Kayle Clark 🇨🇦

Apparently ticks are not a food chain keystone species, we have successfully eradicated a tick before (the Cattle Fever Tick), in 2023 the USDA started gene-editing ticks for future eradication efforts. The issue is just a slow lifecycle and money. Absolutely worth my taxes.

Inspiring

ZELENSKYY to BBC: We went through difficult relations with Iran. We did nothing to them. They shot down our plane, killed our passengers and crew, didn’t admit it, and didn’t let experts in. Then the full-scale war started. They handed Shahed drones to Russians to kill our civilians. I asked them to stop. They promised there would be only one batch. They lied and kept supplying weapons. That’s why I consider them accomplices of Russia.

Putting econ policy in the hands of lawyers predisposed to assuming guilt in any and all private business activity until proven otherwise is an atrocious idea. Lina/warren did enough in damn near destroying the party’s credibility on economic issues. This is a list of ppl to shun

Okay, it's time to do an analysis of relative power, here. How does Joe Rogan derive his immense power and how does that differ from Piker? Specifically: thousands of different people appear on Rogan, including comedians, scientists, UFC fighters, conspiracy theorists, and, also, politicians. This means that Rogan works as a political influence vector BECAUSE people show up for MMA, or weed chat, or whatever Jordan Peterson is yammering about, and they get politics as a byproduct. Rogan ALSO has influence in other domains, not just politics. For example, there's been a long-running intra-hunter debate on whether or not he's had a positive/negative influence on the sport. So Rogan draws people in on one topic, then exposes them to a whole lot else, including politics. This gives him influencer-status *across the board*. Now contrast that with Piker. Piker's content is almost exclusively just one thing: talking about politics from a "far-left" perspective. Now, another, related comparison: Rogan is also politically ambiguous to the *general* public. We Democrats might see him as extremely right-wing, but that's not what draws all his listeners in. So, in Rogan's case, we have a macho dude whose reach is *sprawling* precisely b/c he has content diversity AND political ambiguity. In Piker's case, we have a dude ranting CCP propoganda at like-minded people and occasionally electrocuting his dog. That's it. The entire "Should Democrats accept Piker?" discussion assumes that Piker is bringing people IN, what we would call a "reach" asset. That's what Rogan is for MAGA, to some extent. But Piker is NOT a "reach" asset. He is talking to either 1) like-minded people or 2) people who hate him. And he is speaking on ONE topic (politics) from ONE perspective ("leftism."). He keeps the already converted engaged to what's essentially CCP/Russian style "Leftism." When you engage with him, THAT'S who you're engaging with. STOP comparing Hasan Piker to Joe Rogan. When you do this, you 1) OVERESTIMATE Piker's power and 2) MISUNDERSTAND Rogan's own influence. Personally, I think "Democrats must find their Joe Rogan" is a ridiculous rabbit-hole overall. Democrats should stand on their own two feet. They just look weak when they try to be something they're not. That said, if you DO endorse the white whale of the "Democratic Joe Rogan" it's most definitely NOT Hasan Piker. For that, you'd need someone with content diversity AND more ideological fluidity/ambiguity.

Great, is America going to let chaplains proselytize others? That will very quickly run out many groups from the military and then they won’t have one.

Right-wing and left-wing slopulists both converge on the conviction that institutions of higher learning and their social function are bad, ackshually, and serve an insidious political agenda. At least the righties are more open about their anti-intellectualism, I guess. Horseshoe undefeated as always.

Lefties not beating the 'it's all about psychic revenge against Mom and Dad' allegations.

Oh FFS. His listenership does not overlap with the manosphere, and he is not nearly as well known as everyone thinks he is. Piker’s own audience survey shows that over 40 percent of his viewership is LGBTQ, and a plurality of his audience are millennials, not even Zoomers. The American Man Project, which was launched to study podcasts like Rogan and the entertainment popular with men, shows that only about half of Zoomers even know who Piker is, and only 20 percent of young men hold a favorable view of Piker. His favorability ratings with those who know him are negative. He is not the liberal Joe Rogan. He is the anti-Joe Rogan.

The NDP have a federal leader who the provincial parties (mostly) dislike, the Conservatives have provincial parties who dislike them, and the federal Liberals have no provincial parties but continue to win federal elections. Just unreal man.

What chutzpah. Agent of the Islamic Republic lies his way into Canada, tries to smuggle sensitive equipment back to Iran, adopts a Jewish name, and then tries to sponsor his mother to immigrate! He should be put in immigration detention until he is deported. But here’s my prediction: he will spend years here continuing to game the system. He’ll seek IRB review of a CBSA determination of his inadmissibility. Then he’ll apply for judicial review (JR) of that decision. Then he will file a Pre Removal Risk Assessment, claiming that he will be at risk to be returned to the regime he supports because he now has a Jewish name. Or if the regime falls in Iran, he’ll claim that as a regime supporter he will be persecuted in a democratic Iran. Then he will file a JR application of a negative PRAA decision. If he finally runs out of legal delays, it will take CBSA years to get around to actually removing him. They will complaint that they can’t get travel documents from the Iranian government, etc.. And on and on. His goal will be to game the system for years. Because our system literally invites him to do so. And an entire industry of consultants and lawyers facilitates it. Stop the madness. Put bad guys like this in immigration detention until they are removed. Make the statutory changes necessary to do so, protected from activist judges with the invocation of Section 33.

Perhaps the clearest illustration yet of environmental procedural requirements ≠ good substantive environmental outcomes. (the result of this delay is that a lot of untreated sewage spilled directly into the river)

Environmental review is basically just a running joke at this point.

Average Microsoft Outlook experience.

centre-left people really really need to accept that *good intentions* aren't enough over-regulating something while technically allowing it is the same thing as banning it from a commercial perspective.

This is like self-parody.

Firing the Army chief of staff in the middle of a war is always a sign that things are going great

Why does every lawmaker create these regulatory cliffs when the inevitable result is just that people do stuff that is always just slightly below the threshold that would trigger the additional regulation? This is predictable

If "Moon Colonization" causes your "Colonization is bad" neuron to fire you are more of a stochastic parrot than GPT2.

@loganb @binarybits @jbarro If there’s one thing left-wing groups love, it’s communal rituals (organizing, protesting, what is the call-and-response chants if not their version of hymnody?). And it’s especially if the rituals are near-pointless. It’s only the *participation* that matters.

@binarybits @jbarro Many have been saying this. There was an, I think TED talk, many years ago that listed the common themes across all religions. I wish I could find it again, but it’s clear folks are recreating religion in their politics.

I think some currents of contemporary left-wing thought are best understood as secular people craving the shared sense of moral purity we traditionally got from religion. Most recent example: taboos against AI use.