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Everything Jared Diamond told me was wrong.
I’ve been listening to a bunch of, well, I’m not sure what you’d call them. History, archeology, anthropology? Podcasts. That’s what I’ve been listening to [1]. Anything that’s not about today.
And what I’ve learnt, from people who seem to be knowledgeable experts in their fields, is that all that time I spend reading Jared Diamond was a total waste. Basically he just made up Just-So stories, unsupported by much, if any, actual boots-on-the-ground research, and was completely off the rails. Collapse. Guns, Germs, and Steel. Basically not even supported by research that was current at the time.
[1] Also audiobooks. Ian McKellen should do more of these. The Odyssey was meant to be listened to, read by someone like Mr. McKellen. I’d listen to him read the proverbial phone book, if phone books still existed. The Yellow Pages doesn’t even bother to piss me off by delivering them anymore despite my ticking that box.
PotD 20201113
PotD 20201111
Exchange and the things people will believe
Why does Exchange show me the whole of the last month during the last week of the month, instead of this week, and the next month? Does anyone care what happened in the past month, versus what’s going to happen next month? I want to know what’s coming up.
In a related note, I had to take mandatory phishing training, and what I learned is that there is literally no horrible statement that you can make about Exchange that 15% of people will not believe, and click on the link.
This is supposed to tell me something about the gullibility of people, I think, but it really tells me that pretty much everyone has been trained by experience to believe that Exchange is capable of any horror.
And they’re not wrong.
RBG
Obama went to her when she was 77, and made the proposition that she should retire, and let him appoint someone younger in her place, because who knows what the future holds, and 77 years old and 20 years on the court is long enough. She replied “Who would you rather have on the court than me?” and refused. Well the answer is of course, some one 30 years younger.
Because now that’s what we get. Someone 30 years younger. Several someones.
Ditto Breyer, who was approached with the offer of an ambassadorship to France.
This is why Dems can’t accomplish anything.
Fuck RBG, and her selfish choices that no one else gets to make (most of us will not still be working when we are 77), and fuck Breyer too.
And also fuck Gore, for giving up, because that led to 1.2 million deaths (Iraq, Afghanistan, and COVID), and H. Clinton for running a crappy campaign, and shares part of that responsibility.
PotD 20201108
Voicemail
I counted the other day. In 11 months, my personal phone had the following :
- 67 spam, mostly
- car warranty (my cars are 18 and 36 years old)
- home warranty (107 years)
- roof repair (10 years into a 30-year warranty)
- 10 real – mostly from the vet or doctor
That’s why I never never never answer the phone anymore. Does anyone?
Things that are better than they were part IV in a series
On the list of things that are cool, and/or better than they used to be:
- Bike radar – there are those who dismiss it, and those that have tried it. Game changer.
- An affordable head’s up bike display (HUD) – goes with the previous. Not having to look down to see the radar or stats is also a game changer, for me. To the point where I almost won’t ride if the battery is dead. Almost. I don’t know what I’ll do when this dies, as Garmin discontinued it, and none of the other solutions are remotely affordable or give me any hope they’ll be around in five years.
- Suspensions for road bikes – Next thing that will make me buy a new road bike will be an on-the-fly-adjustable suspension like Isospeed. Do you hear me, Trek? Stiff for climbs, soft for the crappy surfaces, changed without stopping?
- DI2? – I really want electronic shifting, but not enough (yet) to spend an extra $1.5k on a bike for it. Or more realistically, $6.5k for it, cause it would involve a new bike, and the new old bike would probably rotate down to being the backup bike. Is electronic shifting a game changer worth buying a new bike for?
- Home coffee makers – no more Mr. Coffee. There are really good machines that make a good enough cup without having to be a pourover obsessive.
- Radar detectors – I’ve always had one, but the V1 is just head and shoulders above the old Escort. It’s not going to help you with a laser, but nothing will.
- Music players – I hated having to choose which music would be on my 5 (10, 20, 50) GB iPod. Now it all goes on the 512GB iPhone, along with podcasts and movies, with room to spare.
This is why I don’t buy 5.10 anymore
This is every pair of 5.10 approach shoes I’ve ever owned (except the size 12 Daescents which turned out to be really size 11, and haven’t gotten worn much). The big wall boots (two pairs), the guide shoes (several pairs), half a dozen different pair. All delaminate unexpectedly at some point when you are five miles out on talus, at about 18 months after manufacture, whether you’ve used them or not.
If I was bored (and I am), I could go through and find half-a-dozen other examples.
I stopped wearing their climbing shoes because Charles Cole, bless his heart, must have had weird shaped heels, and every pair of their climbing shoes was impossible to heel-hook with. After I graduated from the beloved Moccasym to more aggressive shoes, I went through about three different 5.10 shoes to try to find something that would stay on while climbing tufas. Most uncomfortable: 5.10 Teams.
Then I discovered Solutions (and Skwamas, and Genius, and Boreal Fusions) and never looked back. We used to wear 5.10s because the Stealth rubber was just way better, but now everyone else’s sticky rubber is within a hair of being just as good.
Why buy shoes that 1) fall apart, and 2) don’t fit, and 3) change sizes randomly between not just models, but the same shoe in different years?
I’ve never had a pair of Boreal or La Sportiva approach shoes fall apart like this. I’ve run thousands, and biked ten-thousands of miles, in 20 different kind of shoes, and not a single pair of shoes except the 5.tennies has ever fallen apart. Delaminated. The others get old and wear out, but they don’t fall apart.
I had these shoes for about a year, and really only started wearing them last November in Kalymnos. They still have all their tread, and aren’t worn out. They just fell apart. Both on the same day, like someone threw a switch.
My go-to running shoe is the Adidas Supernova (which they don’t really make anymore), and none of those have ever fallen apart, after probably 20 pairs. Maybe now that Adidas owns 5.10, they’ll fix this problem. But I’ll never know.
Never Again.
Choices
I made sure that the American flag I bought was made in China [0].
Because I’d rather give money to (maybe) Chinese communists [1], than for-real no-kidding American nazis [2].
[0] to go next to the Black Lives Matter flag
[1] But probably just better capitalists than us
[2] A perhaps not-surprisingly large number of US flag makers also make [3] Drumpf, and Gadsen, and Treasonous-Slave-Owner, and Thin Blue Line flags. Not a lot of Biden or Obama or BLM flags to be seen on their Amazon Storefront. Anything you want as long as it’s kinda, or a lot, racist, or white supremacist.
[3] Well, manufacture. The people who actually make it are illegal immigrants, who these folks want to put up a fence to keep out except for the ones who keep their businesses running, mow their lawns, bring up their kids, clean their houses, and pick their fruit.
BITD
If everyone who told me that their dad had that car BITD really did, they would have sold a lot more than the 19,987 they really did from 1984-88.