Tangent — the intergenerational wealth mobility race gap in the US is a black man thing, not a black woman thing. It’s just wrong right now on balance to think it’s worse to be black AND female. The downward mobility almost certainly applies to lower skill white manual laborers too. Large contingents of both parties —…

“The waves would sweep around the globe, east to west, and every east-facing shore would encounter the largest storm surge in world history.” Pretty certain that’s backward. How the waves would look is beyond my pay grade, but the wind would blow the water eastward, so west coasts would be hit by the surge.

For what it’s worth, MPR implies they do have more, and I think the most likely reason they would imply it is that it’s true.

The Star Spangled Banner doesn’t use two keys. Maybe he meant Jaws.

MPR’s statement: “Based on what we currently know, there are no similar allegations involving other staff.” The allegations pertain to “an individual,” singular. It’s not clear whether she claims more than one incident. It’s also conceivable that they decided that the email acknowledging that unwanted contact occurred…

The Earth’s radius is about 6000 km. If you ascend to 500m (~1600 feet) elevation and look at a random spot on the horizon that is near sea level, then your position, that point on the horizon, and the center of the earth form a right triangle. The longer leg of the right triangle equals 6000km and the hypotenuse…

Just wait a couple hours, and you will regain interest.

A few times my former cat turned into an inanimate object after I saw it detail for a split second.

The will of the gods and their chosen instrument to lead the people is inscrutable to mortals and may appear violent and capricious. If you wish to understand or influence a head of state, the proper channels are worship and prayer, not criticism or resistance.

Ha, now we all know how foolish you were not to trust the AV Club to accurately paraphrase Michaels’ statement, “Harvey Weinstein, an alleged serial rapist I intend to humanize, is ready to bounce back after a serious of unfortunate misadventures.”

(baleted)

People are trying to find someone to blame for a bad outcome, but unless there’s more to this story, they are looking in the wrong place. It is fine to say somebody acted perfectly normal around you if that is the whole truth. But positive character witnesses are weak evidence, and if an editor lets that weak evidence…

Tangent about movies with Yudkowsky premises: the scariest AI I have seen described is seriously something called the Paperclip Optimizer. Many evil movie AIs remind me of Satan, and I don’t buy it — why replicate classic human morality and just invert the sign of it? Then there’s Team Robot, which even when portrayed…

Don’t rake your leaves in fall, mow them on the mulch setting. It’s faster and better for your lawn, and it’s better for the environment as well. It doesn’t have the anal retentive appeal of making all the brown go away, but 24 hours later you won’t be able to tell the difference.

Hi, this is Linda. You can prevent double posts by turning down the reverb setting from your account profile.

They’re supposed to be seashells. They help you flush your thoughts down through the pipes of the Internet.

Why does it have to be Bran? I'm thinking Bob Newhart.

You know the whole Winter is Coming as a metaphor for global warming? Maybe it's becoming an extended allegory for climate modeling. You're endlessly replaying the past to better predict the far future and change course in the present! I look forward to seeing the whole process mirrored in detail in the show, and…

Money has inherent value, because it has feelings and awareness. If money loves a person, you know that person has a good heart.

It doesn't work that way. Mercury has a specific gravity of 13.6. Gold has a specific gravity of 19.3. Radon is also less dense than gold despite having a higher atomic number. (Oops, replying to Elf.)