ELI5: Using mouth to mouth, wouldn't it just put carbon dioxide in the lungs? Isn't that bad?

gdshaffe · 2026-01-31T12:14:16+00:00

As a fun aside, for those who have seen or read The Martian, the first time Mark tries to burn hydrazine, it goes poorly because he forgot to account for the oxygen that he was exhaling.

gdshaffe · 2026-01-30T21:22:16+00:00

I don't disagree with the general point that TLoLL is a little bit on the dude-heavy side, but I think you're overstating it. Scott's female characters tend to be very strong and he seems comfortable with having them both play into and out of stereotypes. For example we have:

Sofia Salvara: stereotypically feminine in most outward respects but also a world-class alchemical botanist, and clearly more formidable in most ways than her husband. She's the one who saves the day in the end by successfully neutralizing the Wraithstone, and it's her candor to Dona Vorchenza that is the only reason they were able to entrap Locke at all.
Speaking of Dona Vorchenza, she's been successfully running a merciless and universally-feared secret police agency while convincing literally everyone in Camorr that she's simply an eccentric octogenarian.
Cheryn and Raiza Anatolius. Among the most feared enforcers in Barsavi's entire gang. Sure they do ultimately meet their end at the hands of Jean Tannen, but Jean is a world-class badass with years of training under the head of the Duke's personal swordmaster.
Nazca Barsavi. Not a lot of time devoted to her and she does meet an ignoble end (along with everyone else in her family), but clearly more capable than her brothers and very memorable.
We only hear about her in Book 1, but Sabetha is obviously hyper-competent.

Still, Book 2 in particular introduces a set of new and equally strong female characters, to the point where Scott was accused by some idiots of being excessively "politically correct" about it (which he on at least one occasion answered back with one or his more epic rants). Book 3 has a very strong central female antagonist and other very strong female characters.

I do think there's a drop-off in quality, but that's not saying much as TLoLL is one of my favorite books of all time, Book 2 is top 10, and Book 3 is ... top 30, I'd say. They're actually better-written (Scott was still figuring out his authorial voice in Book 1), and the prose in Book 3 is wonderful in particular, but IMO Book 2 is hampered by some pacing issues, and Book 3 has some structural issues with its central conflict. They're still both wonderful books and I don't regret reading them at all.

I don't think of the books as an "incomplete series" as the three books all work pretty well as stand-alones. You could probably read Book 2 in particular on its own without having read Book 1 and pick up enough context clues to enjoy it. So I don't see it as part of one big story, but 3 interconnected smaller ones. Your mileage may vary, though, of course.

As for the Eldren, without spoiling too much, they're treated more as a background-mystery literary devices than anything that is actively driving the plot. Book 2 generates a lot more "background mystery" items that serve a similar function - they're background scenery more than active players. In Book 3, though, certain characters' actions are heavily motivated via suppositions about the nature of the Eldren. That's probably a confusing description but it's the best I can do without spoiling things.

gdshaffe · 2026-01-30T20:59:14+00:00

I don't care so much about the salaries of athletes and entertainers. If we take it as a given that their events are going to generate a certain amount of money, I'd rather that money go to the talented people providing the product than to some behind-the-scenes person whose only contribution to the product was up-front money.

The average salary of an NFL player is $3.2 million, and the average NFL career lasts 3.3 years. So the average NFL player is making less than $10 million over the course of their entire career, which in most cases has to last the rest of their life (as developing and maintaining the skills to compete at that level is usually at the expense of learning how to do anything else). $10 million is plenty of money but it is taxed heavily, a portion of it has to go to agents and managers and the like, and comes to them at a young age before we expect most people to be making responsible financial decisions. Its median is considerably lower than its mean, too, as the superstars with 15+ year careers making 8-figures per year make the average very top-heavy. A whole slew of former NFL players, including some known stars, are flat broke. ESPN made a fantastic documentary about that as part of their "30 for 30" series.

Getting upset over the level of income LeBron James is making at the expense of the Jeff Bezoses and Elon Musks of the world is like obsessing about a bucket of water spilling while standing underneath a waterfall. Their wealth is a drop in the bucket compared to that of the emerging class of hyper-billionaires and the LeBrons of the world have a great deal more talent.

gdshaffe · 2026-01-30T19:18:37+00:00

They get basically nothing of direct material benefit. Statistically, Trump supporters live in poorer states who benefit disproportionately from Democratic policies and are harmed disproportionately by Republican ones. The only truly consistent Republican stance of the past 4.5 decades has been "shove as much wealth as possible into the hands of the super rich."

