I took fencing in college, and had some preconceived ideas about men probably being better at it on average due to higher strength on average.

At least for foil fencing, that turned out to be quite wrong. With foils, strength is far less important than dexterity and footwork skill, which in my class the girls tended to be noticeably better at.

...However, aggressiveness / competitiveness / "killer instinct" was in many ways more important than either strength OR dexterity, and the males tended to exhibit those qualities far more than the females in my class. So even though the women were more technically proficient, the men tended to win matches at a much higher rate.

I found that interesting. Can't say that my experiences would speak to any sort of universal trend, but it was the clear trend in my beginner's level course.

Trump said he will "repeal Obamacare and replace it with something amazing".

These people bought into that. The average sifter (myself included) did not.

However, as someone who wants to see health care improve in the US, I think that a Trump presidency is likely to lead to things getting better (long term). Even if he massively screws up. Actually, sorta especially if he massively screws up.

These people had deductibles in the multiple thousands of dollars range. With a median family income of $16k per year. According to CNN, the premium for the standard package will be $296 per month on average. So for the people in the video, they'd pay about 20-25% of their yearly income on premiums, with another 12-15% out of pocket before they hit their deductible for any needed care. Sure, some insurance is better than no insurance, but these people have been living dangerously with no insurance for a LONG time. Thirty plus percent of your yearly wages vs rolling the dice? A bunch are gonna roll the dice.

So, option A -- a miracle occurs, and Trump actually follows through and replaces Obamacare with something that actually is better. My money isn't on this one, but if he pulls it off more power to him.

Option B -- the people in the video are right, and Trump and the GOP will lose interest in actually repealing the ACA when they realize that they are going to have a hard time actually making something better. I don't think this one is likely either, because I don't think they really give a shit. But you never know. This one would represent a slow stagnation and likely eventual death for the ACA (without any intervention in 2018 or 2020) as more and more people decide to roll the dice and go back to living uninsured.

Option C -- whatever "plan" Trump and the Republican Congress come up for to "replace" the ACA with is a trainwreck. The people in the video that did benefit from the ACA get screwed, at least short term. But the thing is ... "fool me once". Some of them would be pissed, and wouldn't forget. Some would blame Trump and the GOP. Some would remember Trump's answer to Kathy in the video -- that the ACA isn't perfect, but it could be improved. But that her Senator (a Republican) isn't talking about doing that, he's talking about dumping it.

Maybe a bunch of people get fooled again, and eat up whatever excuses Trump, the GOP, and Fox News feed them. But some will remember. And it doesn't take a whole lot to shift the balance of power -- popular vote totals are often just a few percentage points apart. I think it will be extremely hard for the GOP to avoid a major shakeup in midterms and/or 2020.

Seconded.

...Also NoScript, Privacy Badger, and self-destructing cookies with a whitelist.

And multiple google accounts, plus some old "burner" hotmail accounts for anything that requires a registration email that I think is likely to spam me.

I'm not paranoid at al*WHAT WAS THAT?!*

Awesome.

I would have liked to see it with a somewhat longer timescale (maybe 10 minutes for 1AD - now) and a lower threshold on what qualifies as a "significant event". But, this format is still very cool.

I agree, hard to get past "nuke-yoo-lar".

But also, I think more information is necessary to justify their claims about results of a hypothetical India vs Pakistan nuclear war with 100 warheads dropped "in anger" so to speak.

Google search suggests that there have been more than 2000 nuclear tests, 520 atmospheric, from 1945 to today. Would the increased particulate dust and debris from being fired on generally populated areas really be enough to make 100 of those warheads have a drastically greater effect than the 520 atmospheric tests that have already happened?

Seems possible, but I dunno. Expanding on that further would be interesting.

I'm as surprised as most everyone at how the election turned out. In the week or so leading up to election night, I considered the possibility that Trump might win the popular vote but lose the electoral college, but not the other way around.

Still, as someone who thinks the electoral college is bullshit, consider this thing from all angles:

Hypothetical Possibility 1: At first, when I thought that Trump might win the popular vote but lose the electoral college, I thought that would be a good thing going forward. Both sides would have been screwed out of a victory by the idiotic system in recent memory, which might push for bipartisan support to scrap it.

But thinking further ... I don't think that would have actually panned out. The GOP establishment wouldn't have seen that as "their" candidate getting screwed, they would have been happy. They might have had to pay lip service to the idea of reconsidering the electoral college to pander to angry Republican voters who felt cheated out of a Trump presidency, but they could easily have just left it at that and sat on the issue until apathy took over again.


Possibility 2: The likely reality. Trump will win by electoral votes but lose the popular vote, and that will stand. The Senate and House are both Republican controlled, and the Supreme Court will very likely swing further in that direction. Possibly a LOT.

