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mad-science-guy.bsky.social @mad-science-guy.bsky.social · 01/10/2026

I have interacted with the Yud on occasion (in the Other Place) and what struck me was there are a bunch of things where he doesn’t understand how stuff *works*. Combined with his limitless self regard it makes him dangerous given the influence he has accrued.

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Reposted by @mad-science-guy.bsky.social

aslynn is just a ghoul 👻 @aslynnromano.com · 01/10/2026

An absolute hero. I am SO fucking proud to be a nurse and among such courageous people. Please spread the word of this Florence Nightingale level bravery. I hope that a way to support her legal fees becomes evident soon. Thank you, Chloe 🫶

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mad-science-guy.bsky.social @mad-science-guy.bsky.social · 01/10/2026

It's sad, really. I've met this guy so many times. The machismo, the desperation for a connection to something "cool" and "tough" because he feels inadequate. Guy wants to be Tom Cruise because he thinks that's how you get laid, when he's just an insufferable fool. /end

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mad-science-guy.bsky.social @mad-science-guy.bsky.social · 01/10/2026

Hesgeth is the kind of guy who loves to show up to martial arts classes and talk up how many ways he knows how to kill someone, never fails to remind everyone that he did a stint in the military, "but it was classified" sotto voice because he manned an office for a month in a European base. /4

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mad-science-guy.bsky.social @mad-science-guy.bsky.social · 01/10/2026

He is so focused on the manly-man idea of being in the military that comes from Rambo movies that he has no understanding of logistics, no concept that a modern *effective* military maximizes the use of its personnel. /3

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mad-science-guy.bsky.social @mad-science-guy.bsky.social · 01/10/2026

To illustrate: the European knights who faced the Mongols were warriors. Highly trained. As individuals, very good fighters. The Mongols won because they were soldiers. They followed orders. They worked together as units. They were basically a modern army. Hesgeth doesn't get any of this. /2

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mad-science-guy.bsky.social @mad-science-guy.bsky.social · 01/10/2026

Here's the thing about "warriors" If you were in a fight and had to face 100 warriors or 100 soldiers, you'll do better against the former. Why? Warriors are (mostly guys) who train and get all into the details of hand to hand combat, courage, manly-man stuff. Soldiers fight as units. /1

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mad-science-guy.bsky.social @mad-science-guy.bsky.social · 01/10/2026

This is kind of saddening, as I try to invite people over pretty regularly. That said, I remember when I had housemates in college and we actually made a regular, scheduled thing of cooking - "dinner and Star Trek" on Saturdays. It allowed us to introduce new people to the group.

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mad-science-guy.bsky.social @mad-science-guy.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

And even that is the ends of a bell curve that add up to about a 1/6 chance, IIRC.

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mad-science-guy.bsky.social @mad-science-guy.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

I think a good way to think of it is to always note that a poll with a 3% MoE thats says Candidate A is 48% and B is 52% means results could be anywhere from 45-55 to 51-49

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mad-science-guy.bsky.social @mad-science-guy.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

Counterpoint: Trump doesn't need a strategy, Miller and Vought do. I don't think the locus of power is with Trump in a lot of ways. These guys don't need to be hyper competent supervillains. Trump *is* stupid enough to try to destroy everything and kill many in the process. See: war in Iran.

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mad-science-guy.bsky.social @mad-science-guy.bsky.social · 27/09/2026

Hah, I am not that far in yet but the description of Ned Land is more interesting than what I recalled from earlier reads. And I am developing 19 th century French nautical vocabulary :-).

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mad-science-guy.bsky.social @mad-science-guy.bsky.social · 27/09/2026

I am reading 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea in French. It’s actually not as hard as I thought it would be, Verne was evidently known for writing in a journalistic style. I wanted to see if it was very different from the English versions I grew up with.

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mad-science-guy.bsky.social @mad-science-guy.bsky.social · 27/09/2026

To be fair, it's a transportation alternative in a bad situation. Thanks god I live and work 50+ feet above the Hudson, tho.

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mad-science-guy.bsky.social @mad-science-guy.bsky.social · 27/09/2026

Having grown up in a factory union household (IUE Local 201, and the UE at United Shoe Machine Corp) the social function of organized labor is too often overlooked. My father wrote about this dynamic a bit here: www.laborsbookstore.com/products/tro...

laborsbookstore.com

TROUBLEMAKER: Saying No to Power

Paperback.. 315 pages. This is a book of life, the life of a unique figure within the US Left from the 1950s all the way into the early decades of the twenty-first century. It tells a story too little...

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mad-science-guy.bsky.social @mad-science-guy.bsky.social · 27/09/2026

The biggest turn off for me tho, is the racism. For a bunch of people who call themselves rationalists they are awfully bad at figuring out confounding factors.

