Enjoy Some Ice Cream Every Once In a While

Talked to a guy who is still hung up on the 2020 election. He read a book on the premise that the Delaware County election was a sham. He was really pressuring me to read the book. I was telling him that it was a total waste of time. Nevertheless, I wrote this out to email him, certainly wasting more time.

1. Bill Barr was the country's most powerful person in law enforcement and said he saw no evidence of fraud. He would have every possible incentive to call it out if he saw it. 

2. Biden did worse in Philadelphia County, and better in many counties. That undercuts the central point the book is making. If there was a vast Democratic conspiracy, the least they could do would be to maintain the Democratic % of votes in Philadelphia County. Would you agree?

3. Sydney Powell's own lawyer said in court that, “no reasonable person would conclude that [her] statements were truly statements of fact.” That was her defense. Trump's lawyers could throw spaghetti at the wall, saying anything they wanted publicly, but not when they were in court.

4. Even if I accept that the Delaware County election was a sham and the book proves it conclusively, conclusive proof would be needed for all the other counties that tipped towards Biden. 

5. Countrywide, if votes for Biden were a sham, it doesn't explain split votes, where people voted for Biden for president along with a Republican congressman.

6. There was a clerical error that led to like 100,000 Biden votes in the night that was then corrected. Other than that there were a million Biden votes counted during the night, and about a million Trump votes. That was fact checked by Reuters, and again, if there were shenanigans, Barr would have every incentive to call it out. He's not going to sit on the knowledge that there were 100,000 fraudulent Biden votes, at the expense of him no longer being attorney general.

In all matter the simplest explanation is generally the best. Perhaps there was a vast conspiracy, or maybe after Trump's 4 years of intentionally trying to rile people up, some were sick of it and it tipped the other way. It's not like he acted like he was trying to win the suburbs, and his erratic behavior often worked to his own disadvantage, like when he rolled out an advertising campaign geared towards senior citizens, at the same time he was actually making fun of Biden for supposedly having dementia. That was one of his tweets that people think mean nothing because they are just words.

No president with 40% approval should expect to win the general election. That goes for Biden if he runs in 2024.

Conspiracy theories often swirl around a nugget of truth (Oswald's ties to Russia, Jack Ruby's mob ties) but Oswald simply acted alone. It's the simplest explanation and there's massive proof for it. 100,000 Biden votes in the middle of the night, as a clerical error is a nugget of evidence, but debunked. The rebuttal to that can't be that Democrats say everything was debunked, since so many prominent Republicans who had everything to lose agreed.

The main thing is that any case that the book makes was obviously made to Barr, and Pence too, and the two of them knew that it was nonsense.

There was also no review of the book that I could find easily, positive or negative. Nobody has time to investigate every detail. Reviews can point out the best and worst points, but I can't find any. 

Pretend that Biden loses the 2024 election by a slim margin, and Biden won't drop it, citing evidence of supposed fraud. If Merrick Garland says that there's no validity to Biden's claims, wouldn't that be enough evidence for you to believe that Biden has absolutely no case? That would be enough for me.

An important corrolary to all this.... when Trump lost the Iowa caucus to Ted Cruz in 2016, he claimed fraud. It's just what he does to save his brand. Like when he declared before the 2016 election (when it seemed like he was going to lose) that either he wins, or it was rigged. Total nonsense, no matter who says something ridiculous like that.

If his point is that Barr is part of the conspiracy, that is the critical piece that I would like to see some hard evidence supporting.

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Voltaire- "Doubt is an uncomfortable condition, but certainty is a ridiculous one."

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Helpful reminder, the Buddhist Five Rememberances

1. I am of the nature to grow old. There is no way to escape growing old.

2. I am of the nature to have ill health. There is no way to escape having ill health.

3. I am of the nature to die. There is no way to escape death.

4. All that is dear to me and everyone I love are of the nature to change. There is no way to escape being separated from them.

5. My actions are my only true belongings. I cannot escape the consequences of my actions. My actions are the ground upon which I stand.

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Jeff Bridges ran into the artist Mayumi Oda at a symposium. He said that he looked at her beautiful prints and he asked her how she does them. Her answer was, "It's like I'm already dead."

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Would you agree to get hooked up to a machine that would simulate a lifetime of maximum peak experiences, with the understanding that your memory of the decision would be erased. You would believe it's your own life- perfect in every way, not knowing it's artificial. Most people say no. I would say no. 

But what if you woke up in a lab and a scientist told you that your entire life so far has been exactly that type of mirage and gave you the choice to go back? Would you want to go back to your prior authentic-but-worse life, or would you prefer to live your current artificial one? How could you say no, but doesn't that then mean you should say yes in the first thought experiment? 

