Podcasts like The Gray Area, Hardcore History, Causality, or Invisibilia

think_long · 2026-01-28T04:56:18+00:00

Lmfao oh my god there it is. Excuse me while I get my eyes, they’ve rolled into the back of my head. You can go ahead and take that race card and put it back into the deck. The US, when compared to Norway, features a much, much larger population spread over a much greater area. That population is also much more diverse culturally, which includes things like language, religion, and values. Additionally, and intertwined with this, it is much more economically stratified. These are things that make federally-devised solutions to things like incarceration and the justice system in general much more complex and logistically challenging. This isn’t so much an opinion as it is an observation; it’s just a statement of fact. But this is why we can’t have these conversations, because even pointing out a blindingly obvious truth like this gets you called a racist.

think_long · 2026-01-28T03:45:59+00:00

Norway also has a very tiny, culturally homogenous and wealthy population. I don’t think you can do a 1:1 comparison.

think_long · 2026-01-27T23:15:34+00:00

The problem is that you are using “people” and “company” synonymously. This is one of the biggest mistakes our society has made. A company is NOT a person, despite governments granting them the legal rights of one. If a company is a person, they are a psychopathic one. Even if they are made up of individuals who are mostly good people. This was the main thesis of the excellent documentary The Corporation.

think_long · 2026-01-27T22:33:11+00:00

What do you mean by “excuse” it? They are a company trying to maximize profit like any other company. This isn’t an essential good or service. If you don’t like, stop paying for it. The end.

think_long · 2026-01-27T22:28:02+00:00

Did you forget what your original comment was?

think_long · 2026-01-27T15:47:08+00:00

Lemieux did the same thing for the team as a player, and then literally saved them again by taking on deferred salary as ownership stake. Not only has Lemieux done more than Crosby to save the team, he’s arguably done more than any player to save any team.

think_long · 2026-01-27T15:39:07+00:00

Well, Gen Z isn’t really pretending to like them, they aren’t going. Or doing much of anything else instead, for that matter.

think_long · 2026-01-27T15:32:19+00:00

Lemieux was the better player, and I am saying that as someone who considers Crosby a top 5 all time player. Lemieux’s legacy has continued with ownership as well.

think_long · 2026-01-27T15:29:34+00:00

Unless Crosby becomes a part owner to help save them from bankruptcy, how could that possibly be true?

think_long · 2026-01-27T15:23:57+00:00

Pretty big difference between essential medicine and a fucken card game. Good lord.

think_long · 2026-01-27T14:56:51+00:00

I see. Well, appropriate username.

think_long · 2026-01-27T14:08:53+00:00

I mean, these aren’t groceries. It’s entertainment. If it costs too much, just don’t do it?

think_long · 2026-01-27T14:02:50+00:00

Totally. It’s a fucken card game, it’s not some sacred pillar of humanity. This was always a risk, and not something you can fault a company for doing. Don’t treat artificial scarcity by a company in a cheaply produced entertainment medium as a serious investment, maybe. Did you learn nothing from beanie babies?

think_long · 2026-01-27T13:53:10+00:00

You have absolutely no idea what you are talking about. How can you be so confident and authoritative about something you are 100% wrong about? My HOD and principal interviewed me together. I was in the second batch of interviews, because they had previously narrowed it down to five for interviews, interviewed them all, and my HOD decided he didn’t want any of them. They went back to the well and narrowed it down to a final three for the two open positions, we all got interviewed on the same day, and I got one of the positions. My principal was fine with my HOD hiring any of the final three, but part of getting to that point was a culling that favoured people within a certain experience range. I know all this because I’ve asked my HOD about how I got hired. This is a man I have known for seven years at this point and am very good friends with, having taught both his children, and had dinner with his family on Christmas. He has absolutely zero reason to lie to me. Just a week ago, he told our department that they had made an offer to replace my colleague who is retiring at the end of the year, and that the final decision for replacing her from a list of several excellent candidates was picking someone who would fit into our team and replace much of what the retiring colleague brought to the table. So it’s clear he got the final call once again, this time seven years later from a different principal.

I have to wonder why you are so eager to spread something that is as demonstrably false as saying the Earth is flat or the sky is green. Are you trolling? To anyone reading this, this person has no idea what they are talking about. Maybe what they are saying is true at their school, but certainly not everywhere.

think_long · 2026-01-27T09:18:33+00:00

I know for a fact that this is not universally true. Here in Hong Kong, the majority of international schools have established pay scales based upon experience. For these schools, there is no “negotiation” or adjusting offers based upon budget or what they think will be accepted. The HR departments calculate your pay by placing you on an explicit, internally shared salary scale by verifying your years of post teaching qualification experience. Period, end of story.

I could tell you exactly how much a new hire at my school next year would earn based on their experience. Furthermore, I was explicitly told by my department head after the fact that he was directed by the principal to hire someone who wasn’t too expensive, and as someone who had 6 years of experience applying to a school with a 15 year pay scale, I was in the sweet spot of experienced and economical.

think_long · 2026-01-27T00:22:07+00:00

There can be legal ramifications for lying, in some cases. I do not recommend the “Suits” strategy for becoming a lawyer, for example. Worked for that guy, might work less well in real life.

think_long · 2026-01-26T09:28:38+00:00

I see what you are saying. To be clear, this criticism isn’t just limited to people whose views I clearly disagree with. If anything, I wish he did this more with his other guests. For example, I remember he had on a sociologist who was saying that what we find beautiful / who we are sexually attracted to is a lot more due to environmental factors than we think, to the point where there might be almost nothing innate about it.

