Mike Wasson

Laura -> Sean -> Jessica -> Chad is legitimately funny

So many things boil down to electoral system design. The Irish system isn’t perfect, but it’s pretty darn good. Especially for its age.

Used “painting the Forth Bridge” naturally in a conversation without trying. Guess I’ve been here for a while.

Michael Crichton was a total climate change crank when he died but I bet he hated antivaxxers

Well, you can’t blame them for trying to fix a new problem, but it does have a sort of bad-guy-in-a-techno-thriller vibe to it

I’ll note that while british transphobia is shamefully more rampant and powerful than in America, the kids sports argument rarely comes up because people don’t really care about school sport in the UK and sports scholarships aren’t that important (I think, please correct)

There’s multiple underlying hard problems here before it even begins to touch transphobia—education as credentials, unequal access, classism, schools taking commercial advantage of student athletes—but it makes it all the more urgent

Radicalizing myself into believing that the relationship between sports and educational access needs to be radically changed, since it’s creating a demographic that can be easily exploited for transphobia (striver parents of cis kids)

*blueb up

“Misanthropist” would be the antiparallel derivation but it annoyingly hasn’t accumulated nearly as much semantic shift as “philanthropist” has

A society with a memetic vaccine against low effort clickbait is basically that perfectly idyll high tech future meme; if you solve that so many good things fall out of it, but it appears impossibly heard

Confucian Calvinism with British characteristics

Someone just set off well over one hundred fireworks (by counting booms) from Alexandra Palace, or the park around it, at 1:45am early on a Friday

Why. Why the hell would you do that

I don’t see gulag jokes very often but thinking about it I agree with you.

Guillotine jokes reflect a poor understanding of the revolution. Gulag jokes reflect a correct but reprehensible view of the post revolutionary state

Ahh, if only the duality of Blippis applied to Vance.

Blippi I: evil, “cocaine Blippi”
Blippi II: good, “weed Blippi”

I love how UK bank apps all say “so hey if your transaction is really big or looks strange processing may take a long time. We’re sorry but in extreme cases it might take two hours.”

American living in the UK for the past half decade. I write or receive many American checks every year. I have never written a UK cheque and have received a grand total of one.

It’ll be a different kind of archaeology: if it survives, there’ll be so much that figuring out what’s important will require analysis.

But “S3 survives” can still be spotty: if X doesn’t pay their bill, then what?

You’re right except for the “not induce a civil war” bit. Not his fault, of course

Enjoying how you’ve become parent-of-young-child brained

Ms Rachel is pure good, except that she introduced us to Blippi, who is clearly malevolent (at least, the original one)

Notably in here: "Sex Matters" now taking the position that even the "Men's" and "Women's" sections of a clothing retailer should be regarded as prescriptive "single sex spaces" where anyone they judge to be the "wrong" sex/gender should not be allowed.

Worst value over replacement: RFK Jr
Best: Kash Patel, somehow

RFK Jr. is the worst cabinet pick because if he was rejected, Trump would have picked someone else awful but probably not a hardcore antivaxxer. RFK Jr. has the most negative value over replacement pick by far

I think the canal being there means there are multiple risks you have to be mindful of, and it requires more cognitive load (in the way that a head for heights does).

Thought experiment: if somebody road a bike on a crowded tube platform it’d probably feel very threatening even if they took care.

I completely get the sense of a confrontation even without fear of crime; something moving significantly faster than you inches away is potentially dangerous. I get extra antsy when there are close bikes on canal paths.

But I suck it up or try to avoid situations; lashing out isn’t acceptable.

I’m from Allentown but my mom was from Philly, so I have residual bits of the Philly accent (mad and sad don’t rhyme for me). Same. Have also talked to New Yorkers and others from the northeast where it doesn’t work.

They had rhyming words that don’t rhyme in many common accents in the country they were produced! (Frog, dog, and log don’t all have the same vowel sound for many Americans)

Definitely in my life I’ve seen a correlation between being a woo believer and a person thinking they’re someone special

This is not true. A main drive for woo is the feeling of being treated like just another patient instead of someone special, which happens in just about all systems. Germany, with strong universal care, has tons of woo, so does China, with its very weak and inadequate insurance system.

I don’t think that’s “other ways of knowing” in the way meant; that’s a practical skill that requires training whose success can be verified, but yes, isn’t common in industrial nations. Except for the last property, all of those describe e.g. plumbing.