Public Service Message: I have ridden roller coasters all over the world, and the relatively new Velocicoaster at Universal Orlando is the best I have ever ridden. At my son's urging I went there for a day solely to ride that ride and I was not disappointed It is not the highest and does not have a huge drop. It does not have a crazy gimmick like the 400 ft straight up launch of top fuel dragster in CP. It is just awesome. Every turn and move I have ever heard of in a coaster.

I wondered last year what the long-term plan was in NZ and Australia with a zero-COVID strategy that made no sense given that it could not be maintained in a (now semi-)free society forever. Apparently there was none.

dailymail.co.uk/health/article… Here was the original of what I wrote

coyoteblog.com/coyote_blog/20…

I have always felt that "believe all women" was an absurd overreach, an exhortation no rational, observant person should be willing to accept as a general rule. The proper statement, imo, was and is "take women seriously" There is a real problem that needed to be solved. Various law enforcement bodies often did not take accusations of sexual violence seriously, patting women on the head and sending them on their way. This case was a great example

wsj.com/articles/gymna…

This is the sort of "common sense" market intervention that technocrats love but of which I am really suspicious

engadget.com/eu-reaches-dea… Here is one reason why: Maybe 15 years ago, when cell phone power cables were power only, there was pressure for government to do this same thing, to mandate one standard among a variety of barrel power-only connectors.

This is simply madness -- with a looming worldwide shortage of cereal grains (due to Ukraine war and other factors) and the real potential for famine later this year, Biden mandates that more food be burned in cars

zerohedge.com/political/bide… I can't tell if this is bad energy policy -- since every study not funded by ADM has shown zero to negative fossil fuel savings from corn ethanol. Or if it is pandering to the midwest corn lobby ahead of this election.

If we forgive student loans, it should come with an admission that the product was so entirely flawed that a 100% refund is warranted. And then everyone who paid cash should also be fully refunded. And then we should shut down all the suppliers of the product as a scam business.

https://twitter.com/montana_skeptic/status/1516126012852953093

Seriously, why else would be be talking about giving full refunds to people unless there was an implicit assumption the value was entirely missing? In other product liability situations we give folks like a 50-cent coupon. We are talking here about $200,000 refunds!

I have not really educated myself on either, but I would probably take the firing squad too. Not sure anything has much less dignity than the electric chair

reason.com/2022/04/18/dea… This is weird to think about, but movies have sort of established firing squads as the manly way to be executed -- think of Robert Vaughn at the end of the Bridge at Remagen, Breaker Morant, scores of others.

Like visiting the last Blockbuster store: Just had a call from a self-storage company in WA state asking about a disputed bill. The details were sort of complicated. Asked them if they could email it to me, and she said neither she nor the business has email. Reminds me of a related story. Many of our employees are older retired people and we often hire both spouses in a couple to work together. We found over time that many older couples only have one email address they share between them

I think we over-estimate the newness of political polarization. Any reading of primary sources in, say, the 1850's or the 1960's would look at least as politically crazy as today. But one thing I could never have predicted -- political polarization with one side being vaccine proselytizers / treatment skeptics and the other being vaccine skeptics / treatment proselytizers. I am not sure how we got here

In 2016 a good number of Democrats thought the Presidential vote counts suspect and called Clinton the true President. In 2018 a good number of Democrats thought the Georgia vote counts suspect and called Abrams the true governor (she still calls herself that). In 2020 a good number of Republicans thought the Presidential vote counts suspect and called Trump the true President. There seems to be mistrust in the vote counting system across the political spectrum.

I just cancelled a trip to Europe in April -- not because of COVID or Omicron, but because of the current and likely future reactions & rule-making of governments in reaction to COVID and Omicron. I think that is an important distinction that is often lost in the media The media says that Omicron is causing another drop in travel. Maybe. I do understand there is some sort of mild xenophobia that makes people assume other places away from their home are more dangerous for catching diseases

When I complain about COVID totalitarianism, many folks I talk to want to make an exception to the normal rules of individual rights for public health -- they have this lovely, gauzy image of brave doctors fighting the disease But when I read about 19th & 20th century anti-Semitism in places like France and Germany, it is amazing how completely the anti-Semites adopted the language, logic, and moral high ground of public health.

