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Monday, what other better day to procrastinate? Need to get over this, tho, so maybe purging whatever varia I found while procrastinating will help me to get over it.
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Fact check: Joe Biden did not predict or manipulate the weather that caused the Texas freeze
Say... what? There have to be a special type of insanity to actually believe that.
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Ah, BTW. The science of making rain - Sabine Hossenfelder's overview of the cloud seeding seems to show that the effect amounts to an extra 15% of extra rain considered over long term averages. She points to the fact that, even with science involved, it is still hard to control ("If you would not have seeded, how can you know that it wouldn't have rained anyway?" - not very different a question from the one involving the rainmaking cons).
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After acquittal, Trump 2024? Maybe not so fast
If Trump chooses to run for the White House in 2024, opponents are likely to call on a constitutional provision adopted after the Civil War to try to stop him. The Supreme Court could have the final say.
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The drafters of the 14th Amendment wanted to keep former officials who joined the Confederacy from resuming public service, without an explicit vote from Congress restoring their eligibility. Section 3 was enforced for several years at both the state and federal level, according to Gerard Magliocca, a professor at the Indiana University Robert H. McKinney School of Law. But in 1872, by a two-thirds vote of the House and Senate, Congress lifted the prohibition against most who had been barred from office.
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At least two Democrats in Congress say they are working on it. Rep. Steven Cohen, D-Tenn., ... Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz, D-Fla.
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Even if Congress does nothing, though, state elections officials, or even state courts, might say that Trump cannot appear on their ballots because he engaged in insurrection, the professors said.
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People with extremist views less able to do complex mental tasks, research suggests
Cambridge University team say their findings could be used to spot people at risk from radicalisation
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The study, built on previous research, included more than 330 US-based participants aged 22 to 63...
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Overall, the researchers found that ideological attitudes mirrored cognitive decision-making, according to the study published in the journal Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B.
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A key finding was that people with extremist attitudes tended to think about the world in black and white terms, and struggled with complex tasks that required intricate mental steps, said lead author Dr Leor Zmigrod at Cambridge’s department of psychology.
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Almost half of Republicans would join Trump party: poll
Meh, last time they tried it was with The Tea Party. Very likely they'll flop in 2024 and fall into nothingness in 2028.
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Trump to speak at CPAC next week
- The former president will criticize what he'll argue is the Biden administration's "disastrous" amnesty and border policies, and vow to remain a key leader in the conservative movement to fight against Biden.
- His speech comes after Trump ripped into Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, promising to battle the GOP leader's 2022 midterm picks.
- The New York Post first reported on Trump's plans.
* what?!? Has Trump gone sane? No more "stop the steal", no more birthers conspiracies? Just the little they want your cookie old trick?
* Runaway may rejoice having the occasion of seeing superspreader events, featuring rock star politicians. Unless, of course, Biden conjure a big freeze over Florida, you just can't trust those liberals.
Related: Pence declined invitation to attend CPAC: reports. Ummm... have Trump hooked the evangelical fish, so he can dispense of Pence bait?
(Score: 3, Insightful) by FatPhil on Monday February 22 2021, @11:54AM (18 children)
A key finding was that people with extremist attitudes tended to think about the world in black and white terms, and struggled with complex tasks that required intricate mental steps, said lead author Dr Leor Zmigrod at Cambridge’s department of psychology.
“Individuals or brains that struggle to process and plan complex action sequences may be more drawn to extreme ideologies, or authoritarian ideologies that simplify the world,” she said.
She said another feature of people with tendencies towards extremism appeared to be that they were not good at regulating their emotions, meaning they were impulsive and tended to seek out emotionally evocative experiences. “And so that kind of helps us understand what kind of individual might be willing to go in and commit violence against innocent others.”
Participants who are prone to dogmatism – stuck in their ways and relatively resistant to credible evidence – actually have a problem with processing evidence even at a perceptual level, the authors found.
"""
"black and white terms", "simplify the world", "dogmatism – stuck in their ways and relatively resistant to credible evidence" - lots of libertarians tick those boxes with views like all taxation being theft and rigid compartmentalisation of realms, and erm, dogmatism about it. I wonder if there are any other boxes I've missed, I'm sure they're not the only ones.
Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
(Score: 3, Insightful) by c0lo on Monday February 22 2021, @12:19PM (4 children)
I sorta can understand them. If one can't understand complex things, it's easy to appear principled than just plain stupid.
It's a trap anyway. One may be free to fart in the forest, but there's no "God given right to fart in an elevator", the later is bad manners and trying to justify it as "free speech" is still plain stupidity.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0
(Score: 0, Offtopic) by khallow on Monday February 22 2021, @12:33PM (3 children)
So your society has a problem with a lot of Australian libertarians practicing their right to free farts in elevators?
(Score: 3, Informative) by c0lo on Monday February 22 2021, @12:41PM (2 children)
Non sequitur is not sequitur [xkcd.com]
Otherwise, taken at face value as a question and reading it literally, it just happens they don't call themselves libertarians, thus we fall back on calling them bogans for the lack of a better term.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0
(Score: 1) by khallow on Monday February 22 2021, @12:53PM (1 child)
(Score: 4, Touché) by c0lo on Monday February 22 2021, @01:15PM
Movement? Are you moving posts again, khallow? Take care with the strain on your back, after an age you don't fully recover from back damages.
As a cultural phenomenon, here, have a sample [boganandproud.com]
See also cashed up bogan [wiktionary.org]; if you get over one in an elevator, it's likely to be of this type.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0
(Score: 1) by khallow on Monday February 22 2021, @12:31PM (12 children)
But let's consider other features that aren't so black and white:
That's multiculturalism without the politically correct extremism.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by FatPhil on Monday February 22 2021, @12:45PM (3 children)
However, to answer your initial question - what about doing a proper study on them too, now we've done the usual extremists. One thing I've noticed from many supposedly-rational libertarians is that if you start highlighting the inconsistencies or impracticalities of their arguments, they will eventually fall back onto just caveman-with-club levels of thinking, though typically with an AR armoury. I've seen it repeatedly, although they were a self-selecting sample - which is why I suggested doing a proper controlled study - I'm pretty sure that as a group they show more commonality to the obvious extremists than you're prepared to admit, you've just fallen for their potemkin facade.
Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
(Score: 1) by khallow on Tuesday February 23 2021, @04:27AM (2 children)
You're begging the question that a proper study was done in the first place.
And that differs from your thinking how? Many arguments, particularly of the moral sort, work just as well with cavemen-with-clubs as they do in a modern society.
Given that they're all libertarians, there would naturally be a lot of commonality.
(Score: 2) by FatPhil on Tuesday February 23 2021, @03:50PM (1 child)
And libertarians naturally have a lot of commonality? (You have just said this, you have no option but to answer "yes".)
So a fair proportion of libertarians are extremists? (This is an inductive conclusion from those two statements, you have no option but to answer "yes".)
Wow - you hold my thesis more strongly than I do!
All I was saying was "test the hypothesis" - you've already concluded it's true!
Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
(Score: 1) by khallow on Tuesday February 23 2021, @11:02PM
Now I move in for the kill!
Can't you just feel the sting of that hypothetical face palm?
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Monday February 22 2021, @12:51PM (2 children)
I think the real question is what it means to "hold extremists views".
(Score: 3, Insightful) by FatPhil on Monday February 22 2021, @01:24PM (1 child)
Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
(Score: 4, Insightful) by c0lo on Monday February 22 2021, @01:46PM
See also the Voight-Kampff test (grin)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0
(Score: 3, Insightful) by c0lo on Monday February 22 2021, @01:37PM (4 children)
To me, this (and the list above it) sounds very much like liberalism the laissez-faire kind, except extended outside economy (minimal govt intervention in all social relations) and very little with the strident activist libertarianism I keep hearing from USoA direction.
You saying that I should ignore the "Muh libhurties over covid masks"... umm... basket of deplorables as part of the libertarianism?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0
(Score: 1) by khallow on Monday February 22 2021, @03:24PM (3 children)
You'd probably hear a lot less of that sort of libertarian, if politicians and medical staff treated covid as seriously as the rest of us are supposed to. Double standards bring out the "muh libhurties" a lot.
(Score: 1, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Monday February 22 2021, @09:29PM
LEAVE
BrittneyRUNAWAY ALONE!!!!!1!!(Score: 2) by MostCynical on Tuesday February 23 2021, @02:11AM (1 child)
in what basis are "politicians and medical staff " able to be put in one group?
