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Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: June 9th, 2023

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  • They point to women’s impressive performance in extreme distance events, like 100+ mile ultra marathons.

    But that runs head long into the question of “How far do you have to actually chase an animal for it to collapse from exhaustion?” I’m having a hard time finding hard numbers but I don’t think gazelle have the endurance to run 10+ miles before collapsing. So women may be biologically equipped for ultra-long distances, but I don’t see how this correlates to endurance hunting as that advantage doesn’t play out hunting game.

    That’s not to say the basis for the theory on male hunters/female gatherers is not without flaw, but the arguments being made against it don’t seem to really be citing evidence that backs up women being significant, let alone dominant, in that role either.


  • No, it’s not a terrible argument. Anyone can have a pitch or idea. That does not mean it’s automatically a viable product/service or a viable business.

    It’s a valid question, how do we define “founder”? To play devil’s advocate, I’m curious if the people who think Musk didn’t co-found Tesla also agree Aaron Schwartz didn’t co-found Reddit. He joined later, after reddit was already incorporated by Hoffman and Ohanian.

    In business, “founder” is already an honorary title. It has no inherent power. Co-founders often ensure they get C-suite positions as a company grows, have stock/shares, or other legal powers, but none of those are guaranteed just by being a “founder”. So practically, there’s no difference between calling Musk a “co-founder” versus “honorary co-founder.” Let’s just focus on calling him a piece of shit for the very definitive and obvious things we can point to.






  • There’s a theory that Taiwan could achieve mass destruction with just regular cruise missiles, no need for actual WMDs.

    The destruction of Three Gorges Dam would kill millions of people from the resulting flood. Be a tough target and air defense would be a nightmare, but it is still within Taiwan’s cruise missile range.

    There’s been no acknowledgement ever of this plan, but it’s pretty obvious.





  • There is no path out of this that makes anyone happy.

    I really wish everyone would accept this so world leaders could just buckle down and resolve any sort of permanent solution. Israel would have to make concessions but oh boo-fucking-hoo. The Palestinians don’t even have anything they could concede in the first place. Hell, the only thing Hamas would have to concede is “No, you don’t get to destroy Israel,” since anything else they’d get in a permanent agreement is going to be a step up from the current situation. The UN is fucking impotent though and partially responsible in the first place, but even with the power they do have seem unwilling to use it to try and fix anything. The whole time the US is happy to sell as many weapons as possible to Israel just on the off chance Iran looks the wrong way, but as long as a bomb lands on an Arab we’re seemingly not too fussed about it. Wonder how quickly Israel would be willing to make concessions towards a two-state solution if the West told them “no more weapons.”


  • Ignoring nuance is claiming only one side is right. It’s easy and borderline brainless to simply claim Israel is the only side wrong for bombing hospitals.

    But this ignores that Hamas is committing war crimes by using civilian facilities as staging grounds to launch attacks on Israel. This ignores that Hamas’ charter calls for the destruction of Israel, and the only thing stopping them is lack of weapons. This ignores that Hamas, the democratically elected ruling party of Gaza, has continued to use resources to attack Israel instead of building infrastructure to actually function independently.

    Ignoring nuance is to ignore history. Ignoring that the West created this whole situation, by both promising one region to two peoples then creating division where there was none to make colonial rule easier, and by also so brutally attempting to wipe out an entire people it created a hardline cultural belief that swift and severe military action is necessary to insure “never again,” (and two wars in '48 and '67 didn’t help either).

    None of this is to say Israel is innocent of wrongdoing - they sure as shit aren’t and certainly seem happy to bomb 100 Palestinian civilians if it means they get 1 Hamas fighter. But rejecting nuance pushes a belief one side is right and one side is wrong, and that the only sides here are national ones. Both suck, both are morally wrong. The only “right side” is Palestinian and Israeli civilians being killed because the only “wrong side” - extremist Israeli and Palestinian leaders - are happy to kill as many civilians as possible for some acres of land.

    But please, do tell me how my opinion is wrong and there’s no complexity here.





  • I was thinking “Maybe he was more moderate or even liberal, but just knew there’s no getting elected without an ® in small town Alabama politics, and so ran as a Republican anyway.” The inverse happens in our town - we’re so blue, we occasionally get conservatives running as Democrats just to have a shot.

    But then he ran for re-election in 2020 and used publicity of him and Trump together to get re-elected, which is farther than any actual moderate would go. So he’s either a massive hypocrite to the LGBT community or a massive hypocrite to the Conservative community, but either way, wasn’t super bright if he was posting all this publicly to Reddit as an elected figure. Shame he felt the need to shoot himself. Could have just moved to a blue state.


  • In my experience, ad personalization is still so bad it has no impact, like in your last example. But at least now I’m not seeing random shit. I don’t really bother to try and counter targeted ads, and the vast majority of the ads I get are for products I actually already bought or never intended to buy but was researching for other purposes. Yes, Google knows I spent a lot of time researching drills, but guess what, Home Depot isn’t telling them I bought a drill, so I’ll get drill ads for a month. And yeah, I looked at a bunch of luxury sail yachts, private jets, and cars, but it’s not because I suddenly make more money. It’s because I’m interested in design and engineering. But Google just stupidly assumes I became a billionaire overnight and gives me 100’ yacht ads.

    I’d honestly be more worried about a random ad getting lucky and pre-emptively catching my interest. Targeted ads are so reactive it’s not a problem.


  • Read the article. The UAW has just signed a ~5 year contract, expiring in 2028. He’s calling for other unions, between now and then, to align their contract expirations with the UAW’s. This is not something that’s possible to do in a short period of time, because it relies upon various other union contracts ending, and realistically by the time we get to 2026/2027 no union is going to sign a sub-2 year contract.

    It’s kind of dumb, I kind of think they’re doing it for PR, but it also is a reasonable strategy.


  • Detroit was the setting of RoboCop. Crime was pretty bad there in the 70s/80s. It’s much better now and the city is turning around.

    However, worth noting that Detroit is in the lower peninsula of Michigan, and the blue “cars & crime” part here is the upper peninsula, which is basically super rural and low crime. I suspect this was done intentionally, lol.


  • Michigan has more automotive manufacturing facilities than any other state, nearly 1,000 if you count all the suppliers and distribution hubs. And despite Stellantis now being French-owned and abandoning their headquarters, Ford and GM are still present with many dozens of facilities as well as their respective HQs.

    Next closest is Ohio with only 600.