Rob Shearer

I see we’ve entered the Pascal’s Wager stage of war planning…

What evidence is there they didn’t? Oil futures aren’t like prediction markets: they’re thick enough that even *very* big bets aren’t going to stand out.

A lot of it is “I miss being able to bully the people who now think I’m a loser.”

I used to know a bunch of people working on “systems biology”: attempting to model biological processes (all the way down to the chemical level) in silico.
And then the LLM people crash through the door and say “throw out the model: what if we just guessed?” and steal all the funding.

This “argument” (if it even rises to that rhetorical level) can be equally applied to my confidence that a rock isn’t conscious.

Effectively, “To disprove the presence of a term I cannot define you must define it. Checkmate.” It’s the epistemology of faith-based religion.

That *used* to be the job of the WH press secretary.
Now it is to deliver press conferences Trump likes.
And he likes pretty young blondes extolling Trump's judgement.

The Trump administration, as a whole, seems to have lost interest in winning public opinion.

The slack-jawed confusion when Canada imposed retaliatory tariffs on American goods was a pretty strong signal that they didn't realize anyone else had agency.

Immigrants are crowding out deserving Americans from spots in higher ed, but athletes aren't. Got it.

It's even more ridiculous to think about it the other way round. How many countries have already "unconditionally surrendered" to the US because they don't currently pose an existential threat? All of them? Including Iran? Have I unconditionally surrendered?

This administration is going to go straight from "Donald Trump is the fittest, healthiest president who has ever occupied the office" to "how *dare* you evil monsters mock someone because a medical condition makes it impossible for him to stand!" the first time someone asks about the wheelchair.

You missed an h.

Lisa vs. Malibu Stacy (2 of 2) YouTube video by Lisa Simpson Liberal

www.youtube.com/watch?v=F3Sz...

This isn't just about "content creation". I've known several teachers who were convinced that the existence of deep relationships with students who adored them was proof they were spectacular at their jobs. And I always wondered about their other students. Ie *most* of them.

Both can be right! The fact that (some) of your work is fawned over by a select few is no indication at all of its appeal to a wider audience. And frankly I loathe the common assumption that the modern ability to build a career catering to smaller and smaller core audiences is a good thing.

You're restating what I said. The "liberation day" tariffs were named "reciprocal", but the formula used to calculate them didn't include the one variable required to make them reciprocal.

All that is independent of the fact that he also shifted these base rates for political/personal reasons.

You took it too far with "completely".

Everyone who works in higher ed works tries to make it hard (not impossible) to graduate while remaining a pure dumbass.

Inherent dumbasses are *hugely* underrepresented in college admissions.

That's compatible with lots of bright people not having degrees.

Worth mentioning that the cost of the most progressive price structure in America is that rich kids get degrees from "Yale" and "Wharton", not the schools normies have to fight to get into.

I'm slowly coming to think that vibe coding is to programming as excel is to data analysis.

They have literally defined Iran's unconditional surrender as when *we* give up.

Being open and transparent is good PR, but mainly because it highlights that the anti-vaxxers are liars. The entire game is won and lost on who people trust, not whether they understand the science.

My refrain on so many of these subjects is that "empowering" patients by explaining the science is validating a delusion that it's possible to make informed choices without a decade (or more) of full-time study. It's not. Imagine passengers demanding to do their own safety inspections of airplanes.

I'm deeply skeptical that the "questions" from the vaccine-hesitant are actually good-faith. Once you've decided that decisively discredited weirdos you found on the internet are more trustworthy than doctors you've bought into an epistemology that facts can't penetrate.

We are like two weeks away from the right un-defining “kinetic” the way the left un-defined “violence”. Eg “This War Powers resolution is a kinetic attack on our troops!”

This is like claiming “I can’t pay income tax! Do you have any idea how many pennies that would be?! And they don’t even make them any more!!!”

The formula used to calculate the tariffs is well-known, and it has nothing to do with reciprocity.

I mean what I said. It’s not an index.

I call this the Tyler Durden problem.

Please don’t issue challenges like this.

Remember when W was the idiot President?

My theory on Noem is that it was the blankie story that made her look like a loser to Trump.
And that her boyfriend *failing* to fire someone was the end of him.
If she’d just spent that whole hearing yelling at and insulting people instead of taking their abuse she’d still be in the cabinet.