Funny y'all should be discussing this at the very moment I'm reading the Overpopulation segment of PJ O'Rourke's All The Trouble In The World. He has a lot to say about Paul Ehrlich, none of it complimentary. Toward the end of this section, he writes, "In other words, people are -- present company always excepted -- just awful. Especially if these people happen to be not-quite white. Notice that Paul Ehrlich is not panicked by being caught in the squash and jostle of rich folks around the bar in the Churchill Downs clubhouse on Kentucky Derby Day. Nor is Charles C. Munn worried about the opening night crush at New York's Metropolitan Opera. And Malthus, when talking about a race of unwashed brutes who live in a miserable spot and don't have enough sense to come in out of the rain, is not discussing Highland lairds." (This is well out of context. Without the rest, O'Rourke sounds kind of like an idiot. But if you read the rest, it makes good sense. At this moment I know more about how Bangladesh is run than I do my own government.)

The much bigger issue is that they were fighting for a seat that was held by one guy for 50 frigging years.

One trick I learned, that I always forget, is to "dog-ear" every other page. That way, when you want to turn the page, the ear is sticking up, making it easy to grab. If you've done it right, the uncreased page is being held away from the following page by the dog-ear that that one has.

@mark said in Drone flight over Mt Everest: Love that consumer level products can achieve such quality. Impressed with how well the the little DJI handled the altitude and winds. Yep. What a great way to look for lost climbers at an altitude choppers can't reach.

You fell off my big clock?

@Klaus said in Please tell me it’s real: "humiliatingly", really? They should have capitalised 'Orange Lord' while they were at it.

Doesn't look staged at all, pretty funny too.

@jon-nyc Good to know. Can't predict the future, but man... next time rates are near zero for a decade, it would make sense to start buying I bonds for the inevitable inflationary period that we are in today.

The top one is too funny!

https://academic.oup.com/pnasnexus/advance-article/doi/10.1093/pnasnexus/pgac158/6678861?searchresult=1&login=false

It is unlikely that California will exist in 2035.

@Mik said in I'm proud of myself: A LOT of moisturizer. That is correct.

@George-K said in Booby Trap: @89th said in Booby Trap: <Larry has entered the chat> RIP By the way, today would have been his 71st birthday. Interesting. My mother died on his 57th birthday.

[image: 1661984701850-ef36d6e7-09b0-4f75-b569-d7b459c2204d-image.png]

You should. It's great.

Beato was on Sean Carrol’s podcast recently. Carrol is a top physicist and all around thinker about stuff. Interesting to see Beato cross paths with him.

Uhm....no thanks. If I'm in a situation where I require any sort of self defense firearm, I want it to be lethal.

This guy ain’t ready for prime time. We landed on cool, smooth stone, and I seriously considered never moving again. I looked up in time to see the setting sun. It took a few seconds before I realized that we’d left New York City at dawn. Adverbs are the devil. “Seriously considered” is bumsauce description. “I was in no rush to pull myself up” or a dozen other responses would have been better. But wait: you seriously considered never moving again, but looked up anyway? In time to see the setting sun? If you’re seriously considering never moving again, you’re not going to look up. Sunsets aren’t “up.” They’re out. Off in the distance. Level to the horizon. “Looked up in time”? Has this guy never seen a sunset? It’s a process, it takes awhile. It’s not a thing you miss if you don’t look up in time. It took a few seconds before I realized that we’d left New York City at dawn. This is maid-and-butler writing. What he's doing is telling you things he wants you, the reader to know, by hijacking a character and making him speak for the writer. I say "hijacking" because only maps label it "New York City". If you're from there, it's the city. If you're not, it's New York. When I got started, I joined an online crit community. Contributed on and off for quite awhile. His writing reads like that other stuff. Not really a dig—I hope he keeps at it—that's just where he's at. Also not at all surprised he's a Jim Butcher fan. That's basically where he got his premise from.

@George-K I think George Will misses the point. Gorbachev naively believed that the Soviet system’s ills could be addressed by it moving it away from the centralized rule of the Communist Party and towards a rule of law as in the West. His legalistic approach to reform was characterized by lengthy speeches, platitudes and slogans with only limited half measures in actual reform. The result was economic chaos and political incoherence.