Shoes and ships and sealing wax, cabbages and kings
Joined March 2022
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Bayesian Filter retweeted
An obese idiot proudly saving their local abandoned parking lot from being turned into a local money-printing machine is a perfect metaphor for what the country did last Tuesday.
Bayesian Filter retweeted
When I started following social science stats in 1972, the rank order on most measures was:
1. Orientals
2. Caucasians
3. Chicanos
4. blacks
Now, it's totally different:
1. Asians
2. whites
3. Hispanics
4. Blacks
The Asian-white-Hispanic-black rank order for socially desirable outcomes (and the inverse rank order for socially undesirable outcomes) is the norm in the US, including for:
Examples of socially desirable outcomes in which this rank order prevails:
— IQ and standardized test performance
— Average college GPA
— Percentage degrees earned in the most cognitively-demanding STEM fields
— Law and medical school graduation rates
— Household income
— Household wealth
Below are socially undesirable outcomes in a rank order the reverse of above:
— Violent crime rates
— Most property crime rates
— School disciplinary rates
— Antisocial behavior percentage
— Divorce rates
— Out-of-wedlock birth rates
— Single-parent household rates
— Obesity rates
— Teenage pregnancy rates
— Average age of first sexual intercourse
Performance in the following areas contains an occasional or slight divergence from typical ranking-order, but never involves Hispanics or blacks rising to the top two spots or Asians and whites falling to the bottom two spots:
— Law and medical board professional licensing rates (Asians and whites switch places occasionally)
— Personal (not household) income (very slight lead of blacks over Hispanics explained by fact that 1/3 of Hispanics are foreign-born and about 1/5 have incomplete command of English language)
— Welfare recipients (Asian percentage is often higher than whites, tied to higher percentage of immigrants)
— Scientific innovation and achievement (Whites lead Asians, but gap may be closing)
— Mortgage foreclosure rates (blacks and Hispanics switch third and fourth position occasionally, but are always in the bottom two)
— Bachelor's degree percentage (blacks have higher percentage than Hispanics
Finally, these are major outcomes in which Hispanics or blacks outperform whites or Asians:
— Longevity (Hispanic lead over whites is called the “Hispanic Health Paradox”)
— Prominence and influence of musical artists (blacks outperform all other groups on a per capita basis, and Asians perform worst)
— Athletic achievement in the two most popular American sports (blacks outperform all other groups, and Asians perform worst)
Bayesian Filter retweeted
This is why every society since the beginning of time has told you 'get married and have children' btw.
Every single thing society encouraged you to have, that you view as 'oppressive', was because your ancestors figured out it was the way to avoid misery.
Bayesian Filter retweeted
>Be Me
>Worried I'm becoming meaner online
>Decide to try and be nicer
>Go online
>"They've destroyed the bones of Saint Nick"
Bayesian Filter retweeted
Believing that the poor are wholesome chungus victims of society who we need to coddle is a bourgeois liberal luxury belief. No one hates the poor more than other poor people, especially the upwardly mobile former poor. They know exactly why poor people are the way they are
Bayesian Filter retweeted
seeing some commentary that "girls didn't like Gary Paulsen's Hatchet." I'll have you know that in 5th grade, me and another girl built a 24x36" perfect 3D topographic model of his crash site out of plywood for a class project. we filled the lake in with acrylic and everything
Bayesian Filter retweeted
Only the madman can witness the divine symphony and conclude there is no composer. such folly can only spring from hearts that refuse to bow before the majesty of heaven
Bayesian Filter retweeted
Hearing the contempt adult women have for 3rd-grade boys simply because they enjoyed an award-winning children's book really makes you wonder what the male youth of this era are actually going through in school and how their futures are being altered because of that treatment.
Bayesian Filter retweeted
Vice President Vance is mistaken. The reason we Republicans lost yesterday is not just the war in Iran. Yes, the resulting higher fuel prices contributed to the inflation that infuriated Americans who were promised lower prices by this administration. But the war is not the only cause. Arbitrary and capricious tariffs directly raised costs for all American consumers. Lower income Americans can least afford them. Many voted for Democrats yesterday.
Tariffs should be a central part, but only part, of the “honest conversation” VP Vance wants Republicans to have about the future of our party. For instance, we all seem to oppose government-owned grocery stores. But are we ok with government ownership of semiconductors companies and rare earth miners? We oppose rent controls. But do we support price controls on medicines and credit cards?
The bigger question is does the Republican party now agree with the left that we need a large, powerful central government to run the economy, allocate capital and control prices? Or, do we believe that free men and women should be able to engage in commerce as they see fit and that a free enterprise system will create a higher standard of living and the greatest opportunities for the most people as it always has?
Let’s have an “honest conversation.”
One of the things the data analysts on our side obsessed over was "composition"—whether the electorate looked close enough to 2024 for Republicans to win. And despite polls that showed a Democrat blowout, the data kept on telling us the same story: in some states turnout was merely OK, in other states it was downright amazing, and in no state was it catastrophic. There was a genuine sense of optimism on our team: our people were showing up.