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mad-science-guy.bsky.social @mad-science-guy.bsky.social · 27/09/2026

As well, I grew up in radical circles, and in a working class environment during my formative years. Maybe transitioning from that to a wealthier neighborhood did it; a lot of absurdity was revealed that way. But the fundamental fact is yes, the Rationalist™️ worldview reminds me of 14 year old me.

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mad-science-guy.bsky.social @mad-science-guy.bsky.social · 27/09/2026

I have to say reading Duncan's piece I recognized a lot of myself in these people. But as you say, some of us grew up. I am not always entirely sure why I grew up when I did, but I think engaging with people who were anti-racist helped, along with my father's committed Marxism.

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mad-science-guy.bsky.social @mad-science-guy.bsky.social · 27/09/2026

Ah I see. I wasn't sure if you were referring to ⚽ or 🏈 (no emoji for the AFL version, a pity that)

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mad-science-guy.bsky.social @mad-science-guy.bsky.social · 26/09/2026

That’s relatively rare tho, and the issue is most kids never get a chance to work with each other basically unsupervised. Parents were convinced that if your kid walks to school alone they will be murdered in five seconds and we are all paying the price now.

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mad-science-guy.bsky.social @mad-science-guy.bsky.social · 26/09/2026

And speaking as someone raised in a world steeped in Marxist thinking I can understand that wariness. (I don’t hate the essay, fyi; but given that LeGuin is one of the few writers to actually think through how an anarchist society would, day-to-day, actually *work* I’d characterize her differently).

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mad-science-guy.bsky.social @mad-science-guy.bsky.social · 26/09/2026

Haber is trying a top-down version of social change, and even his “solution” to racism was the “I don’t see color” version, and we all know why that’s inadequate. So in that sense I don’t see LeGuin as anti-revolutionary as much as one who is wary that in itself that gets you the changes you want.

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mad-science-guy.bsky.social @mad-science-guy.bsky.social · 26/09/2026

And her later work does sometimes operate from the perspective of the oppressed, notably Tehanu and Always Coming Home (the latter more loosely). More to the point, I took from it that *any* revolutionary change requires a lot of hard work; the issue was never the change itself but how it happens.

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mad-science-guy.bsky.social @mad-science-guy.bsky.social · 26/09/2026

Hm. Reading this I think you downplay something that shows up in a lot of LeGuin’s work — the Earthsea books, for example, which are all about the reasons that a will to power is a bad idea. Her take *is* very Taoist.

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mad-science-guy.bsky.social @mad-science-guy.bsky.social · 26/09/2026

In the dark days before the Internet existed you did one of these: Call the 800 number *on a landline* and reserve at the door (phone CC payment) Go to the venue beforehand Go to a record store For colleges there were bookstores I mean, I was able to buy tickets to Rush, Suzanne Vega, REM…

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Jeff Sharlet @jeffsharlet.bsky.social · 26/09/2026

Front page news, Boston Globe: Ivy provost leading charge to infuse AI into higher ed discovered using AI in academic & public work w/out disclosure--an action for which a student could fail a course or worse. Free link: archive.is/JoJbA

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mad-science-guy.bsky.social @mad-science-guy.bsky.social · 26/09/2026

I used to believe retributive violence was bad and now I am wondering if there is any other way. What do we do with people who take such joy in harming others?

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mad-science-guy.bsky.social @mad-science-guy.bsky.social · 26/09/2026

This bleeds into reading and a whole culture (not limited to education) that values answers as opposed to process. So few kids I meet seem to get *pleasure* from reading the way I did as a kid, and it’s a little sad.

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mad-science-guy.bsky.social @mad-science-guy.bsky.social · 26/09/2026

So younger folks are already not getting the chance to build underlying skills that help you develop a theory of mind that allows empathy and the realization that you noted about other people being real people. Continuous Tech mediated communication makes it worse.

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mad-science-guy.bsky.social @mad-science-guy.bsky.social · 26/09/2026

For example, socialization it is now so narrow — things like play dates and the like so kids never really learn how to operate on their own, how to make up their own rules, and how to set things up so that everybody has a good time. Such skills require “reading” context in a big way.

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mad-science-guy.bsky.social @mad-science-guy.bsky.social · 26/09/2026

I teach HS and I notice that it’s hard to engage kids in certain ways - I don’t teach reading but I often bring up where words come from. The thing I harp on is that any skills need practice and there are a lot of “muscles” that children are no longer allowed to develop.

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mad-science-guy.bsky.social @mad-science-guy.bsky.social · 24/09/2026

We were just handed the standards. My beef is that “discovery” is all very well but there’s a ton of basic skills you need first. You can’t “discover” in precalc if fractions are black magic to you. That’s where a lot of disconnect is, IMO. There are systemic issues *before* HS.

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mad-science-guy.bsky.social @mad-science-guy.bsky.social · 24/09/2026

I teach and tried reading the NGSS standards. Whoever wrote them… I mean, prior to teaching I was a reporter. And if you need a whole PD to understand the standards you are reading then the standards are not written clearly. That I think is a huge part of the problem.

