“Were these Russian soldiers? No. They were local self-defense forces.” “We are not going to go to war with the Ukrainian people.“ — Vladimir Putin, March 2014, while annexing Crimea So I was reading an article on Ukraine today in the Medium app. And at the bottom it recommends other…

I’m writing this on March 24, 2022: the one-month anniversary of the full-scale invasion of Ukraine.

in an article about Effective Altruism being morally “bankrupt” — Effective Altruism is a movement dedicated toward improving the world using hard work, large donations, and analysis meant to make our work and donations as effective as we know how. It involves, for example, comparing very different courses of action to each other and trying to decide which is better…

A response to “Reframing the evolutionary benefit of sex”, which explains the evolutionary role of sex as something something E[dx * (1 + dX)] = E[dX] + E[dX²] something something variance! Which I’m sure would have been very interesting and enlightening if I had been paying closer attention. …

My Dad won’t get a vaccine because, he says, the vaccine has killed over 3,000 people. He says he knows this because of information on Fox News, the CDC web site and “interviews with doctors”. I asked which show interviewed these doctors; he didn’t answer. I asked him why, if…

Dear SeekTruth SpeakTruth: I just want to say something, because you think that you used to be one of those flat-earth guys. I know you honestly think you were one of them, but when looked at your old YouTube videos, I could tell immediately that you weren’t. Let me explain. …

About two weeks ago I left this comment on a blog critical of Molten Salt Reactors and other designs. So far the author has not published the comment, so I’m plopping it down here for future reference. While Part 8 gives some good information that LFTR proponents ought to know…

How to reduce your electricity bills with a $20 power meter — Today, humans use more energy than ever before, with the primary energy supply now exceeding twenty trillion watts — that’s about three thousand watts for every man, woman and child on Earth, 24 hours a day, 365 days a year, averaged across everywhere from the poverty-stricken plains of Sudan to…

For as long as I can remember, there were always two kinds of selectors.