The “spandrel hypothesis” is the front runner explanation. Essentially we didn’t evolve to have chins but rather evolved other things that are helpful, and the chin is a byproduct of that other evolution. Not harmful so it didn’t get selected away, but not helpful.

This is why I don’t take family photos with a hat or flag that announces my political affiliation.

I think it’s clear he’s a fan of Apple and Tesla but he does make negative statements about them, the Cyber truck was not a positive review and he always criticized the fit and finish of Teslas. And he critiques Apple’s idiosyncracies like the proprietary charger and lack of calculator app on the iPad.

I guess my point is that he’s not a journalist he’s a reviewer, we are tuning in for his judgement, his opinion. If he personally likes the products from a certain company, that’s not a bias that impacts his capacity to do his job well.

Like movie reviewer giving Pixar a bunch of 10/10 reviews, and then criticizing Cars 2 as a mediocre cash grab. Maybe they are biased for Pixar, or maybe Pixar just puts out a lot of good movies. As long as you’re calling out the bad moves, that’s what we want from a reviewer.

The fair concern is when he gets exclusive access like this, I don’t necessarily care about the puff piece interview but you hope it doesn’t influence his future reviews.

The last time he was in the wider media discussion was because he negatively reviewed the Fisker Ocean and the Humane Pin and people were calling him a company killer.

The actual reason why is that everyone was expecting Hillary to win and she had vowed to “end private prisons.”

So everyone was calculating in a 90% or whatever chance Hillary wins, with some percentage chance she actually fulfilled her promise. Instead they got a 100% chance they would stay around for 4 years and probably get a tax cut. Pretty big adjustment is appropriate.

(Also old 2016 articles about Hillary are so quaint. They even mention Obama closing Guantanamo lmao)

Yeah the guy who was going to pass permanent corporate tax cuts and temporary individual tax cuts, funded by chaining individual tax brackets so taxes go up for individuals after 10 years, won. That’s great for corporate profits. And great for the 10% who own 90% of stocks.

It’s horrible tax policy and detrimental to the majority of Americans but it absolutely should make stocks increase.

I don’t think anyone would notice on the cloverloop.

The one example I’m familiar with is a name brand ice cream company that produces the store brand ice cream too…in that case the recipe is different, cheaper ingredients to cut costs to the bare minimum. But using the machines for a higher volume saves money.

I’m sure ‘same exact item’ does happen too but just ‘same manufacturer’ doesn’t mean exactly the same item.

Can’t believe Harriet Tubman got all that infrastructure up.

If you’re saying “you should not restrict ALL culture to rich people” then, we’re not. There is plenty of culture available for free on YouTube, or on broadcast TV channels, or FreeVee. And paying for one paid subscription doesn’t make you rich, $10/mo or whatever is an accessible price for a subset of digital media to a non-rich person. And those libraries are sufficiently large that you would not run out of material to watch even if you only had one service.

If you’re saying “everyone should be provided literally all digital content for free at all times” that is a pretty extreme position which does sort of break the economics of any content being produced. Digital content would have to be plastered in way more ads or be government subsidized or something to have the money to make more of it. That’s not a political position I’d be on board with.

If you just want the current system but with you being allowed to download the stuff you want to see on services you don’t pay for…again, there’s an argument for that, but let’s not pretend it’s some high minded one. It’s selfish. You probably have the money to pay for HBO Max for one month to watch the new Game of Thrones and the Barbie movie but you don’t want to pay money and it’s really easy not to.

That doesn’t track at all. I can’t afford a Lamborghini so the need arises for access to stolen Lamborghinis for cheap? It’s absolutely not a need, you can just go without or only access the free media that is available to you. In the car example, I can just buy an old Civic.

If it’s stealing bread to feed your family that is one thing, because it’s an actual need. If it’s getting stuff because you want the more expensive version instead of the version you can afford, there’s no need there.

The ethical argument is that there’s no one harmed because you can’t afford it anyway. It’s not that you need it like a starving man’s bread.

If there was no DEMAND it wouldn’t exist. It exists illegally specifically because it can’t be done legally at the price point. That doesn’t mean anyone needs it, all the content is presumably available elsewhere. It just costs money and people don’t want to pay money.

I don’t want to pay money either, I’m just not high minded about it.

I disagree with the implication that the Bible or even Jesus’ teachings as told by the New Testament, are left wing or right wing. It doesn’t map to modern politics at all because it’s ancient, their politics were just different, and also it’s not univocal, it’s hundreds of authors who all had different politics and different willingness to import their politics into their religious text.

Because of that, you can easily read it to confirm your biases, no matter what they are. Apostles went out as married pairs to spread the Gospel in early Christianity, that’s in the Bible, so women are equals and should be allowed to be priests? But also women should cover their heads and be silent in church, that’s in the Bible too. So who should we listen to? There’s no “right” answer except whichever confirms your biases.

Even if you are trying to read it historically, I’d argue the historical Jesus (from the Q source sayings and implications from what different authors added or subtracted from Mark) was remarkably egalitarian for the time but he was doing it from the perspective of an apocalyptic preacher, eg he said his followers should give up all their money to the poor, but it was because the world was going to end during the current generation… which was 2000 years ago. So does that even apply as a life lesson in the modern day if the world isn’t ending?

So the religious right may well have read the Bible, and come to a different conclusion than you, and they’re not necessarily wrong, and neither are you.

I feel like weight class doesn’t do it. Women have higher body fat %. Is a welterweight woman athletically equivalent to a welterweight man? I don’t think so.

Fortunately and unfortunately, there have been so many changes and breakthroughs on solar power over the last 50 years that this doesn’t really tell us much about current technology.

It is admittedly pretty weird that a whole group of species developed a baby-juice organ that is only used by the females to feed only the young babies.

I’d like to rent your home for a weekend, I’ve always wanted to try living under a rock.

Yeah that would suck. But it’s still just a true statement. If Kyle Rittenhouse hates America he can leave.

Even if Native Americans do like America they can leave.

Anyone can leave for any reason.

It’s just a dumb…I don’t know I guess it’s not actually a threat. Dumb phrase.

Anyone can leave if they hate America.

Hawking gets a Covid sample from a time traveler in 2009 and immediately travels to the Wuhan lab to study it and look for a cure, he successfully delays the pandemic and he almost gets to a cure but a bad guy time traveler comes to kill him in 2018 and without the watchful eye of Stephen Hawking, the world falls to chaos.

I’d watch that movie.