The Glade 4.0

Aren't you in Texas, the land of cowboys and banditos? I would be surprised if there weren't a significant percentage of the population constantly wearing bandanas.

They are, just not in the grocery store. I did buy a 12-pack for the family though, so we look like a whole family of outlaws.

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

Not sure where I ever directed anything at you whatsoever. I purposefully reread the whole thing just to make sure.

Also - people are allowed to consider both sides of an issue Elmo. I don't really see the latter scenario happening, as the current surge is undermining my thoughts from a couple weeks ago that this is seasonal, but it is technically possible we'll end up in better shape than other countries. I doubt it, but it's possible.

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“The duty of a patriot is to protect his country from its government.” - Thomas Paine

Having listened to Brett Weinstein's discussion with Rogan, I wonder if the seasonality of it is actually suppressed by stay-at-home orders. I don't know that keeping people indoors, out of the sun, and closer to other people is necessarily working all that well.

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

Yea, I heard that podcast. It was a great one. I particularly was interested in his point that this seems uniquely adapted to indoor circumstances for a disease that reportedly evolved in outdoor animals.

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“The duty of a patriot is to protect his country from its government.” - Thomas Paine

Been slowly going through this podcast as well on my commutes. Haven't gotten to the part you're talking about. I can agree with some of his premises, but his conclusions just go way off base for me.

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The Dude abides.

Most of his comments surrounding the police and associated racial issues betray that he's not fully grasped how we got to the point we've gotten to. He doesn't want racial identity politics, but he wants to enact policies based on the same vague sense of history re-termed an "origin story", and doesn't seem to understand that people will NEVER give up the origin story as long as it's getting them something - whether material or mental.

His comments on the virus are much stronger, but that's to be expected. He's a biologist.

He's a smart and basically reasonable guy, but he is a perfect example of a scientist trying to speak authoritatively well outside his area of expertise, and I don't find his attempts to turn every aspect of human behavior into an evolutionary question terribly convincing.

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

Not just a biologist, and evolutionary biologist. So he's approaching the world through a very narrow lens.


And yes - I struggled with his discussions on elements of the racial situation. Knowing his history at Evergreen, though, I understood where he was coming from. Just not the conclusions (or at least not all of them). His point about removal of males from a population and the impact on mating practices was really fascinating, regardless of accuracy. If true, it explains a huge amount of cultural elements.

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“The duty of a patriot is to protect his country from its government.” - Thomas Paine

That point was very interesting.

The impression I got from his "origin story" and associated bits was that he really does not want to have to change any of his own thinking on race, and doesn't understand that decades of this kind of thinking is part of what created the mob at Evergreen. Massive efforts to boost a particular racial group will necessarily create resentment, not only in the other group(s) but in the group receiving it as well, because it's a constant reminder of the past (no matter how long ago that was). I sense a real reluctance to let the past go, because I guarantee he's done his own share of beating conservatives over the head with it over the years, even if he's been more willing to listen in response.

I don't know a whole lot about how different types of biologist are different, but I agree he's got a narrow lens - he puts EVERYTHING, or close to it, in evolutionary terms.

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

The Evergreen thing is the least interesting thing about Bret. How he got screwed on the rat telomere prediction and how corporate science has failed to respond to the finding is 100% more relevant to why everything is **** beyond reason.

His concerns about covid and what he'd have done are 100% more reasonable and well thought out than what our appointed overlords have done.

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"...the line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being. And who is willing to destroy a piece of his own heart?" -Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

Yea the rat thing is reeeeeeally fascinating.

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“The duty of a patriot is to protect his country from its government.” - Thomas Paine

The reactions over the last 10 days to Trump's diagnosis, treatment, press releases and in-hospital behavior, and subsequent return to the White House all have me so pissy with the state of modern media. Like more than normal, even.

I'm more and more convinced it isn't the politicians that are ruining this country, per se, but the utter and complete failure of the 4th estate.

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“The duty of a patriot is to protect his country from its government.” - Thomas Paine

This is absolutely true. We've interpreted Freedom of the Press as a special privilege for media corporations, entitling them to special access to information, and to present as much or as little of that information as they please, in whatever way they please, with no oversight from anyone at all - not the public, not even a non-binding, non-government Board of Ethics or anything like that, not really even each other. FOX and the MSM covering each other and fussing about each other is just a bunch of squabbling. The only thing that even starts to be accountability is RealClearPolitics's checking the fact-checkers, and that's got a minute amount of public traction.

The fussing over the details of Presidential COVID treatment, as you say, has been absurd. The President has the same right to medical privacy as anyone else; there is no public right to know about it. (That said, they should have better prepared his doctor to speak publicly, if they did choose to reveal it.) What the public does have the right to know is: 1) Is the President in charge of the country? 2) Is that reasonably likely to change in the immediate future? 3) If he is not, what is the status of the Vice President and 4) Is the National Command Authority intact and able to respond to a crisis.

That's it. The public doesn't need to know how much oxygen or what kind of steroids were administered on what day. We, our allies, and our adversaries just need to know that someone is in charge and able to speak for the country and make decisions. The other information is just useless gossip and speculation dressed up as news.

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

Not just that, but things like "Defund Walter Reed." Really? Let's harm veterans because some journo hates Donald J Trump? Great call.

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“The duty of a patriot is to protect his country from its government.” - Thomas Paine

Trump enjoys breathing oxygen, so I'm gonna stop...

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"...the line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being. And who is willing to destroy a piece of his own heart?" -Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn