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@MorlockP
Two-time Prometheus award-winning hard science fiction author. https://t.co/X1XAm8tVlh Learn how to homestead https://t.co/tsoohJ5emD
10 subscribers
Jun 19 • 5 tweets • 2 min read
1/
In isolation, yes. But it's a very modern thing, outside of its historical origin, and it's part of the "1619 project" which seeks to alter all of American history, and it's tied up in toppling monuments, etc.

In that context >>> 2/
It becomes much more ominous. It came out of nowhere, was made a federal holiday, is being incorrectly called "national independence day" (overwriting the actual independence day).
Jun 8 • 7 tweets • 2 min read
1/
Here's how I bought a new truck for the lowest price in 2000 and again in 2023: 2/
Find every dealer in ~50 miles.
May 26 • 4 tweets • 1 min read
one thing I note often is that knowledge is fractal

you can spend part of your life knowing "chainsaws exist" without much detail

then you get into it and there are different brands, bar lengths, swappable power heads

you go further down the rabbit hole and you learn that 2/
chain oil comes in summer and winter weights, chains have various pitch / gauge / cutter types / grind styles

...and pretty soon you know about rivet spinning and bulk chain purchases ...
May 15 • 21 tweets • 5 min read
garbage tats, too many rings, BPD eyes ... this is the 'elite' that rules over us
Image 2/
You actively should judge books by their covers.

Publishers pay a lot of attention to what covers look like, and use them to convey important marketing information to prospective purchasers.

Apr 24 • 8 tweets • 4 min read
the last few years where midwits have been taking to social media to explain geopolitics in terms of Star Wars and Harry Potter analogies has been hugely enlightening

no one can deal with any complexity or ambiguity at all. "It was historically Russian territory, and a majority of people who live there are Russian speakers, and the Ukrainian regime is deeply corrupt and has paid off the family of the US president *** BUT *** the attack was unprovoked, and tons of civilians were killed for no reason, and the Russian president jails his political enemies in a manner even worse than the US president does, and it's pragmatic to show that the US will defend the existing world order, *** BUT *** ..."

No one's got time for that.

Everyone wants to LARP Les Miserables or the French Resistance or Valley Forge or some such crap (all of which is ALSO, in the popular imagination, a one sided simplified LARP with one heroic side and one villainous side and no gray at all).

It's all so fake and ghey and I'm dispirited by how willfully stupid people are and how they yearn to throw themselves (or, actually, others) into literal battles that will leave them dead, mutilated, burned over 50% of their bodies, with traumatic brain injuries, missing limbs, or worse because evolution has designed us to be enthusiastic murder monkeys who love joining coalitions. 2/
Everything I've read says that Crimeans thought of themselves as much more Russian aligned than Ukranian aligned.



en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Republic_…

Image
Apr 10 • 18 tweets • 3 min read
1/
A list of things where I can be slightly mistaken for a lefty:

(a) if you can't get sufficient workers, that's because you're not paying them enough 2/
(b) law enforcement is terrible and they disproportionately victimize the poor and the incompetent. Like PETA throwing red paint on women in furs, not bikers in leather, LEOs go after people too poor to fight back.
Mar 26 • 9 tweets • 2 min read
this is an extremely leftist/wordcel/normie question

the normal state of cargo ships is sinking/no electrical power/no rudder control

only constant maintenance, discipline, and executive function keeps cargo ships out of that ground state and in a more energetic state 2/
The power in your house does not "want" to be on.

The clean water does not "want" to flow.

The supermarket does not "want" to be stocked.

Entropy is always and everywhere trying to destroy, corrode, sink, and endarken.
Mar 26 • 10 tweets • 3 min read
1/
I had a [ slightly left of center ] teacher in HS who said that the distinction between right and left dictatorships is that in a right dictatorship you could keep your mouth shut, go along to get along, and all would be fine 2/
...but in a left dictatorship, you had to actively parrot the party line, and the regime would switch up the party line all the time to trip people up. The constant greengrocerism and whiplash was PART OF THE PROCESS.
Mar 3 • 25 tweets • 6 min read
a new 747 costs $450 million, and one single trusted individual can destroy one in 5 seconds if he chooses to

the modern consumer-facing world trains people to think that everything has, metaphorically speaking, seat belts and airbags, but it's not true 2/
Feb 25 • 38 tweets • 10 min read
1/
Krugman, like most other midwits, uses data to persuade, not to understand.

He sees a graph that proves that "food at home spending" is up 1.2x not 2x, and immediately uses it to demonstrated that "food prices are not up 2x".

Let's dig in. 2/
The graph he is using comes from here



Scroll to the bottom and find

> Source: U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics Release: Consumer Price Indexfred.stlouisfed.org/series/CUSR000…
Feb 10 • 8 tweets • 3 min read
sure, he violated the law

and, sure, the law specifies that there are no exceptions, and the law must be followed

...but we don't want to

...so we won't.

