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[hector13]

Yeah, bwoi; trade war intensifies, business leaders (alright, one interviewed business leader) don’t know why.

[SalmonGod]

Oh Oh Oh... can I join in the shitting on Neil Degrasse Tyson?

This quote needs to die forever.  I have a couple friends that follow pop science streams on Facebook (IFLScience being the main offender), and I swear I see this thing make the rounds at least once a month.  It's obnoxious.  He seemed like an alright guy when his celebrity status really started to take off.  But pretty soon, this became the primary thing I associate him with.  He's like the spiritual sponsor to every psuedo-intellectual circle jerk on the internet that continually widens the cultural divide.

I try to make time to bitch at people for it almost every time I see it.  Because the attitude it displays is shamelessly self-congratulatory, without substantiating itself at all.  An anti-intellectual religious fanatic could say exactly the same words with "the bible" instead of science, and believe it with the same manner of conviction.  It does nothing to differentiate itself from what it criticizes.  Showing this quote around unironically with no further context just publicly exemplifies the lazy, self-satisfied righteousness that gets the left accused of forgetting how to engage sincere dialogue with those they disagree with.  When I point this out, I get a whole bunch of clueless responses to the effect of "What's the problem.  It's just a statement of fact.  If this offends anybody, they should bother to educate themselves as to how the scientific method works."  And I'm like "K, thanks.  When science denial pushes mass extinctions to the point that I'm scavenging for insects, I'll remember that at least your self-esteem got a good boost out of circle-jerking to the expense of all those hopeless illiterate peasants."

To be fair, I know that the full quote isn't as bad.  But that doesn't matter so much, when this is ultimately the legacy he's cultivated.




And on a lighter note, I love this comic.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Edit:

Also, I'm sick of the trade war.  It's greatly increasing the difficulty of my work.  I spent 3 hours yesterday troubleshooting technical issues for just one entry to Customs, associated with the new 25% duty rate on a bunch of products from China.

[smjjames]

Yeah, bwoi; trade war intensifies, business leaders (alright, one interviewed business leader) don’t know why.

“They can’t figure out what the endgame is”, pfft, it’s been staring you in the face since Trump started his Presidential run. He wants to make China break under pressure and stop its unfair practices.

[Frumple]

... man, if you actually believe that last bit, you make me reconsider the viability of selling bridges. Trump doesn't give a shit about unfair practices, save the extent he can get away with them.

[Maximum Spin]

... man, if you actually believe that last bit, you make me reconsider the viability of selling bridges. Trump doesn't give a shit about unfair practices, save the extent he can get away with them.

Oh, that's not true at all. Trump hates unfair practices when people are doing them to him.

[MrRoboto75]

Neil "The Grass" Tyson

[Trekkin]

Oh Oh Oh... can I join in the shitting on Neil Degrasse Tyson?

That sort of attitude ("this should never see the light of day so let me show and tell you all about it") is part of why he took the trajectory he did, though. Derision is more or less our primary means of self-expression now, so anything he says that sounds smug and snappy and anti-those-dumb-other-people gets amplified like crazy and then re-amplified when people come rushing in to point out how wrong the first group are for being smug. That's not to say he didn't roll with it rather too readily, but if we're going to claim Sagan was better for not talking down to people, it's probably worth asking how much talking down Tyson has done for him.

That actually plays into something I've been trying to push pedagogically for a while: part of the reason there's this kind of cultural divide is that we tend to measure the success of our outreach efforts in terms of how many new STEM graduates or enrollees or other dedicated people we get, which I think incentivizes the wrong behavior if we want everyone to be more scientifically literate/appreciative of science generally -- not least because not everyone who likes science can or should become a PhD scientist like they usually push, if only because it's a small, mostly mediocre job market. I can't imagine our current "get 'em young and never let go" attitude endears us to many parents, either.

Of course, that does raise the question of what measurable markers positively correlate with good science-related social trends, but that's definitely a problem we have the informatic capacity to solve.