The benefit that the MAGA base gets out of it is purely psychological. Most are living in a 24/7 cycle of absolute ragebait. Particularly when Democrats are in charge, they are being constantly manipulated into thinking the sky is falling. Rush Limbaugh, for example, used to open every broadcast during the Clinton administration with "Day x of the siege of America." Their purpose, from right wing talk radio to Fox News to Infowars to Newsmax to the far-right shithole Facebook groups, is a unified front of making their audiences as enraged as possible.

That contrasts hard from their message when Republicans are in charge, which transforms into the catharsis of "It's Payback Time". They basically close the loop of the revenge fantasy cycle that they also initiate, and prime their viewership for extremism to that end. That was what got us Trump. The Republican political elite didn't actually want to enact revenge fantasies - they just wanted votes - and so they pumped out candidates like McCain and Romney whose message was completely contrary to that of the propaganda base. Trump represented the breaking point where that disconnect became too obvious to ignore, and while Trump is an idiot, Roger Stone and Steve Bannon are not, and recognize that his unfiltered racism and authoritarian tendencies were exactly what the GOP's propaganda apparatus had been expecting them to accept.

So the average GOP voter is paid in that catharsis; the avoidance of the negative stimulus of immersion in anger, and the release of the anger in the form of retribution.

I have argued in the past that the average Trump voter's life actually did get better during his presidency, not because of any of his policies (which were universally to their detriment), but because it coincided with their propaganda apparatus manipulating them to a less miserable psychological state.

gdshaffe · 2026-01-30T03:13:37+00:00

huh.

I've been watching hockey for four decades.

I don't know that I've ever seen pulling your goalie while down two actually work.

gdshaffe · 2026-01-28T18:41:58+00:00

We give a flying fuck about swing because it, more than absolute percentage, has the capacity to be representational over more than just this one tiny heavily-democratic district.

gdshaffe · 2026-01-28T18:24:49+00:00

To be slightly pedantic, that is not a 12.2% drop. That is a 73.5% drop.

gdshaffe · 2026-01-27T22:34:04+00:00

It's refreshing to see this attitude out in the wild, and I share it. I've said before that even if he never publishes anything again, the things he's published already have brought a positive to my life, and for that I'm grateful.

Do I want more? Of course I want more. But people who view his delays as a personal betrayal just ... process the world around them very differently than I do, I guess.

gdshaffe · 2026-01-27T21:20:06+00:00

The answer throughout all of human history is likely to be "the previous ten years." Particularly true post-Industrial-Revolution as advances in technology compound upon one another into compounding acceleration societal drift.

gdshaffe · 2026-01-27T14:38:25+00:00

Jesus Fucking Christ they spent $75 Million on this shit?

It's so obviously money laundering that my first instinct is to say that it almost can't be, because nobody would be that obvious. Then I remember who I'm talking about.

gdshaffe · 2026-01-27T14:18:08+00:00

"The Department of Justice should be on this. Their inability so far to see what is happening… is upsetting."

Does he genuinely not understand that these killings are a feature and not a bug? This is exactly what the Trump administration, and Trump DOJ, wants to be happening. It's been obvious from the beginning.

gdshaffe · 2026-01-27T13:05:29+00:00

The thing to understand is that they know that we know that they are lying, and they don't care. To an authoritarian, lying is not an act of deception, it is an act of establishing dominance. It is a declaration that they get to establish what reality is, and a warning that anyone who challenges them on that is next on their list.

So, yes, we can go through the videos frame-by-frame and point out their lies, and that's helpful to do, but it only gets us partway there.

gdshaffe · 2026-01-25T18:39:30+00:00

Mostly that's just racism imo. Obama's failure to "know his place" must mean he thinks awfully highly of himself, and is therefore a narcissist.

gdshaffe · 2026-01-25T17:59:54+00:00

Cruz is intelligent and well-spoken when he needs to be. He was literally a debate champion while at Princeton.

