About evidence and reason; conservative book bans; automobiles as creators of inequality; anti-vaxxers and traffic crashes; Trump as the emblem of a half population of semi-literates.
I’ve seen this comment on Facebook before, but have never quoted it. It’s apocryphal, but demonstrates its point.
Here’s one more leftover saved link to an article about Sam Bankman-Fried and longtermism. It’s from a Salon writer who did two previously pieces about it/them (which I discussed on 14 Sep and on on 22 Aug), giving me the impression that there was something deeply sinister about it. Continue reading
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More about “longermism,” Effective Altruism, how they relate to science fiction, and whether or not books can be reduced to six-paragraph summaries.
I’ve discussed “longtermism” before, via a book by Ari Wallach called LONGPATH, reviewed here about five weeks ago. Its ideas seemed entirely reasonable: consider long-term consequences of making decisions rather than reacting in the moment. Consider the big picture. (The science-fictional perspective.)
Items today about Hasidic yeshiva schools, “common good constitutionalism,” the root cause of violent crime, and the increasingly despicable Elon Musk.
We like to think modern society is more advanced than societies of thousands of years ago, and it is in many ways. Our understanding of the world, the universe, of course. Our understanding and usage of science and technology, of course. Human welfare has improved. People live longer and healthier lives than ever before, and not due to religion. Even morality has improved, given the steady abandonment of tribal religious claims, to Enlightenment values of reason and science. And yet there is always a portion of society bent on taking that all down.
About the stages of the Republican Party’s terminal illness (doom); and about why conservatives disapprove of same-sex relationships more than any number of other supposed Biblical sins (existential dread); and my explanation for the latter.
NY Times, Anthony Fauci opinion guest essay, 10 Dec 2022: A Message to the Next Generation of Scientists
Quick post late in the day, mostly just copying a public Facebook post from Adam-Troy Castro, who writes novels (see pic above) but seems to be better known for his short fiction (see his sfadb.com page), and is apparently even better known to many people on Facebook (he has 4.6K friends) for his comments there. He’s a resident polemicist.
Here’s a post of his from yesterday. which I’ll quote in its entirety. Continue reading
How Christian morality plays out; the Respect for Marriage Act and the weeping Republican; the right’s sense of grievance; how the media is disconnected from reality; opposite opinions about the American defense budget.
And a fun item about Christmas. That one first.
Boing Boing, Gareth Braynwyn, 3 Dec 2022: In search of a more “Bible accurate” Christmas
