12 Comments
Aug 14, 2022Liked by Freddie deBoer

I'm glad you ended up writing this blog instead of working for Junk King or whatever. Lots of artistically talented people who get stuck in dead-end retail for lack of opportunities. But you'd have made an amazing Junk King in that counterfactual. Or that's my headcanon now, anyway.

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I liked your civil war piece, but I wonder how to interpret the line "The war put this question to the test, in combat, and came back with a definitive answer. The basic logic of that war, and the moral righteousness of the North’s victory ...".

In the counterfactual world where the South had won the civil war, would that have made their position any better morally? Isn't the main question that a war answers, who has currently got military superiority, not who has the better morailty?

The North won, and the North had the better values, and the North deserved to win, but these are three separate variables to me.

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Aug 14, 2022·edited Aug 14, 2022

Scott's comment just proves your point, though: EA has already discovered all the low-hanging fruit. Mosquito nets and cash payments to third world citizens can continue without wannabe thinkfluencers disappearing up their own arses about the importance of "doing good well." As time goes on the ratio of useful, boring activity to carnivore eradication will get smaller and smaller. They should quit while they're ahead.

Scott appears to be a reasonable "rationalist" because he's not actually a rationalist like his followers: he's just a smart, cool dude who is unfortunately used by the subculture of losers to make itself more popular.

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Highest recommendation for Paul Scott’s The Raj Quartet if you are interested in that period of India’s history. Fantastic series of books. https://www.britannica.com/topic/The-Raj-Quartet

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TiVo probably killed baseball for me. A combination of the 30 second skip making football games much easier (and faster) to watch and the Braves decline in the early 2000s made me stop watching baseball almost completely. Last year I watched the Braves in the playoffs and WS and I couldn't believe how damn long the games were. I know a few times in the playoffs, I'd start watching a baseball game, an NFL game would start and then finish, and I'd still be watching the baseball game. Every time a hitter leaves the batter's box to adjust his gloves or whatever, they should have someone designated to come over roshambo his slow ass. (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rHliDE1_Hls). I'm 53 and baseball is too boring for me. No way a zoomer is watching this.

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Good luck in fantasy football. My league's draft is Saturday September 3rd. We did a draft lottery of sorts last night to decide the order.

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You do know that to read your article about Las Vegas, for which my prior is that it's probably a fine piece of writing, one must subscribe ($) to Compact, which is a bridge very much too far for me given the lead on Compact's masthead. (There is no obvious system I can see to which Compact articles are or are not paywalled)

I'm no fan of Matthew Schmitz or Edwin Aponte either, and haven't read enough recent Nina Power to have an informed opinion about her, but they are not disqualifying for me in the way that the thrice execrable Ahmari is.

It's something of a pity in that, at least hypothetically, Compact might have been kind of interesting to see the antiliberal left (although I'm not sure that's a good descriptor of Aponte - he's kind of sui generis among the relatively few Marxist Christians I have read) engaging with the antiliberal right* and _occasionally_ taking time out from their shared hatred of the moderate liberal establishment to work out their other shared positive values and their core disagreements.

*both of which groups have plenty of internal schisms.

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A friend of mine who has a PhD in physics and has extensive practical experience is trying to bootstrap a project to get cheap solar power into parts of Malawi that are currently off the grid. He has gotten manufacturing and distribution costs to the point where locals can afford them, but could grow much faster with an infusion of capital.

https://www.solar4africa.org/newsletters/july-9-2022-friends-and-family-letter

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/361480695_Refining_a_business_model_for_rapidly_scaling-up_efficient_empowering_and_affordable_off-grid_solar-electric_cooking_for_all_of_rural_Malawi

How can I contact some of the EA people and see if they might be interested in his project? This project increases food production, reduces malnutrition and has numerous other benefits, all while reducing GHG emissions.

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