Tad Thurston

On Stupid: Case 1 In talking about politics, we should use this word way more often when it's deserved

A new #Substack promoting the use of the 'stupid' word, and the first one's easy...

open.substack.com/pub/onstupid...

Happy Solstice! 🧪

Happy Earth Day! 🧪
Earth size relative to Sun -> to scale
Earth distance from Sun -> not to scale

YouTube video by Tad Thurston Retrograde Motion and the Copernican Explanation

But the newer heliocentric model explained retrograde motion as a *natural consequence*, or a *prediction*, of our (and the other planets') motion around the Sun: 🧪 (3/3)

youtu.be/m5QXoFaTN1I?...

YouTube video by Tad Thurston Epicycles -- Visualization of Retrograde Motion

The ancient geocentric model invented new (real) motions, like planets following circles superimposed on other circles, in order to explain it: 🧪 (2/3)

youtu.be/KT3PmGVf6DU?...

YouTube video by Tad Thurston Mars Retrograde Motion

Retrograde motion of the planets looks like this: 🧪 (1/3)

youtu.be/5-bJGzLAq58?...

YouTube video by Tad Thurston Retrograde Motion and the Copernican Explanation

Heliocentric models explained this as a *natural consequence* of the model, which is more aesthetic:
(3/3)
youtu.be/m5QXoFaTN1I?...

YouTube video by Tad Thurston Epicycles -- Visualization of Retrograde Motion

There was an explanation in the old geocentric system involving inventing motion around circles superimposed on other circles to explain it: (2/3)
youtu.be/KT3PmGVf6DU?...

You know, my two decades of #teaching experience gave me a BS-spidey-sense when I saw they used asterisks for multiplication. A sure sign of someone typing out a #math thing they don't understand...

‘Arresting’, ‘detaining’, and ‘relocating’ someone without authority is called ‘kidnapping’, right? It’s a criminal act.

No doubt. I saw it in theatres just before going to college, and it was seen on the reg by my two kids right before they went. An example of a movie way better than it had a right to be, and an 80s comedy that still holds up really well.

Months ago: 'The markets are just super-excited Trump is coming in the future'

Today: 'these are Biden's markets. Also time is probably non-linear.'

It seems to me the playbook is clear: knowing that billionaire tax cuts will blow a $multi-trillion hole in the debt, the cover is to (falsely and loudly) claim $multi-trillion savings by DOGE, whether it’s true or not.

it me

Grand Maester Pycelle has entered the chat

CDC advisers push agency to explain data removal, say when info will be restored Information on topics such as gender, teens' behavior, and infectious diseases was removed from the CDC's website.

BREAKING: CDC's top advisors demand answers and a restoration of crucial public health data. New story by me: www.statnews.com/2025/02/01/c...

Trump is like the cop-beating, dark-timeline version of Jesus where if you commit violence in his name, you are forgiven.

2024: Warmest year recorded!
-> we inject CO2 into the atmosphere
-> the concentration of CO2 goes up
-> since CO2 absorbs and re-radiates heat, the temperature goes up.
We should stop doing so much of the first thing. 🧪

There is an *information* gap that is seemingly impossible to bridge since one side imagines that they are constrained by rules, decency, and prior custom, and the other recognizes none of those things; the commodity is volume and repitition, and the complicit media sets themselves up to allow it.

What did people complain about? Higher prices. What did GOP promise? Lower prices. What is the effect of blanket tariffs and deportation of low-wage workers? Higher prices. What will happen? Lies about the consequences of their actions, nobody hears otherwise in their silos, and we'll start again.

It still blows my mind that we talk about the last election as though Dems should have 'listened more' and promoted better economic and inflationary policy. What did the winning side do? Blast false assertions about economic numbers and promise to do the opposite of what their policies actually do.

National Prayer for Peace (Spurious Quotations)

I had a feeling that "Thomas Jefferson daily prayer" quoted by Mike Johnson didn't really sound like something from TJ:

www.monticello.org/research-edu....

Physics and astronomy!

Trying to enforce what people choose to do after leaving public ed doesn't sound super conservative.

It's a moral imperative

Yeah, us too (and the facility in the show seemed a carbon-copy of ours), but the show did a good job humanizing the occupants.

... and Colin from Accounts
Man on the Inside

Assessing the Global Climate in November 2024 The global land and ocean temperature departure from average for November 2024 was the second highest on record.

November global update:
www.ncei.noaa.gov/news/global-...

The @meetthepress.bsky.social Trump interview was a primer on how to lie and get away with it: brazenly, and without correction. Among others, 3 or 4 times it was asserted that crime was “at an all time high” and the (correct) pushback to criminals immigrating was flatly denied, without pushback.

And the students will cheat using AI to complete assignments and tests, so it’ll be some spiraling word-prediction singularity.