WoodScientist

My favorite incidents of bungled auto transcription:

First, on a a voicemail, the caller said, "this is _____ over at Rice's pharmacy." The transcription read, "this is _____, overt racist pharmacy."

I mean, I suppose if the pharmacy is racist, at least they're overt about it so people can avoid the place.

Second, I have some lecture videos on YouTube, and in one course we used a text by Hibbeler. A few times in the video I will say something like, "this is problem so an so from the Hibbeler text." The captions have me referring to "the Hitler text."

Apparently I was referencing Mein Kampf while teaching undergraduate mechanics, for some reason.

Tools like this and Gemini make managing my ADHD sooooo much easier.

Can you elaborate on this?

Why is my ass always itching?

Because you don't wash it, you dumbass.

Honestly, at this point, I think it's time to just call it a day on the very idea of the US as a single unified nation. The Constitution has been demonstrated, beyond a shadow of a doubt, to be utterly incapable of actually doing its job. It's a 200+ year old document written in a different age, by people who didn't have hundreds of examples of modern democracies to draw upon. It was a good attempt, but it's horribly obsolete at this point. And our institutions are equally not up to the task. And it was written by 13 states who each joined willingly. If you gave each state a chance to join the current US today, how many would actually do it?

We need to peacefully dissolve the whole thing. Dissolve the federal government; grant every state full independence. The states can then come together into whatever number of new nations they wish to form.

This clearly isn't working. Half the country has completely given up on the Constitution, and the other half thinks institutions and laws alone will magically fix the problem. We've crossed the Rubicon. Once a president is allowed to get away with this level of flagrant law breaking, once the courts have become this corrupted, once the system has become so sclerotic and fundamentally incapable of meeting the needs of the people? It's time to call it quits. There's no repairing a system like this. Even if free and fair elections happen, electing a Democrat in 2028 will not fix this problem. At best, we'll get 4 more years of useless waffling, and then another fascist will get elected in 2032.

The US is a couple that has reached an impasse of irreconcilable differences. The US had a good run, but at this point it's time to admit that it's run its course, and it is time to move on.

The US isn't even really a nation; it's more of an empire. There are vast regional differences in the country. The cultures and desired governments of the people in the different regions vary substantially. But because we're all locked together in this bloated dying husk of an empire, nobody is happy. There's a reason the oldest countries in the world tend to be smaller ones. Empires are held together by force, not by common culture and shared values. They tend to collapse under their own weight and contradictions eventually. And the US is no exception.

And we shouldn't mourn this. The US had a good run. It did some cool things and made some real advancements on the human story. But governments exist ultimately to serve the people. Can anyone really say with a straight face that the people of the US wouldn't be better served by breaking the US into a series of smaller, more manageable nations that better reflect the will of their people? Would all the nations that border the Mediterranean really be better off if they were still united in the Roman Empire? Would all of Latin America outside of Brazil be better off if it was all still New Spain? Would the people of Asia be happier if they were still united in some post-Mongol empire? I don't think so.

Sometimes you just need to let things die. It's time to put the United States out of its misery. We can do better.

That approach always fails in the long run. Yes, you can lose weight by just counting calories. But you are fighting your body every step of the way. And even after you reach your target weight, your body will constantly be trying to return to the overweight state. In the end, your will will almost certainly fail. Are you prepared to religiously count calories, be constantly tired, and miserable for the rest of your life? Then sure, you can rely on physics alone to keep your weight down.

But that is not how human beings were meant to live. We're meant to simply eat until we're full. What we're talking about is a massive public health problem. And public health problem is not obesity. The public health problem is that the "full meters" of hundreds of millions of people have been irrevocably damaged by modern processed foods. Your set point, your full meter, your satiation reflex, whatever you want to call it. This is as a part of your body as any other organ or gland. When someone breaks their arm, we don't demonize them for having a broken arm. When someone has a broken full meter however, we decry it as a moral failing.

