ShittyBeatlesFCPres

Because the library won’t stop e-mailing my wife.

One more is that some people in the Himalayas (Nepalese, Tibetans, etc.) have some pretty recent adaptations for living at extremely high altitudes where there’s less oxygen. This Wikipedia article has more examples of recent adaptations: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Recent_human_evolution

Another interesting factoid is that Africa has more genetic diversity than the rest of the world. So, don’t sleep on the fact that that Homo sapiens spent more time radiating throughout Africa than radiating out of Africa.

For a technological civilization like ours, I think it’s just that Earth/humans are weird and we’re past the main ones (like going from single-cell to multi-cellular organisms).

Having to overcome the physical obstacles on other planets rules out the type of spacefaring technological civilizations like ours. No matter how intelligent a civilization on a water world is, it’s not starting fires, much less building rockets. Just getting out of the water would be their space program. Even a totally Earth-like planet that’s a bit bigger and has an intelligent species wouldn’t be able to get to space with chemical rockets.

And also, humans are weird. It could be as basic as “we have hands for building complex tools.” We have a seemingly insatiable need to compete and explore, even beyond all logic—maybe no other intelligent species wants to strap someone to a rocket and send them to space because it sucks up there. We’re violent: without WWII and the Cold War, do we even have a space program?

So many things had to come together to create an intelligent, tool-building species with hands that lives on a planet with the right balance of land and water. As far as we know, it never even happened on Earth before and even then, we had thousands of years of civilizations before anyone was dumb enough to strap themselves to a rocket just to see what would happen.

I find neutron stars fascinating. The remnant of a star that was almost big enough to form a black hole but not quite. The gravity pulls all the matter left after a supernova into a bizarre form of matter. The protons and electrons are smushed together making basically the whole thing neutrons. They’re packed together so densely, a teaspoon would weigh as much as a mountain. A star much bigger than the sun suddenly condensed into like 20km.

Plus, some form pulsars spinning so fast that it seems impossible. The record is over 1,000 rotations per second. Some form magnetars, the strongest magnets in the universe. There might be an even more exotic form of matter — “strange matter” made of strange quarks — in their core.

I do think he believes he’s the best shot against Trump. He’s a politician. Basically every elected official in DC or a governor’s mansion thinks they’d be the best presidential candidate ever. Plus, he already beat Trump once and (according to 538’s polling average) is slightly ahead nationally.

I didn’t support Biden in the 2020 primary and I’m not thrilled with a replay of 2020 but with everyone even older. But at this stage, Biden might be the best candidate. If he did step aside, the convention could easily divide the party and be a total disaster. Do they go with Kamala? A popular governor like Gavin Newsome or Gretchen Whitmer? Could the candidate even put together a campaign staff and raise the necessary cash in time to be a good candidate? They’re already booking TV ad time for September.

I mean, I don’t have an answer to those questions. Maybe voters would be like, “Thank god, someone under 75.” and it’d be a landslide. But it could just as easily be total chaos.

Biden isn’t the “official nominee” yet but under DNC rules, the pledged delegates are essentially required to vote for the candidate their state selected in the first round. Only if no one has the required 1,968 pledged delegates in the first round does it go to a second round. At that point, 739 Superdelegates — party officials, basically — are allowed to vote and pledged delegates can switch to another candidate.

Biden currently has 3,894 pledged delegates. Second is Dean Phillips with 4. So, you’d basically have to convince thousands of Biden loyalists to change the party rules so they could vote for another candidate. And then, in the potential second round, convince the Superdelegates to also reject Biden.

That won’t happen unless he’s literally dead or incapacitated. Both primaries are over and the nominating conventions are a formality. It’d probably be easier to convince the electoral college to vote against the candidate that specifically chose them for their loyalty.

Edit: here’s a link that explains it in detail https://ballotpedia.org/Democratic_delegate_rules,_2024

You can go back as far as you want but I think the current situation is because they got routed in the 2008 election and decided that openly courting the worst people in society was their only option. There’s always been racists and conspiracy theorists in America — see The John Birch Society, for one of many examples — but parties didn’t openly court them, at least without plausible deniability. Maybe a wink and a nod but not open courtship.

So, after 2008, Republicans started saying the quiet parts out loud because they were desperate. They — especially Mitch McConnell, in my opinion — thought they could control the beast they unleashed but, it turns out, that isn’t how unleashing beasts works. It started with the Tea Party and pretty quickly escalated into a situation where “moderate Republican” became an oxymoron. And then Trump came along yelling the formerly quiet parts and that was that.

The left isn’t who made him a cause célèbre. That was the right wing media. He wasn’t interviewed by fucking Jacobin or whatever. He was interviewed on Fox News. And he didn’t “defend” himself unless you ignore everything that happened leading up to the killings. He got driven across state lines with a AR-style rifle “to protect businesses” like a dumbass.

I want medical reforms as much as you, believe me, but I also want a dumbass exception to self-defense laws. If you arm yourself and appoint yourself a vigilante, you are no longer acting in self defense. You are an untrained dumbass creating the conditions for violence. It’s like showing up to an Alabama - LSU game and going into the LSU student section in a Bama jersey. If you get a beer thrown at you and it ends in a brawl, nothing you do is self defense. It’s your own dumbass fault.

This is set to change in the next iOS version. (In developer beta now; to be released in early September, typically, when the next iPhones drop). So, if you’re otherwise happy with the keyboard, I’d say just use Text Replacement rules (Settings → General → Keyboard → Text Replacement) for a few months.

I don’t think you’re giving normie white American evangelicals enough credit. Aside from kids and very old people, most join megachurches for community and status reasons. It doesn’t matter at all if the pastor preaches the exact opposite of what the Bible says — prosperity gospel, for example — it’s about showing up, seeing friends, and being part of a community. They aren’t being duped.

I don’t want to say no Evangelicals are sincere in their faith because, obviously, that isn’t true. Plenty people practice their faith by doing good works and helping the poor. But as that Niebuhr quote says: “Religion makes good people better and bad people worse.” A lot of white American Evangelical churches are about giving bad people excuses to be worse. Trump hasn’t been good for much but he did create a big “mask off” moment for lots of American “Christians.”

I wear a Texas Congressman pin even though they begged me not to so I can’t get too mad.

One piece of advice I can offer (as someone with a similar wide range of interests) is that you should sometimes treat life like a field trip. If you meet an expert in something, ask questions and show enthusiasm. Experts (usually) love talking about their favorite topic. I know a gearhead who restores old cars who doesn’t talk much. But if I ask about any car, he will put his beer down and talk about different cars until the sun comes up. Chefs love talking about food. Most people like telling people about their life’s work (as long as you aren’t the type of asshole who tries to tell a Ph D they’re wrong because someone on the internet said something else).

Also, people say life is short. It’s actually simultaneously too short and too long. You won’t have time to be a Ph D level expert in all your interests but you’ll (hopefully) have decades to learn about whatever floats your boat. Life can get in the way but if you find hobbies you like, it’s restorative. Work and family responsibilities exist, to be sure, and lots of people feel too drained for hobbies but doing something fun isn’t draining.