Rob Hill

@anishmoonka Maybe YOUR chest muscles are only half of 1% of your bodyweight NERD! (Joking, of course, thanks for all the great content)

150 pounds. 23-foot wingspan. A bird this size lived in Argentina 6 million years ago. It still couldn't flap its wings to fly. It had to glide, riding rising air currents the way a surfer rides waves. The bird is called Argentavis magnificens. In 2007, a researcher at Texas Tech named Sankar Chatterjee built a computer model of it. The model found that its chest muscles were less than a third of what it needed to flap its way into the air. A bird with your body weight already existed. It couldn't beat its own wings. A biology professor at UNC named Ty Hedrick did the math for an average 155-pound person. You'd need a wingspan of about 20 feet. Other estimates push that to 30 or even 40 feet once you count the weight of the wings themselves. The tweet above says each wing would be 3 times your height, which puts total wingspan around 35 feet. Close enough. But wing length is barely the start of your problems. Your chest muscles are about half a percent of your body weight. A flying bird's chest muscles are about 17 percent. Hummingbirds hit 25 percent. Birds are flying chest muscles with a head and a beak. To even lift off, you'd need a chest bulging forward like nothing you've ever seen on a human, a new bony ridge down your breastbone for those muscles to attach to, and legs thin as sticks so they don't weigh you down. Your bones are another problem. They're dense and full of marrow. Bird bones are hollow, full of tiny air pockets, and connected to their breathing system. Air flows through the bones to keep them light. And even then, you'd still be too heavy. The biggest flying bird alive, the kori bustard, weighs about 44 pounds. It can barely get off the ground. You weigh three and a half times that. Humans first flew using our own muscle power in 1977. A cyclist named Bryan Allen pedaled a plane called the Gossamer Condor around a figure-eight course in a California field. It took him just over 6 minutes to go one mile. The plane had a 96-foot wingspan, roughly the length of a basketball court, and weighed 55 pounds. Allen himself weighed 145. That's what flying under our own muscle power looks like. An aircraft lighter than a person, with wings stretching 96 feet end to end, crawling through the air at 11 miles per hour. Not a pair of feathery wings sprouting from your back.

@MattPasienski @mattyglesias Pretty much a knockout punch of a reply, you win.

@mattyglesias Let’s also not forget that leaving a small child at home alone is illegal (and bad), while leaving a dog at home alone is legal (and fine)

See the reason my article is titled “Dogs aren’t people” is precisely because I believe a lot of errors in dog policy stem precisely from confusing issues related to human children and issues related to non-human canines. slowboring.com/p/dogs-arent-p…

@BriannaWu Those abs were so far ahead of their time.

It was very unsurprising for me to learn that my biological mother was obsessed with Cher. The apple did not fall far from the tree.

@chribreuer @Aella_Girl #woke 😂👌

@Aella_Girl I never catcalled but I will start catcalling older women from now on, knowing I make their day. #MaleFeminist

@thx6969 @Logically_JC Does anyone think midwit John is even smart enough to understand how intellectually humiliating this is for him?

@Logically_JC x.com/i/status/20455…

So many of our problems could be fixed by properly funding public education.

@DonOfDynasty @KennyBurgosNY @williamjames My sweet summer child.

@KennyBurgosNY @williamjames Tenants effectively own nothing. This is delusional; if you signed a lease agreement, a landlord can look at his property.

These are so frustrating to receive. A building owner sent me this video of a 2BR Upper West Side apartment he just got back, but after he empties it out it will stay vacant going forward. The tenant lived here since 1985 and the current legal rent is $940.01 Because of the 2019 HSTPA law, a building owner is expected to fully renovate this unit to current building code (that’s a good thing), but also expected to lose money in perpetuity at the same time. This 2BD would need well over $100,000 to clean out the debris, comply with lead laws, upgrade major systems, remove the Sheetrock + much more just to make this into an apartment a tenant would actually want to live in with dignity. But the law says the $940 rent would still end up below the estimated $1300/mo it costs to operate the apt which covers insurance, property taxes, labor, fuel, and capital expenditures for the building. So if the new rent falls below the operating cost, the owner would still lose money every month and never see $1 back from the $100k+ renovation. Why would the state expect anyone to lose money like this? What bank would ever provide a loan with no path to repayment? Why do we acknowledge the cost to build housing but ignore what it takes to preserve older housing? Why do we accept this policy when thousands of New Yorkers are searching for housing in the midst of the worst supply crunch we’ve ever seen? So frustrating.

