my only comment is, for the people who dont own bidets, have some respect for yourselves. you're really walking around like that? going out in public. interacting with loved ones. im disgusted.
There has never been a better time to be alive than right now. I write this as someone worried about climate change, income inequality and the state of our democracy. I can list out 1000 things that are wrong with this country and we could have the normal disagreements likely based on how you vote, but that doesn't change the fact that if I could pick any time to live in, it would be now.
On the Brian Flores stuff, look I know most of us are anti-woke around here, but this is one of those situations where I'm with the mainstream media. The NFL is 70% black players, so it's ridiculous to have just a tiny handful of black head coaches. There's a lot of guys out there who deserve a shot to prove they can be leaders.
The criteria for making the NFL playoffs should have nothing to do with Divisions, Conferences, etc. The only criteria should be win 10 or more games and you're in. Less than that, out. Any weird number of entrants can be fixed with first round byes so that the 2nd round is 8 teams.
Feb 5, 2022·edited Feb 5, 2022Liked by Ethan Strauss
Despite significant headwinds and skyrocketing prices, Single Family Residences for sale in the Bay Area will not drop in price even when the Fed rate hikes start in March 2022 (and march into the next 24 months) and will hold (insanely) high demand/market value through 2024 because there is no new SFR building permitted, there's a glut of highly compensated people wanting to raise kids here (near great schools), large employers give significant equity comp on top of W-2 wages, and who wants to buy a high rise condo near the CalTrain/Bart station without the rest of the "American dream" - your own patch of dirt/grass, an outdoor BBQ, and a patio garden area where you now call your "summertime-outdoor-office" for WFH life.
The giant elephant in the room of global humanity that no-one wants to acknowledge, let alone discuss, is the inherent unsustainability of the current global civilisation driven by an endless growth mentality of linear consumption and disposal. Based on broad, deep science from a wide range of disciplines, human civilisation is rapidly degrading the ecosystems, renewable and non-renewable resources we are completely reliant on - topsoil, biodiversity, fresh water, groundwater, stable climate, fisheries, and so on. Because these systems are complex, resilient, interconnected, and behave in a non-linear manner, on the surface they may appear unaffected and functional until, one day, they undergo rapid transition into system states hostile to human civilisation and impossible to reverse in human timescales. Disposable consumption is inherently unsustainable. Endless growth on a finite planet is axiomatically absurd. And yet we are all trapped in a system driven by these principles, itself highly resilient and repellant to any real change. Is it any wonder that sentience has been described as an evolutionary dead-end?
Most “foodie” culture is just classism in disguise. All PMC and higher seem to do is good out to eat and talk about going out to eat. My personal belief is this is bc it’s a way to have “good taste” without any intellectual rigor.
Ethan, Would you consider adding weekly links you found interesting to the weekend thread?
Oakland Coliseum is a great place to watch a ballgame. A's fans are passionate, and the stadium itself is charming -- plain and basic, no superfluous nonsense. The focus is on the gameplay. Newer ballparks all feel like soulless malls.
We need to have more empathy and better understand the science before claiming that "bears shit in the woods." And if studies show that Bears do in fact, shit in the woods, we need be very careful about releasing those in the wild, as it could inflict great harm on the Bear community and its collective psyche. Bears are already greatly discriminated against. 1 in 4 Bears in their lifetime will try to steal a pic-a-nic basket or commit suicide. Within 2 years of retirement, 78% of Bears are broke. (Source: Pablo S. Yogi, 2009)
Most of you are as performative and full of shit as the (left or right) biased news sources that you decry. Ironic because both sides are working in concert to keep everyone divided and by engaging in this nonsense you are actually carrying their water as much as their most ardent and loyal followers.
The 2022 Beijing Olympics are the moral equivalent of the 1936 Nazi Olympics. A brutal regime that terrorizes and abuses their own population, especially an ethnic minority, and threatens peace and democracy in the rest of the world, is using an international sporting event as a propaganda tool.
Ron Unz’s American Pravda series makes some excellent points (including plenty of “left-wing” ones). This struck me recently: RFK Jr.’s book on Fauci has been a gigantic best seller, and may surpass 1 million copies sold. He devotes hundreds of pages, with detailed evidence, to supporting HIV / AIDS hypothesis as a money-grabbing hoax. He also has detailed his belief Sirhan is innocent of murdering his father. Shouldn’t this be a bigger deal? Why the media focus, when they give him any attention at all, on his opinions about vaccines?
People spending too much time on Reddit trying to correct the opinions of others are missing their calling. They should be answering calls from the Indian call centre that insists my social insurance number is in arrears and that I may appear before a judge if I don't provide my credit card number pronto.
