Sandbox (4)

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Sometimes very active discussions about peripheral issues overwhelm a thread, so this is a permanent home for those conversations.

I’ve opened a new “Sandbox” thread as a post as the new “ignore commenter” plug-in only works on threads started as posts.

5,864 thoughts on “Sandbox (4)”

  1. On Harry and Meghan vs the tabloids, there’s a meme doing the rounds showing Daily Express front pages, each time a glowing reference to Kate Middleton juxtaposed with, on another day, a sneer at Meghan for the exact same thing – off-the-shoulder top, cradling the baby bump, wedding flowers …

    I’d jump ship too. The UK is turning a bit shite at the moment, racists emboldened by Brexit.

  2. I was wondering why I didn’t like the whole Megxit business, but I couldn’t quite put my finger on why. I think now it’s because it seemed like Meghan and Harry were acting like their lives were so intolerable. That the duties of being royalty were such an infringement on their lives.

    Princess Diana (Harry’s mother) showed that one can use the royal office to better society and bring comfort to those in need. Sometimes one is dealt a tough hand in life, and if being a royal is a bad hand, it’s not that bad a hand, and if one is really committed to doing good things for society, one can use the office.

    https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/10769771/piers-morgan-congratulates-queen-meghan-harry/

    ‘WELL DONE’ Piers Morgan congratulates no-nonsense Queen for ‘telling part-timers Meghan Markle and Harry to sling their hook’
    …
    “Only surprised it took her so long to get Harry to ditch his family, the Monarchy, the military and his country. What a piece of work.”

    Piers concluded: “Bottom line: Meghan/Harry wanted to have their cake & eat it, but the Queen just took the cake back to the royal kitchens”.

    Meghan’s dad reportedly is really disappointed in his daughter and son-in-law.

  3. Jesse Waters pointed out last night that the one guy who is absolutely loving the fact Megxit is getting so much attention right now is Prince Andrew. Ha!

  4. Allan Miller: It’s the same with mimicking accents – putting on an African or Indian accent is – ahem – beyond the pale, whereas no-one bats an eyelid if you “do” Liverpudlian or Canadian, eh?

    Just heard that Hank Azaria doesn’t want to voice Apu any more. Which is up to him, but I find a bit disappointing. Shows like the Simpsons play with stereotypes. Their British ones are pretty dire, but don’t bother me. I don’t feel Apu is any more offensive than Groundskeeper Willie.

  5. stcordova:
    Jesse Waters pointed out last night that the one guy who is absolutely loving the fact Megxit is getting so much attention right now is Prince Andrew. Ha!

    Are you doing gossiping in your spare time? 😉

  8. Just glanced at traffic statistics and I see the “unique daily visitors” parameter has moved into the 200’s the last couple of days, having not done that since last September. Reports of TSZs death (including some pessimism from me) have been exaggerated!

  9. Alan Fox:
    Just glanced at traffic statistics and I see the “unique daily visitors” parameter has moved into the 200’s the last couple of days, having not done that since last September. Reports of TSZs death (including some pessimism from me) have been exaggerated!

    What was the highest ever?
    What was the average during the busiest times at TSZ?

  11. stcordova: It’s a distraction from real problems in the world, of which there are many.

    I prefer sports, a good book, socializing etc.
    I guess we are all different…
    I personally find the following the so-called celebrities quite shallow and the royal family especially, as it is in their best interests to cultivate the fairy-tail image of princes and princesses away from the real life and their stained past of barbaric history…

  12. J-Mac: What was the highest ever?

    Unfortunately there’s not a complete record. You can see what there is by clicking on hits in the dropdown from statistics and choosing “All”. Suppress “visits” and all is revealed. Busiest was 16.11.2015 with 1,360 visitors

    What was the average during the busiest times at TSZ?

    Again, information is incomplete but 400 to 500 daily visitors possibly.

  13. Although Meghan Megxit is leaving the UK’s Royal family, she’s started a monarchy of her own of which she is the chief Drama Queen. Ha!

  14. Alan Fox: Unfortunately there’s not a complete record. You can see what there is by clicking on hits in the dropdown from statistics and choosing “All”. Suppress “visits” and all is revealed. Busiest was 16.11.2015 with 1,360 visitors

    Again, information is incomplete but 400 to 500 daily visitors possibly.