Rule of man, not rule of law.

justice.gov/storage/report…
Image 2/
"he DID share classified information"

and yet "... evidence falls short of supporting criminal charges"

ok, so there's rock solid evidence that he shared classified info he knew was classified...but...something something

is there some other branch of the law not fulfilled?
Image
Image
Feb 5 • 6 tweets • 2 min read
1/
Megan is getting at what @slatestarcodex calls "the non central fallacy".

My rebuttal is that being here illegally is a form of election fraud, often a form of benefits fraud (taking advantage of our roads, schools, and other things with real maintenance costs), and ... 2/
while I detest the scare mongering of " MiLiTaRy aGeD mEn !!111", is it true that illegal immigration, en masse, and without assimilation, fundamentally changes the character of a nation, and often - contra @AlexNowrasteh - for the worse.
Jan 29 • 14 tweets • 2 min read
1/
As I mentioned recently, I saw Top Gun: Maverick and it was excellent.

A lot of little tricks of great writing.

Specifically re sequels.

One big trick w sequels... 2/
is how to hit the same notes, but not in the exact same way.

Cheap / bad: do the same thing, a second time. If episode 1 was a dam busters raid, ep 3 can't be another raid, and ep 4 certainly can't.

(looking at you, Star Wars, w 3 different death stars)
Jan 19 • 10 tweets • 3 min read
1/
This is entirely false, and I'm old enough to remember exactly when the progs forged this meme.

In the 60s & 70s progs had lots of exposes about mental hospitals, and leveraged these to pass laws closing institutions.

The crazies ended up on sidewalks and were now hobos. 2/
Now it's 1980.

First, the progs used the euphemism treadmill to get rid of the words "hobo" and "bum". Those had unfair connotations / stigma, and suggested that these people living on the sidewalks were either lazy or mentally ill.
Jan 2 • 16 tweets • 3 min read
I am, in general, in favor of mercy, against excessive punishment, etc.

...but I strongly disagree with Megan here, on, like, a dozen counts.

First (and least importantly), is Megan's assertion that Gay has gotten racist garbage. True or not, it's entirely irrelevant. 2/
Some of the more important reasons to disagree with Megan:

* it's basic economics that the less likely someone is to get caught in a crime, the more painful the punishment has to be, so that the EXPECTED pain of punishment (chance of getting caught * pain) > benefit of crime
Jan 1 • 10 tweets • 2 min read
2023 was a mediocre year, but I got some things done:

* first year in the NH legislature, voted consistently for small gov, earning an A+ rating from @nhliberty

* finished building / re-building / re-re-building the solar project and got house onto it

* finished "Willow Park" (a ~500 ft^2 area behind the compost bins, where we planted a willow tree. Pulled all rocks, filled in dirt, re-re-seeded grass, etc. 2/
* finished my first YA novel "The Aristillus Engineering Club and the Journey to the Center of Mars", and shared beta copies with a few friends at BasedCon

* started my second YA novel "Aristillus Engineering Club Around Mars in 80 Sols"
Dec 13, 2023 • 5 tweets • 1 min read
one problem domain specialists often make is, because of their experience as practitioners, interpreting phrases much much more narrowly than normal people do

1A lawyers will argue that getting hounded on the internet or fired from a private sector job for political tweeting > 2/
is not a "free speech issue", because they're so close to 1A litigation that they lose all concept that not all freedom of speech issues are American constitutional law.

Similarly, if someone reports that "inflation and the economy are crushing them", econ wonks >>>
Dec 8, 2023 • 38 tweets • 7 min read
1/
ok, quick thread on what negotiation is, and how to negotiate 2/
any transaction (hiring, promotion, selling a new car, buying a used dog bed off of Craigslist, getting a fellow legislator to co-sponsor a bill, getting assigned to a new project at work, selling an original piece of art, etc etc) only happens if it is MUTUALLY BENEFICIAL.
Nov 30, 2023 • 11 tweets • 2 min read
Aristillus YA 2 viral marketing event ! 2/
fun note:

a coronal mass ejection is a large bolus of plasma, electrons, and protons traveling faster than the escape velocity of the sun. They happen all the time, but the vast majority aren't aimed in the direction of Earth.

Earth has a magnetic field, and if you remember
Nov 27, 2023 • 8 tweets • 2 min read
There's something I envy about the media of the cultural victors: the NYT can spend 1/3 of its words trying to push the Revolution forward, and 2/3 of its words just IGNORING its class enemies and seeing/speaking the world from its own victorious position. 2/
1,000 words on a lesbian couple buying their first home, or 800 words on a guy who moved to a small goat farm in Vermont to make cheese in a nice college town, or an essay on a new restaurant that doesn't even ARGUE for why the biracial marriage of the two head chefs >>>
Nov 20, 2023 • 10 tweets • 2 min read
1/
I love threads like this.

From artists, from truck drivers, from welders, from airplane pilots.

All these crazy little details, the procedurals of "make sure your tire pressure meter is in your left thigh pocket", are so great.

>>> 2/
I recently made a tweet about how Argentinian president elect Javier Milei looked like a BBC announcer from 1968 doing a documentary on British cheese, and one comment was along the lines of "so weirdly precise and yet so right".

There's a connection between that and this