The right type of screen time is GOOD for kids. Kids shoes can be intelligently designed to teach them language, colors, shapes, etc. In a manner that's more effective than the average parent who has no experience or training in how to teach.
Cultural appropriation is the most stupid issue to be debated. I have never understood why people are strongly opposed on how others learn about other cultures and monetize it. We pick up so many new things from each other, and this hand-wringing is just a way to make everything exclusive.
(I love this blog, but) defectors from the current prestige media orthodoxy won't be able to move the needle whatsoever. What's going to do it is the more adult-in-the-room insiders who slowly introduce antibodies to the pathologies of the culture. One example: the recent Jessica Bennett NYT article on the concept creep of words like "trauma" and "harm".
It's not like there's no awareness in those paces of the dysfunction and absurdity, it's that it can't be addressed except by people who read as friends and allies.
Hotter supplemental take: this will work and we'll have a lovely Hegelian synthesis of good old fashioned liberalism and the strongest woke critiques of it by 2030. By 2040 the 2010s and 2020s will all have been a bad dream.
I’ve lived in various big cities around the country all with different characteristics (both coasts & the south, left and right skewing populations, R and D leadership, more segregated and less segregated, etc) and they’re all pretty much the same. Everyone complains about the same things, they all have good food, etc.
My hot take is that there is a conspiracy theory I honestly fully believe: that Elon Musk and Tesla don’t just not care about pedestrian deaths but that they see a *benefit* to them.
Consider that Tesla lets owners beta test its Autopilot feature on residential streets. Musk—against the advice of many of his engineers—decided Teslas would handle autonomous driving solely with cameras, and without radar or other sensors commonly used by Tesla’s competitors. It lets drivers play video games while driving, on an enormous touchscreen on the car’s dashboard. All this indifference to safety features that other manufacturers include has already contributed to a body count: at least 12 deaths in recent years from distracted drivers in Teslas.
Throughout all this, safety experts and engineers seem a little baffled as to why, exactly, Tesla would do such flagrantly dangerous things. Why? “Given what we now know about the limits of automated driving, why might a car manufacturer continue to overhype its capabilities, introduce it to urban roads that it's particularly unsuited for, and intentionally remove safeguards against its well-documented limitations? They may want the fully automated driving future to come into existence even with the full knowledge that the technology doesn’t work. If you were a renegade automaker who is both aware of the actual history of American urban transportation and something of a sociopath, the fact that autonomous driving is clearly unsafe might actually present an opportunity.”
“A car manufacturer could make a bet that by intentionally making his vehicles more dangerous, particularly to people outside of them, regulators and states and municipalities will respond not by punishing his massively over-valued company but instead by attempting to further limit opportunities for Teslas to come into contact with non-drivers. That is, by walling off the streets, giving more space to cars, and making all roads more freeway-like. A true believer might come to think that causing more mayhem will only accelerate the speed with which this transformation takes place. One reason to make that bet is because it is essentially what happened with automobiles themselves…”
I brought this up on one of the callins but here it is- a mid-season tournament would be great for the nba. January through March is pretty rough to watch most of the time. Imagine the grizzlies or bulls being able to win a trophy this year. I think it would be really exciting
Well I'm hoping you have a good Olympic take coming soon, I saw someone report that the opening ceremonies were down 43% or something like that. I can tell you I plan to watch none of them, and I like some sports during the Olympics but I'm disgusted by how corrupt the IOC is and the CCP. People got on SLC case when they blew open the bribe scandal for their win, but that's how the game is played, there's a reason dictatorship's keep winning the Olympics. Be nice if the democracies that came up with the Olympics had a pair and stopped giving them to corrupt countries.
Thoughts on the eternal hot mess that is my home town team - Redskins/WFT/Commanders, worst owner in sports, sexual predator Danny "Kim Jong-un" Snyder?
my only comment is, for the people who dont own bidets, have some respect for yourselves. you're really walking around like that? going out in public. interacting with loved ones. im disgusted.
There has never been a better time to be alive than right now. I write this as someone worried about climate change, income inequality and the state of our democracy. I can list out 1000 things that are wrong with this country and we could have the normal disagreements likely based on how you vote, but that doesn't change the fact that if I could pick any time to live in, it would be now.
On the Brian Flores stuff, look I know most of us are anti-woke around here, but this is one of those situations where I'm with the mainstream media. The NFL is 70% black players, so it's ridiculous to have just a tiny handful of black head coaches. There's a lot of guys out there who deserve a shot to prove they can be leaders.
Dopamine addiction is ruining society.