    I thought so…Is it done by IP?
    If that’s the case, I use probably 4-7 different IPs.
    Some people visiting TSZ could use one or two of the IPs on the same day…

  15. J-Mac: Some people visiting TSZ could use one or two of the IPs on the same day…

    Now 4G coverage is universal where I live, I might glance at TSZ when out and about at spare moments but I’m usually logged in which would, I imagine, mean I only count once even if I’ve connected via several IP addresses. I guess if someone wanted to boost the figures, they could.

  16. stcordova:
    Although Meghan Megxit is leaving the UK’s Royal family, she’s started a monarchy of her own of which she is the chief Drama Queen.Ha!

    What if Brexit turns out to be some sort of success?

    If you talk to people in the most impoverished areas in USA, who had no prospects, or jobs, and now they do, would they say Trumpexit is going to be bad or good for them???

  17. J-Mac: What if Brexit turns out to be some sort of success?

    Depends how you measure it. If you’re a disaster capitalist, it’s an opportunity. If immigrants annoy you more than a thriving economy, likewise. But if you’re a farmer, a fisherman or working-class – all groups tending to vote heavily for it – it ain’t gonna work out well financially, IMO. Plus it will screw the NHS.

  18. Allan Miller: If you’re a disaster capitalist, it’s an opportunity. If immigrants annoy you more than a thriving economy, likewise. But if you’re a farmer, a fisherman or working-class – all groups tending to vote heavily for it – it ain’t gonna work out well financially, IMO. Plus it will screw the NHS.

    Well, that hypothesis is now up for testing.

  19. Alan Fox: Well, that hypothesis is now up for testing.

    Yep. As comedian James Acaster said (he managed to make it funny!) he half-hoped Johnson would get his wish. If it goes well, we win; if it goes badly, at least we can watch the bastard squirm.

  20. Allan Miller: Depends how you measure it. If you’re a disaster capitalist, it’s an opportunity. If immigrants annoy you more than a thriving economy, likewise. But if you’re a farmer, a fisherman or working-class – all groups tending to vote heavily for it – it ain’t gonna work out well financially, IMO. Plus it will screw the NHS.

    I agree.
    It’s crossed my mind that (other than having an accidental handpoppet in the office, like US) perhaps UK has more profound aspirations; to be viewed at least as “the third world power”? Or, as some think, US’ closest ally?
    What do you think?
    Alan Fox?

  21. Alan Fox: Well, that hypothesis is now up for testing.

    It’s hard to measure success but low unemployment and high demand for real estate are usually good indicators…
    Where I live, biddiing wars are a norm…

  22. J-Mac: I agree.
    It’s crossed my mind that (other than having an accidental handpoppet in the office, like US) perhaps UK has more profound aspirations; to be viewed at least as “the third world power”? Or, as some think,US’ closest ally?
    What do you think?
    Alan Fox?

    Part of the problem is that the country is not a unit, so can’t have aspirations, more a fight over the steering wheel. The closer to 50/50 we split, the less certain the steering, hence 4 years of paralysis. We’ve got a majority government now, but they only got 43% of the vote, and are claiming a mandate from a narrow 4 year old poll.

    Cosying up to a flake like Trump is a huge mistake IMO. We’re vulnerable, and he’s already threatening us. Whatever trade we may do over 3000 miles, it always makes more sense to look to our neighbours. If it goes well I’ll be astonished.

  23. Allan Miller: Part of the problem is that the country is not a unit, so can’t have aspirations, more a fight over the steering wheel.

    Nether was Nazi Germany…
    Reasons for more unity can be “cooked”; antiterrorism, anti-immigration, islamophobia, xenophobia, anti-religious movement…

    Trump needs allies now, not enemies… He also needs a conflict: i.e. Iran

  24. Emerging from the stone age! Tempest Gloria dumped an unprecedented amount of rain on my little corner of the World, one consequence of which was a landslide toppling a pylon supplying electricity to our village. A day-and-a-half without it tests the ingenuity.