So, I asked the smartest data guy I know, does that mean we're going to shock the world? "No," he told me. "We might do better than the polls suggest. But the data is telling us that a lot of Trump/Vance 2024 voters are pissed and planning to vote for the other guys. Our voters are turning out, but they may not vote for us."
Well, that looks prophetic now. Our voters did show up. In Florida, for example, the electorate was 9 points more Republican than Democrat, just a couple points worse than 2024. Undoubtedly there were places we could have done better on turnout. But the main problem is not turnout. The main problem is that many people who voted for Trump/Vance in 2024 voted for Democrats in 2026.
There will be a lot of infighting and arguing over what happened and why that is. One of the pollsters I really respect told me that our economic messaging wasn’t sharp enough down the stretch. I’m sure that’s true.
But the real reason we lost is obvious to almost everyone.
Another pollster—one of the smartest people I know in politics, told me yesterday we’d lose the generic ballot by 13 points. I felt negative going into Tuesday, but even I was shocked by this. In his polling, he saw that a lot of Trump 2024 voters were angry and planning to vote for Democrats. He asked those voters who had abandoned us what would cause them to come back on our team. The top four answers, accounting for nearly all of the responses were:
1) End the war
2) Focus on cost of living/inflation
3) Put America First
4) Change our relationship to Israel
Our voters showed up. And the above four reasons are why many of them voted for Democrats. This is according to a pollster who nailed the results. While many spent Monday attacking Rachel Campos Duffy for calling for a diplomatic resolution to the conflict, it turns out her political advice was sound. (She’s also a great person.)
In the next few months, there's going to be a lot of gaslighting. Expect to hear any number of establishment politicians say the solution to our woes is amnesty. I'm open to the idea that we should change enforcement—by focusing more on businesses that hire illegal labor, for instance. But anyone pushing amnesty is lying to you.
The reason we lost is the war. The president himself said so last night.
If you'd like to argue it was worth it, that losing the Senate for the next 6 years was worth it, then do so. Argue it was a worthwhile cost to pay. Agree or disagree, that's at least honest.
But everyone knows why we lost. And any honest conversation about where we go from here must start there.
I remain hopeful about our country. To the people who are pissed off and want to say, “I told you so”: you’re right, you did tell us so. Take that energy into electing Republicans who share your worldview. To the people who are just pissed at the results, you should be. Let’s take that anger and get back to the work of saving our country.
Bayesian Filter retweeted
It was not, in fact, just about Iran.
Bayesian Filter retweeted
the iran war was january through march 2026. this all started april 2025 with liberation day.
you cannot run on fixing the economy and then ignoring price increases from tariff policy.
Bayesian Filter retweeted
The silver lining of this enormous electoral shift is that parents are going to now pull their daughters out of sports out of fear of being hurt or losing by a biological male and putting them back into homemaking and the kitchen where they belong.
Bayesian Filter retweeted
I asked 50 Japanese people, ages 9 to 91, one question.
"What do you admire most about Americans?"
Here are the top answers.
10. "They clap when the plane lands." (Office worker, 34)
9. "They say 'I love you' every time they hang up the phone. Even men. Even to other men." (Taxi driver, 61)
8. "A stranger told me she liked my shoes. Then she just walked away. She didn't want anything." (High school girl, 16)
7. "They thank the bus driver when they get off." (Bus driver, 55. He got emotional saying this.)
6. "They tell you their whole life story in the grocery line. I know about one man's divorce, his boat, and his knee surgery. We knew each other for four minutes." (My mother, 64)
5. "They stand for the anthem at a children's baseball game." (Little League coach, 47)
4. "When they lose, they shake hands and say 'good game.' And they mean it." (Sota, 12)
3. "They fly the flag on a regular Tuesday. No holiday. Just because." (Nurse, 28)
2. "They help a stranger push a car out of the snow, then leave without saying their name." (My cousin's husband, 52, who got stuck in Colorado once)
And the number one answer came from the oldest person I asked. My grandfather. He's 91.
He thought about it for a long time.
Then he said:
"They still believe tomorrow will be better than today."
I asked him what he meant.
"In 1946, we had nothing," he said. "The American soldiers I met were young and far from home. But they acted like the future was coming, and it was going to be good. After a while, we started to believe them."
I asked him if he thought Americans still believe that.
He nodded slowly.
"Tell them," he said, "not to stop."
Bayesian Filter retweeted
All the other 1st world countries belatedly realizing that we hoovered up their best talent over the last 25 years.
Bayesian Filter retweeted
There are basically two competing visions of the Catholic Church:
1. The Bride of Christ, fair as the moon and clear as the sun, beautiful and fearsome, like an army arrayed for war.
and
2. The UN with altar girls.
These two visions clash on most issues.