As far as I can see, in places like the UK, US and Brazil, the politicians are ignoring or actively contradicting medical professionals.
Who isn't taking covid-19 seriously?
"I guess once you start doubting, there's no end to it." -Batou, Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex
(Score: 3, Touché) by khallow on Tuesday February 23 2021, @04:23AM
Example 1 [bbc.com]:
Example 2 [cnn.com]:
In the first example, a key medical professional only took his own recommendations to the UK government seriously, when he got caught. In the second example, a number of US medical professionals prioritized ongoing protests over controlling covid.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Monday February 22 2021, @12:11PM (1 child)
I find it ridiculous how many bad trials and lawsuits will probably stem from this one protest.
Why not just beat Trump rather than scheme to find legal shenanigans to block him? It'll work better in the long run.
(Score: -1, Offtopic) by Anonymous Coward on Monday February 22 2021, @12:58PM
Keeping the focus on Trump is to keep the focus off what Congress is (not) getting done.
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Monday February 22 2021, @04:12PM (7 children)
I find the dark winter nonsense amusing. Who remembers George Dubya being blamed for literally everything, including Hurricane Katrina? If it was bad, it was George's fault, somehow. Children born with congenital deformities, earthquakes, blizzards, asteroids aimed at earth, you name it. George actually had it worse than Trump, in that respect.
I think Obama caught some of that too, but not nearly as badly as Bush.
Abortion is the number one killed of children in the United States.
(Score: 3, Informative) by DeathMonkey on Monday February 22 2021, @05:15PM (1 child)
Bush was on vacation when Katrina hit and decided to finish that important job up BEFORE responding to the disaster.
Reminds me of a certain other Texan, actually!
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Monday February 22 2021, @08:51PM
I don't really remember if Bush was on vacation. It hardly matters though. The Governor of Louisiana sat around with her thumb up her ass for five days, apparently waiting for Bush to call her. The mayor of New Orleans made no attempt to contact the outside world while his police department was executing black people attempting to evacuate.
Poke fun at Bush if you like, but after five days of hearing nothing from Louisiana, it was Boy George who demanded answers, then mobilized the National Guard to mount a rescue effort.
Braindead Democrats who should have acted gaped in awe that the Republican could actually make shit happen.
Abortion is the number one killed of children in the United States.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday February 22 2021, @08:11PM (4 children)
"Nobody could've foreseen that the leevees would break!" "You're doing a heck of job, Brownie!"
Some Republicans have very bad memories. Runaway has early onset, tends to think about the world in black and white terms, and struggles with complex tasks that required intricate mental steps.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Runaway1956 on Monday February 22 2021, @08:56PM (3 children)
Bullshit. The Army Corps of Engineers was telling anyone who would listen that the levees needed to be upgraded. No one listened to the experts, instead worrying about costs, and supposed impact on fishing in the late behind New Orleans.
Also, FYI, the "leevees" did not break. A canal failed. The canal failed in one particular spot, where the Dept of Water and Sewers had disturbed the walls, then replaced those panels without stabilizing the earth. The panels were undermined when the water soaked into, then washed away the non-stabilized soil.
I don't know where you're getting your revisionist history.
Abortion is the number one killed of children in the United States.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday February 22 2021, @09:31PM (1 child)
Bush Administration?
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Monday February 22 2021, @09:37PM
The President of the United States doesn't administer the departments of sewer and water in any American cities. Just like Flint, Michigan, the water department in New Orleans was administered by Democrats.
Abortion is the number one killed of children in the United States.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Thursday February 25 2021, @03:27AM
My bet is that they were more interested in misappropriating that money than in how much levees cost or the fishing. You can spend enormous sums on levees and canals, but that won't matter if the money doesn't make it to the final project. I believe that was the real problem here.
(Score: 2) by DannyB on Monday February 22 2021, @08:32PM (14 children)
What would be so bad about half the Republicans leaving the Republican party and forming a Trump party?
Oh, right . . . it would leave Democrats mostly unopposed. And that is NOT a good thing, IMO.
"The Democrats" is not a single voice with a single mind. It has its crazies also. Just not so many, or so loud.
