If you want to talk technicalities of science - it always starts with 'Nothing Is Definitely Settled.'

Japanese Student Takes Flight of Fancy, Creates Flying Bicycle YouTube video by Team Marksmen Network

And humans can fly, under pure bodily power of a single trained cyclist. By applying advanced tools, yes, but we need those for mere survival anyway 🤷

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

Ok... But we Really Don't Actually Know Yet.

There are plausible unexamined pathways (maybe it activates some somatic flight response, as infrasounds might indicate the presence of animals with massive chest cavities), maybe it's only harmful in conjunction with something else etc.

'Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality' level of martial arts understanding and prowess...

Tweet by “Secretary of War” Pete Hegseth: “The War Department is once again restoring freedom to our Joint Force. We are discarding the mandatory flu vaccine requirement, effective immediately.” Below there is a video of the announcement for his many, many illiterate fans

Behind Hegseth’s big stupid face, a painting can be seen.

The painting is of George Washington crossing the Delaware. It is by Emanuel Leutze.

An article from the National Parks Service: Smallpox, Inoculation, and the Revolutionary War Boston National Historical Park During the 1700s, smallpox raged through the American colonies and the Continental Army. Smallpox impacted the Continental Army severely during the Revolutionary War, so much so that George Washington mandated inoculation for all Continental soldiers in 1777. Just fifty-six years earlier, in 1721, Bostonian doctors and clergy introduced the procedure to the American colonies. Without the vision and determination of these early Bostonians in normalizing inoculation, Washington may not have made the decision to mandate inoculation for the Continental Army. Though it was a controversial action, many historians credit the medical mandate with the colonists' victory in the Revolutionary War and the creation of the United States of America.

Many such cases. By the end of WWII, the Nazis were playing up the threat of 'Werewolves' (sleeper Nazi combatants, hiding among the civilians) to seem more formidable and dangerous... and the Allies were playing it up as well, to make the residual-Nazi threat appear more formidable and dangerous 🤷

Yes correct which is why they ordered it to stop and when it didn't used limited force to disable it and take it into custody instead of sinking it

Similar category.

In my country, Ladas did indeed have a reputation for ruggedness and reliability. It wasn't comfortable, it wasn't pretty, it wasn't fuel-efficient - but it did get you where you needed to go, over potholes, gravel and dirt.

That's my favorite example. It was already a euphemism! "Developmentally retarded" - See, your child isn't *stupid*, it's just a little slower in its development.

And yet...

His job was to lead the country to success and prosperity. He did and this, of course, created a new problem of brutal, crushing greed. Because humans are Fallen beings prone to worship of Golden Calfs and we will spontaneously turn any abundance into a nightmare.

Well, where did he get the greed from and whom did he deliver it to, then?

If you're saying that he set up the conditions for the roaring tech & economy of the late 80s and 90s that the Boomers got rich off, I can agree with that.

But that's like blaming gluttony on the people who solved farming.

The arguments may be economically weak, but they are very strong politically. People have a deeply felt aversion to freeloading in principle. A bit of a small-tribal-group atavism still left in our psyche.

😆 Dude's like "I work for the vampires and let me tell you something: in this economy, we're sucking people *real dry.* If you were a true socialist, you wouldn't be diminishing any of this so glibly!"

The average age of boomers in 1980 was 24, btw.

Artist formerly known as "Thatguy Detestable"...

I've seen a number of professor-led start-ups where they assume the technology is so good that it'll sell itself, and they don't understand that you have to, you know, understand advertising and show that you're delivering value, even when it's true.

I think part of the reason the Pope thing is hitting so much is that modern life is so devoid of *any* morality, any system of right and wrong that is not completely hollow and fraudulent, which hits as halfway sensible and opposed to Trump and those like him, feels absolutely revolutionary

without lionizing Leo XIV too much, i think people are brought up short by encountering someone in a position of authority who seems to have commitments to stable concepts of right and wrong that supersede class loyalty to other powerful people (which is largely the same as what Dan is saying)

You have been visited by the Bat of Stoic Optimism. Stay strong.

☝️

💥

Alphonse Mucha: Holy Mount Athos (1926)

"Believe Marxist-Leninists" Well, there's your problem.

The claim "the fact that the incumbent party was successfully defeated in an election shows that there was never anything to worry about and democracy was fine all along" in the Hungarian case— with explicit or implicit analogy to the US— is maddening to begin with, bc it's a well-known fact
1/

This is literally indistinguishable from Trump's approach. "There are too many Covid-19 deaths; stop reporting them."

If They Who Hold Correct Opinions disagree with the experts, the experts must be wrong and the data needs to be changed.

Screenshot of a chat with the Washington Post's AI search. Q: Why is the Post AI not able to find information about recent articles? A: The Post AI is not able to find information about recent articles because it does not have access to real-time data and can only provide information based on the articles provided to it. Q: What articles are provided to the Post AI? A: No articles are provided to the Post AI.

Oh, okay

I take sin to mean "An act that feels good at the moment, but is detrimental over the long run." As opposed to virtue, being momentarily unpleasant but long-term beneficial.

These are actually quite useful concepts, having expanded upon the naive 'feels good = good' ethics of old antiquity.