Re: Implanting Bill Gates's Micro-chips In Brains For Over 20 Years!
 

That review looks interesting and I will read when not a Friday night, i.e. when sober. But I can say now that I was not endorsing all of Shellenberger's arguments (such as they are - the book is often more incredibly well researched statistics (100 pages of footnotes) than conclusions), but that this book will either anger or epiphanize (I just invented the word) Sebby's progressive gift-recipients. It is a lesson in progressive failure, but weak in proposed change.

Re: Implanting Bill Gates's Micro-chips In Brains For Over 20 Years!
 

I read this piece in the Atlantic a while back, about homeless and meth, and was totally depressed. Not sure that anyone has a policy solution for this.

As for Shellenberger's incredible research, Scott Alexander says he repeatedly offers a much-needed corrective to the way progressives overstate social-science research, and then proceeds to overstate things the same way himself. It's one thing to do lots of research, but another to represent that research in an even-handed way.

Re: Implanting Bill Gates's Micro-chips In Brains For Over 20 Years!
 

That's a lovely feel good piece.

The author nails the issue. There are no villains. I'd go beyond the assessment this applies to meth and say it applies to most severe addictions that land people on skid row. These folks have simply been bulldozed by a ruthlessly unforgiving system in which they could not make it.

It's said the US is s great place if you've some money, but an utterly miserable place if you don't. That seems true. This would mean it's a horrific place if you've no money and fall into addiction to hard drugs. And those two tend to follow each other. Met any well heeled meth heads lately?

But what's the fix? How does one achieve a positive result to this equation:

Increasingly more people without marketable skills + A country in which cost of living is high and economic success is increasingly difficult to attain = ?

Re: Implanting Bill Gates's Micro-chips In Brains For Over 20 Years!
 

He kind of drives me nuts because his climate book was endorsed as gospel by every over-70 right wing denier I know. It got maddening arguing that one book among literally libraries of others was somehow the final word on climate change.

But that's not his fault. And I don't think he's a charlatan. I just think he's all but assuredly wrong in his ultimate assessment.

Philly has a variant of the SF thing going on with its progressive DA, Krasner. There's a movement to hang Larry from City Hall right now, with every carjacking and mugging blamed on him. I don't think it's fair.

We over-incarcerate in this country. And the length of sentences is obscene. It's a cruel, stupid, vengeful system. And it creates more dangerous criminals, with prisons acting as grad schools in crime.

We had a pandemic. Shit does not return to normal overnight following a pandemic. The right wing crowd - which doesn't even like the cities or live in them - needs to be ignored. They're using the crime spikes which are totally normal and expected following a pandemic to create paranoia that is going to lead to a vicious and monumentally stupid resurgence in "tough on crime" politics.

More now than ever before cities and their justice systems need to be run by circumspect thinkers. It's "elitist," I know, and so politically probably impossible, but moderate apolitical technocrats need to be brought into city govts to handle this problem. The right wing and the progressives need to get out of the way, stop bending the conversation in counterproductive directions. Let a star chamber of pros fix things, because despite the shit one will hear to the contrary, the following can be done simultaneously:

1. Reform justice/enforcement to stop jailing/harassing/preying upon the poor and minorities at the ridiculous pace of the past; and,
2. Address violent crime.

You can look up the stats on the arrests in NY. It is a small percentage of criminals getting arrested and rearrested for violent crime. The cure is not to focus on entire communities of poor/minority people because "that's where the criminals are" or restart "broken windows" policing that crowds jails mindlessly. The solution is to identify and jail the recidivists.

Re: Implanting Bill Gates's Micro-chips In Brains For Over 20 Years!
 

If anyone here is as into wine and books as I am (hi GGG!), I would like to recommend a book that came out five years ago, and which I cellared for an appropriate length of time before reading, Cork Dork, by Bianca Bosker. Full-bodied, not too sweet, a little acid, nice long finish.

Re: Implanting Bill Gates's Micro-chips In Brains For Over 20 Years!
 

And I will recommend this amicus brief filed by The Onion
in a US Supreme Court case being heard this term - [https://www.supremecourt.gov/DocketP...us%20Brief.pdf

Re: Implanting Bill Gates's Micro-chips In Brains For Over 20 Years!
 

2.

Re: Implanting Bill Gates's Micro-chips In Brains For Over 20 Years!
 

Ah, well, another year that Thomas Pynchon doesn't win the Nobel Prize.

Re: Implanting Bill Gates's Micro-chips In Brains For Over 20 Years!
 

This brief is a work of art. Flower has to be pissed that he wasn't involved.

Re: Implanting Bill Gates's Micro-chips In Brains For Over 20 Years!
 

I literally just read it and sent it to my wife two minutes ago as required reading (a mandate she will most likely ignore). And yeah, I’m fucking pissed. I didn’t even think The Onion was a thing any more, or if anything it was a faded relic of its past glory. But this is some next level amicus brief writing, a phrase I did not ever expect to be writing.

Re: Implanting Bill Gates's Micro-chips In Brains For Over 20 Years!
 

I put it just below Hank's Guernica posts.

Re: Implanting Bill Gates's Micro-chips In Brains For Over 20 Years!
 

Thanks for having my back my brother! I just wish the Onion would acknowledge its debt to my Guernica stuff (not to mention the Gilligan posts):mad::confused:

Re: Implanting Bill Gates's Micro-chips In Brains For Over 20 Years!
 

Question:
I have not gotten TSA Precheck because I always forget to make an appoint for the interview before I'm at the airport. But now I see they do the interviews at selected Staples. So I'm getting it. BUT always looking to worry, I have to assume most people that get Precheck also know to get Clear. Does Precheck speed up and simplify getting through the machine but slows down getting to the scan line?

Re: Implanting Bill Gates's Micro-chips In Brains For Over 20 Years!
 

I got Precheck when I was flying internationally a lot, never got Clear. It made a huge different for the international flights a few years ago, but I don't fly much for work anymore, and it doesn't help when I fly with my family because my wife doesn't have it.

Re: Implanting Bill Gates's Micro-chips In Brains For Over 20 Years!
 

Similar. It's easier when flying with the family because they give you a card so you go through the regular metal detector and don't have to take your shoes off. But when you are outside of the country, TSA pre carries zero weight. So basically, in my recent international trip, it would have saved me 15 minutes on one line at JFK. LHR, CDG, zero.

I do not travel for work anymore.

I also have Clear through a credit card but I found the service to be super-shitty. Every time I tried to use it, the employee was befuddled and it didn't work and they had to lead me through the airport like I was taking a tour of the pyramids by going to some random Egyptian.