A long, fascinating review of a book on what was perhaps the most horrible “civilization” in history.
This thought experiment has stuck with me ever since I read it. I think of it whenever I encounter a system that everybody hates but everybody is powerless to change, or some other stuck equilbrium or multipolar trap. When I first read it, the society he described sounded contrived and outlandish, but later I was to learn from my dear wife that the real world is far more outlandish than that thought experiment. The thing is that each of the societies chronicled in that book Jane reviewed is very small, very primitive, and very dysfunctional. What is so disturbing about the Mexica is that they were large, sophisticated, and oh-so-terribly functional. The streets of Tenochtitlan, as my elementary school textbooks told me, were wider and more beautiful than those of Paris or Seville. Their art, music, and poetry were sublime, their theology was subtle, and their intellectual life was vibrant. The Mexica would seem horrifying to us if they were barbarians. But I think they should be more horrifying precisely because they were not.
I knew they were awful, but hadn’t realized the extent of their cruelty. And the comparison with the Holocaust seems apt, except this was not just against a few disfavored groups, but all of society. It’s not clear whether that’s better, or worse.
After the Starship $300/kg price floor nonsense made the rounds, the ones who shared the studies started saying there isn't a better model out there to look at. I'd be willing to bet whatever @mach33 has put out is way better, but I've always run my own numbers on this stuff…
I don’t understand, though, how you get two flights per pad per day into SSO, at least not if you want the SSO on the terminator, which is where everyone claims to want to be, for continuous sunlight.
Ask communists to explicitly describe what communism would be like. The answers are hilarious.
> Everyone gets a modern urban apartment in a city, no cars > You don't have to work > Things are just produced so everyone has stuff somehow > People work because of a 'sense of… pic.twitter.com/KzG2nT0c8k
It looks like it was legitimate. People don’t understand that the only clock that counts is the one the officials, keep, not the one on the scoreboard or that NBC shows. But it gives people another reason to hate Michigan’s football program. Seriously, what did people expect Michigan to do with that gift, take a knee? No program would do that.
They didn’t deserve to win that game, the way the offense played, or, rather, didn’t play, but a win is a win. They’ll pay for it with a drop in the polls, if not becoming unranked entirely. And I’d say that Western Michigan should now be ranked. If the Wolverines can’t figure out how to score this coming week, it will be a bloodbath when Oklahoma comes to town next Saturday.