patrick.net

I don't think Twitter has much relevancy left. When Yahoo! implemented censorship and reduced the ability to comment on their articles - that happened in the 'naughts' - it didn't take too long (like a year) before their solvency was beginning to be questioned. Droves of people just didn't bother to read the "news" section anymore.

It seems people thrive on disagreement and when you just have conformity, what's the point of going to the website?

In the old days of USEnet I'd log in just to argue when somebody was calling my thinking stupid or to go after somebody whose thinking I thought was stupid. USEnet was just one big flamewar in the early 1990's. Being in a newsgroup even on physics, it was fun to demolish somebody's incorrect claim, and it's not like I didn't get my ass handed to me more than once.

In one instance - did you know, that as an orbiting object doesn't only decrease in relative angular speed to the body it is orbiting but linear speed as it gets further away from the object (i.e. higher orbit) that it is orbiting? It's entirely counter-intuitive, and I made the mistake of "correcting" somebody's claim. So, incensed, I did all the math on a computer, and realized, I was wrong. I posted it anyhow, and sheepishly admitted I didn't know what I was talking about before, but I did now. I'll never forget having somebody tell me to do the math or I was an idiot that should just shut up, and doing the math, and realizing yes, I was indeed an idiot.

It's weird to think that the ISS is moving through space much faster than the moon is, but it is.

election2020 says

I remember reds cheering at Iraq war as "freedom something" while lives were destroyed and Bush cronies getting rich. So reds have their share of idiocy.

Hear, hear!

I was so pissed off with the last Bush administration I would have voted for a dog fart over any Republican running in 2008, 2004 as well.

The thing is, most "reds" saw the error of their ways, and when Trump said in a debate that the Iraq War was a grave mistake, he was booed and hissed - but the audience was canned, and he picked up 10's of millions of supporters watching on their computer and tv.

www.H4ThZcq1oJQ

That is when he went from being a big fat orange joke running to better his brand, to a legitimate candidate to me, although a long shot at that. For that alone, for that alone, I went from indifferent from which asshole won the "presidency" to a Trumptard and so did 10's of millions of new voters.

election2020 says

I just want "people to use their brain" instead of propaganda.
When is the "Green shit control agenda" going down?

Haha, you want people to use their brain and you're complaining about the "Green shit control agenda" in the same post?

Good luck with that!

I was at work sitting at my desk and I was reading about what Solyndra was and their "technology". Let me show you what a Solyndra "solar panel" looks like:



It's a bunch of tubes of solar cells.

Well anyhow, when I realized what a stupid idea this was, and that it actually was a scam, I started to laugh at my desk. My coworker, another ENGINEER asked why I was laughing? I showed him the picture of the Solyndra solar "solution" and said "This is Solyndra's solution to existing solar panels! How did they get funding when it's an obviously inferior solution to a flat panel? It cannot possibly collect more energy, and it's got to be more expensive to produce because of complexity and it's less efficient. It actually is a scam!"

And my follow engineering coworker thought I was mad and I realized my colleague was an idiot. Just looking at it, because you can see white below it - i.e. reflected, uncaptured photons not being collected to be turned into energy, it must necessarily be worse than a flat panel that is all black. It doesn't absorb all the possible energy over a given area, PLUS, these have to be a bitch to manufacture. Without doing any math, you can immediately see that it must collect less energy than a flat panel would.

If an engineer can't see the stupidity of Solyndra's solution, how do you explain it to somebody that works in marketing or has a womyn's study degree?

How could anybody, much less an engineer, see this as an improvement over a flat panel? Yet Solynda had to have many engineers working on this. I think. Why would tubular panels be better, in any way? How could an engineer not immediately see the problem?

This is a trivial example from Solyndra, now try to explain why a wind turbine might consume more energy to make than it produces over its existence? That's a bunch of research, how much energy to dig up the metals? How much energy to refine it and put it into a pillar? What about the energy needed to make the blades and to transport to install it? What about the energy requirement to build storage? How about the longevity of the turbine?

It's been explained to me "trust me, it takes more energy to make a wind turbine than you get out of it before it has to be replaced", and I accepted that as probably true. Solar cells definitely produce more energy over their lifetime than they take to be made, but that time depends on where they are installed as well and depending on storage methods for excess energy, they may not overall. Also depends on how long they last - I think 7 years can be considered break even, but I've heard as little as 3 - as long as they don't break.

Now try to explain that to some fanatic that thinks we're all going to be dead in 10 years if something isn't done ASAP!

He should just post on Parler instead lol

Fortwaynemobile says

He should just post on Parler instead lol

He's on Gab:

https://gab.com/realdonaldtrump

richwicks says

Trump said in a debate that the Iraq War was a grave mistake, he was booed and hissed - but the audience was canned, and he picked up 10's of millions of supporters watching on their computer and tv.

For me it was the stance on reducing low-skilled immigration. The only people benefiting from this are non-citizens (the people who come here) and the business workers who want to drive labor costs down as far as possible while putting all the downside on the taxpayers. Bush's stance on immigration was as bad as the democrats'.

SunnyvaleCA says

For me it was the stance on reducing low-skilled immigration. The only people benefiting from this are non-citizens (the people who come here) and the business workers who want to drive labor costs down as far as possible while putting all the downside on the taxpayers. Bush's stance on immigration was as bad as the democrats'.

I'm with you on that one too. I know people that are high school dropouts that work under the table and are terrified of being caught. If an illegal gets caught, they just disappear - if he gets caught, he goes to jail.

richwicks says

I'm with you on that one too. I know people that are high school dropouts that work under the table and are terrified of being caught. If an illegal gets caught, they just disappear - if he gets caught, he goes to jail.

Yeah. An interesting corollary to that is that illegal workers are mostly only beneficial to the rich because they are illegal. If they followed all the required work rules and the employees also followed the law (overtime pay, time off, healthcare, minimum wage, workplace safety, etc) they would be basically unemployable. So when illegal aliens become legal aliens (and, to the great pleasure of Democrats, citizens) they'll go right on welfare just like the existing low-skilled citizens.

Edit: I'm not saying low-skilled workers (foreign or domestic) are incompetent or anything like that. There's certainly much need for that kind of tough work and the gritty individuals who can do it well. I'm only saying that people who can be hired off-the-books have a competitive advantage and that legalizing illegal workers renders them less competitive.

This is what happens roughly 10 minutes after creating a new Twitter account and liking one of Trump's Tweets:

richwicks says

I don't think Twitter has much relevancy left. When Yahoo! implemented censorship and reduced the ability to comment on their articles - that happened in the 'naughts' - it didn't take too long (like a year) before their solvency was beginning to be questioned. Droves of people just didn't bother to read the "news" section anymore.

It seems people thrive on disagreement and when you just have conformity, what's the point of going to the website?

In the old days of USEnet I'd log in just to argue when somebody was calling my thinking stupid or to go after somebody whose thinking I thought was stupid. USEnet was just one big flamewar in the early 1990's. Being in a newsgroup even on physics, it was fun to demolish somebody's incorrect claim, and it's not like I didn't get my ass handed to me more than once.

In one instance - did you know, that as an orbiting object doesn't only decrease in relative angular speed to the body it is orbiting but linear speed as it g...

People also thrive on agreement. I loved reading yahoo comments for two reasons. One, the humor. Some people are seriously hilarious. And two, the fact that there were sane rational people in the world. When you are allowed to post anonymously, you see true colors. When you are on facebook where everyone knows who you are, you post in fear.

I'm happy to run an anonymous forum. I'm thinking of ways to make it more anonymous, and more censorship-resistant.