Faisal Aslam

DHS demanding identity details from social networks of users who criticize ICE, Trump, et al.

Short:

TheEncogitationer wrote:
In all fairness, any prediction could be considered true if the prognosticator talks nebulously enough, moves the goalposts, and, above all, talks a lot. Astrologers, psychics, and self-proclaimed “prophets” do it all the time.

They could, and they do, but this was different.  She went around telling people their futu…[Read more]

Reg the Fronkey Farmer wrote:
“Now” is not a universal property spread across space. The universe doesn’t care where the time zone line is drawn. Only humans do. Our segmentation of our experience of time flow is just a convention. The feeling that clock time reflects a moving reality is mistaken.

OK, true, the clock isn’t evidence of anyth…[Read more]

Reg the Fronkey Farmer wrote:
So yes, we do experience a “present” but not “now”. Experience is a perspective from one region of spacetime, not evidence that reality contains a moving “now”. A camera records one frame at a time, but the film does not move through the camera — the whole reel exists.

I don’t know what it proves.  I’m not saying it…[Read more]

RedBull Urban Downhill

Reg the Fronkey Farmer wrote:
In spacetime, an object is not a 3D thing that moves. It is a 4D curve or a “worldline”. From my birth to my death, I am not “an entity” or dot moving through time. I am an extended 4D structure. Think of a thread woven though spacetime. (Or as I called myself previously – I am an ontic worm).

Yes, but you only expe…[Read more]

Reg posted a great sample from the latest Pam Bondi hearing, featuring Jeremy Raskin here. My sample features Jasmine Crockett. I only wish she made time to add at the end something like “Pam Bondi will no doubt now be given the opportunity to respond to me, as usual without answering any of my questions, but by changing the subject”.

As I’ve…[Read more]

Reg the Fronkey Farmer wrote:
Modern physics does not operate with any variable for time = flow. No equation contains a term to describe ‘time is moving’. Relativity explicitly forbids universal flow as different observers in different locations disagree on temporal ordering.

Is this not “argument from ignorance”?  We can’t explain it, ther…[Read more]

TheEncogitationer wrote:
As I’ve observed before, everything is natural and everything is chemicals and you can say both at the same time.

True, even water’s technically a chemical. So’s arsenic, and cyanide, the latter being in almonds in the past, in amounts that people died from, until someone discovered an accidentally GMO’d (by nature) a…[Read more]

Reg the Fronkey Farmer wrote:
I needed to stop confusing time passing with time as a coordinate 🙂

Yes, but the coordinate keeps changing as time passes.  Or, as you pass time.

Short, and funny at the end:

Reg the Fronkey Farmer wrote:
Do we cooperate or compete to survive?

It’s interesting to think about the conditions where it’s optimal for the individual to cooperate, or to compete.  As a species, it’s necessary to cooperate to survive.  As individuals, it’s sometimes optimal to cheat.

Bannon says ICE will “surround the polls” during the ’26 election.

TheEncogitationer wrote:
[…] organic produce is another woo product

I largely agree, although it must be said that there is environmental benefit when farming with less chemicals, and advancing integrated pest management (IPM). If I had more money to spare, I’d be paying more to support those farmers.

Speaking of farmers, or at least some of…[Read more]

jakelafort wrote:
Don’t knock sexual repression. It is great for creating teenage and early twenties suicide bombers.

It’s worst in highly patriarchal countries, where the rich men hoover up all the wives, and the poorest men are left with no-one to marry.