Either way, Happy Thanksgiving, whether you have anything to authentically be thankful for, or whether it's all just an illusion.

November 25, 2021

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Be thankful for your ice cream cone.

November 25, 2021

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What's the difference between a dilapidated Greyhound depot and a lobster with breast implants?

One is a crusty bus station and one is a busty crustacean.

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This is a big deal... could gain traction. A non-partisan issue, I'm certain the entire Supreme Court is in agreement of the unconstitutionality.

Reich:

Richard Painter, Chief Ethics Counsel for George W. Bush, and Norman Eisen, Chief Ethics Counsel for Barack Obama, believe that if Trump continues to retain ownership over his global business interests by the time the electors meet on December 19, they should reject him.

As Eisen explains, “the founders did not want any foreign payments to the president. Period.” This principle is enshrined in Article 1, Section 9 of the Constitution, which bars office holders from accepting “any present, emolument, office, or title, of any kind whatever, from any king, prince, or foreign state.” The provision was created to prevent the President from being corrupted by foreign influences. 

Painter agrees. “I don’t think the Electoral College can vote for someone to become president if he’s going to be in violation of the Constitution on day one and hasn’t assured us he’s not in violation.” Painter says his attempts to warn the Trump transition of the legal consequences of Trump’s continued ownership of his business interests are being ignored.

Trump doesn’t release his tax returns. He won’t put his foreign business holdings into a blind trust. His children sit in on private meetings with foreign leaders. If the 538 Electors vote for Trump on December 19, in the absence of a complete divestment of his business interests, they will abdicate their solemn duties under the Constitution. 

What do you think?

November 25, 2016

Postscript- I remember that! Quaint times. Why on earth would he sell the businesses that he won the presidency in order to grow? Makes no sense. So we had 4 years of other countries essentially paying our president for implied favors.

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Gore Vidal- "...the lies are based upon the most advanced techniques of advertising, which is the only art form my country has ever created—the television commercial—and we sell soap and presidents in the same fashion. Once a country is habituated to liars, it takes generations to bring the truth back."

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Happy Black Friday everybody! Remember, if you'll never get down to your last $100, you can always spend $100 frivolously.

November 25, 2016

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David Hume- “...no testimony is sufficient to establish a miracle, unless the testimony be of such a kind, that its falsehood would be more miraculous, than the fact, which it endeavors to establish.”

In other words, Mother Teresa was canonized in part due to a woman's tumor disappearing after praying to her after her death, so to accept this miracle is to believe that it would have been even more miraculous for the tumor to have disappeared due to another reason.

November 25, 2016

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I'm thankful for being rich, in the Thoreauvian sense. 

"A man is rich in proportion to the number of things he can afford to let alone."

November 25, 2015

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Let's keep the Christ in Christmas. And take the Christ out of Opher Hitchens.

November 25, 2014

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Bazo had four kittens on this day in 2011- Eanie, Meanie, Miney, and Moe.

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Yukio Mishima commited ritualistic seppuku after an unsuccessful coup attempt on this day in 1970. 

"True beauty is something that attacks, overpowers, robs, and finally destroys."

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Joe DiMaggio joined us on this day in 1914. 

Jerry Coleman- "DiMaggio seldom showed emotion. One day after striking out, he came into the dugout and kicked the ball bag. We all went "ooooh". It really hurt. He sat down and the sweat popped out on his forehead and he clenched his fists without ever saying a word. Everybody wanted to howl, but he was a god. You don't laugh at gods." 

Ted Williams- "DiMaggio was the greatest all-around player I ever saw. His career cannot be summed up in numbers and awards. It might sound corny, but he had a profound and lasting impact on the country."

Phil Rizzuto- "There was an aura about him. He walked like no one else walked. He did things so easily. He was immaculate in everything he did. Kings of State wanted to meet him and be with him. He carried himself so well. He could fit in any place in the world."

Ernest Hemingway in The Old Man and the Sea- "I would like to take the great DiMaggio fishing, the old man said. They say his father was a fisherman. Maybe he was as poor as we are and would understand."

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Bucky Dent was born on this day in 1951. Sure, DiMaggio's got all that, but Bucky Dent has the best baseball name of all time.

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Christina Applegate was born on this day in 1971. 

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English rally driver, Richard Burns, left us on this day in 2005, hopefully not due to the reason that I'm thinking.

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Fidel Castro left us on this day in 2016. I think Trump memorialized him with something along the lines of, "Castro dead!" He was always one notch above Frankenstein.

"A revolution is not a bed of roses. A revolution is a struggle between the future and the past."

That goes for Castro ousting Batista with the backing of 90% of the Cuban people, and many Cuban people trying to rise above Castro later on.

