The video appears to be broadly interpreting nerds as “non-apathetic people”. But by this analysis, jocks are also nerds. This is a poor definition that doesn’t capture the group being referred to by “nerds” in ordinary usage. It’s as though someone defined “fire” to mean reddish-orange moving things and claiming that his bicycle was made of fire.
Another problem – the video uses “religious people” to mean approximately “Christians”. Numerous religions aren’t evangelizing. Some don’t even accept converts. Nor do all religions have a sacred scripture to hold proof-texting arguments over.
The video makes an exemption, too, for “not all religious people, like not this guy”.
Any one of these could have been understandable, since a lot of humor involves squinting to see how something looks like something else. But with all three objections together, “Religious people are nerds” has turned into “A subset of Christians are passionate”, which isn’t funny to me. The joke just falls flat.
Dan Kurt: To me this post is disconcerting–on reading it I experienced a strong sense that I had read it once before. What a selcouth Déjà vu moment. Dan Kurt
gaikokumaniakku: Isaiah 5:20 Woe to those who call evil good and good evil, who turn darkness to light and light to darkness, who replace bitter with sweet and sweet with bitter. 21Woe to those who are wise in their own eyes and clever in their own sight.
Phileas Frogg: Again the eternal conflict between the Real and the Nominal, and once more the Nominal lies. Never forget, lying is an act of aggression, and should always be treated as such. The more egregious the lie, the more aggressive the act. Respond accordingly.
Gaikokumaniakku: Tangentially related: 3M22 Zircon: Debunking Misconceptions. At the link, a military expert criticizes Russian hypersonic weapons.
Phileas Frogg: History is a gift and its study a blessing; even the people whose effects I have come to despise are so obviously superior to our present milieu that one can’t help but feel a sort of scruffy abashedness in the presence of their biographies. And, of course, it gets worse the further back you go. One wonders at the impression a fully fledged Adam in the Garden, before the Fall, would have had on us scampering apes. Darwin got it backwards, we didn’t evolve from an ape-like...
Bob Sykes: LBJ also kept a cooler of beer in that Caddy, and he usually was drinking a beer while he drove around.
Phileas Frogg: “Interestingly, working-class Americans are more likely to read local news, while the wealthy and highly educated favor national and global news.” I wonder how much of this is social norms vs self-perception. Do the wealthy and educated feel in touch with (or that they should be in touch with) national and global events, or is it mere mimicry? How about the working-class? The two are necessarily mutually exclusive of course, but I wonder if there’s a different primary...
Phileas Frogg: As advances in weapon’s have improved the range and effectiveness of the individual soldier’s impact on the battlefield, the number of soldiers has increased in importance relative to the quality of any individual soldier. It’s the Thermopylae Principle in reverse because of weapons advancements. Reminds me of RTS balancing, where to effectively implement melee units developers need to give them either unrealistic speed or durability relative to the ranged capabilities of...
Bob Sykes: Calling Mohamed Farrah Aidid’s militia a mob is a bit much, but they were lightly armed and poorly trained. However, they defeated the US/UN mission to Somalia, or at least fought it to a draw. We’re still fighting Aidid’s grandchildren, and we still haven’t won. The war is now in its 4th decade, with no end in sight. Settling aside our Indian Wars (1607 to 1918). Somalia is the longest US war.
McChuck: Anybody who has ever played a wargame can tell you that your defenses can handle a certain amount of opposition, but when enemy numbers, regardless of quality, exceed that number, you get overrun. The mobs in Mogadishu back in 1993 weren’t well organized, weren’t well equipped, weren’t well trained, and weren’t well led. But there sure were a whole lot of them shooting at the Rangers.
Russell: New article about Thorp https://archive.ph/fq5JC
Phileas Frogg: The class divide in the US is as deep and wide as any as has existed in history, but instead of acknowledging the divide, much less trying to bridge it, we have chosen moralization and mutual animosity, which will be the death of us.
Freddo: https://www.zerohedge.co m/geopolitical/us-drones -are-expensive-and-error -prone-so-ukraine-turns- china
Jim: The principle applies whatever the source of the wall-penetrating radio waves in question.
Phileas Frogg: In conjunction with the Rob Henderson excerpt one can safely conclude that neither drug use, nor sexual immorality, can be meaningfully correlated with class. “But poverty causes crime!” Does it?
Bruce: Green energy is a patronage fraud, and Terraform Industries is working with it. But their tech isn’t a fraud.
Handle: What is Henderson taking about? I was under the impression that it was a broadly believed meme and one frequently portrayed in popular entertainment for several generations before Henderson was born that college kids got drunk and enjoyed / experimented with recreational drugs quite a lot. Maybe Rob’s poorer friends couldn’t afford to watch those episodes of South Park or didn’t hear about George W Bush’s “youthful indiscretions”? Man, the left really is...
The video appears to be broadly interpreting nerds as “non-apathetic people”. But by this analysis, jocks are also nerds. This is a poor definition that doesn’t capture the group being referred to by “nerds” in ordinary usage. It’s as though someone defined “fire” to mean reddish-orange moving things and claiming that his bicycle was made of fire.
Another problem – the video uses “religious people” to mean approximately “Christians”. Numerous religions aren’t evangelizing. Some don’t even accept converts. Nor do all religions have a sacred scripture to hold proof-texting arguments over.
The video makes an exemption, too, for “not all religious people, like not this guy”.
Any one of these could have been understandable, since a lot of humor involves squinting to see how something looks like something else. But with all three objections together, “Religious people are nerds” has turned into “A subset of Christians are passionate”, which isn’t funny to me. The joke just falls flat.