neonvincent

My comment on STOP ALLOWING REPUBLICANS TO SMEAR PEOPLE BASED ON FEELINGS. Also a tweet.

Colbert's truthiness in action.

My comment on What We Can Still Accomplish.

You returned to two of your consistent themes in this essay without using your catchphrases: The first was ternary thinking without writing "the opposite of one bad idea is usually another bad idea." The variation on that I like is that the opposite of love is not hate, but indifference. Speaking of which, the second is your admonition about a decade ago that "there is no better future." That's the one that set off Nebris, my friend through two incarnations. He's a believer in progress and he thought you were doing a working against it instead of giving helpful advice like your examples about telling people to flee the failing dam and selling their speculative bubble investments before either bursts. Since then, you've described what a better future with earlier levels of technology look like in "Retrotopia," so there can be a better future without progress. That's also ternary thinking of a sort.

As for the upcoming oil price spike, that's been associated with recessions in the U.S. since the country hit peak conventional production in 1971. At first, the current recession seemed to have severed that link, but now we are going to get it as a result of supply destruction because of lowered demand and prices (even negative prices for oil futures last year) followed by a spike in demand because of recovery. The causation between high oil prices and hard times may be reversed, but the correlation will survive. Now let's see if it takes another six years like it did between 2008 and 2014 for high prices to prompt more supply coming online or if supply of petroleum and natural gas liquids finally has peaked.

My comment on FOX DOESN'T WANT ITS VIEWERS DEAD, BUT IT DOES WANT THEM INDIFFERENT.

I guess Faux Noise has realized the wisdom of "the opposite of love is not hate, but indifference."

My comment on Missed Opportunities. Also a tweet.

Love your labels on this post. It deserves a song.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PyeWRd7ZEBs

My comment on Obesity and Industrial Pollution?

I've been aware of that phenomenon for years, but the connection I've seen is not between weight gain and industrial pollution as such, but between weight gain and climate change. As the climate warms up, people and animals gain weight, which would produce generally the same pattern you described, including less weight gain at higher altitudes, which are cooler. That's a connection that the powers that be would be less likely to suppress, as it fits with what they consider to be environmental threat number 1. The appeal then becomes "climate change is making you fat, so fight climate change and help reduce your weight!" I've also seen cause and effect reversed, with increased weight being implicated in contributing to climate change because of obese people exhaling more carbon dioxide. Then the exhortation becomes "lose weight to fight climate change!" As much as I support reducing both greenhouse gases and Americans' weight, seeing this makes me think that the relationship between weight and climate can be used to get people both coming and going!

My comment on MATT TAIBBI HATES YOU, YOU DISGUSTING ELITIST.

I'm going to be a good environmentalist and recycle my tweet about this entry: "When did Taibbi drink Steve Bannon's Kool-Aid? Does he even know that's what he did?"