That sounds terrible. And it definitely means that in the short term, there will be absolutely zero traction for anyone wanting to push the idea of getting rid of the electoral college. BUT -- it also sets up a gold-plated opportunity to see real, actual movement on that front in 2 years. Think Trump is going to be horrendous? Think GOP-controlled Legislature will be abysmal? Look on the bright side -- if those expectations are correct, the blowback in midterm elections won't be a "wave". It'll be a fuckin' tsunami. And that's what we need to have a shot at killing the electoral college.


Possibility 3: Faithless Elector rampage. You can argue, with some merit, that the electoral college was intended to prevent or safeguard against exactly the kind of situation that we are in now. And I'd love to see President Bernie myself. But what would actually result if enough electors swapped to make that happen?

First, NYTimes projects Trump getting 306 electoral votes. That would mean that 37 faithless electors would have to happen to flip the election. You have to go back more than 100 years to find an election where there has been more than 1 faithless elector. There has only been 1 election with more than 37 faithless electors, and that was in 1872 because the candidate died. So realistically, it would be close to impossible to pull this off. (all info from wikipedia)

But forget the odds and just assume that it did happen. I think that would be a strategically terrible idea for Democrats, liberals, etc. Trump won because enough people didn't like the prospect of President Hillary and/or actually wanted to see what Trump himself could do. In either case, his voters generally aren't going to give him a whole lot of leash to screw things up or fail to deliver on their expectations. It will be next to impossible for him to keep those swing people happy. If Trump is 1/10th as terrible as the average Democrat expects him to be, he will alienate all of those people in very short order.

But if faithless electors "stole" the presidency from him (and you know that's how it would be perceived)? Oh, man ... he'd effectively be a political martyr. The anger and backlash would likely be apocalyptic and/or lead to revolt. Worse than almost any realistic way that Trump himself might fuck things up as the President. Even if that was somehow avoided, which I tend to think would be impossible, whoever got installed as President would have the shortest leash of all time, and a massively hostile and motivated Legislature that they would be forced to attempt to work with. Better have some sacrificial lamb to put in there that has zero political future, and even then they would probably cause massive damage to their party by association when they inevitably fall.

No, I think the clear best option is to let Trump (and the GOP) dig his own grave over the next year or two, and then graciously ride the wave of comeuppance.

Awesome, although "Jerry the Goatfucker" sounds totally more legit than Olga of "KEEEEEV"...

I'm on the pretty extreme end of the introversion side of the curve.

I remember talking about introversion vs. extroversion in Psych 101 at college. I think that talking about it in that classroom environment helped to foster a lot of understanding between both sides. Very extroverted people talked about how they would get anxiety on up to physical symptoms of discomfort if they went for several hours with zero human interaction, which completely blew my mind.

But, I'll feel similar discomfort if you drop me into a loud, crowded party. If I'm ever trapped in a situation like that, I quickly escalate from nervous to annoyed to "honey badger in a corner" enraged.

I think there is definitely a societal extroversion bias, but a lot of it is well-intentioned. Many leaders tend to be extroverts, and they sort of "feel sorry" for people who seem to distance themselves from the group. Then they will try to incorporate those people into the group, thinking that they are doing them a favor. But in many cases, that is the exact opposite of what we introverts actually want.

I think that both personality types have advantages that can make them uniquely suited towards specific tasks. A really good leader understands both types and knows how to get the best out of either.

Living in Thailand, I've grown to really appreciate locally grown meat and produce in comparison to massive factory farm stuff.

One good example: Tilapia fish. Back home in the US, I thought Tilapia was disgusting. It tastes like algae, because they are raised in man-made concrete tanks and fed exclusively on algae that is easy to grow. They won't breed in those conditions, so they have to pump in hormones to basically force them to reproduce, more hormones to make them grow quickly, etc. etc.

Here in Thailand, I live in a town close to a lake. If you go to the lake you can see huge enclosures made of nets, which keep the Tilapia contained but otherwise living very normal fish lives. They get a natural lake diet of insects, plants, etc., no need to give them any extra food. They reproduce without any encouragement.

Talk to one of the fish farmers, and they will pull up some of the net and present you with several fish to choose from. Point one out and they will pull it out, smack it on the head to kill it instantly, and then scale and gut it for you and put it in a bag. From alive in the lake to dinner in 15-20 minutes.

Or, if you go to a local market in town, people have stalls set up that serve the middleman function. They go to the lake and buy 20-50 Tilapia to put into a big tank in the back of their pickup, and keep them alive in there for a day or two until they are sold, for a slight markup so you don't have to drive out to the lake.


