A thread for Democrats Only
POSTED BY: THGRRI
UPDATED: Sunday, September 6, 2026 15:36
VIEWED: 755368
PAGE 63 of 725
Quote:
Originally posted by second:
6ix, I have lost the urge to read science fiction because I got old and cranky. Now even my dreams are solidly non-fictional. Everything I do and think about is one solid fact after another stacked up to make a cathedral. Maybe it's not odd that I like the Rick and Morty cartoons. Rick is so bitter and disillusioned at the Universe and he is out there kicking the Universe in the balls, reshaping reality to something he doesn't dislike intensely. He can actually bring down Galactic Empires. Same as Rick, I don't like Galactic Empires: www.abelard.org/e-f-russell.phpQuote:
Out near the edge of the Milky Way was a matriarchy bossed by blonde Amazons, and a world of self-styled wizards, and a Pentecostal planet, and a globe where semi-sentient vegetables cultivated themselves in obedience to human masters. All these scattered across many light-years of space but readily accessible by Blieder-drive.
See what you did there?
"I Won't"
I realized later that I didn't send you a link to the full book. Just my favorite part of the 3 part story "And Then There Were None".
I'd read this story right around the time I saw Firefly and actually felt that Joss must have read it and taken a lot of inspiration from it for Firefly.
I can't tell if your quote is kind of a wink letting me know that you've already read it. Could you see how easily it would be to add to that list "I spent 6 weeks on a moon where the principal form of recreation was juggling geese"?
If you haven't read it, I think you'd like it. ATTWN isn't necessarily a story about taking down a Galactic Empire, but it's a story about a People who have their shit together so well that when invaders came down to completely uproot and change their way of life it wasn't long before they were willingly brought into the fold and completely turned their own backs on the Galactic Empire they used to serve.
Do Right, Be Right. :)
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“The new Fake News narrative is that there is CHAOS in the White House,” Trump tweeted Tuesday morning. “Wrong! People will always come & go, and I want strong dialogue before making a final decision. I still have some people that I want to change (always seeking perfection). There is no Chaos, only great Energy!”
That evening, Gary Cohn, his top economic adviser, announced his departure. The move came a week after communications director Hope Hicks revealed her exit and about a month after staff secretary Rob Porter stepped down amid allegations of domestic violence.
Still, Trump has stuck to his stance.
"Everybody wants to work in the White House," he said this week at a White House press conference. "They all want a piece of that Oval Office. They want a piece of the West Wing. And not only in terms of, it looks great on their resume — it's just a great place to work."
As of Wednesday, the share of Trump’s top staffers who have left or changed jobs had reached 43 percent.
www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2018/03/08/trumps-turnover-breaks-
white-house-records-it-probably-wont-end/?utm_term=.f59c3a4543fc
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly
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The man lives in his own world second. Facts to Trump are like facts to some here. Existing only in a reality other than theirs.
T 
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Quote:Trump thinks his wealth is earned. MIT created a model of how wealth is distributed and it suggests Trump is mistaken. The article begins like this:
Originally posted by THGRRI:
The man lives in his own world second. Facts to Trump are like facts to some here. Existing only in a reality other than theirs.
The conventional answer is that we live in a meritocracy in which people are rewarded for their talent, intelligence, effort, and so on. Over time, many people think, this translates into the wealth distribution that we observe, although a healthy dose of luck can play a role.
But there is a problem with this idea: while wealth distribution follows a power law, the distribution of human skills generally follows a normal distribution that is symmetric about an average value. For example, intelligence, as measured by IQ tests, follows this pattern. Average IQ is 100, but nobody has an IQ of 1,000 or 10,000.
The same is true of effort, as measured by hours worked. Some people work more hours than average and some work less, but nobody works a billion times more hours than anybody else.
And yet when it comes to the rewards for this work, some people do have billions of times more wealth than other people. What’s more, numerous studies have shown that the wealthiest people are generally not the most talented by other measures.
How did Trump get rich? Read MIT Technology Review to find out:
www.technologyreview.com/s/610395/if-youre-so-smart-why-arent-you-rich
-turns-out-its-just-chance/
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Quote:
Originally posted by second:Quote:Trump thinks his wealth is earned. MIT created a model of how wealth is distributed and it suggests Trump is mistaken. The article begins like this:
Originally posted by THGRRI:
The man lives in his own world second. Facts to Trump are like facts to some here. Existing only in a reality other than theirs.
The conventional answer is that we live in a meritocracy in which people are rewarded for their talent, intelligence, effort, and so on. Over time, many people think, this translates into the wealth distribution that we observe, although a healthy dose of luck can play a role.
But there is a problem with this idea: while wealth distribution follows a power law, the distribution of human skills generally follows a normal distribution that is symmetric about an average value. For example, intelligence, as measured by IQ tests, follows this pattern. Average IQ is 100, but nobody has an IQ of 1,000 or 10,000.
The same is true of effort, as measured by hours worked. Some people work more hours than average and some work less, but nobody works a billion times more hours than anybody else.
And yet when it comes to the rewards for this work, some people do have billions of times more wealth than other people. What’s more, numerous studies have shown that the wealthiest people are generally not the most talented by other measures.
