep, eh?
I thought it was x’DEADBEEF’
It’s 0xDEADBEEF.
Do better, nerds.
Now I want a hamburger.
Yeah, BADBEEFx16 is the guy playing the Superbowl halftime show.
I’m not really into DADBEEF myself but Rule 32….
(is that like Rule 34, but with no hands?)
Dammit I changed it to 34 but undo-fucked it or something.
We totally need a tinfoil/conspiracy tag.
NTTAWWT. Srsly.
AGREED
I take a lot of supplements. And I like to accelerate through traffic circles with my hazards on. Occasionally I will roll down the window and cackle whilst brandishing an empty whiskey bottle I save for just such an occasion.
I back into diagonal parking spots.
Beautiful. Do you take fifteen tries to do it? That would be awesome.
While eating deep-dish pineapple pizza.
Finally found the latest vintage of a wine that I am collecting. I have been looking since last spring. Guess what. It’s 20% higher than 18 months ago. I wonder why an import is costing so much more these days.
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/judge-rules-against-ucla-prof-suspended-after-refusing-lenient-grading-for-black-students/ar-AA1SNVBk
The professor should have ignored the email or simply replied “No”.
5 years of wrangling over an email…
[head desk]
*reads some of the email*
Yeah, that’s asking to be canceled. He was entirely correct of course but file this under “things you are not allowed to say or do in the United States if you want to keep your job”.
Item the first.
Drive over the top of the damn thing if you can.
I seem to remember an idiots in cars where some guy flew across a traffic circle?
Apropos
lol
Well, you can consider it but then you run up against the feeling that hardly any of them are arguing in good faith. Few of them seem to believe in much of anything other than obtaining and maintaining power. It’s reflected in their promotion of batshit fantasies that have no basis in reality like the “green deal deal”, “housing first”, or “my truth”. Nobody actually believes any of that.
Nobody actually believes any of that.
Are you sure about that? Maybe not AOC. The people who vote for her? I think a not inconsiderable fraction actually do.
Yeah but it’s like believing in the Tooth Fairy. They insist these things are real but deep down they know it’s bullshit.
deep down they know it’s bullshit.
You have more faith in people than I.
TBH I do swing wildly between extreme cynicism and sappy romanticism.
“Nobody actually believes any of that.” Largely correct, IMO. Many/most repeat the same dogmatic chants in order to signal their v̵i̵r̵t̵u̵e̵ belonging to The Group. The shit they spew could easily be changed and no one would really notice, as long as that The Group flocked in sync.
(Don’t wanna stand out. Too easy to spot. Unsafe. <– The Social primate kicking in. People want to *belong.*)
Frog boiling, and the easiest example of the Overton shift: In 2003 Lefties were united against female genital mutilation in the ME, properly so. Twenty years later, they're proudly promoting "transing" and kindergarten Drag Queen Story Hours. The people didn't change political teams midstream, but spurned on by Obama.
Mutilating prepubescent children is evil. It was evil when it was broken bottles and sand. Lasers and lab coats just put a Group-Approved smiley face on it so the same leftists can be proud of it. No one has converted. Just altered their perceptions.
All right I gotta say something here. Gun rights are negative rights, meaning nobody has to take action in order for you to exercise your rights. This whole “healthcare is a human right“ thing, is complete bullshit. Somebody has to be enslaved in order to give you your free healthcare. Or someone has to have their money taken in order to give you free healthcare. I’m going to go back to drinking my whiskey and occasionally popping in to make non sequitur comments.
I’m not making a comparison of gun rights vs made up ‘rights’, but rather whether people who support one or the other through legislation – never mind whether it’s a valid legislative power or not – do so because of financial considerations or because they actually believe it.
This was always a sticking point for me, under the “universal health care” label, ie gov provided. So, it gets voted in, yay?, and now the gov’t, to fulfill its obligation, mails you a box of band aids and a tube of aspirin. What, that isn’t health care? Oh, you want cradle to grave doctor at your elbow? Sorry, no can do.
Case in point, India has gov’t provided health care. But, not enough doctors to give coverage outside the cities and large towns. So, in effect it doesn’t have it for poor people. Some universal health care they got!
Best case is to ignore the drunken rambling man
I like Ethiopian traffic circles.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UEIn8GJIg0E
Yakety Sax would have been a better choice of song.
Gun rights organization work the same way – their going to support politicians who support gun rights.
Triggering.
But on topic: It would be a whole lot cooler if they actually did support gun rights. You know, like pass repeals of existing gun laws. Or held Donald Trump accountable for his bump stock ban. Countdown to “BUT, THE AWB EXPIRED!” or “BUT, THEY ZEROED THE TAXES ON CERTAIN NFA ITEMS” or “BUT, THEY STOPPED BAD LAWS!” Blah blah blah. Show me a repeal of an existing gun law at the Federal level.
Absolutely! Once they make the laws, they never go away.
*Drinks more whiskey
triggering
I blame my editor.
So the Chiefs are moving to Kansas? Meh.
To a domed stadium? That seems to be an, umm, unwise surrendering of home field advantage.
When I was teaching my kids to drive I kept reminding them to use the signal lights. I explained it’s the only way you can talk to other drivers to explain what the plan is. I sometimes forget or remember, whichever, and use my signals to turn into my own driveway. It’s a rare day when I see another vehicle on the township road,
While driving, I still regularly hear the words of my high school Driver’s Ed teacher – “Signal your intentions!”
Sometimes it cuts the wrong way, you’ll signal your land change and the guy behind you in that lane speeds up. You have to know the average reaction of drivers in your area.
“…some large sequence of supplements with fancy sounding chemical designations in ultra-precise ratios that were absolutely essential to optimal human function. Really?”
See: Faith in The Science — Numbers and fancy m̵a̵g̵i̵c̵a̵l̵ medical speak? Powerful fairy dust to the incantations. Gives ’em weight, power. People still want to believe in things, and their faith is bolstered with little chants that’ve been ‘blessed’ by their clergy. Folk like to think they’re smart and will happily buy things that pander to this desire. Bigger numbers and fancier names are more scientifickier, with more credence. The New Hot Thing will come around and folk’ll buy it, thinking they’re on the cutting edge.
‘Belief’ is tremendously powerful and can be sparked by placebos, which are fucking real. I don’t think we can say too much about the brain when that massively unexplained, and testably true factor can’t be ‘explained.’ Belief /faith can be religious, scientific, moral, or whatever other mix. Its effects are real.
As for diet, weight and health? Outside variations of the Gluttony victim in Se7en, genetics is the answer.
Letter to Governor Walz et al
https://www.scribd.com/document/970218856/Minnesota-Mayors-Letter-to-Gov-Tim-Walz-and-Legislators
The first 11 names are very local towns. I won’t say that MN is in decline but thanks to our politicians MN is in serious decline.
Never has so much ineptness done so much damage in such a short time as we are experiencing now.
New York, California, and Illinois smile, nod, and welcome you to the party.
Oregon asks if it is chopped liver.
In theory it’s obvious that one should signal when leaving a traffic circle, but in practice I find my hands are in wrong location on the wheel to easily reach the turn signal.
As for your lymph nodes, just go for a walk. Your lymphatic system doesn’t have a pump like the heart so it needs movement. Manipulating your prostate is just a bonus.
lol Googling this was a treasure trove of laffs.
As far as turn signals go, I just use mine at random.
Seriously, if you and everyone else was as good a driver as they claim, there would be no need for them. And traffic circles are an affront to god.
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/trump-unveils-trump-class-battleships-pressures-defense-contractors-on-overruns/ar-AA1SRLNr
[Kif sigh]
I guess no one in his inner circle is familiar with what Billy Mitchell proved about aircraft vs ships. Maybe someone could show him a clip from Tora! Tora! Tora!
There’s a decent chance he’ll want spikes on helmets if he happens to see them.