A week ago, I received a text message from someone I was friendly with years ago. They are a self-proclaimed socialist & someone I met when I used to be a Democrat. It wasn't a negative text, just a "How have you been?" text. Because of our last interaction, I haven't replied. When we met several years ago, we were part of a group of left-leaning friends I genuinely liked at the time. It wasn’t always about politics. Many times, we just discussed life. However, COVID and the George Floyd riots made them even more radical and unbearable—especially since I wasn’t having the same social panic attack they were. One of the people in the group was someone I used to spend holidays with and talk to on the phone all the time. Suddenly, because I asked where the “15 feet” recommendation from Fauci came from, I became deserving of ridicule and disrespect. Despite the fact that our relationship had been built on questioning things, they all became extremely dogmatic. I refused to follow suit. One of the friends in this group posted on Facebook that Trump told Americans to drink bleach to get rid of COVID. I thought that was so insane that I wanted to see it for myself. Of course, Trump never said that. When I called him out on it, he acknowledged that Trump didn’t say it—and then proceeded to block me. I bring all of this up because this small group of lefty friends eventually dwindled to just one person who was still willing to talk to me, despite my willingness to question things and change my opinions. In 2021, I published my first book, Black Victim to Black Victor, and I told him about it. It could be seen as controversial, but he seemed superficially receptive. I figured that was better than him shunning me before even attempting to read it. It was either late 2021 or early 2022 when we decided to meet for lunch. I don’t remember the meal, but I do remember the need to talk about politics the entire time. It’s hard to explain, but he’s one of those people who argues with you through a smile and a laugh, yet it doesn’t feel playful. It wasn’t a terrible encounter, but I didn’t entirely enjoy it. I felt like I was constantly being put on the defensive or dragged into topics I didn’t care about. I thought maybe it was because we hadn’t hung out in a while. Not long after that meeting, we had a phone call, and the same feeling returned. I’m not argumentative, and frankly, I don’t like arguing about politics. I’m not a debater, and I have no interest in fighting with people over things I have zero control over. Even worse, I absolutely despise when people put words in my mouth or make assumptions about me. I don’t remember everything from that call, but one thing he said really bugged me: “Your boy, Tucker.” That bothered me because I didn’t watch Tucker Carlson’s show. I had never brought him up, and I wasn’t even particularly fond of him. So why did he make that association? It was because he had placed me in a box. Because I asked questions and pushed back against certain narratives for my own personal reasons, I must be a strident Republican and the right-wing caricature he could mock. Then I remembered how he used to talk about the Republicans he knew in his life. He would tell me how they were all racist and “what they really think.” He placed me in a box instead of seeing me as an individual with logical reasons for what I believe. He wasn’t inquisitive about me—he was assumptive. That statement made me want to end the call early, especially combined with his tendency to go on and on about politics in search of a debate. I haven’t replied to him, not because he’s a socialist, but because my instincts tell me he sees me as a fool and a punching bag. I can already picture him jumping straight into talking about Trump and putting me in a position where I’m expected to defend him—despite not caring about it at all. We should be able to have friends with varying viewpoints, but sometimes those people aren’t really your friends. You’re just a diversity avatar for the politics they hate. I’m not one for ghosting people, but I haven’t talked to this person in a long time for a reason. I don’t feel the need to force disrespectful people into my life. I don’t want to be anyone’s avatar to blame for all their political woes. Despite being in the political world, I don’t like talking about politics with people I care about. So, I’m not replying. I’d rather protect my peace of mind and move toward people who like me for who I actually am, instead of who they unfairly associate me with.

@wil_da_beast630 Going a little viral for this one, amigo. instagram.com/p/DXKSeXtCnCc/

Still one of the most legendary city designs ever, negative category.

@sikeGB @MrPopulares @RoyDelfino @WearThePeaceCo Nah. And these cowards won't come to a US ghetto and harass brothas for the "Tens of thousands of murders" by other brothas. They just want to yell at Jews, who they know will be too civilized to throw them the beating they deserve.