  31. Alan Fox: Are you suggesting a motive and a possible culprit?

    No. But there have been early suggestion that some stretch of the genome looks like an insertion rather than some other kind of mutation.

    I doubt it was engineered as a weapon, because it seems to prefer Asian males. Worst weapon ever.

    My question is whether you can tell if was engineered. A Chinobyl virus. An experiment gone bad.

  32. petrushka:
    My question is whether you can tell if was engineered. A Chinobyl virus. An experiment gone bad.

    If only there were some kind of heuristic for detecting design … 🤔

  36. stcordova:
    From the secretary of State’s personal Twitter?

    Link

    They been crying on Fox how mean she was to Trumpie, how could someone be so mean to such a nice guy?

  37. Gregory writes:

    Apatheists are pretty much the scummiest pretenders in the roost.

    Don’t be coy! 🙂

    Don’t care; do care; can’t say, but will insult. So banal.

    I’m insulting?

    Gregory continues

    More than that, best to go mute. Speak only for yourself.

    When have I ever claimed to speak for anyone but myself.

    Self-certainty that you at least won’t be saved, even if salvation had more than 0% chance, is what you are left with alone with according to your current dark worldview. It is a worldview, that most people around the world, almost everyone I’ve met, thankfully!, don’t share.

    Well, you asked me. I don’t understand why anyone would fear death as a natural end to life. It’s just oblivion, ceasing to be.

  38. Phoodoo writes

    Yea, because you think it is a genetic mutation, (which improves fitness) which makes people want to believe in religion. But you are just one of the unlucky, unfit ones who didn’t get the advantageous mutation.

    It’s more like a pink dress.

    ife is so unfair to you. At least you have no one to blame, because, you know, bad genetics.

    Life has different outcomes for different people but there it is.

  40. stcordova: For J-Mac from Eric:

    Looks like Tom scared Eric off.
    “Oh what an entangled web we weave, when first we practice to conceive”.
    Or something like that.

    As for the QM entanglement in time, all these experimental results should by prefixed by “As predicted by the Schrodinger equation …”

    The deterministic Schrodinger equation, that is.

    ETA: TL;DR about Sal’s linked post: incoherence due to ignorance of decoherence.

  44. stcordova: Methinks a wave-function collapse is about to happen.

    That’s more relativity than QM. For you, Biden’s campaign collapse is in the future. For the Atlantic, it is in the past: they just published two post-mortems of it.

    I’d say the QM woo stuff better applies to the future of the Democratic party. Its ideology currently is in a superposition of centre-left and further-left states. Will it collapse into one or the other by election day? Or will the party itself fission into two parties? Definitely some uncertainty there.

    The Canadian compromise was fission: Liberal versus NDP.

  47. Gregory,

    It is a surprise to you that Coyne is a dishonest, manipulating, skeptic censor?

    Hm.

    I wonder what you thought he was.

  49. Ah, ok. Thanks for sharing. I guess it shows how much I pay attention to Jerry Coyne’s blog or ideas! Why is he so loud in his anti-theism & at the same time accepted as a “scientist” authority figure by some? Doesn’t it just get boring & people wanting less biased views rather quickly? What’s the allure for some people of Why Evolution is True blog?

  50. Gregory,

    He is just a gross person in my opinion. For one thing, just his whole premise of God doesn’t exist, is so intellectually vapid. Fine, you can say you don’t believe or you don’t know, but that is pretty much as far as anyone with any academic honesty should be able to say. But no, no, Jerry has all the answers.

    Secondly, he is this smarmy little letter writing, fascist, who thinks its his job to complain to every academic institution on the planet, if there is someone teaching something he doesn’t agree with. His personal attacks against a Chicago colleague are so unprofessional I don’t know the institution doesn’t reprimand him. Who the fuck is Jerry Coyne to be writing that James Shapiro, a Harvard trained microbiologist, who works at the same university as him, doesn’t know what he is talking about. Fuck you Coyne, he should be fired.

    I have never heard of another professor, talking about someone else in their own science department that way. Why don’t you just call the University of Chicago Deans a bunch of numbskull assholes for hiring unqualified people. UoC should be just fine with him doing that. Oh, have you picked up your paycheck yet this week Jerry? It’s in the girls toilet, why don’t you go get it.

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