The criteria for making the NFL playoffs should have nothing to do with Divisions, Conferences, etc. The only criteria should be win 10 or more games and you're in. Less than that, out. Any weird number of entrants can be fixed with first round byes so that the 2nd round is 8 teams.
Despite significant headwinds and skyrocketing prices, Single Family Residences for sale in the Bay Area will not drop in price even when the Fed rate hikes start in March 2022 (and march into the next 24 months) and will hold (insanely) high demand/market value through 2024 because there is no new SFR building permitted, there's a glut of highly compensated people wanting to raise kids here (near great schools), large employers give significant equity comp on top of W-2 wages, and who wants to buy a high rise condo near the CalTrain/Bart station without the rest of the "American dream" - your own patch of dirt/grass, an outdoor BBQ, and a patio garden area where you now call your "summertime-outdoor-office" for WFH life.
The giant elephant in the room of global humanity that no-one wants to acknowledge, let alone discuss, is the inherent unsustainability of the current global civilisation driven by an endless growth mentality of linear consumption and disposal. Based on broad, deep science from a wide range of disciplines, human civilisation is rapidly degrading the ecosystems, renewable and non-renewable resources we are completely reliant on - topsoil, biodiversity, fresh water, groundwater, stable climate, fisheries, and so on. Because these systems are complex, resilient, interconnected, and behave in a non-linear manner, on the surface they may appear unaffected and functional until, one day, they undergo rapid transition into system states hostile to human civilisation and impossible to reverse in human timescales. Disposable consumption is inherently unsustainable. Endless growth on a finite planet is axiomatically absurd. And yet we are all trapped in a system driven by these principles, itself highly resilient and repellant to any real change. Is it any wonder that sentience has been described as an evolutionary dead-end?
Most “foodie” culture is just classism in disguise. All PMC and higher seem to do is good out to eat and talk about going out to eat. My personal belief is this is bc it’s a way to have “good taste” without any intellectual rigor.
Ethan, Would you consider adding weekly links you found interesting to the weekend thread?
I am here to normalize wearing jeans, inside at home. It is my anti-sweatpants, leisure wear movement.
Oakland Coliseum is a great place to watch a ballgame. A's fans are passionate, and the stadium itself is charming -- plain and basic, no superfluous nonsense. The focus is on the gameplay. Newer ballparks all feel like soulless malls.
Novak Djokovic is a hero.
"The United States is also a one-party state but, with typical American extravagance, they have two of them." - Julius Nyerere
We need to have more empathy and better understand the science before claiming that "bears shit in the woods." And if studies show that Bears do in fact, shit in the woods, we need be very careful about releasing those in the wild, as it could inflict great harm on the Bear community and its collective psyche. Bears are already greatly discriminated against. 1 in 4 Bears in their lifetime will try to steal a pic-a-nic basket or commit suicide. Within 2 years of retirement, 78% of Bears are broke. (Source: Pablo S. Yogi, 2009)
Most of you are as performative and full of shit as the (left or right) biased news sources that you decry. Ironic because both sides are working in concert to keep everyone divided and by engaging in this nonsense you are actually carrying their water as much as their most ardent and loyal followers.
The 2022 Beijing Olympics are the moral equivalent of the 1936 Nazi Olympics. A brutal regime that terrorizes and abuses their own population, especially an ethnic minority, and threatens peace and democracy in the rest of the world, is using an international sporting event as a propaganda tool.
Most people don't read: https://jakeseliger.com/2022/01/31/most-people-dont-read-carefully-or-for-comprehension/
Ron Unz’s American Pravda series makes some excellent points (including plenty of “left-wing” ones). This struck me recently: RFK Jr.’s book on Fauci has been a gigantic best seller, and may surpass 1 million copies sold. He devotes hundreds of pages, with detailed evidence, to supporting HIV / AIDS hypothesis as a money-grabbing hoax. He also has detailed his belief Sirhan is innocent of murdering his father. Shouldn’t this be a bigger deal? Why the media focus, when they give him any attention at all, on his opinions about vaccines?
Steph is winning finals MVP this year
People spending too much time on Reddit trying to correct the opinions of others are missing their calling. They should be answering calls from the Indian call centre that insists my social insurance number is in arrears and that I may appear before a judge if I don't provide my credit card number pronto.
The right type of screen time is GOOD for kids. Kids shoes can be intelligently designed to teach them language, colors, shapes, etc. In a manner that's more effective than the average parent who has no experience or training in how to teach.
Armed boomer democrats protect our nation's gas pumps and ATMs from Biden "I did that!"stickers.
Pancakes are best served with crispy edges and a gooey inside.
WHAT ABOUT THE BRIAN FLORES SITUATION ETHAN!?!?!?
