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Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: November 19th, 2023

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  • Trump was pretty ineffective in his first term, largely because he did a terrible job of supporting people who really agreed with his agenda, and an even worse job of removing people from influential positions who didn’t.

    He said during his campaign that he knew much better who to trust, but now he’s got Elon Musk and RFK Jr. prominently featured. I don’t think he has learned anything, and I think he will be just as ineffective this time.

    It’s possible that some of the Republicans in Congress will support more of his agenda, but even there if they have to overcome the filibuster, I don’t think mass deportation, a federal abortion ban, or most of the rest of the potential worst of it is in the cards.





  • When I was in college, our sportsball team won a game against the other guy’s sportsball team by not many points. Many hundreds of students started a chant going out of the sportsball arena, and four freshmen decided to light a couch on fire, apparently thinking they’d just blend in. The police were there immediately, firefighters put out the couch in a few minutes, and they all got hit with fines.

    In short, I think you’re exactly right, and most sportsball fans just want to be loud and drink.


  • Any reasonably powerful god could make a non-Euclidean spacetime in which the points equidistant from a central point also form 4 straight line segments of equal length that meet at right angles.

    I also think the classic rock so heavy it can’t be lifted fails, for the same reason that an omnipotent god could clearly commit suicide, if it wanted to (and once it did, it would no longer have the capability to perform other actions).

    The omniscience thing is harder, because of things like incompleteness theorem, but I don’t think I can really describe what it means to know everything in the first place. “Able to provide a true, and comprehensive answer to any question for which a true, and comprehensive answer is possible” doesn’t seem to give any contradictions, but as you mention has the feel of dancing around all the hard issues.














  • There are details missing in this question that matter tremendously. Squirrels are faster and more agile than us. If they are well coordinated, and behave optimally to win (without concern to their individual survival, only the group’s success), I think it would take only a small number of squirrels to brutally murder most people, something like 5. I think their best strategy would be to go for the eyes first, then inflict bleeding injuries and escape again before the person can react. Without tools, and without backup, this approach wouldn’t take long to wear down most people.

    If the squirrels don’t care about their own survival, but make straightforward attacks, I’d think closer to 10-20. The person’s injuries will still compound quickly, but once thet have a grip of a squirrel, it wouldn’t be especially hard to lethally injure.

    If the squirrels still behave like squirrels, and are instead attacking because (for example), they are starving, then the number probably doesn’t matter much, as they’re more likely to go after each other, and the person would have the opportunity to plan and ambush small groups at a time.