Yes, mathematicians first encountered equations which could only be solved with complex numbers in the 16th century.

The Red Green Show

Easy-going comedy with minimal plot, mostly there to tie together an episode of shorter skits. Some Boomer humor, but not too cringe, I think.

Who set those rules? Is there standards body that promulgates them? I remember that social media emerged as a term to describe media on which the users provided the content, rather than traditional gatekeepers like newspapers and TV networks. Wikipedia agrees, using special jargon, distinguishing between monologic and dialogic media models.

Reddit is quintessential social media.

Sir Terry Pratchett tweeted his own meeting with Death.

It may not be the most poetic, but I’m partial to the word holdfast, which is a biological structure that anchors organisms to surfaces. “Hold fast” was an order given to sailors of yore, telling them to grab tightly onto the ship to avoid being washed overboard in storms. The word suggests images of kelp, mussels, or sponges doing the same, determinedly holding fast against the waves, figurative and literal.

They’re called “snout houses,” because the garage makes them look like they have a big, ugly pig snout.

What the hell is it with the Sterling Archer window borders? Y’know, where the active window is black, and the inactive windows are slightly darker black?

Sort of meta, but: Alienation.

Buildings plopped down in a rectangle with a standard layout—boxy building with door facing parking lot—with no ornamentation, no contextual clues about what’s inside, and worst, no consideration or design dialogue whatsoever with the surroundings. It’s like a city as Lego set, each building on its own bar plate, and they can be shuffled around in any order. Designers talk about design language, and this style says, “fuck you.”

Food that just shows up at your door after ordering from an app, made by a “ghost kitchen.” Possibly located in one of those boxes-with-a-parking-lot. No connection to other humans. (Or is that a tire distributor’s headquarters? No way to tell.)

Company web sites with no information about who runs the company, or where it is, or much about its connection to the community. The product is probably made on spec by an anonymous Chinese factory, so even if you can talk to somebody, they’re either in a contract call center serving hundreds of companies, or somebody not paid enough to care.

Speaking of low-paid lackeys, the fast food-ification of the landscape. They’re getting rid of dining rooms, so your only human interaction is briefly through a window. If you’re lucky. They’re working on getting rid of that, too. Then, you’re sealed behind a windshield, in cars that get more fortress-like every year, never seeing another human face.

A lot of people say that they’re introverts and hate people and like it this way, but we also have a pandemic of loneliness and poor mental health , so…

EVs don’t put out tailpipe emissions while in operation, sure, but that’s an highly reductive view of the system. The latest numbers I’ve found show that an EV car has about 30% of the total lifecycle CO₂ emissions as an ICE vehicle. That’s production, operation, maintenance, and disposal. A lot better, so if we drastically cut back on the number of vehicle miles traveled, that’d be a win. But that’s not what’s happening. Instead, the profusion of cheap EVs in China means that more people can afford them, there will be more vehicles on the road, we double down on automobile infrastructure and lifestyles, and the environment, human health, and long-term sustainability will take a hit. It’s the Jevons Paradox, which says that if we find a way to use a resource more efficiently, we use more of it.

What’s more, the transition to EVs won’t even stop the CO₂ emissions. The emissions will just come from a new source. World-wide, we have a fully-functioning fossil fuel extraction industry. Petrochemicals are the energy and raw material input for so many industrial processes (including the production of EVs), it’s not going to shut down. If we stop using it for fuel in our vehicles, the law of supply and demand means it’ll get cheaper for other uses, which will ramp up. Indeed, our total global CO₂ emissions keep rising.

What’s necessary is to re-design our societal systems to solve a bunch of problems, like the ecological catastrophe of habitat destruction and collapsing insect and bird populations, or the looming fresh water shortages, which don’t get much press because of the climate change issue. Drastically reducing the number of vehicle miles traveled to 10% of the current level would have a much greater impact, even if all of those miles were all done in ICE vehicles, compared to maintaining the current VMT but doing them in EVs. That’s why I don’t agree that EVs are necessary to lower CO₂ emissions from ICE vehicles. It would be really great if we drastically reduced VMT, and did those miles in EVs, but that’s not at all what’s happening.

