TheEncogitationer

Environment: New AI agent tallies a gadget’s emissions in the time it takes to brew tea.

Great idea, as long AI is not the one in control of the gadgets or the decision to use them. Human control freaks are bad enough without being given SkyNet Terminator capabilities:

Air Conditioning? It’s I…[Read more]

Reg:

The Trad part will disappear when they discover that the urine in wool and cotton diapers consists of more than “salt and water,” is more odiferous, and doesn’t just drip-dry away. And Trad Life is more than Laura Ingalls gambolling down the prairie hill with her doggie Bandit with a happy ending. As the diaper prices in the story show, it…[Read more]

SimonPaynton:

And they’re going to all this expense and trouble over a single study of 66 infants from China (home of the human pin cushion and accupuncture disinformation) alleging a connection between plasticizers in disposable diapers and DNA damage.

Obviously, Trads also have a contempt for scientific method and causal connections.

SimonPaynton:

I couldn’t respond on your message, so I’ll have to do it here:

TradWives/TradMoms and TradHusbands/TradDads hold their children and other parents in contempt if they support this:

MAHA (and Marxist) moms are outfitting their babies in ‘healthier’ wool diapers — that don’t need to be washed for a month
By Karen Fischer…[Read more]

Jake:

You were right about the Renaissance coming before the Reformation. They did kind of run parallel on the historic timeline, though.

Jake:

Enco,

I assume you are referring to the vid in which the author(s) prognosticate the demise or reformation of Islam.

Some interesting ideas are adduced there but i am not sure anyone can with confidence know how the story will play out.

That’s about how I see it. Never say ‘trend’ or ‘predict.’

Also, it would be a mistake to extrapolate…[Read more]

Jake:

The Internet can be either a Web connecting a mind to new knowledge and new ideas or it can be spun into a bubble to isolate a mind from anything else.

To borrow from the story line of Mystery Science Theater 3000the Internet definitely foils the Pearl Foresters who seek to rule the World one person at a time, but it doesn’t stop her…[Read more]

Jake:

Now this is what I’ve been wanting to see for the longest time: a technology that could be used to kill pain without killing people, in addition to it’s use on pre-existing addiction. I thought it might take the form of genetic modification of opiates, cocoa, and other drug plants, but this technology is even faster!

My only complaint…[Read more]

Jake:

Forget it, Jake. It’s Bean Town, with all the effluvia and gaseousness that goes with it. Research up on how Bostonians dealt with school integration in the Seventies.

That Principal probably lets every gang have free run of his halls. His school is probably Blackboard Jungle redux and cyber-augmented.

And the Teacher is probably…[Read more]

Jake:

They had a plan and said yes it can. Who put the estoppel on the topple? Would it have worked?

No one had to convince Trump to restrain Israel from taking out the Mullahs. Trump thinks anything can be a “deal” and anyone can be open to negotiation. Trump spared the Mullah regime in 2025, thinking he could get something from them later,…[Read more]

Reg:

Yep, evidently, “Shark Week” isn’t enough to get people scared to death. Now, fearmongers have to use umbrellas.

I still can’t help but think “Central European News” is a Putin Bot-Farm putting out this story to discobobulate Western minds. Putin’s coworkers in the Soviet KGB did use an actual poison-tipped umbrella to assassinate a…[Read more]

Jake:

Yeah Enco,

My kneejerk reaction to the threat of Christian Nationalism is grounded in the notion that our history as a nation has enough in the virtues of democracy and limitation of powers that resistance to Christianity as a governing power, the power, would not get too far. But hell who the fuck knows. I am the one who keeps saying…

[Read more]

Fellow Unbelievers:

A cautionary tale on critically thinking about everything you read from any source, hard copy or electronic:

Do beach umbrellas kill millions? How Google perpetuates a legend
Jun 22, 2026 at 04:46 PM EDT
Mark Keierleber

Do beach umbrellas kill millions? How Google perpetuates a legend

My questions were:…[Read more]

Fellow Unbeliever:

How to refute an antivaxxer.

This is science writing done right! It points out in precise and plain language, the benefits of vaccine and how many lives it has saved and that the risks of vaccine are no greater than the risks of living.

The only thing that disappointed me was that someone sat on this for a year before I and…[Read more]

Jake:

If you use your imagination and project the worst how will Christian Nationalism play out in USA or anywhere in the west? Any chance it will approach the worst of Islamic Nationalism? Lets take the Islamic Republic of Iran as a model. Anyone think USA or any western nation might degenerate to the point where its comparable in its…

[Read more]

Reg:

Fantastic essay! Bill Maher summed it up by pointing out that if The Bible was really anti-slavery, slavery would have been mentioned in The Top Ten.