Being invested at an identity level is a human trait, not a Republican or MAGA one. It’s not “lately”, it’s all of human history.

We all readily recognize the blind spots in people we consider part of an out-group. Becoming more aware of the blind spots of people we consider fellow in-group members, and especially in ourselves, is more difficult, but I believe important to strive for. Having blind spots is natural. Recognizing them and trying to compensate for them in our thinking can benefit decision-making.

In the case of “are the tattoos on this guy’s fingers MS13-related”, there is way more substantive discussion to be had than demanding the guy’s girlfriend dig up and share publicly a years-old couple’s picture without the emoji. Some quotes below if they are of interest, and the article has a picture with the full fingers and their tattoos fully visible in case that really was what you were going for. https://www.cnn.com/2025/05/01/politics/abrego-garcias-tattoos-explainer

“I see a bunch of symbols that could be interpreted any number of ways,” Jorja Leap, a University of California, Los Angeles professor who has served as an expert gang witness in court, told CNN.

…“These are definitely NOT MS-13 tattoos,” Thomas Ward, a University of Southern California professor who spent years embedded with MS-13 researching the gang, and is the author of an ethnography that studies MS-13, said in an email.

…While some gangs will opt for more low-profile or ambiguous means of identifying members to evade detection from law enforcement or rival gang members, MS-13 tattoos, according to Leap, aren’t exactly subtle. They are used to market the gang’s brutality.

“MS-13 members have tattoos that say ‘MS-13,’” Leap said. “They’re not head-scratchers; they’re billboards. There’s no ambiguity.”

Birthers claimed for years that seeing Obama’s long form birth certificate would alleviate their citizenship concerns. Spoiler: it didn’t, they moved the goal posts.

Once people are identity-level invested in something being true - in this case that deportations are about public safety and not racism, because no way could they or people they respect be racist - sinking time into producing evidence for them is futile. It is no longer about facts, it’s about identity. Sometimes people break out of these self-imposed mental prisons if a main trusted person who helped lead them there loses their trust for an unrelated reason (not one that had become identity-latched). Sometimes being welcomed into a different community that fulfills those identity needs will let them see their previously identity-latched falsehoods as false. But evidence is always futile.

Neat to see a 6-7 solar mass black hole spotted. First one without a companion star to give it away! As we get better at finding black holes of this size, will be interesting to see if they end up explaining part of the “dark matter” problem.

As long as it’s mutually wanted. One of the women interviewed for the article started building her career later in the marriage, and cites her husband’s anger at her increasing independence as a major factor in their divorce.

Apparently she started out saying AI, then switched to A1 mid-statement. Might have been corrected privately before, but it only partially took.

Sundown towns… were all-white municipalities or neighborhoods in the United States… The term came into use because of signs that directed “colored people” to leave town by sundown.

The towns of Minden and Gardnerville in Nevada had an ordinance from 1917 to 1974 that required Native Americans to leave the towns by 6:30 p.m. each day. A whistle, later a siren, was sounded at 6 p.m. daily, alerting Native Americans to leave by sundown. In 2021, the state of Nevada passed a law prohibiting the appropriation of Native American imagery by the mascots of schools, and the sounding of sirens that were once associated with sundown ordinances. Despite this law, Minden continued to play its siren for two more years, claiming that it was a nightly tribute to first responders.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sundown_town

Elsewhere in the thread, someone said non-primate mammals (like mice) are dichromic (can’t see orange), but birds are quadchromic (see even more colors than trichromics like primates). Is your cat only a good mouse-hunter, and comparatively a bad bird-hunter?

Apparently pink works as well, if a hunter wants a second color vest

I guess people eating a basket of shrimp are balanced out by people sharing one cow with several hundred others.

Well, changing it dramatically. It’s going to stay within historical ranges where ocean life flourished, but without any exoskeleton-heavy animals like corals in the mix.

You can’t logic someone out of a place they didn’t logic themselves into, but they got to that place for reasons, just not logical ones. If you can figure out the underlying drivers for their position, it’s possible (although still really difficult) to address those underlying needs in a way that enables the person to loosen up on the unreasonable position.

Not sure that approach can get traction over the internet, though. Discussions on social media are more for the lurkers than for any chance of the posters changing each other’s minds.

The lines get really blurry.

Manufacturers pay grocery stores shelving fees, both to be stocked in that store at all and for specific locations (eye level shelving is prime real estate). That the toothpaste is on the shelf there at all for you to see it and decide to try it… is basically due to a paid advertisement.

Bakeries often put signs about openings or events at the end of the block. Do you think that should be banned, too? What about a billboard in their own parking lot?

There is some awareness effect, too. If I like burgers and see a listing for a new burger place in my neighborhood, learning about a potential new place I’d like to include in my going-out rotation feels like a win. If I need a home repair and see a neighbor with a yard sign for a local contractor, that’s helpful in compiling a list of potential companies to check out.

Military conquest. That line of thinking was a big driver for Germany and Japan in WWII. Scary to see that path opening as a possible future.

Not sure about now, but there was a time period where he owned no properties and lived in the houses of friends. Staying in someone’s fourth home is not a hardship, but technically he didn’t have a home.

Wikipedia says /ˈkwɒkə/ which I think was your original pronunciation.

The allies fought together in WWII because the axis attacked them. The genocide not only had nothing to do with it, war decisions were explicitly made to leave intact the concentration camp system (for example not bombing railroads that took people to the camps) because any whiff of supporting Jews would have damaged political support for the war. The people in the camps were only freed at the very end of the war.

The allies were the same countries that crippled Germany’s economy after WWI, leaving its society vulnerable to the demagogery of Hitler. I don’t believe they can be black-and-white described as “the good guys”.

Maybe more with less is possible, but we are currently doing less variety of skill with way, way more energy. From https://www.humanbrainproject.eu/en/follow-hbp/news/2023/09/04/learning-brain-make-ai-more-energy-efficient/

It is estimated that a human brain uses roughly 20 Watts to work – that is equivalent to the energy consumption of your computer monitor alone, in sleep mode. On this shoe-string budget, 80–100 billion neurons are capable of performing trillions of operations that would require the power of a small hydroelectric plant if they were done artificially.

…since gross vacancy rate is a measure of all vacant properties — including vacation properties — states with several popular tourist destinations, like Florida and Hawaii, will always register slightly higher rates. The Census Bureau notes that the largest category of vacant housing in the United States is classified as “seasonal, recreational, or occasional use.” In over one-fifth of US counties, these seasonal units made up at least 50% of the vacant housing stock.

Is the movement now to ban vacation homes?

Also note that California, with the worst housing crisis, has one of the lowest vacancy rates, while Maine, Alaska, and Hawaii have among the highest rates. There’s not a housing shortage on average, there’s a housing shortage in the places people want to live - which largely means the places where they can get jobs.

I believe it’s likes (the heart icon) to replies (the chat bubble icon). Usually there are way, way more likes than replies: the ubisoft comment in the screenshot has 9,200/408 which is about 23. The middle comment has 2,400/318 which is about 8. Guessing that’s unusually low.