Roughly the same thing applies to pork, chicken, and most fruits and vegetables. Somewhat for beef also, but there is less of that since most Thais follow a branch of Buddhism that discourages killing/eating cows. So, gotta go to the Islamic Thai shops for beef.

Maybe the system here is old-fashioned, quaint, or a bit backwards ... but everything is really nice, fresh, and tasty compared to supermarket stuff back in the US.

Interesting. I figured it was Right = Red, Left=bLue, but thinking back a bit further "reds" for commie leftists and "blues" for Lincoln's union army makes a lot of sense.

I'd wager we're stuck with the current association now until one or both of the parties implodes (which they both sure seem to be trying hard to accomplish).

That was awesome.

The origin of a riff being "accidental" doesn't seem unusual -- people come up with riffs that get turned into earworm songs while just jamming / screwing around all the time.

But having the combination of sudden inspiration and accidental creation of the riff immediately followed by impromptu creation of the lyrics is really really cool.

Awesome sift, thanks!

I think corn would be doable, but the advantages would be less efficient compared to short plants.

At some level of efficiency, there is a break even point (which can also take into consideration shipping costs and fossil fuel usage to major metro areas). I'm pretty convinced that vertical farming could be a significantly good / efficient idea for those plants that it is best suited for, but I do think there would be some early-adoption issues that would make it less practical for tall stuff like corn. At least until it has been done enough to work out the kinks and economy of scale kicks in.

So at least for the time being, I think we'll see it first be applied to leafy plants and tuber / root plants. But I could definitely be a biased opinion since my family revolves around conventional corn farming on irrigated fields...

Good questions. My family operates farms for wheat and corn, and I've been involved in that process, so I can take a stab at answering the last bit:

Corn stalks get quite tall -- 6 feet / 2 meters or so. Each stalk usually has 1 or 2 ears of corn. On our farm, the experience I had suggests that each plant needs quite a lot of healthy leaves for Photosynthesis as well as quite a lot of available ground water. Irrigated corn often produces 2-3 times as many bushels per acre as compared to "dryland" / non-irrigated corn.

So the issues I can see potentially clashing between corn production and vertical farming are:

1) You'd have a greater space requirement for layers of corn since you'd need probably 8-10 feet per layer, as compared to what looks like 2-3 feet per layer for leafy vegetables in the video. Approximately one story per layer wouldn't allow for the massive footprint savings like in leafy plants without getting extremely tall, which would be expensive for water pumping etc.

2) Corn root systems are pretty deep to support a tall and relatively bulky stalk. Getting that to bite into a thin layer of fabric / recycled plastic to provide structural support for the plant would be difficult. I think you'd need to have a thicker bottom layer *and* to manually place further support lines on the stalks as the plants grow, which would get very labor intensive and therefore expensive.

3) The vertical nature of a corn stalk suggests that the overhead motion of the sun might be pretty important for getting light exposure onto all of the leaves. Fixed overhead lights might mean that the top leaves get plenty of light but the ones lower on the stalk would be shaded by those above and get nothing -- which isn't a problem if the sun progresses through low angles at sunrise/set to overhead at noon throughout a day. So you might have to have lighting that hits from all sides to account for that with corn, which would again add expense.

4) To maximize the output, corn needs a LOT of water. Pumping that up the vertical expanse to get lots of levels could easily get problematic. Corn will grow without optimal / abundant watering, and their misting system would likely be more efficient than irrigating to add ground water, but the main benefit of vertical farming seems to be high output in a small land footprint on the ground. So without LOTS of water, you'd be limiting that benefit.


So basically, my guess is that vertical farms are a fantastic idea for squat, spread out plants like lettuce, but a lot of the advantages disappear when you're talking about something tall like corn. I could easily be wrong about any/all of that though.

I will never understand why Windows defaults to hiding filename extensions... Not that it would have helped most User = ID10T problems like that, but at least displaying extensions encourages some degree of curiosity and diligence.

I suppose it is hard for any pre-internet virus to compare in terms of damage to these 5, but one that stands out in my mind:

Form (circa 1990 or so), and its variants like Form.A would infect the boot sector of your hard drive, and from there could infect any floppy disk that you used on the computer. Most PCs at the time would try to boot from a floppy disk left in the drive, which would spread the infection.

I guess that many variants didn't really do much of anything particularly bad, but I got Form.A one time and it nuked the Master Boot Record (like virus #5 in the video) of my PC. Since DOS / Windows (3.1 at the time I think) wouldn't boot, I (mistakenly) assumed that it had formatted my hard drive, and then lost all of my data by reformatting.

I remember a span of about a year where any 3.5 inch floppy disk being passed around offices or schools in my home town had a roughly 80% chance of being infected with Form.A. So that seems like a pretty impressive infection and spread rate, without advantage of being able to spread through the internet!