chonglibloodsport

All the people arguing for RCV are hoping it will solve their problems. I’m skeptical.

There are loads of other voting systems in action out there. Some of them guarantee full proportional representation to their respective countries. Generally what we see in those countries is a ton of different small, special interest parties with a few seats apiece. Then you end up with these bizarre coalitions where a bunch of unrelated special interests band together to form a government which roughly half the population ends up hating anyway. Israel is a prime example of that.

Maybe the diamond magnate will hire locals to build statues in his honour!

The fact that he feels the need to say this is a sign of his vulnerability, of the pressure he feels. The chorus of voices is only going to grow louder as Ukraine kills and captures more and more soldiers, more conscripts.

Putin blaming the security forces is the beginning of the end for him. The domestic security apparatus is the only thing keeping him in power.

McDonald’s, Wendy’s, Burger King. I googled them all with the word brioche and there was news for all of them.

Thank you. Brioche buns are an abomination used by the fast food industry to trigger sugar reward signals and make their burgers just a bit more addictive. They’re not used with any good intentions whatsoever.

Comparing one jail sentence against another in totally unrelated cases, tried in different courts by different judges, is ultimately a self-defeating and unproductive exercise.

If you think there’s a systematic problem then you need to look at more than 2 cases for comparison. Is there an overall trend towards sentencing protestors to excessive jail time throughout the court system? Or is this one problematic judge who has seen many of the protestor cases and is deciding to make an example out of someone?

Anyway if you’re interested in seeing what it’s like to be a protestor engaging in civil disobedience and especially to see what these folks go through both personally and in the courtroom, I highly recommend the movie The Reluctant Radical.

Every kind of hobby ultimately rests on some different kinds of reward mechanisms. Whether it’s the thrill of winning at a competition, the excitement of discovery, or the satisfaction of accomplishment, these sorts of positive emotions are what keep a hobby interesting and engaging for us. Collecting is no different, and this is where I believe the problems start.

Collecting as a hobby gets its main motivator from acquiring rare stuff. While there is a learning component to it (learning about all the stuff that’s out there, the history, why some things are rare and others are not, and what fair market prices are for everything) and a sense of satisfaction and accomplishment (from gazing at a completed collection), the main drive that keeps people engaged is the excitement of unboxing and taking possession of new and rare item.

Unfortunately, this is an extremely fleeting and hollow emotion. It can last as little as a few minutes and rarely lasts more than a few days. In the long run, I believe this is what leads people to lose interest in collecting: they simply run out of rare stuff to obtain and thus lose the excitement they once had. Some even get so frustrated and disillusioned by collecting that they go out of their way to destroy or sell off their collections, often experiencing an enormous sense of relief afterwards (but potentially also a sense of loss and regret).

Contrast this with hobbies based around making or fixing stuff: making wine, brewing beer, gardening, cooking and baking, repairing old clocks or TVs or computers, restoring old cars, woodworking or blacksmithy or hobby machining, making jewellery or clothing, programming video games. These hobbies all differ from collecting because they’re focused on learning and personal growth. For example, there is a sense of satisfaction and accomplishment to pick a few jalapeño peppers off the plants you raised from seeds, but the ultimate driver is the thrill of learning how to better take care of plants so that next time they grow even bigger and healthier than before!

Likewise with a repair hobby such as fixing old clocks: each one you come across (and there is some overlap with collecting here) has a unique history with a unique set of challenges to overcome if you are to get the thing repaired and running again good as new. But it differs from collecting in that the biggest satisfaction arrives at the end, when you complete the repair, rather than the beginning when you unbox the clock.

Some of the other making/crafting/food hobbies also provide additional satisfaction when you’re able to give away or sell your creations to friends and family (or strangers at a farmer’s market or Etsy shop). Having another person be happy as a result of something you learned how to do is incredibly rewarding in ways that an obscure collection may not be. It can be quite a downer to have others fail to understand what’s so interesting about your collection and even painful if they tell you they think it’s a waste of time and money. Of course, ultimately this reward/consequence of a hobby depends greatly on your relationships to other people and how much you care (or not) what they think.

The pink part is called legacy admissions. It’s how elite universities grow their endowments. That is their ultimate goal: grow and grow and grow some more.

It isn’t just admissions though, it’s also tuition. Schools like Harvard could easily afford to give free tuition to all their students. The fact that they don’t is rather mysterious. I suspect part of the reason is that the students whose families can afford the tuition see it as a sort of conspicuous consumption.

So what if you kill them all? Their industries will still exist. The products/energy/services they provide we still need. The zero-carbon replacements you allude to are still in the research labs, not even the drawing board. It’s not like they’re just about to take over as soon as the fossil fuel magnates are out of the way. They’re decades from being ready and climate change is happening right now!

We’re picking up pennies in front of a steamroller.

Still not going to take all the cars and trucks off the road, shut down all the coal power plants, the cement kilns, the superfreighters, the steel mills, fertilizer plants…

Climate change is everyone’s responsibility, not just the people selling it. It’s no different from the drug trade. We’re the buyers in that transaction. We’re addicted to the lifestyle fossil fuels provide us. Giving them up means going back to a 17th century lifestyle. No one wants that.

Need billions of them to die if you want to stop climate change!

Brilliant. She has real gravitas. That’s what you need for this role. The ability to carry the weight of history.