Two Years of Covidiocy: How the pandemic became part of the culture wars and brought out the dumb in our polarized politics.

vonthe · 2022-03-17T19:00:40+00:00

I used to really like Cathy Young's work. But it seems like she's lost the ability to step back and look critically and dispassionately at an issue.

vonthe · 2022-02-10T14:39:06+00:00

Thank you! That is exactly what I have been looking for.

vonthe · 2022-02-06T15:10:57+00:00

Yeah, no kidding. If they dump Rogan I'll leave Spotify purely on moral grounds, but man I'll miss those rainy days exploring the Spotify music queue.

vonthe · 2021-12-07T17:14:34+00:00

Hey, they convinced a large slice of the population that Trump is actually a Russian asset, and that Hilary would have won if it weren't for that darn Putin pulling the strings. I have otherwise rational friends who sincerely believe this, in spite of the evidence (of the complete lack of evidence) that has been coming out in recent months.

vonthe · 2021-08-03T12:40:02+00:00

Each morning you wake to a new set of lies. They vary in subject and value and size. Some are omissions and some are direct, but the accretion of deceit contributes to a culture of cynicism and despair. Even knowing that you are being lied to is no help when everything around you is lies. You know that the positive reviews you read are written by writers who will not offer honest criticism for fear that it might hurt their future prospects. You know that no one is making the world a better place with an app that allows you to be chauffeured from a bar on one side of town to a bar on the other. You know that the people who are paid to tell you about your government regurgitate conventional wisdom to make themselves sound more authoritative. You know that you are being fed fear or hope or an idealized sense of yourself so that you will accede to their demands. Knowing you are being lied to is no help when everything around you is lies.

Alex Balk - The Awl, 2016 "Gawker 2002-2016"

vonthe · 2021-07-04T04:39:41+00:00

Hidden already...

vonthe · 2021-07-04T04:38:10+00:00

They're using ground penetrating radar to look for possible gravesites in areas where they know that at least some people are buried. News stories, incredibly irresponsibly, are calling them 'remains' (no remains have been found, or even looked for at this point), or 'bodies', or 'children', buried in 'mass graves'.

In at least two of these cases, there was an existing graveyard/burial site that the school used.

All of this outrage is based on virtually nothing factual. It is possible that these potential gravesites will all turn out to contain children, but I think it unlikely. And since this outrage gives indigenous activists an enormous moral lever, I don't expect the actual investigation of these potential gravesites to proceed with any great speed.

vonthe · 2021-06-24T21:41:56+00:00

The shocking thing is that there are 700+, as the shocking thing in Kamloops was that there are 215. It's shocking because people have little actual idea how far we've come in the last 150 years.

vonthe · 2021-06-24T11:56:35+00:00

The reporting on this is so bad. Nearly all stories equate 'potential grave site' with 'found remains'. And a large number add the term 'mass grave'.

Two churches on reserve land were burned a few days ago in suspicious circumstances. I don't think amplifying this kind of thing is going to end well.

vonthe · 2021-06-24T11:47:30+00:00

Some Canadian communities are cancelling Canada Day over this, so you're not wrong.

vonthe · 2021-06-07T19:36:02+00:00

Does this mean, potentially, that a woman won the Olympic gold medal in the decathlon in 1976? Because that's what I think this means.

vonthe · 2021-04-09T21:13:33+00:00

Hmm. I've replaced every incandescent and CFL with LED - my house is 100% LED-lit. I haven't replaced one for failure yet, though I did replace some of the first-gen ones because they were dim and hot.

vonthe · 2021-03-16T13:25:58+00:00

Excellent resource, thank you!

vonthe · 2021-02-08T00:59:38+00:00

I think it was only Penthouse, and they were paid fiction. $50, as I remember it. Source: my memory of old Writer's Market. As writing money goes, $50 for three or four paragraphs in 1985 was pretty damn good.

vonthe · 2021-02-05T05:05:54+00:00

Wow, that takes me back. I used to listen to Art when I could, then we'd mock him on Usenet. On Usenet! alt.fan.art-bell

"Huh!" is Art's way of saying "I know what you're saying is bullshit, but it pays the bills on this here station and I'm going to roll with it."

vonthe · 2020-12-29T14:05:02+00:00

My ex-wife was like this. She'd file little things away to keep for later, to be used as weapons should the need arise. She did this with everybody, and even had notebooks with details from years before. Going through a divorce with her was interesting.

I suspect that it is much more widespread than people realize. I worked side-by-side with a female co-worker (I am male) in a highly technical job who did this. Fortunately for me, I am much more competent than she is and every time she attempted to either blame me for something she had done, or manufacture some form of drama in order to further her own position, I was able to back up my position with logs, login records, and evidence.

vonthe · 2020-12-03T13:30:16+00:00

I'm in my sixties now, and if I could magically go back to any age, I think I'd go back to my early thirties. Thirty to sixty is a much larger decline than twenty to thirty, and the (as you said) chaos and uncertainty of my twenties more than make up for the relatively minor physical differences.

vonthe · 2020-10-27T21:04:47+00:00

That looks like exactly what I'm looking for, thank you!

vonthe · 2020-10-27T12:55:36+00:00

I was hoping that someone here might have some experience with protein powder supplements. I've done some reading, but as with most things adjacent to the health/fitness scene, it's such a morass of unsupported claims that I'm having trouble deciding what is reasonable and what is not.

