101–110 of 232 posts
> Half of you think I’m describing Donald Trump. The other half, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. Not really, no. The people who are aware of both AOC and DJT enough to have an opinion are not split evenly in terms of their thinking about each of these politicians. I don't despise AOC, I just don't particularly care for her, and I think the way she was elected by exploiting people's lack of attention to the primary race, an…
What does MOR stand for?
For anyone just skimming comments - this is a very well written, well researched, thoughtful, and objective piece. That's pretty rare in today's climate. Definitely worth the read. It's the first time I can remember signing up for a newsletter voluntarily, despite my general distaste for those types of popovers.
The introduction's tacky and condescending tone lost me. Does it get better?
Dialectical arguments tend to long, boring, and esoterical. I found the intro a mix of jocular and dialectical, which for me turned out to be the payoff for some of the article's repetitiveness.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
The introduction's tacky and condescending tone lost me. Does it get better?
Came here to say this. The intro seemed to think it was much more clever than it really is. It's very easy to pick descriptive language vague enough that it applies to multiple subjects. I had to stop reading after that.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Have you considered that the rational bond villains use celebrities as a visibility and accountability shield to accomplish goals that would otherwise be shut down if proposed directly?
Rupert Murdoch was overtly portrayed as a Bond villain in one of the late ‘90s films...
However, Wikipedia says: "While many reviewers compared Elliot Carver to Rupert Murdoch, Feirstein based the character on Robert Maxwell." (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tomorrow_Never_Dies)
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Have you considered that the rational bond villains use celebrities as a visibility and accountability shield to accomplish goals that would otherwise be shut down if proposed directly?
"Celebrity isn’t just harmless fun – it’s the smiling face of the corporate machine" - George Monbiot https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/dec/20/celebr...
This is really reflected in my area: nuclear design. This has gone from once the most secret and guarded information possible (Manhattan project) to a world where there are 50 small companies working on various types of reactor designs [1], many run by what can easily be considered amateurs.
Last week I was in D.C. at an industry conference and met a guy running one of these companies. He was explaining to me the merits of his design and had the basic physics unequivocally backwards. I prodded him gently on it: "Oh, you mean the fast neutrons don't get readily absorbed in fission products, not the slow ones, right?" He doubled down. Some poor schmuck is funding this guy.
Meanwhile, Transatomic, the famed Thiel-backed molten salt company recently folded [2] partly because the two MIT grad student co-founders apparently spent more time giving TED talks about how thermal-neutron reactors could "run on nuclear waste" than reading the 1940s literature that established that this was not possible [3]. (To be fair to the co-founders who are wonderful and smart people, many reactor companies make big mistakes early on, most are just a lot less public about it)
On the other hand, a then-amateur reactor designer named Kirk Sorensen read some stuff about molten salt reactors in an old book and then almost single-handedly built up an internet army of thousands of people yelling from the rooftops the benefits of fluid-fueled reactors. Now the big institutions like national labs have caught back up and there's serious talk and work on these reactors all over. Molten salt reactors (especially thorium-fueled ones) essentially went viral.
So there's a lot of good and bad coming out of all this, and I'm not sure where it will end up. One thing from the article seems certain: we need new forms of accreditation. We should try to find ways to bring trust back to the situation given its new reality.
[1] https://www.thirdway.org/infographic/the-advanced-nuclear-in...
[2] https://www.greentechmedia.com/articles/read/transatomic-to-...
[3] https://www.technologyreview.com/s/603731/nuclear-energy-sta...
I imagine that everybody who watches too much Fox News or Rachel Maddow has a manifesto like this up their sleeve. Just like everybody has a book, which should not necessarily be written. There's something distinctly sad about a disenfranchised person devoting most of their time and thoughts to politics. The entire circus is a scam.
One thing that I find interesting is how none of the great dystopian works of the 20th century featured celebrities as the ruling class. The antagonists are like Bond villains, smart, sophisticated, rational, cruel. A worthy adversary you could respect and feel good about struggling against. Our reality is that we've made our lives so advanced and comfortable, that our fantasies can try to become our reality. I guess…
Have you considered that the rational bond villains use celebrities as a visibility and accountability shield to accomplish goals that would otherwise be shut down if proposed directly?
And that would be true, but I don't believe that overall, since it presupposes that just because someone is a celebrity, they are necessarily some sort of mindless, insentient vessel that optimizes for fame and can otherwise be controlled. Why shouldn't Kim Kardashian have strong-but-misguided opinions like any other random person? And wouldn't her existing fame make her way less amenable to influence by unknown individuals? To use a real-life example, much of Trump's immigration obsession is not shared by the elites who benefited from his tax cuts.
Ultimately, I don't believe it because I don't think any person can be as easily influenced as this scenario implies.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Rupert Murdoch was overtly portrayed as a Bond villain in one of the late ‘90s films...
Interesting, that's how I remembered it too! However, Wikipedia says: "While many reviewers compared Elliot Carver to Rupert Murdoch, Feirstein based the character on Robert Maxwell." ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tomorrow_Never_Dies )