Pilot, Sailor, Curious Person
MidBest
Joined January 2007
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Open tunings on an acoustic guitar are a revelation. Makes everything feel fresh and new and joyful. Like discovering a new instrument.
Rick DeVos retweeted
People ask me why I block, often while attempting mockery - apart from their behavior, this is the simplest answer.
We created a digital society of everybody, not only from all cultures but of all characteristics (including people who commit crimes, advocate terrorism, and so on) and expected it to have norms - it doesn’t.
(I’ve noted now and then that Jack Dorsey, founder of this site, was from St. Louis, a town that began its life as a New France river port with exactly this kind of mix of characters - some patterns run deep.)
And we then imported what norms it did create (essentially, bad ones) to American political discourse and civil society.
One of the ugliest hallmarks of this time period is the complete indifference to another person's humiliation. People used to duel to the death to defend their dignity. We have never found a civilization in all of human history that lacked a language or customs for politeness.
And yet in the last decade or so watching random souls get fed to the lions has become a massive pastime, a spectator sport. Like Romans in the Colosseum, we howl and jeer. Only now we are the spectators, the damned, and the lions all at once.
Rick DeVos retweeted
Reportedly Bruce Lee, when asked how he would defend against a home invader (everyone thought he’d answer with some martial arts move) gave the answer, “A Colt 1911.”
(More probably, “A Colt .45,” but people get technical, so whatever.)
Questionable exact accuracy but I’m sure with a bit of bullying it could be dialed in. Quite cool though.
🤖 Made with AI
C'est absolument fascinant
Quand j'étais petit, j'adorais les livres qui montraient des coupes transversales de châteaux, de navires ou de machines
Je pouvais passer des heures à regarder chaque pièce, chaque personnage, chaque mécanisme
Aujourd'hui, je demande à l'IA de générer ces planches pour mon fils, puis je les imprime
Quelques exemples de sujets qui fonctionnent particulièrement bien :
1. Un galion anglais du XVIe siècle
2. Une locomotive à vapeur du XIXe siècle
3. Un sous-marin de la Seconde Guerre mondiale
4. Une cathédrale gothique du XIIIe siècle
5. Un paquebot transatlantique comme le Titanic
6. La fusée Saturn V du programme Apollo
7. Un phare maritime du XIXe siècle
8. Un château fort du XIVe siècle
Et le plus intéressant, c'est qu'on peut quasiment tout explorer de cette manière
Je vous partage le prompt universel pour reproduire ce style et créer vos propres encyclopédies illustrées
Rick DeVos retweeted
I always assumed these ruins were 2-3 hours drive up the coast from the city, in the part of the country California decided to permanently forsake from any development or even rebuilding
But they're actually INSIDE the city limits. They just keep it like that.
Rick DeVos retweeted
No one in the history of media knew the interior workings of a young boy’s brain better than Bill Watterson
Rick DeVos retweeted
Just not true. The Romans made one of the entire city. It was hung in the Roman senate tax offices. We've been finding pieces of it for centuries.
Leonardo da Vinci created the first ever
"satellite view" map in 1502 of Imola, Italy.
He did this by manually measuring the angles and distance of every corner on every building in the city.
Readers added context they thought people might want to know
Leonardo’s 1502 Imola map was not the first overhead city plan. The Forma Urbis of Rome, made in 203–211 CE, mapped every building’s ground plan at 1:240 scale. Leonardo’s work was a surveyed Renaissance plan, but calling it the first “satellite view” is inaccurate.
formaurbis.stanford.edu/docs/FURmap.ht…
rct.uk/collection/912…
The pfp, the morally idignant gesturing at make-believe things, the signing with the name at the end.
It’s The Perfect Boomer Tweet.
🇭🇹🇸🇻 À ceux qui pensent que Nayib Bukele peut intervenir militairement en Haïti à la suite de la «disparition » des quatre militaires salvadoriens, je tiens à rappeler ceci :
La volonté légitime du président salvadorien de sauver ses quatre militaires ne saurait justifier une intervention militaire unilatérale en Haïti, en violation de sa souveraineté nationale.
La lutte contre les gangs ne saurait devenir un prétexte pour contourner le droit international. Toute opération militaire doit s’inscrire dans un cadre juridique clairement établi, conformément au mandat de la Force de répression des gangs (FRG) et aux dispositions de la Charte des Nations unies.
La gravité de la situation sécuritaire en Haïti ne suspend ni le droit international ni la souveraineté du pays.
Nancy Roc
#Haiti #Salvador #Souveraineté #InterventionMilitaire
Rick DeVos retweeted
However this Ilhan Omar situation plays out, it's worth remembering that the entire thing is an own goal. A comedy of errors.
The US didn't need to be intervening in Somalia - it didn't need to admit 'refugees' - and if it was going to admit them, it didn't need to have such shoddy vetting procedures that it allowed a Marxist military officer implicated in mass murder fake his way in. And then it didn't need to give citizenship to the officer or his kids.
Rick DeVos retweeted
These pleas all beg the question.
I don't think the money will be used wisely. I don't think it would be used to build shared prosperity. I don't believe them when they say it's a one-time tax. I don't very much like many of the people who support the tax. I don't have the same values as the people who support the tax. I don't think they will do good with the money.
You're assuming a level of "all in this togetherness" that doesn't exist and assuming the answers to all the most interesting questions.
Seeing the tsunami of comments, I realize the irony:
You are right that I was admitting to puzzlement at the fact that (many, not all) centi-billionaires act like the homo economicus of the basic economic textbook😀: They maximize utility (or at least wealth), try to keep as much as they can, and the hell with other motives.
And, indeed, this is what puzzles me. I would have thought (but this is the left wing me…) that they would care about more, including the welfare of others less lucky, and would be willing to pay the tax. That they might even volunteer to help (a few of them actually do).
I hear from the comments (although I suspect none comes from a centibillionaire…) is that maybe they care (although some of the comments are : Why should they?). But, even if they do, they do not trust the government not to come back with another “one time tax”. And that money given to the government is a waste of money. This may indeed be the reason, and I should not have been surprised.
I am afraid that there is not much the CA state can do in terms of credible commitments not to come back for more. But on the waste argument. The centibillionaires could have come back and offered public private partnerships to fund specific projects that they find worth funding. (Or maybe the state could have offered them)
lmao the quote
Kristi Rogers has become a familiar face in her husband’s voter outreach initiatives in Detroit. A Detroit voter I spoke with helped explain why.
My latest @mich_enjoyer
Rick DeVos retweeted
One of the most misinformed groups in the world has to be people who watch John Oliver religiously, this is one of the better forum posts on the phenomenon of the "comedic-news" segments
HBO's @LastWeekTonight has a long track record of citing social science findings without the appropriate context, massaging them to support whatever point @iamjohnoliver is trying to make.