@MrPopulares @RoyDelfino @WearThePeaceCo So you’d do the same with German or British people? Their people have done atrocious shit

Pro-Palestinian tourists call out ex-IOF Israeli soldiers in a restaurant in Vietnam after spotting one of their tattoos in the shape of Palestine and then continue to remind them of their genocidal behavior until they’re forced to leave.

@BriannaWu Those kids are too young for the gym. He just didn't want to miss a workout. My fellow dad is wrong here.

Ethical question. I was in the hotel gym just now in a dad came in to do weights with two of his children. While he wasn’t paying attention to his son, who was about seven years old, climbed on the treadmill and kept hitting buttons until it was going at 8 miles an hour. Worried he was going to get killed. I warned him to turn it down. He then got back on it and did it again. I ended my workout early and talk to the dad saying I thought that was dangerous and I didn’t want someone a child to get hurt. He said it was fine and he did 8 miles an hour yesterday. At that point, I left and informed the front desk. I said it was their call, but it was my judgment a child could get seriously hurt. Was this the right thing to do?

@FloridaManV @HistoryBoomer

@HistoryBoomer You have it exactly backwards Shaking my head

Never forget all the poor desperate people shot while trying to cross the Berlin Wall to escape the evils of capitalism.

@thmstern @BriannaWu @ArielleScarcell No way, she's totes masculine! Can't even tell a difference between her and males projecting aggression. Matchy matchy.

@BriannaWu @ArielleScarcell Also, her body language is very deliberately cutesy-feminine.

Kids watch this and think “it’s cool to want top surgery so my clothes fit better”

@wil_da_beast630 I'd agree, but with exceptions for more heraldic foundations: I know many multi-millionaires with a deep pride in their family, nation, and state. Patriot, proud Texan, upstanding member of the Jones clan: none of these identities is inversely correlated with wealth or success.

In my experience, there is a very direct, very significant correlation between (1) personal lack of success and (2) identification with giant diffuse groups that might produce some wins you can brag about. Whites, Blacks, men, Bears fans, football supporters....it goes on and on. At least per my tiny data set of <60, multi-millionaires are rarely "fans."

@ShowlandProd @WorldWideWob 💀

@WorldWideWob The Clippers when you think they’re done building the Oklahoma City Thunder dynasty

The Oklahoma City Thunder will now be in the lottery because of this Clippers loss. What have the Warriors just done.

@scandlenjosh @wil_da_beast630 Nah.

I'm not going to stop beating the "Just kill people" drum. Absurd to sentence a fit adult male to 500 years, have him live 60 on our dime.

@CAMOKAT6 @thepearjoseph "As a radiant beauty, I knew when every straight male on the street turned their heads to look at me, it was *out of judgement*."

@thepearjoseph FFS no-one is calling this woman mannish or repulsive 🤦 And if she truly thinks that white women get treated better than her no matter how fat or ugly they are then it's a shame that body-swap machines don't exist so she could learn how wrong she is.

TLDR: She dealt with the same unrealistic expectations and beauty standards all women have to deal with but instead of saying “fuck you, I don’t have to look a certain way to be a woman” she responded by saying “I’m not like other women” and giving herself she/they pronouns, thus reinforcing the belief that in order to be a “normal” woman with she/her pronouns you must look a certain way.

@impostersyndrum @ramit @FightingPolack Yeah, I assume & hope it's just engagement bait slop, otherwise he's a child.

@ramit @FightingPolack Gross generalization. You have zero theory of mind for people who think differently than you

Women can instantly filter out the biggest losers in America by asking these 3 screening questions on dating apps: 1. Did you vote for Trump? 2. Do you have a Robinhood account? 3. Do you eat street food when traveling?

@indy543219748 @jessesingal "No ideology that requires the denial of objective truths can lead to human flourishing." No one tell the communists. 😉

@jessesingal Part of the issue is an overbroad definition of fascism. But at the end of the day, it is a firmly documented truth that many attributes *are* heritable, regardless of where may "lead." No ideology that requires the denial of objective truths can lead to human flourishing.

1/ New from me: I Can't Believe We’re Still Having *This* Debate About Steven Pinker The idea that if you accept heritability arguments you are somehow paving the way to fascism is very very silly!

@CoreyWriting I find her one of the more attractive women out there, but that honestly lessened after learning she went to Columbia AND THIS IS THE KIND OF SHIT WHY.

So she's admitting gender ideology is a social contagion?