I show them where their bootstraps are.

The last wallet I had was one of those super thin tarp material ones. I liked it because it could hold a good deal of stuff and be super thin.

However once I retired it I went full hobo. I actually use a hair tie thing (not sure what they are called). But it is esssentually a very thick rubber band. I double wrap it and it holds all my cards, dL and for the rare times I carry cash I can put it in there. As for homeless I just realized I could buy some $5 gift cards to restaurants and hand those out.

In honour of every dishonest ****head troll trying to get comedians who have ever tweeted not politically correct jokes fired, some related humor.



I think Disney will also pull an MSNBC and re hire Gunn just like Seder got rehired.

Some people have intellectual curiosity - they strive to learn more and experience new things. Most of these people end up being liberals, and virtually none end up being Trumpers.

Some people have no curiosity and just have firmly held beliefs - either what they were taught as kids or what suits them individually (ie, if they're rich they believe hard work pays off at a rate directly correlated to effort, if they're white they don't believe in white privilege, etc, etc). These people can land anywhere on the political spectrum, but a larger percentage of the right will hold these views than the left.

The problem from an electoral standpoint is that people in the first group are less likely to be politically indoctrinated and more likely to recognize that they could be wrong about some things. They also are more likely to make pragmatic voting choices or to withhold their vote on principle. As a result, they are likely to be less reliable voters.

Can we fix some of our more pressing problems first? We'll get to our WOAT showers in like 2023, okay?

on permanent repeat: shoot the Midwest into the ****ing sun

The mega-machines helping China link the world

BBC article about how China intends to create a network of land and sea-based transport links, connecting two thirds of the world's population.

The animated graphic showing SLJ900/32, "the Iron Monster", which lays bridges across valleys and canyons at a much faster rate than existing methods is particularly interesting.

A video clip of it in action:

This might be the world record for getting ratio’d

is only true when you define black people as „a small percentage of the population of one African country“.

I mean is pointing out differences in groups always problematic? I have no doubt that someone making a post like that is pretty racist but is it controversial to point out that black people tend to be better at basketball (and are generally more athletic) than other groups or people? I think the problems arise when you use this any further than an observation, like hiring an Asian person over a black person because one is “obviously” smarter or something like that. Idk maybe I’m not woke enough and definitely not defending that poster but I’m not like super shook about that post; as an example Inso0’s average post in this forum is way more racist Imo.

The observation can be problematic because it's hard to separating that sort of observation from implicitly asking the audience to infer that blackness has something to do with basketball. People are really bad at decoupling correlation from causation. Taking the long distance running example from earlier since it's easier, yes, certain people of particular East African heritage apparently have some set of genetic gifts that can make them among the best marathoners in the world. Melanin has absolutely nothing to do with it, and neither does the set of social and genetic factors that cause American society to label someone black. So, no, it's not that "black people tend to be better long distance runners," it's that "a large proportion of the best long distance runners happen to be black."

We should also be wary about concluding it's anything to do with genetics. I can remember when all the best middle distance runners in the world were english (and white).

and Celtic were once the best football team in Europe with every player (bar 1) born within 10 mile of the ground.

It's not controversial, it's just incorrect.

In making that statement you are assuming your conclusion. You assume that the human races reflect real biological borders. That there is biological distance between the groups. You assume that distance allows you to make meaningful predictions. All of which is not supported by any evidence.

There are some subsets of people who have a small genetic advantage at the elite level. Your error is attributing that advantage to race, when the racial border is far, far away.

Imagine you distribute genetic differences to small populations all over the world. Then you draw some lines on the globe to define races. Each of the small populations will fall inside one of your races, but none of your races will have any advantages because you didn't use genetics to draw the lines.

"Black people" don't have an advantage at long distance running. Some members of the Kalenjin tribe (in Kenya) do have a genetic advantage for marathons. Our delusions about race are so deeply ingrained that many of us can't separate these ideas. The Kenyans always win and we attribute it to black people. Wrongly. For black (not Kenyan) people, running long distances is the same pain as for everybody else.

The races we use don't have any proven biological value. It's self-serving lies that we think are science.

Supposedly Africans have greater genetic diversity which makes sense as humans have been there much longer.

