Note: Many people refer to the weapon as “napalm” and the above product as “jellied gasoline”. You can call it whatever you like; doesn’t much matter.

On a general note. Older people want to say that social media has an echo chamber effect and reinforces bad beliefs. And you probably hear this from people with all variety of political beliefs.

I’ve read several studies indicating that’s not true. Indicating that people aren’t as polarized as others say they are, and also indicating that social media did not lead to greater polarization. But there’s tons of data I haven’t read, so don’t cite me.

Personal knowledge, from both myself and many of my friends, is that before the Web we were far more limited in getting information, which was a problem for people who grew up as minorities, in various ways. And I believe that was a far worse problem than whatever your Facebook group might be causing.

Ho ho ho. Trump does not hold the cards here. Colombia DNGAF. But Trump does, and he’s digging that hole as fast as he can.

Indeed. What personal stories?

Right, Andy’s action was bad but not as bad. We agree. It’s not identical.

And when given the chance to explain how he felt about this situation, on how the bad timing is … purely accidental or something … he did a bad job of it. Which suggests our original conclusions were in fact correct.

Also, if you think observations about time, place, and manner are superfluous, that’s a peculiar thought. Maybe we disagree. Maybe I think basic elements of societal interaction and communication are important and informative.

Context matters. Why did you ignore it? We see so many CEOs kissing Trump’s feet these days. Here Andy is, doing the same… Of course I don’t know what’s in Andy’s head, but Trump loves groveling, and clearly Andy is riding that bandwagon on purpose.

Now now. Many MAGA are in fact documented nazis, and Trump’s record is bad but it quite as explicit as that. If you’re afraid of the term being bandied about, I recommend therapy.

You are one sad individual, aren’t you. Oh well. I guess it’s how you were raised.

I thought this would have been incredibly obvious, but apparently not, so let me spell it out in detail. Let’s suppose you’re a plumber working in the New York City area, and someone on the other side of town asks you to come fix their pipes. If the highway to get there is very expensive, you’re going to charge them more, so they’re going to look for a plumber that is located closer to their location. Or, if you work for a large company that has one hub for the greater New York City area, your company might invest in several smaller hubs, so that they can be more local. Does that make sense? Can you imagine it? Is it too difficult for you to conceive of?

And I’m not saying that you should like such a system, or that such a system is better or worse than what’s currently in place, but it’s one possible result of making certain roads more expensive to use.

As for off peak hours, nobody said that all trade jobs should be done in the middle of the night, but if you can’t imagine several that could, and many that often could, then you have an issue with your brain.

Trade and service vehicles would of course have incentive to work at off peak hours and establish satellite offices. Maybe we don’t need to exempt them after all.

No they aren’t. According to current projections the population could drop from 130 million to 50 million by the end of the century. That’s a shocking gap. Nobody knows what the consequences of that would be.

And it is tragic when small towns and villages slowly die out. If you’ve ever lived in one or if any of your relatives who ever lived in one that suffered from young people leaving and never coming back, it’s just sad. To some degree it may be unavoidable, but when that’s happening on a massive scale across your entire country, maybe there’s a better way.

And if you don’t want it to drop that low, then you need to take steps to address the fact that people aren’t having children. The first is you need to raise pay and increase working conditions and stability. But of course the rich assholes don’t want to pay for that. Another option would be to allow for foreign workers to come in and gain citizenship, but if you give them citizenship then they will create laws that will prevent companies from fucking them over. Rich assholes and racists don’t like that.

You come across as anti-tech out of spite. Yes, generative AI is snake oil, but that is a question of scope and power and speculation, not utility of easy to create pictures.

I am so happy with the vast amount of free art available these days. As a blogger, it’s easier than ever to find a free topical picture.