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mad-science-guy.bsky.social @mad-science-guy.bsky.social · 24/09/2026

What district? Because changing curriculum every year is just beyond stupid. But education is full of fads and there’s a tendency to want to try the next new thing every year rather than let teachers actually get good at anything.

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mad-science-guy.bsky.social @mad-science-guy.bsky.social · 24/09/2026

I mean, I liked Raiders and ET and Close Encounters; Jaws is really good. But some of his prestige output leaves me less impressed, and I *wanted* to like them more than I did.

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mad-science-guy.bsky.social @mad-science-guy.bsky.social · 24/09/2026

Ok, I must be in the minority here, but my sense is every Spielberg movie must have something glow in the dark. I was surprised that we didn’t see freaking light pour from Schindler’s window. His movies aren’t *bad* but the ones I have seen seemed to be spectacle, often borderline mawkish.

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mad-science-guy.bsky.social @mad-science-guy.bsky.social · 24/09/2026

This was really interesting! as someone who grew up near Boston the whole question of local dialect and how it can mark class, region, or education (so many other things too) has a certain resonance.

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mad-science-guy.bsky.social @mad-science-guy.bsky.social · 24/09/2026

There was that video of the theater group in England, which reads Shakespeare in the “original” accent which to my American ear sounds a lot like Scottish people. The development of English is in so many ways really fascinating.

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mad-science-guy.bsky.social @mad-science-guy.bsky.social · 24/09/2026

I teach HS and a fun thing was to put the first 10 or so lines of Beowulf on the board and ask kids what language they thought it was. Then play a video of someone reading it. It’s interesting to me because even early modern English is pretty difficult for a lot of readers.

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mad-science-guy.bsky.social @mad-science-guy.bsky.social · 23/09/2026

Good luck, by the time you see this I can only hope he doesn't puke on your shoes. (I have dealt with some belligerent drunks now and again, and the usual outcome is just gross, and I have in fact been out some pairs of shoes).

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mad-science-guy.bsky.social @mad-science-guy.bsky.social · 23/09/2026

This is a great primer on *why* supporting Israel is not a get-out-of-antisemitism free card, and why many Jewish people have not supported the Israeli government at *many* junctures, not just the more recent ones. www.everythingishorrible.net/p/trump-thin...

everythingishorrible.net

Trump Thinks Jews Should Be America’s Tools

That’s the Zionist bargain

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mad-science-guy.bsky.social @mad-science-guy.bsky.social · 23/09/2026

So I just saw this ad for tourism in Israel, and it seems heavily marketed to Christians (the scene of someone getting baptized in the Jordan was kind of a clue). Really interesting, this.

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mad-science-guy.bsky.social @mad-science-guy.bsky.social · 22/09/2026

It's interesting because Yoda's syntax isn't so weird if you've ever heard anyone whose first language isn't English and given that even English will put verbs at the end sometimes. Fascinating to think of what word orders in say, Japanese would duplicate the effect.

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mad-science-guy.bsky.social @mad-science-guy.bsky.social · 22/09/2026

I am not saying she has no chance, but the pattern of past candidates would make me think the odds aren't great, for the same reason that as a VP I think her odds weren't spectacular in 2024 *even if* Biden dropped out much sooner or didn't run at all.

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mad-science-guy.bsky.social @mad-science-guy.bsky.social · 22/09/2026

Granted these were all very different candidates in very different circumstances. But the record for people who lost the first time isn't great; looking it up I can't find too many instances where a candidate lost a nomination in attempt 1 and got it later. (Harris is a bit of an odd case though).

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mad-science-guy.bsky.social @mad-science-guy.bsky.social · 22/09/2026

A candidate who ran for a nomination a second time (and wins the nomination) is not unheard of; and as the old saying goes you're electable if people vote for you. Nixon, Dewey, Stevenson and Bryan were all folks who tried more than once to be president, but only Nixon did it.

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mad-science-guy.bsky.social @mad-science-guy.bsky.social · 22/09/2026

Do you think that has changed since 2020? I mean, odds are it has, but one problem Harris ran into then was she couldn't crack double digits in the primaries among *Democrats*. She has better name recognition now, for sure! But were she to try again could do better by a factor of 10?

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mad-science-guy.bsky.social @mad-science-guy.bsky.social · 22/09/2026

They'd better not reciprocate by capitulating to GOP talking points (see their behavior on trans issues) from the getgo.

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mad-science-guy.bsky.social @mad-science-guy.bsky.social · 20/09/2026

I’d say this applies generally no? It is no easy thing to make Christmas specials of any stripe “inside” a series that works seamlessly. I still have a soft spot for the old Rankin Bass stuff from my childhood. Tho I get that to current kids they’d likely look weird.

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