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Diego Maradona left us on this day in 2020. The New York Times... come for the journalism, stay for the obituaries. Wow. Excerpt:

Thirty-two years before Maradona was born, the great Argentine writer Borocotó — editor of El Gráfico, the prestigious, trailblazing sports magazine — suggested the country should erect a statue to the so-called pibe: the dusty-faced street kid with the “trickster eyes,” “a mane of hair rebelling against the comb” and the “sparkling gaze” who represented not only Argentina’s soccer culture, but also its self-image as a nation.

Maradona was the platonic ideal of a pibe, all virtuoso skill and impetuous cunning. He captured the spirit Borocotó made immortal more than any player — more than anyone could have thought possible — not just when he was a teenager, fresh from the potrero, but throughout his career.

All of those iconic images of Maradona are monuments to the spirit of the pibe: leaping high above Peter Shilton, the England goalkeeper, the goal that he would joke — with the “Picaresque laugh” that met Borocotó’s description — was scored by the Hand of God; dancing, a couple of minutes later, through the entire England team to score “the goal of the century,” the strike that would prompt the commentator Victor Hugo Morales to declare him a “comet from the sky”; facing up to the entire Belgian team, the ball at his feet, a picture of fear on their faces.

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/11/25/sports/soccer/diego-maradona.html

November 26, 2020

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IFLScience- Brain Scans Reveal How Your Dog Really Feels

Good news, our dogs do love us!

http://www.iflscience.com/brain/brain-scans-reveal-truth-puppy-love

November 25, 2014

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IFLScience- Is Your Religion Ready To Meet ET?

"If extraterrestrial others exist, then my religion and my religious beliefs and practices might not be universal. If my religion is not universally applicable to all extraterrestrial others, perhaps my religion need not be offered to, let alone forced on, all terrestrial others. Ultimately, we might learn some important lessons applicable here at home just from considering the possibility of life beyond our planet."

http://www.iflscience.com/space/your-religion-ready-meet-et

November 25, 2014

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Five Thirty Eight- Demographics, Not Hacking, Explain The Election Results

If Nate Silver's 538 is to be believed, nothing will come from these recounts. I'm going to allow myself 10 minutes to imagine a world in which they did unequivocally overturn the election results... can you imagine! Think about someone telling the Trump supporters that he lost, just get over it. There might be riots in all the rural areas but nobody would even know. It would be past the deadline for him to challenge any other states, it would just be over. Allow yourself a moment to feel Trump's all-consuming rage. He would go berserk because something that belonged to him would have been taken away, but in this hypothetical scenario, it wouldn't have been his to begin with, so his rage would be groundless. He would go back to being a laughing stock. His business conflicts would be of no matter. Democrats would somehow feel redeemed that their message was received, but their popular vote total would be up to like 2.05 million vs 2 million. White supremacists would feel deflated. Or probably more energized. There would be a run on the gun shops. Some former teen USA pageant contestant who was changing when Trump walked in on her (to check things out, because he's in charge) would feel a bit better about the country's choice.

Wait, he's made mistakes before... IS Nate Silver to be believed??? (I believe so.)

http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/demographics-not-hacking-explain-the-election-results

November 25, 2016

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IFLScience- 'The Hare Psychopathy Checklist': The Test That Will Tell You If Someone Is A Sociopath

The good news, I'm not a psychopath. The bad news, well... I think we all know someone who is.

http://www.iflscience.com/brain/the-hare-psychopathy-checklist-test-that-will-tell-you-if-someone-is-a-sociopath/

November 25, 2016

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History News Network- 5 Steps Obama Can Take to Thwart Trump and Advance the Liberal Agenda

http://historynewsnetwork.org/article/164442

I can't imagine him doing any of these. But should he? Yes. Or he can fade away.

And I'm not sure why has hasn't appointed Garland to the Supreme Court. Congress waived their duty to advise and consent. That would have been Bush's strategy, and Trump's... and good for them if it was. Appoint him, and let the Supreme Court decide on the constitutionality. I admit I must be missing something here.

November 25, 2016

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Howling practice with a nearly 3-month-old Zuzu.

https://www.facebook.com/share/v/d7AxH8ih8uaZGomK

November 25, 2015

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I recently took a poll and found out that 100% of the people inside the tent we're unhappy that it collapsed.

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Joan Didion- "We flatter ourselves by thinking this compulsion to please others an attractive trait: evidence of our willingness to give. We play roles doomed to failure before they are begun."

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Quentin Crisp-"Never keep up with the Joneses. Drag them down to your level. It's cheaper."

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Vonnegut, Breakfast of Champions- "What is the purpose of life?...To be the eyes and ears and conscience of the Creator of the Universe, you fool!"

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Sagan- "The universe seems neither benign nor hostile, merely indifferent."

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Huxley- "You shall know the truth and the truth shall make you mad."