1/ Can we PLEASE get on with legalizing sex work.

There is still a huge community (including our current VP) who hold that sex work is illegal because it is abusive. But this ignores the lesson from every prohibition in history -- sex work is abusive because it is illegal.

https://twitter.com/ENBrown/status/1437809570567626763

2/ There are abuses in every workplace (eg Apple, apparently) but women have recourse to law to stop & to be compensated for these abuses. Female sex workers must worry about getting prosecuted themselves if they report abuse and thus have only limited avenues of redress.

There are folks on the Left that want to deny COVID care to sick people who eschewed the vaccination, on the logic that they don't deserve treatment when an easy preventative was available. This represents oddly an Victorian ethical judgement that the Left applies nowhere else For example, why couldn't the Right in turn then say, "well, let's ban abortion in the cases of consensual sex, because there were multiple readily available pregnancy preventatives available?"

I see conspiracy theories that Biden's vaccine order is meant as a distraction from Afghanistan. FWIW, here's my conspiracy theory: COVID is burning itself out & cases are going to fall fast. This is the last chance for Biden to retroactively claim credit for "defeating" it 74% of the population of the US over 12 years old has at least one dose. That is pretty damn good despite all the wailing and WAY higher than I would have guessed from Biden's speech or the media coverage.

covid.cdc.gov/covid-data-tra…

I will add one more thing to this -- US plastic recycling may be one of the largest contributors to plastic trash in the oceans -- here is why

sfchronicle.com/opinion/editor… Plastic trash in the oceans is not from some poor schlub in Austin who had a plastic straw in his big Gulp. The vast vast majority of the plastic trash in the ocean is from 10 or so large Asian coastal/river port cities

I agree Twitter's actions are private & legal. Got that out of the way. But you & other people of goodwill are soft-pedaling the degree to which Twitter is punishing heterodoxy by saying they are just "banning fascists"

https://twitter.com/Popehat/status/1347942321392795648

But this makes it sound like they are banning only the most extreme 0.01%. Who can argue with banning fascists from your private platform? But the bans go so much further than this, as I have experienced myself and seen happen to others I respect (@boriquagato)

We seem to be moving to the Reichstag Fire Decree phase of the capitol riot aftermath. @ElonBachman

https://twitter.com/Reuters/status/1347734868885708800

Google & Apple are free to do this, of course, and I can't say I have been too thrilled with Parler in my short experience with it.

What worries me is the attitude that seems to dominate the Left now that if only wrongthink and wrongspeak can be suppressed, paradise will emerge

1. Government top-down planned solutions are never efficient. See: every socialist country in history

https://twitter.com/WarrenJWells/status/1347300225828876288

2. The government sets standardized rules for everywhere, but local conditions vary, & they don't give local people with knowledge of local conditions the authority & incentives to innovate based on overall program goals. Planners are uncomfortable with people going off the plan

Well, the good news after today is that the Republicans are done with Trump.

There was some danger, I thought, after the election that Republican opposition would continue to rally around Trump and be guided by Trumpism. Trump may remain a force of some sort in populist politics, but the Republicans are distancing themselves from him so fast they appear red-shifted in photographs.

This was already happening with the GA Senate losses. I think R's have a valid beef that in a 50/50 election,

Here is my COVID math. I am 58 with hopefully, say, 20 good years.

Life given up from year in quarantine: 1 in 20
Chance of contracting & dying of COVID in one year at my age: 1 in 1500
Approx. chance of death from vaccine reaction: 1 in 50,000 By this math:
1. I have zero desire to give up 5% of my life to remove a 0.6% chance of dying.
2. I am happy to take a vaccine -- the odds are good compared to chance of death from COVID and it is really worth it to me if the government will leave me alone after I take it