The primary difference between skinny people and fat people is that fat people are simply hungrier. People have different set points that their bodies try desperately to stay at. And this set point is largely affected by the diet you experience in early childhood, and it's set for life.

Yes, obviously it is possible for a person with a fat set point to lower their weight through constant grinding effort and calorie counting. But that's not how human beings are supposed to have to live. Most skinny people don't have to count calories, they simply rely on their natural hunger levels to maintain their weight.

If a skinny person tries to eat past their set point, their body will actually fight them. If you try to eat past your set point, your body will force you to burn off calories in all sorts of ways. Your energy levels will soar, so you spend more time active. You'll experience insomnia, so you spend more time active and burning more calories.

If a fat person tries to lose weight just by counting calories, their body constantly fights them over it. Their energy levels decline so they'll burn less calories. They'll get tired earlier and find themselves sleeping for 10 hours as their body forces them to preserve calories.

Weight is not a moral issue. It is a simple health issue. Our modern food systems create unnatural foods that fuck up people's internal set points. Instead of your body trying to get you to maintain a healthy weight, it tries to maintain an unhealthy weight.

We see now through the invention of drugs like Ozempic that the whole idea of calorie counting and brute force willpower to maintain weight is a Medieval and barbaric approach to the problem. We've taken a medical problem and turned it into a moral failing. It's no different than how people used to ostracize, demonize, and banish those who caught leprosy.

Oh, and for added physics fun, that extra 40 mph represents a 62% increase in vehicle kinetic energy and stopping distance.

That's 186 mph. In the US, the highest posted speed limit anywhere is 85 mph, on some stretches of highway in remote rural Texas. So you're looking at more than 2x the speed limit of the highest posted speed limit in the country. A lot of cars come preprogrammed with some speed governor in them. They usually top out at an already absurd speed of 125-155 mph.

So 300 km/hr is absolutely insane. That's enough to get jail time in most states.

Exactly. So if we want to be pedants, earth or Earth would be fine here. Even if he's in a building, that building is still on the soil. Even if he's flying in an airplane, that airplane is supported by air, which it itself supported by earth. The only way you can't be "on earth" is if you're in space and/or in freefall. And Musk is too much of a coward to climb aboard one of his own rockets.

My prediction, built on assuming we're in the stupidest timeline, is that Germany will try to help the Palestinians...by carving a new homeland for them out of Poland.

I feel personally attacked.

At an individual level you are right. But this is more an issue with numbers. Immigrants do not just bring themselves; they also bring their culture. Think of it this way. Let's say Germany decides to bring over a million politically disaffected American progressives. How many mosques do you think those million people will want to build in their new home? Maybe one or two, there will be some Muslims in that group. But most of those million won't even be religious. And most of those that are will just help fill the pews of half-empty German churches. There won't be a titanic shift in the German religious landscape from these million American immigrants.

Immigration starts having issues not at the individual level, but the societal level. Too many immigrants too quickly, and people start feeling like their culture is being replaced. The slower assimilation happens, the more people start feeling like their culture is being replaced. The more culturally different the immigrant population is from the native population, and the more people feel like their culture is being replaced. And the more people feel like their culture is being replaced, the more they start voting for hard right parties like AfD.

There's nothing wrong with Muslims or with people building mosques. But I mention mosques because they are a highly visible symbol of immigrant populations with very different cultures, a symbol that right wing politicians gleefully exploit.

If Germany brings over a million disaffected Americans, what culturally disruptive things will they bring? I guess Germany will get some more McDonalds franchises and a few other American brands? But those million Americans really aren't going to stir things up too much. It's not like you're going to let the Americans bring their guns with them. They'll have to leave those behind. And the big gun nuts aren't likely to take Germany up on its immigration offer in the first place.

And just due to genetics, give it a generation or two, and you won't even able to tell who is descended from those immigrants without checking ancestry records. The first generation will be noticeably American, but the second, third, or fourth? Indistinguishable from the native German population. Completely assimilated.