However, unopposed Democrats probably wouldn't be as bad as four years of Trump. At least not right away.
Why is it that when I hold a stick, everyone begins to look like a pinata?
(Score: 2) by cmdrklarg on Monday February 22 2021, @09:13PM (1 child)
It would be better if the moderates and independents kicked the extremists of both sides out.
Answer now is don't give in; aim for a new tomorrow.
(Score: 2) by MostCynical on Tuesday February 23 2021, @02:21AM
groups tend to be run by the moderates, until us/them splits occur - then the 'middle' moves away from those considered 'other'
this happens with boards, committees, political groups.. the 'passionate' members are often the most active - and vocal, and also most likely to focus that passion - to an extreme..
you need the passionate people.. but you can't keep them on a leash.
If these people are given direction and 'noble purpose', their passion works for good.. if not, you get bad outcomes.
"I guess once you start doubting, there's no end to it." -Batou, Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday February 24 2021, @05:55AM (11 children)
"as bad as four years of Trump"
Huh? Are you counting the stuff the hateful left did in 2020, shutting down the record-breaking economy and encouraging riots? That isn't Trump's doing, and it wasn't the full 4 years anyway. We had 3 fantastic years, only partially spoiled by democrats and RINOs, and then one year that was made into a disaster because democrats gotta democrat.
I can only think of one single little thing Trump screwed up. He signed the bump stock ban, without even using it as a bargaining chip. That's it. All things considered, he was our best president in at least a century.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Thursday February 25 2021, @03:33AM (10 children)
I can think of several big things: the deficit ballooned (it's now over 100% of GDP, with Biden/Harris that'll probably end up in Greek austerity territory in a few years), he screwed up both the covid response and the Floyd protests (we didn't need that idiot telling us that covid wasn't that bad, while privately admitting otherwise, or that he's got crazy scary weapons and dogs to repel protesters).
It's not the single little things that destroy Trump's legacy. It's the big things.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday February 25 2021, @09:06AM (9 children)
The deficit is of concern, but very clearly isn't a problem like it was for Greece. You see, Greece is bound by the Euro, and thus does not control currency. The US has full control. Deficit issues could hurt California or Chicago that way, but not the USA.
Trump's covid response was excellent. He shut down travel from China early, despite democrat opposition. He supported the vaccine industry, allowing an unprecedented production ramp-up involving complex supply chains. (really it is NOT easy to quickly get all the pieces in place for high-volume production of a complicated item, and 1 year is indeed very fast) He also showed some moderation, resisting calls to completely destroy our economy over a disease that really isn't on a level with smallpox or airborne ebola. People die, of suicide and violence and neglected care, when they are forced into isolation and poverty. Shutdowns kill.
Floyd protests deserved firehoses. The man died in the hospital of a drug overdose due to having swallowed evidence. There was no police abuse, and certainly no hint of any pattern of abuse of black people. All of Floyd's troubles were of his own making. Supporting that criminal in any way is just plain evil.
The protests were no accident of course. Democrats were looking for anything they could find that might derail the record-breaking (for a republican in recent decades) degree of support that Trump was seeing among black Americans. The protests were a political move, and Floyd was just an excuse to be used.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Friday February 26 2021, @12:32AM (8 children)
So the US can weather a somewhat higher level before it goes Greek? You're still stuck with the problem that Trump did a yuge amount to make that possible.
"Showed some moderation" such as turning mask wearing into a stupid, political issue? There's a reason that a quarter of the world's covid cases are in the US, and it's not because Trump showed moderation.
So what does the January 6 protest deserve? Fire hoses? Or something worse?
I also see you ignore that Floyd didn't have a drug overdose. Look at the autopsy sometime. It was high enough that people have died from that level of dose, but it wasn't an overdose. And I think it a shame that you support criminals who killed Floyd by kneeling on his neck for eight minutes. Fortunately, unlike Floyd, they'll see jail time for their crimes!
Nonsense, there had been police brutality protests before. They don't last long, if the cause is address and authorities deal maturely with the protesters. It took Trump baiting them hard with his bragging to turn a few weeks of protests into a summer of nation-wide protests. He gave them a huge excuse.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday February 26 2021, @01:27AM (7 children)
The US can weather an infinitely higher level before it goes Greek. It can't go Greek unless it joins a currency union. The US certainly can suffer, like Japan and Brazil and Venezuela can, but it will never face the troubles faced by Greece. The difference is that Greece was not permitted to print money.