Cultural appropriation is the most stupid issue to be debated. I have never understood why people are strongly opposed on how others learn about other cultures and monetize it. We pick up so many new things from each other, and this hand-wringing is just a way to make everything exclusive.
(I love this blog, but) defectors from the current prestige media orthodoxy won't be able to move the needle whatsoever. What's going to do it is the more adult-in-the-room insiders who slowly introduce antibodies to the pathologies of the culture. One example: the recent Jessica Bennett NYT article on the concept creep of words like "trauma" and "harm".
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/02/04/opinion/caleb-love-bombing-gaslighting-trauma.html
It's not like there's no awareness in those paces of the dysfunction and absurdity, it's that it can't be addressed except by people who read as friends and allies.
Hotter supplemental take: this will work and we'll have a lovely Hegelian synthesis of good old fashioned liberalism and the strongest woke critiques of it by 2030. By 2040 the 2010s and 2020s will all have been a bad dream.
I’ve lived in various big cities around the country all with different characteristics (both coasts & the south, left and right skewing populations, R and D leadership, more segregated and less segregated, etc) and they’re all pretty much the same. Everyone complains about the same things, they all have good food, etc.
Also Ethan curious if you saw this article? Would love to get your thoughts https://www.salon.com/2022/02/04/stop-scolding-joe-rogan-progressives-must-reclaim-the-of-pleasure/
Can you write for Klay Travis and Outkick?
My hot take is that there is a conspiracy theory I honestly fully believe: that Elon Musk and Tesla don’t just not care about pedestrian deaths but that they see a *benefit* to them.
Consider that Tesla lets owners beta test its Autopilot feature on residential streets. Musk—against the advice of many of his engineers—decided Teslas would handle autonomous driving solely with cameras, and without radar or other sensors commonly used by Tesla’s competitors. It lets drivers play video games while driving, on an enormous touchscreen on the car’s dashboard. All this indifference to safety features that other manufacturers include has already contributed to a body count: at least 12 deaths in recent years from distracted drivers in Teslas.
Throughout all this, safety experts and engineers seem a little baffled as to why, exactly, Tesla would do such flagrantly dangerous things. Why? “Given what we now know about the limits of automated driving, why might a car manufacturer continue to overhype its capabilities, introduce it to urban roads that it's particularly unsuited for, and intentionally remove safeguards against its well-documented limitations? They may want the fully automated driving future to come into existence even with the full knowledge that the technology doesn’t work. If you were a renegade automaker who is both aware of the actual history of American urban transportation and something of a sociopath, the fact that autonomous driving is clearly unsafe might actually present an opportunity.”
“A car manufacturer could make a bet that by intentionally making his vehicles more dangerous, particularly to people outside of them, regulators and states and municipalities will respond not by punishing his massively over-valued company but instead by attempting to further limit opportunities for Teslas to come into contact with non-drivers. That is, by walling off the streets, giving more space to cars, and making all roads more freeway-like. A true believer might come to think that causing more mayhem will only accelerate the speed with which this transformation takes place. One reason to make that bet is because it is essentially what happened with automobiles themselves…”
Stole all this from (https://theap.substack.com/p/losing-a-street-fight-to-elon-musk) but man I believe it.
I brought this up on one of the callins but here it is- a mid-season tournament would be great for the nba. January through March is pretty rough to watch most of the time. Imagine the grizzlies or bulls being able to win a trophy this year. I think it would be really exciting
2038 bugs will be more disruptive than y2k bugs because there isn't going to be as much investment in cleaning that up.
Carbonated Mineral Water makes you cum harder.
Newest hot take - we don't actually need NBA GMs anymore. Players+Agents can just decide where they want to play.
Well I'm hoping you have a good Olympic take coming soon, I saw someone report that the opening ceremonies were down 43% or something like that. I can tell you I plan to watch none of them, and I like some sports during the Olympics but I'm disgusted by how corrupt the IOC is and the CCP. People got on SLC case when they blew open the bribe scandal for their win, but that's how the game is played, there's a reason dictatorship's keep winning the Olympics. Be nice if the democracies that came up with the Olympics had a pair and stopped giving them to corrupt countries.
It is easier to believe charlatans who tell comforting lies than experts who tell uncomfortable truths.
What really happened to Michael Wright?
After the buy of the athletic will the nyt become a media company and start to become a sports tv rights owner in the future?
That MIT study predicting global systems failure around 2040 is coming 5-10 years earlier than predicted.
Thoughts on the eternal hot mess that is my home town team - Redskins/WFT/Commanders, worst owner in sports, sexual predator Danny "Kim Jong-un" Snyder?