Gavin (who is back in town)

all my homies love the parable of the workers in the vineyard

They’re both prominent examples of a kind of weaponized ignorance where people who know less about a thing think that ignorance means they know more about it. It’s basically the entire animating force on the right and for the antivax movement, but left-liberals aren’t immune (AI, guns, finance)

Noah Kahan released Stick Season with the song “New Perspective” in 2022. The Wolves traded Karl-Anthony Towns to the Knicks in 2024. Therefore there was a window in which i could have sang:

Ooh, this Towns is Karl-Anthony
He’s playing center at the Target
And he’s hitting from Dow-own-town

Kobe is kind of like Malcolm X in that he died during a transitional period during which he was changing a lot in ways that some people liked more and some of his oldest supporters would not have liked. And his death cut short whatever unknown was coming.

In other ways, Kobe is not like Malcolm X.

people are entitled to whatever response they want to have about Bam Adebayo scoring 83 points but I think there's nothing wrong with a simple resounding "yowza" and calling it quits there

also I should have included one more alive guy. Including exactly one alive guy was the wrong choice there, my apologies to Mr. NeverBrokeAgain

it's kind of like if in two thousand years everyone was obsessed with Lil Peep. Like, why Lil Peep instead of Juice WRLD or XXXTentacion or Young Boy NeverBrokeAgain? But the people of 4000 don't know who any of those other guys are.

I considered all those (went through the discography before replying to you) and didn't put them because I thought that for 1 and 4 the original is famous enough and 2 and 3 the Weird Al is just as obscure. But you easily could be right.

My Bologna also a possibility at this point in time

it is not good but it is kinda funny that some Indians have all these extremely esoteric racisms based on like, what your last name implies about what your ancestors' profession was 300 years ago, and then American racists are like "oh yeah, you guys are also black"

Which Weird Al parodies are more famous than their originals?

Definitely:
I Lost On Jeopardy

Maybe:
Amish Paradise
Pretty Fly For A Rabbi

Not Yet But Someday:
White 'n' Nerdy
Yoda

re Magic City and Luke Kornet, I believe that he is sincere and he is not even wrong on the merits, but "men being sex negative on religious grounds" have and deserve negative credibility for at least a thousand years or so.

women being sex negative on religious grounds is a different story.

At (former firm redacted) everyone hates him, but he makes the game more fun and lucrative so they don't hate him nearly enough in my opinion.

At (other former firm, also redacted) the rank and file don't like him, but the big bosses do, and they set the tone (plus anything is worth lower taxes)

Some of the older people are genuinely Trump dipshits. The ones I know hate him and would broadly vote Democratic, but it's also true that finance is a game to them and Trump makes the game more fun. I get really annoyed when Bluesky people criticize finance people, but I get to do it (unironically)

Wan’Dale versus Cor’Dale in practice every day is a treat

If the Vikings try to sign Kyler Murray, fail, and end up with JJ and Rodgers that might surpass it. But that is like the negative 2 stdev Minnesota outcome

Taking the train from Geneva to Budapest was one of the highlights of my childhood. It’s a shame what’s happened in Hungary - though perhaps those winds are changing.

(That’s been one of the funny/annoying things about arguing with you - it looks like I’m against 13 hour train rides! I love those!)

This discussion isn’t about politics, but it’s not NOT about politics. The thing about a two-party system with 35% ironclad allegiance to an evil cult is that to do anything good at all you need like 80% of the non-evil population on board. A lot of stuff you’re suggesting is good! We can’t do it.

among other issues, these places are ruled by Republicans. A lot of people in Europe and on Bluesky don’t think there is that big of a difference between them and Democrats, but that is wrong.

(Perhaps if enough people moved…you’re not wrong that Build More Houses In Medium Sized Cities is good)

Triumvirate of you, Stancil, and a trans furry software engineer to be named later

Hey @thatpuzzleguy.bsky.social am curious to see your time on the latest @defector.com puzzle when you do it - I broke 2 (1:59) for the first time on one of them today

She’s a freestyle skier, an extremely talented (and intelligent, and beautiful, and marketable) one, who grew up in the US and went to Stanford but has chosen to represent China in international competition

heh, "railed at."

yeah I don't know. The USA is really big, and has really varied terrain. It also has done a piss poor job of developing rail infrastructure.

I used to be like "ugh, why can't the US be more like Europe," and I still feel that way about some things.

they do, I lived in Geneva for a few months when I was a child and adored the rail system. It's a great achievement, and the US should aspire to have better trains.

Switzerland is smaller and less populous than the Acela corridor, which could be better but is fine. The scales are just different.

I am not making an argument against rail infrastructure, and never have been; I am strongly in favor of more of it, and it is a policy failure of the US to not have more of it. That's a separate conversation from your original quote post.

The US should absolutely have more and better railway networks - the mountainous region from the original post provides a challenge here in the same way that Ireland's rail network sucks (which is a shame, because I visit it frequently to see my girlfriend's family and hope to live there someday)

I think this just goes back to the original quote post. "This is an inefficient way to live and I hope the Trump oil shock kills it" is viable, if rude, to say about local land use patterns. It's ridiculous to say about the fact that it can take 2.5 Irelands over mountains to see one's parents.

I would love it if the US had a better rail network. I wrote a college admissions essay about how much I disliked Dwight Eisenhower because the US had focused on the highway system instead of rail networks. I am as sympathetic to your arguments as you can be...you still don't get how big the US is.

That would help, to some degree.

Also, Helsinki to Kevo, a town I just looked up in northern Finland, is a fifteen hour drive. That's a little further than Galveston to Albuquerque, in two neighboring states. Even when you're trying to acknowledge the size, you're not getting the size.

completely separate point, and a good one. US sprawl and underfunded public transport are bad policy choices, the truth of size is just a truth of size. See e.g. the Warriors analogy I made elsewhere in the thread.

Ok now we’re at Poe’s Law. I’m not *that* good at chess (1800-ish), but I think I would know if masters were regularly giving up major pieces in order to improve their pawn structure.