It takes two to make a political issue. We can equally well ask why democrats turned mask wearing into a stupid, political issue. Their saint Fauci started off telling people to not wear masks, but that changed because we could panic about mask supplies and we could use masks to enable democrat crime. Democrats were happy to suspend the KKK-era anti-mask laws so that they could once again Burn Loot Murder in black neighborhoods.
So what if a quarter of the world's CLAIMED covid cases are in the US? We incentivized reporting. We've done the most testing. We even test the dead, so that insurance payments will be bigger. Africa mysteriously has few cases... maybe because they just don't care when dealing with malaria and polio and ebola and sleeping sickness and HIV and tuberculosis and more. China mysteriously has few cases after they did their big show of force to induce worldwide panic. No, the virus didn't go away in China. The reporting incentives changed.
January 6 was a futile attempt to continue the democracy we once had. If you support the deep-state coup with senile Biden as its figurehead, then of course you might think the resistance deserves worse. When you hate America, a crowd of foolish patriots are your enemy. Maybe you can build a gulag in Alaska or some killing fields in Puerto Rico.
Police brutality protests don't last longer than needed by democrat party insiders. Once the desired damage to our country has been achieved, the funding stops. Kamala Harris and George Soros were among the people bailing out rioters.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Friday February 26 2021, @02:38AM (3 children)
The US is its own currency union. That box is checked off. And I would rather face the troubles of Greece than the troubles of Venezuela. The power to print money is merely yet another power to pass costs on to others. It's not infinite in extent and it doesn't prevent retaliation from those who are so slighted.
So right there, you concede that Trump is no better than democrats.
What made it futile? The enormous delusion of the protesters. Only a few hours after the protest started, they were already trying to blame it on Antifa - it went south that fast. Similarly, Trump and his allies had plenty of opportunity to prove the alleged "deep-state coup". They failed utterly.
Sure, it's a cool story, bro, but I'm not taking it seriously. Nor apparently are most US citizens.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday February 26 2021, @04:50AM (2 children)
The US is its own currency union, so it is possible for California or Chicago to go down like Greece.
The US itself is immune to that, as is the EU. Other troubles may happen. Hyperinflation is still possible.
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The idea that the USA has legitimate elections is not to be taken seriously. There are also elections in North Korea. It's the same deal.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Friday February 26 2021, @11:53AM
Because? Where's the evidence?
(Score: 1) by khallow on Friday February 26 2021, @12:46PM
(Score: 1) by khallow on Friday February 26 2021, @12:41PM (2 children)
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday February 26 2021, @07:31PM (1 child)
I see no conflict between a deadly an exponentially growing virus and "WE WILL WIN THIS WAR", provided that the death rate is less than 100%. The rate was far less than 100%, especially when considering children and people of productive age. Practically nobody died. (of the people you know under age 60, what percentage died of the virus, what percentage died of other causes in the same time period, and what percentage survived?) Mostly it killed retired people. We'll miss grandma, but she wasn't a critical part of the economy.
This is something difficult for you to accept? I suppose a lot of people have trouble with cold rational calculation.
Would you have preferred Trump saying "LOL, grandma's going to kick the bucket and it doesn't matter, RIP"? I suppose it is more honest. It's really insensitive. Normally we consider it unacceptable to express such a truth. It might be better if such things could be said openly, but we don't live in a society like that.
Also, for the good of the country, Trump needed to minimize fear. Democrats impeded that of course, gleefully destroying the fantastic Trump economy at the first chance. Shutdowns are not harmless. Reduced education will have effects that last for decades, including a higher death rate. People are dying from neglecting normal medical care like cancer screening. Quality of life matters, not just quantity of life.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Saturday February 27 2021, @03:53AM
Notice that I also pointed out one other quote and a private discussion with a biographer. The linked story mentions a number more. Why cherry pick the one quote that was ok rather than the many that weren't?
I would have preferred Trump to be honest, yes. But honest doesn't require one to be insensitive about the deaths of the elderly.
Hence, why he deliberately stoked protest and riots over the past year. To minimize fear.