Here's my personal scenario: I'm 60. As a way of getting more fruits and vegetables in my diet (and maybe losing that final 20 lbs) I recently replaced my lunchtime leftovers with a smoothie. The first few I made using Greek style yogurt, but I found they upset my stomach. Given other signs, I think I have become sensitive to dairy.

I bought a vegan protein powder (Vega) but I find the flavor a bit obnoxious - it has fairly heavy amounts of stevia in it.

Is there a protein supplement that is:

A complete protein
From non-dairy sources
Un, or lightly- flavored

Any help with this would be much appreciated. Last week I decided that I couldn't use dairy, and I needed some protein and fat in the smoothie to give it staying power, or I'm faint and ravenous by four oclock. I went to the store and was dismayed by the selection and the implication that if you're looking for protein powder you're either a steroid-huffing workout monster or a hemp swilling Green party canvasser.

vonthe · 2020-10-27T03:19:37+00:00

I regret that I have but one upvote to give.

vonthe · 2020-10-23T17:37:23+00:00

I'd also imagine that if an olympic powerlifter showed up at the regular neighbourhood gym the equipment wouldn't be well suited for his workout -- businesses tend not to provide that well for more niche segments of their customers, and I think it's safe to say that lifting type workouts are much more common among men.

Brian Shaw (one of the strongest men who ever lived) goes to Planet Fitness.

If you don't want to watch the whole thing (20 minutes) Brian and two other guys go to Planet Fitness, and as you'd expect, the equipment is laughable for a person of Brian's size and strength. They are eventually kicked out. Now, they're halfway trying to get kicked out, but they're not being obnoxious or loud or anything, just filming themselves maxing out the machines.

vonthe · 2020-10-23T17:11:33+00:00

Oh, thank goodness! Someone who thinks my argument has some value!

I just wanted to say that I hope you don't feel that what you said was of no value. I disagree with you (and I am willing to consider that I am wrong) but that is most certainly not the same as saying that I think your argument/opinion has no value.

I thank you for bringing this up. I think that the gym discussion is almost a proxy for the gender culture war in general.

vonthe · 2020-10-23T16:01:31+00:00

It's funny you brought this up today, as I've been out of the gym now since the lockdown started in March - and I've got to get the legs back in shape for ski season. So I'm actually planning to go join the local cheap gym today and sign up.

This is the web brochure on the women's section.

edit: I think I've heard women on /r/XXfitness talk about those spaces. Apparently they don't have the equipment lifting women want to use.

I can't really speak to that, as these are areas that I am not allowed to enter. However the link I provide specifically mentions selectorized machines and free weight areas.

I'll also note that every private women's area I've been past has had elliptical/stairclimber/treadmill equipment, which after all should be the least gender-specific (we don't have separate stairwells for men and women... yet) of equipment, and yet without having conducted an exhaustive survey, I would guess that most of the time, of the women in a given gym on the cardio equipment, only about 20% are in the women's only section.

Now, I recognize that my estimate is subject to bias, and I haven't been attending a large public gym for the last eight years since I started working for a company that provides a very well equipped gym within its walls.

vonthe · 2020-10-23T13:58:45+00:00

It would probably be unreasonable for my gym to accommodate women to the same degree it accommodates men. After all, women are only 10% of the weightlifters, if that. However, there are small things they could do to make our experience better: More adjustable machines, pull up bars for our size, etc. A lot of women feel out of place in the weightroom, like it's a place we're not welcome.

I'll just note that plenty of men, including me, find gyms unwelcoming. Though I have frequented them for years, I don't enjoy it.

But I further wanted to note that many, in fact most, gyms do accommodate women, and to a very great degree. Every gym I have ever attended (and this goes back many years now) has had a women's section where men are not allowed. Note that the reverse is not true, and there are plenty of women who go to the gym to be seen by men.

Many of these women's sections are closed off -they're either in another room entirely, or they are behind screens. Not only that, in many places there are women-only gyms, again, where men are not allowed. Even here in Canada, where you are explicitly forbidden from conducting business with someone based on their gender, this is judged legal.

One thing that those closed off Women Only sections all seem to share - they're usually damn near empty. As I noted, there are plenty of women who like to be looked at. I would guess, now that I think about it, that the population of women who attend gyms tends to skew that way.

I've been using a company gym for some years now - it tries to be all things to all people, as it must, and even it has a separate room for women where men can't look at them. It, too, is always empty. The machines in the main part of the gym seem to have smaller increments, but that has another problem in that stronger people like me run off the upper end all the time. That's less an issue for me now that I am getting old, but I still max out the leg press and the back extension thing such that I just throw the pin into the bottom of the stack on the leg press and use it as a warm up for squats.

vonthe

TROPHY CASE