Still, I think racial superiority at sports is almost 100% cultural. A white heavyweight champion or a good Black quarterback were thought impossible by many people when I was a kid. Jews were thought to be particularly good at basketball in the 30's.

It really depends on the sport. It's pretty easy to figure out why there aren't really any great African hockey players, but people of every nation run, and they value being fast. Also, team sports are going to be far more divorced from genetics than raw contests of speed or strength.

Good posts, ty

If the Kenyans are so much better at super long distance running you'd think that one of the also-rans who never wins a marathon would get an ultra-marathon record just for the glory, but like 1 out of 40 of the ultra-marathon record holders is a Black African.

I'm down with the concept that white people are ****ed up because we're all inbred.

Always? No. But in the context of a forum that’s chock-full of racist *******s, it’s obvjously stupid to just toss out these theories without carefully framing and qualifying them. Sorry,it’s 2018, people who are weirdly fascinated with racial aptitudes should get zero benefit of the doubt from anyone.

I kind of envision these types as the sort of person who would collect and examine their own fecal matter, for no apparent reason and without gloves, just so they could describe the process, texture, and consistency to a polite society that would rather they just shut the **** up.

Like, sure, there are geneticists who actually do scientific experiments to learn things in these areas. But some dip**** racist sports fan is not that person. There are also people who examine fecal matter for a living, but they have labs, sterile equipment, etc.

Might just be cultural that they don't compete but might also be that the advantage doesn't apply at longer distances. There doesn't appear to be an advantage to being male in ultramarathoning, plenty of the elite are female. The same is not true at marathon level. So clearly ultramarathons are not simply "more of the same".

Were people with light colored skin genetically disadvantaged in boxing from 1960-2000?

Being as there's no such genetic thing as race (obviously there is a genetic component to sex) it's pretty hard to even talk about scientific evidence for differences in races. It's also obviously dangerous socially.

Kenya is a mountainous country meaning that many of these runners likely grew up in areas with very thin air. So from birth, their lungs were developed to thrive in such an environment. My impression is that these mountainous, isolated areas are unlikely to rely upon cars or public transportation to go from place to place. So it's unsurprising to see people come out of those regions with extraordinary stamina.

I'm sure there's a genetic element to it as well but we can't discount environment. After all, you never see a professional boxer who took up the sport because he flunked the bar exam. It's always people who grew up in dangerous, impoverished places with broken homes and needed the sport to thrive. Boxing has taken over big in Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union and the top fighters in the large weight divisions are coming from there. Hell, last night we saw a Russian and Ukrainian fight for the undisputed Cruiserweight championship. I'd argue right now that three of the top five pound-for-pound fighters in the world today are from the former Soviet Union.

I guess what I'm getting at it is that people who say that one race has genetic advantages over another is a bad thing because it oversimplifies a very complex issue. I'm unsure if scientists have been capable of completely controlling for the effects of environment on the development of athletes or if they've even been able to define which genes make for greater athletes. I mean does anybody know exactly what goes into making a great athlete and to what degree each factor plays a role?

Even worse than oversimplifying science, science allowing for race comparisons empowers racists who can then use that logic to scientifically justify not just racism but in extreme cases outright genocide. Even if it's just sports, it leads to other people who often have malicious intent going, "Well if genetics can determine if one race is better than others at sports, then what about intelligence or criminality?"

So yeah a person like Cotton might only be talking about sports in those posts but we know what happens as you go down the slippery slope. Once you accept the premise that science can distinguish differences between races, you have given validity to scientific racism and nothing good can come from that.

Cotton wasn't just talking about sports. He was clearly trying to use chess and go as proxies for general intelligence as well, i.e. to imply that non-whites and non-asians are less intelligent.

Here as well the problem is mostly ignoring the role of culture and social institutions in determining which people pursue professional careers in those games, because it's not enough to have the raw natural ability (and neither chess nor go are probably great measures of general intelligence but leaving that aside) you also have to spend 10s of thousands of hours training to become elite.

The problem is black people arent good at basketball. The average black guy is overweight and can’t dribble or shoot. Just like the average white guy.

It’s a weird example because Asians arent that well represented at elite chess and white dudes are scrubs at go, so gl trying to find a theory of racial IQ which fits the evidence.