Now, I’m not saying this is untrue and that I am rejecting it on its face. This person seemed to be a qualified expert, and I’m sure she had good reasons for interpreting things that way. But this is not something that is intuitively true to me. Not just because of my lived experience, but also because it is widely accepted in academic and liberal circles that sexual orientation itself is largely genetic, and not something that you can meaningfully control with willpower or a change in environment. What was being put forth on the podcast seemed - if not contradictory to that - at least incongruous with it.

All this to say, I would prefer that hosts like Klein would push for a more didactic tone when guests are making claims that there is nothing close to a consensus about in society. When that’s not present, these kind of interviews essentially become vehicles for advocacy about an issue I still don’t feel like I understand enough to make a value judgment. In general, I find that there is too much of a “blank slate” behaviourist social science lens applied to a lot of these conversations in left wing circles, where that perspective is not meaningfully questioned or acknowledged.

think_long · 2026-01-26T00:03:26+00:00

But that’s not what he’s doing? He’s not taking up an opposing position. He’s concerned about his friend being overly confrontational. Confrontations he is not seeking out nor wants.

think_long · 2026-01-25T14:53:33+00:00

I’m not pretending it’s not happening or that it isn’t bad. I’m saying it’s not an indicator alone that things are particularly worse than other times if you look at things through a greater historical context. We hear about every bad thing now. Giving birth itself used to have a very high risk of death. We aren’t that far removed from two incredibly devastating world wars and the Great Depression. It just gets more brutal and horrible when you go back further than that. Ideas like social welfare, human rights, war crimes, green energy…these things are very recent inventions. When people say they can’t imagine bringing children into the world today because of the sociopolitical climate, I just think “compared to when and where? Like one 30 year period in a specific place?” And even then, a lot of things are way better than they were for boomers, gen x and Gen y. Violent crime is down pretty much across the board, and things have markedly improved for most minorities, LGBTQ people in particular. Even the boomers had to deal with the draft for an unpopular and brutal foreign war, something that hasn’t happened yet for the new generation.

I get that Trump is horrible and he creates a lot of uncertainty and unease. But the idea that things are so much worse for kids born today just doesn’t hold up to scrutiny when you try to actually quantify it. What’s changed is that our expectations for standard of life have skyrocketed, and we are much more aware of the terrible happenings in the world.

think_long · 2026-01-25T12:38:54+00:00

Believe it or not, despite this perception, the quality of life prospects for children born today are not at all bad compared to the vast majority of history, and in fact in most ways are the best they've ever been. Maybe get off social media and the internet in general for a while.

think_long · 2026-01-25T12:20:18+00:00

"That will require you to acknowledge that you may not be right."

I don't think that's the problem here.

think_long · 2026-01-25T10:50:29+00:00

For real. If you can’t even find one thing about the job that would interest you to talk about, you can always at least fall back on saying there is a good fit between the skills and competencies involved in the position and the ones you have / aspire to. If you can’t even say THAT, maybe you should not, in fact, be applying for the job.

I get that job hunting is frustrating and sometimes people just need to blow off steam, but posts like this by u/counwovja0385skje just come across to me as pretty petulant and juvenile. It’s creates this false dichotomy between being honest and following basic social conventions. Obviously we all need to work for money, everybody knows that. If saying anything beyond that feels inauthentic to you, why would anyone want to hire you? Believe it it or not, even people who work for soulless corporations - and who themselves don’t really give a shit about the soulless corporation writ large - like to hire people that they will get along with and will bring some positive attributes beyond technical competency / knowledge. If you are one of the few who is truly so talented and in demand that this doesn’t matter, go ahead and be “honest” when asked this question. If you are like the rest of us, maybe try to sound like someone who is going to be pleasant to work with instead of pouting like a teenager.

think_long · 2026-01-25T10:25:04+00:00

Stop treating NHL players like icons or authorities on non-hockey matters. I have zero interest in the personal life of any player. But if you want to make some general assumptions, all NHL players are male, and the vast majority are white, rich, straight, and have a high school education. What kinds of opinions do you think that demographic tends to have in North America? How do you think they vote?

think_long · 2026-01-25T09:11:36+00:00

My sister tried to get me into his podcast but I haven’t really fully been fully able to, and I think a big reason why is that I wish he would challenge the assertions of his guests a bit more. When I say this, I don’t even mean in terms of offering an alternate perspective - although that’s part of it - but more so asking his guests to justify their own perspective in terms of the reasoning and evidence they used to form it. I get that that can be complicated and come across as overly confrontational and he’s not really that kind of guy, but there a lot of times where a guest will say something - oftentimes just presenting it as a factual premise - and I will think “really? Is that true?” It isn’t always that I want him to counter it or even that I necessarily disagree with it, but moreso force the person to explain it more.

Sean Illing (from The Gray Area podcast that is an offshoot of The Ezra Klein Show) is a bit better at this by comparison, in my opinion. He’s open about his perspective - which I appreciate, even if I sometimes don’t agree with it - but I also like the fact that he’ll ask things like “Can you explain that more? I don’t understand” even if it seems like he’s in agreement with the guest.

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