How did Trump get rich? Read MIT Technology Review to find out:
www.technologyreview.com/s/610395/if-youre-so-smart-why-arent-you-rich
-turns-out-its-just-chance/
Before Regan and Kennedy tax rates were over 80% for the rich. I always thought that was unfair. Now though not so much. The rich control the wealth distribution in this country, and put most of it into their own pockets.
T
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Quote:The largely dominant meritocratic paradigm of highly competitive Western cultures is rooted on the belief that success is due mainly, if not exclusively, to personal qualities such as talent, intelligence, skills, efforts or risk taking. Sometimes, we are willing to admit that a certain degree of luck could also play a role in achieving significant material success. But, as a matter of fact, it is rather common to underestimate the importance of external forces in individual successful stories. (That is very Trumpish)
Originally posted by THGRRI:
Before Regan and Kennedy tax rates were over 80% for the rich. I always thought that was unfair. Now though not so much. The rich control the wealth distribution in this country, and in doing so put most of it into their own.
It is very well known that intelligence or talent exhibit a Gaussian distribution among the population, whereas the distribution of wealth - considered a proxy of success - follows typically a power law (Pareto law). Such a discrepancy between a Normal distribution of inputs, with a typical scale, and the scale invariant distribution of outputs, suggests that some hidden ingredient is at work behind the scenes. In this paper, with the help of a very simple agent-based model, we suggest that such an ingredient is just randomness. (Also Trumpish)
In particular, we show that, if it is true that some degree of talent is necessary to be successful in life, almost never the most talented people reach the highest peaks of success, being overtaken by mediocre but sensibly luckier individuals. (Very Trump)
As to our knowledge, this counterintuitive result - although implicitly suggested between the lines in a vast literature - is quantified here for the first time. It sheds new light on the effectiveness of assessing merit on the basis of the reached level of success and underlines the risks of distributing excessive honors or resources to people who, at the end of the day, could have been simply luckier than others. With the help of this model, several policy hypotheses are also addressed and compared to show the most efficient strategies for public funding of research in order to improve meritocracy, diversity and innovation.
https://arxiv.org/abs/1802.07068
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly
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180.8 million people are represented by the 49 senators who caucus with the Democrats.
141.7 million people are represented by the 51 senators who caucus with the Republicans.
www.bradford-delong.com/2018/03/note-to-self-this-is-your-reminder-178
4-million-people-are-represented-by-the-48-senators-who-caucus-with-the-democ.html#comments
He is a GOP U.S. Senator
https://xkcd.com/154/
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly
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Quote:wow. That series of flawed arguments is so unfounded as to be boggy. Good example of dreaming up evidence or rationalization after forming the conclusion.
Originally posted by second:Quote:Trump thinks his wealth is earned. MIT created a model of how wealth is distributed and it suggests Trump is mistaken. The article begins like this:
Originally posted by THGRRI:
The man lives in his own world second. Facts to Trump are like facts to some here. Existing only in a reality other than theirs.
The conventional answer is that we live in a meritocracy in which people are rewarded for their talent, intelligence, effort, and so on. Over time, many people think, this translates into the wealth distribution that we observe, although a healthy dose of luck can play a role.
But there is a problem with this idea: while wealth distribution follows a power law, the distribution of human skills generally follows a normal distribution that is symmetric about an average value. For example, intelligence, as measured by IQ tests, follows this pattern. Average IQ is 100, but nobody has an IQ of 1,000 or 10,000.
The same is true of effort, as measured by hours worked. Some people work more hours than average and some work less, but nobody works a billion times more hours than anybody else.
And yet when it comes to the rewards for this work, some people do have billions of times more wealth than other people. What’s more, numerous studies have shown that the wealthiest people are generally not the most talented by other measures.
How did Trump get rich? Read MIT Technology Review to find out:
www.technologyreview.com/s/610395/if-youre-so-smart-why-arent-you-rich
-turns-out-its-just-chance/
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Quote:
Originally posted by second:
180.8 million people are represented by the 49 senators who caucus with the Democrats.
141.7 million people are represented by the 51 senators who caucus with the Republicans.
What's you're point?
60-70+ million of those people are too young to vote for anybody. More than half of the rest didn't even vote. A small but not trivial percentage of them don't even have a legal right to be here so their opinions don't even matter.
Those numbers are virtually meaningless.
Do Right, Be Right. :)
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Quote:6ix. What if the numbers were more obvious? 280.8 million people are represented by the 49 senators who caucus with the Democrats.
Originally posted by 6IXSTRINGJACK:Quote:
Originally posted by second:
180.8 million people are represented by the 49 senators who caucus with the Democrats.
141.7 million people are represented by the 51 senators who caucus with the Republicans.
What's you're point?
60-70+ million of those people are too young to vote for anybody. More than half of the rest didn't even vote. A small but not trivial percentage of them don't even have a legal right to be here so their opinions don't even matter.
Those numbers are virtually meaningless.
41.7 million people are represented by the 51 senators who caucus with the Republicans.
6ix. Not Obvious enough? How about these numbers?
320.8 million people are represented by the 49 senators who caucus with the Democrats.
1.7 million people are represented by the 51 senators who caucus with the Republicans.
6ix. What do the numbers have to be before it becomes obvious to you what the point is?
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