https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X0VpfiMcPPA

Education

2023-07-18

Dear Student

Milgram was ultimately denied tenure because the ethics of his experiment were rightfully questioned. Still, Milgram’s experiment has been continually re-created. Perhaps, what is most telling is not Milgram’s results, but the fact that the experiment continues to be repeated and debated and supported and refuted. When faced with an oppressive authority figure, we wonder how we’ll act, what we’ll do, who we’ll obey. The answers, unfortunately, aren’t clear. Even good teachers, kind teachers, given an oppressive hierarchical system, will misuse their authority.

The Parable of the Turkey

“How lucky we are,”

peak oil

2023-06-18

Collapse might be interesting to write about, if only everyone else wasn’t doing it.

Hubbert’s Peak is Finally Here

From here on out, just six counties in West Texas must meet all global demand growth. […] Using our neural network, we have updated our basin analysis, and the results are shocking. [This area] is likely less than a year from peaking and starting its decline. The only source of non-OPEC supply growth is now primarily tapped out.

What is Hubbert’s Peak Theory?

Hubbert’s peak is defined as the point where the demand for the resources is rising at its highest production rate and then expects a reduction in the correlation with the increased demand.
[…]
Technically speaking, when looking into the future, there is almost an unlimited amount of oil still to be extracted. This implies that we are not yet close to reaching peak energy.

lol

via Reddit

Road math

2022-04-25

The Fourth Power Rule

What these researchers found is that damage to the roadbed is proportional to the 4th power of the axle load of the vehicle, and they called this “the Generalized Fourth Power Law.” This means that if you double the weight on an axle, your vehicle does sixteen times the damage to the road.
[…]
[So] the owners of large, heavy SUVs pay sixteen times what the owners of economy cars do in registration fees and gas taxes.

Oh wait, no they don’t, because we live in Bizarro Land.

Water

2022-01-12


This is Water by David Foster Wallace (Full Transcript and Audio [SoundCloud])

Death Drive Nation

But distresses to Freud’s metabolisms, psychic and digestive, aside, one wonders if he might not have found in the US a case study in what would prove to be his most controversial idea, an idea which would also resolve his confusion over why Americans might actually be pretty copacetic, even welcoming, towards plagues of all kinds.

Raymond Zack

2021-11-20

“He uh… had the ability to make a bad decision and did.” “Yeahh-uh.”

via Lefty Book Club
Commentary with some more perspectives

Do not pass Go

2021-11-08

Hey, i wrote something for another blog.

Been participating in Lefty Book Club for a few weeks, with weekly assigned readings and group discussions over Zoom. In the subgroup i’ve been attending, we have read Capitalist Realism by Mark Fisher and are now into Lost Connections by Johann Hari. Good books, good people, recommended for all political shapes and sizes.

Class Kerfuffle: Ideology in Board Games

[…] while board gaming has grown beyond a geek pastime into a booming industry, does it have the potential to be an effective tool for political education? Before answering this, a brief review of the use of ideology in tabletop board gaming may be useful.