(I’ve ignored the last-mile logistics issue because it’s small potatoes by comparison.)

It’s a multi-generational problem, so we should start fixing it now. Why is it going to be easier to solve 30-50 years from now? Why should we wait until we’ve transitioned to EVs to start the process? What is it about EVs is going to make that easier?

Yeah, all those losers born in Soweto in 1971 who haven’t used their enormous wealth to fund a bunch of different business ventures. What are they even doing?

No, I really don’t agree. Like, at all. The problem is largely that geometry of vehicles creates those highly-destructive, resource-intensive, low-density population areas, and that’s the problem that we need to address. In that respect, EVs are just like any other vehicle. Same streets, same highways, same parking lots, same garages, same bi-weekly grocery runs to the store 5 miles away. We can start to address those problems (zoning, building codes, environmental regulations, land-use, tax structures, and such) now, and it won’t be any easier after 20 years of further automobile-oriented development while we transition the fleet to EVs. It’ll just be 20 years more entrenched. Yeah, EVs help somewhat, but the way we’re approaching them now, they’re like treating 10% of your cancer.

(I take that back if the EVs we’re talking about here are e-bikes and micromobility devices.)

I know that tongue-in-cheek snark can be difficult to detect for many people, but consider the context here: I responded to somebody who said that success is 75% luck. There is no amount of hustle that would let a person become a railroad mogul, an oil baron, an automotive pioneer, a sugar plantation owner, or a privateer today. Being born into the correct historical era to become one of those things is part of that luck. And my secondary implication is mocking the idea that many of those people achieved their success by working hard, or even working at all.

WDYM? I can be a railroad mogul one day, or an oil baron, an automotive entrepreneur, a sugar plantation owner, or even a privateer, if I hustle hard enough, right?

“Souvenirs” sometimes being a polite way to say “body parts,” which were not always removed after death.

Children and sex. Recently on local social media, there was a discussion on our topless laws. Of course, there were the predictable comments about women not going topless where children might see.

Well, why not, Karen? It’s utterly ridiculous when you consider what breasts are for, and what children are meant to do with them. Yes, it’s true the children shouldn’t be engaging in sex acts, and the details of adult sexual behavior should be kept from them, since they’re not equipped to understand, e.g. BDSM and power play, yet. But if kids see a pair of boobs, if kids see naked people, or even if kids know the basic functions of body parts, they’ll be fine. Lots of kids throughout human history lived in small dwellings and heard, or even saw, parents and other members of their community having sex, and they all survived the experience.

Communicable disease? Now there’s something that we should be protecting children from…

Yes, absolutely, as the population has increased, so has the feeling of being in the proverbial crab bucket.

I have a cargo van. It’s impossible to see any traffic coming from the passenger’s side when backing up, and there’s a big blind spot even on the driver’s side. It’s a larger vehicle, and it’s much easier to maneuver into tight spaces in reverse. (It’s why we learn to parallel park in reverse. Try it in forward once, and see.) Also, backing into a parking spot can be accomplished with just a steady gaze at one of the wing mirrors. (Driver’s or passenger’s side depends on which way you’re turning.)

That last point will also be important someday when I’m older and don’t have as much flexibility to turn and look backwards. (I was appalled once at a city transportation committee discussion about back-in parking stalls when a city alderperson said that he doesn’t look behind his car when backing out, because he can’t twist his body. If you can’t drive safely, you shouldn’t be driving!)

Best that I can think of would be to create an endowed institute of political scientists, psychologists, neuroscientists, linguists, et cetera, dedicated to studying and developing ways to counter right-wing populism, and de-program people who fall under its sway.