An analyst says that it’s a virtually infinite source of oil.
There will be no peak oil, just peak oil demand. https://t.co/wmEDGeboJE
— Rand Simberg (@Rand_Simberg) August 25, 2017
And it’s bad news for bad people around the world.
[Update a few minutes later]
Mexico’s largest shale field is now open for business. In theory, this should help the economy down there as well, and perhaps relieve the pressure to emigrate. But the place is still pretty corrupt.
My space take:
Distracted NASA pic.twitter.com/lI6vp6ctIw
— Rand Simberg (@Rand_Simberg) August 25, 2017
This account of life there reads like something from the Soviet Union:
This is daft, certainly. Even funny, in a macabre way. But it also raises a serious point: the university experience in America is now not one that will adequately prepare students for real life. In real-life democracy, people disagree — and normally they don’t die or suffer emotional injury because of it. In normal life, there’s no reason not to like someone with whom you disagree politically. On campus, opinions are often ontology: you are what you think. But this is dangerous logic: if I hate what you think, I must hate what you are.
Who is going to want to hire these people?
[Update a few minutes later]
“American higher ed is rapidly becoming a worldwide joke. What if the high-dollar foreign students stop coming?”
[Update a couple minutes later]
This seems related: Video shows that Millennials support socialism even if it results in starvation.
Trump has no strategy there.
But to be fair, he has no strategy in general. He’s more of a tactics kind of guy, which sometimes work, and often don’t.
[Update a few minutes later]
“We Will Fight In Afghanistan Until Victorious, Or I Change My Mind, Get Distracted, Look Bad, Or Get Bored.”
Nick Gillespie says it doesn’t exist.
[Afternoon update]
The real reason that libertarians become “fascists.”
Why we should expect scientists to disagree. In general, science is much more complex than many people are comfortable with.
Is there a libertarian case for reining them in?
Some thoughts from Scott Adams on both Trump and Obama derangement:
The first rule of communicating is that people only hear what they think you intend to say. They don’t hear what you actually say. If you think someone is a racist, you will perceive their disavowals of racism as too late and too inadequate. If you think someone is not a racist, you might see their statements as politically incorrect and nothing worse. This phenomenon is most pronounced when strong emotions are involved. The topic of racism stirs our strongest emotions. So according to everything we know about brains, we should expect the highest level of hallucinations when racism is the topic. And that is exactly what we observe.
To be clear, racism itself is very real. The hallucination is limited to seeing it under every bed and behind every couch.
It applies to anti-anti-Trump derangement, too. I don’t think that Trump is a racist, but I’m sure a lot of people imagine I do because I think he’s so terrible in many other ways.
That he’ll almost certainly not take.
Why does Trump hate him so much? Because, as Virginia Postrel points out, Bezos is the anti-Trump:
Trump, who likes his staff to have the right “look,” would never cast a wiry guy who doesn’t hide his lack of hair as a big-time businessman. How can someone only five-foot-nine intimidate people into submission? In Trumpworld, intimidation, not value-creation, is what business is all about.
Bezos also has a sense of humor, often at his own expense, and a famously raucous laugh. Trump is humorless. He certainly doesn’t laugh at himself.
Bezos speaks clearly and has amazing message discipline even by the standards of successful CEOs — something that struck me when I first interviewed him way back in 1996. Trump: not so much.
Trump grew up rich, went to private schools, and had an undistinguished college career. Bezos grew up middle-class, went to public schools, and knocked the top out of Princeton, graduating with highest honors and Phi Beta Kappa in electrical engineering and computer science. One had a rich father; the other has brains.
Ouch.