[misko27]

Oh those naughty greeks.

Although the Bulgars probably had it coming.

Yeah, bwoi; trade war intensifies, business leaders (alright, one interviewed business leader) don’t know why.

“They can’t figure out what the endgame is”, pfft, it’s been staring you in the face since Trump started his Presidential run. He wants to make China break under pressure and stop its unfair practices.

that's an objective, not an endgame. Like saying you want to put the enemy into check, without explaining how you intend to get into the situation where that will happen.

Expecting China to simply surrender is as laughable as expecting anyone to surreder. Mexico has been under pressure, they just elected their first leftist since the 1930s, and on a wave of anti-trump sentiment. People in other countries are just as willing to elect angry people who will fight a tradewar to the bitter, self-destructive end as the United States was, which is why acting like a child and expecting others to act like adults is counter-productive to begin with, even if it works in some circumstances with some parties. On the international sphere, if someone won't stand up to bullying, they'll be replaced with someone who will.

[EnigmaticHat]

I think we've reached and passed the endgame: convincing his base that he's doing something.  That was their main complaint at the end of 2017, that almost none of his promises were fulfilled.

And I think Trump didn't want a trade war so much as restructuring our economy as protectionist.  This would line up with the location of his base, the midwest and the south, who want the manufacturing jobs to come back.  I'm not sure Trump expected a trade war or more accurately, he didn't expect a trade war from anyone other than China.  Remember how furious he was at Canada?

So from a certain perspective Trump has already reached his goal, the trade war is a side effect to be endured.

[MrRoboto75]

I don't think the manufacturing jobs are ever coming back.  If the Chinese won't be doing them, robots will.

[Sheb]

Well, and of course it only works if the other countries don't retaliate, which they will do.

I think part of the issue is that Trump is used to fucking people working on his building projects. It worked for him, but you can't replicate that in world trade. You can't try to rip your trade partners and then go and find another schmuck to trade with.

[Egan_BW]

Hmm. Maybe you can.

Hense his interest in a space force. He needs more trading partners.

[McTraveller]

Funny thing about manufacturing jobs in the US: by count, they've been about flat since 2008. The big decline appears to have been between 2000 and 2008.  Interestingly, that was before the economic turn in 2008.

What's really silly is that absolute number of jobs is kind of meaningless anyway - what's most important for day-to-day living is probably closer to the quality of life metrics, even as flawed as they are.

[Frumple]

What's really silly is that absolute number of jobs is kind of meaningless anyway - what's most important for day-to-day living is probably closer to the quality of life metrics, even as flawed as they are.

While true, you can't even get the GOP emphatically behind workfare projects at this point, shit as they may be, much less anything less problematic that could increase quality of life metrics. Bit less than half-ish the political spectrum is intent enough on destroying the country's infrastructure and government's ability to help people that jobs are about all that's left at the moment.

I don't think the manufacturing jobs are ever coming back.  If the Chinese won't be doing them, robots will.

Oh, some steel/whatever stuff seems to have been bumping up a bit.

It's just at the cost of dozens/hundreds/thousands of other american jobs for each one that has (on top of all that good will and shit vis a vis increasingly tentative allies and trade partners), and no guarantee for any particular region regardless. It's basically been about the stupidest and most self-destructive way to go about it you could think of that doesn't involve detonating nukes.

Manufacturing as a core economic activity that indefinitely supports increasing amounts of people on a high school or less diploma is permafucked, though, yeah. That's gone and it ain't coming back. It'd basically take nationalizing and subsidizing the manufacturing industry, 'cause that'd be the only way you're going to get companies to both use the methodology that could use that sort of background in appropriate numbers and pay them a living wage without said company getting outcompeted faster than you could blink.

... and if you're going to do that, you might as well just tax the companies a bit more and pay for better education/welfare/investment-in-other-markets/whatever. Be better for everyone involved, probably.

[Hanslanda]

But taxing them sounds... Socialist. We can't have that commie shit, except for in the parts of the Bible we quietly flip past real quick.