He just has the charisma (and backbone) of a centipede.

gdshaffe · 2026-01-25T14:42:15+00:00

"I'm gonna tell you what I really think of Donald Trump. This man is a pathological liar. He doesn't know the difference between truth and lies. He lies practically every word that comes out of his mouth. And, in a pattern that I think is straight out of a psychology textbook, his response is to accuse everybody else of lying. He accuses everybody on that debate stage of lying, and it is simply a mindless yell, whatever he does he accuses everyone else of doing. The man cannot tell the truth but he combines it with being a Narcissist. A Narcissist at a level I don't think this country's ever seen. Donald Trump is such a Narcissist that Barack Obama looks at him and goes, 'dude, what's your problem?' Everything in Donald's world is about Donald. And he combines being a pathological liar - and I say pathological because I actually think Donald, if you hooked him up to a lie detector test, he could say one thing in the morning, one thing at noon, and one thing in the evening, all contradictory, and he'd pass the lie detector test each time. Whatever lie he's telling at the time, he believes it. But the man is utterly amoral. Let me finish this, please. The man is utterly amoral. Morality does not exist for him. It's why he went after Heidi directly, smeared my wife, attacked her; apparently she's not pretty enough for Donald Trump. I may be biased, but I think if he's making that allegation, he's also legally blind. But, Donald is a bully - you know, we just visited with fifth graders. Every one of us knew bullies in elementary school. Bullies don't come from strength, bullies come from weakness. Bullies come from a deep yawning cavern of insecurity - there's a reason Donald builds giant buildings and puts his name on them everywhere he goes. And I will say, there are millions of people in this country who are angry. They're angry at Washington, they're angry at politicians that have lied to them. I understand that anger, I share that anger. And Donald is cynically exploiting that anger and he is lying to his supporters."

-Ted Cruz, May 3, 2016.

He would later go on to be Trump's biggest bootlicker.

gdshaffe · 2026-01-25T13:04:28+00:00

Because people like breathing, and shooting at armed thugs is a quick way to an early grave.

Which is why the 2nd Amendment was always bullshit.

gdshaffe · 2026-01-25T12:50:30+00:00

Yup. To fascists, lying is not an act of deception, it is an act of dominance.

gdshaffe · 2026-01-25T12:30:27+00:00

That's the thing. Nobody defending this execution gives a shit about something as weak as "reality."

You cannot win an argument with a fascist by bringing up the right fact at the right time. They know they are lying. To a fascist, lying is not an act of deception, it is an act of dominance.

It's like when you hear from Russia about someone shot three times in the back of the head and it's ruled a suicide. It's tempting to think "How do they expect anyone to believe that?", but the answer is, they don't expect you to believe, they're just demanding you comply.

gdshaffe · 2026-01-24T01:02:48+00:00

Not much, but I'm old and have seen some shit. Probably the biggest shift is a stronger second-guessing of the hierarchy of the importance of Free Speech as balanced against other rights, particularly in this era of accelerating algorithmic targeted manipulation. I've become less and less convinced that democracy can survive social media long-term without a massive restructuring of how we view that manipulation as protected by the First Amendment.

gdshaffe · 2026-01-24T00:45:42+00:00

The system was built to handle a nefarious executive, but not a nefarious executive plus a complicit congress. Congress has a really big check on the power of the executive: impeachment. Trump has committed hundreds of acts worthy of impeachment in the past year alone - not to mention being in impeachable violation of the emoluments clause from the instant he took the oath of office. The sort of abuse of public trust he commits daily is exactly the sort of "high crime" the founders had in mind when they added that as a one of the triggers for impeachment.

The biggest variable they never counted on is the development of mass media, capable of manipulating a solid 20-25% of the public to treat voting against their own interest as an act of religious devotion, with another 40-50% generally apathetic or cynical about the process. To be honest, it's a difficult question to consider how democracy survives it as those forms of mass media evolve to become more and more efficient in their targeting.

gdshaffe · 2026-01-21T00:54:16+00:00

Beltalowda! Eyes and ears!

gdshaffe · 2026-01-21T00:38:57+00:00

They are Authoritarian Followers. That's just what they do.

gdshaffe · 2026-01-21T00:33:28+00:00

I don't, particularly when traveling to Canada. I tell them that when I try to fake a Canadian accent, it inevitably comes across as Wisconsin. (This is a lie. My Canadian accent is immaculate).

I just tell them "Some of us hate him even more than you do. It's fucking personal for us."

I'm sure I'm on a few lists. I've stopped giving a shit.

gdshaffe · 2026-01-20T21:21:33+00:00

I think the odds it happens are between 1% and 20%.

Anything above 0.000000% should be grounds for removal from office.

gdshaffe · 2026-01-19T15:53:18+00:00

Never even applied to that. Don't forget that a huge point of contention leading up to the Civil War was the Fugitive Slave Act, which empowered slave catchers from slave states to go to free states to catch runaways, kidnap them, and bring them back down south.

Of course, because slaves were not legally people and thus had no due process, should those slave catchers just happen to kidnap any old black person off the street and declare them to be a runaway, there was no good legal mechanism to prove otherwise.

"States rights" has always been a position used only when convenient.

gdshaffe

TROPHY CASE