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956 Worldwide

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Everything posted by 956 Worldwide

  1. More Viper at 50. I had a die-cast model of the F-16 as a kid, a nice one that was in 1:144 scale. It was easily my favorite, the X-Wing of 4th Gen fighters. It’s become such a formidable machine but I still love the super clean lines and bubble canopy of the F-16A/B without the conformal tanks.
  2. I don’t like betting on what humans should do in a kind world, I like focusing on policy ideas that account for what humans will do. I accept as a given that: 1. Migration will happen, as it always has, as a response to scarcity and demographic shifts 2. Migration will prompt deep ambivalence and nervousness in the destination regions. I don’t think you can preach, moralize, or wish your way out of those semi-contradictions as long as we are people; migration shifts are one of the great engines of history and civilizational change. Macro, it usually sorts out but it can be tough to be in the micro moment. We need to be searching for ways to manage this process in a way that’s humane and beneficial, taking into account the very real and unavoidable tensions and feelings on both sides of the push/pull. I am not confident that America 2000s is going to do that.
  3. Yep. Which goes back to the Enshittening model. I used to visit the si.com site more frequently than espn.com but the site just got shittier and shittier, there was no reason to go. No writing and “content” worse than niche competitors focused on CFB (my main interest). I think the question of whether SI Swimsuit made the right move by moving away from eye candy to empowerment will be measured in whether that brand stays alive. I think the Swimsuit brand will stay.
  4. Bobby Morrow was a sprinter for Abilene Christian. And multiple gold medalist/world record holder. And from the 956.
  5. No Teslas have spares. So nothing new there, but it is of course something that is a lot different when you are touting your apocalypse ready off-road “truck.” But look, these are going to be driven by crypto-bros who might venture down a dirt road one time.
  6. It’s far more accurate to say that Bibi feels like he must demonstrate his independence from Washington than that he is emboldened to do so. Bibi is a populist who answers first to his constituency; it is a common error to overstate American influence either by support or the threat of withdrawing it.
  7. Some cracks in the support for Hamas in Gaza— fewer Gazans approve of the October 7 attack than West Bank Palestinians.
  8. Steadfast Defender is huge and it’s going on at the same time as Russian presidential elections. It’s going to be a huge target of disinformation and framing as NATO being aggressive to Russia.
  9. I like to imagine there’s a monkeys paw crossover where these guys get virgins and red-pill incels get a bunch of sex in a male dominated society.
  10. For song, if you are if the “geriatric millennial/late X generation” and not Black then your high school graduation song was either this: Or this (shitkicker version) No exceptions.
  11. It’s just Elon being Elon. Traditional car companies spent decades developing amazing clear coat and paint tech that prevents their cars from rusting through or getting corroded by bug splats. Gotta disrupt that OldThink!
  12. Congrats on your super-tough, rough and ready new stainless steel truck. Make sure to wipe up bird poop and bugs immediately or else it will corrode.
  13. I’d place a small sum that the SI Swimsuit brand will be the only piece that remains functioning so we may want to revisit this. SI Swimsuit was a pot sweetener for dads and teenagers who subscribed, a bit of socially acceptable skin delivered by mail without stigma. Or a newsstand impulse purchase that was designed to get you to fill out the card. SI died because magazines died, not because Swimsuit went woke. They had to shift their focus to remain relevant and it worked, dads and teenagers were not gonna keep a once a year soft skin mag afloat. But they have succeeded in getting people to talk about them and buy the issue.
  14. Daniela Pestova in 1995 changed my entire life. Got me on a Slavic women kick that I never shook….six years in Czech and Slovakia……
  15. Robert Fico was never going to cut off sales, but his bullet remark was about donations. He remains an utter piece of dick who is in the pocket of local corrupt actors and who will instinctively side with Russia. There is no place for celebration, that country is now a black hole in Europe.
  16. We haven’t faced a problem set like this impending population inverted pyramid. It poses some interesting math problems for the people who will be old and at the top and needing the money and goodwill of the young to pay pensions and medical and keep the infrastructure going. It will impact migrant flows for good and ill, in developing and developed world. My personal thought is that on the macro-level you are correct and in the long run it will be good for the planet and species to have a more sustainable population. But that will be cold comfort for the people living through the adjustment as both youngs and olds. Demographers and historians can point to lots of salutary effects of the Black Death for generations after it hit Europe. But you wouldn’t have wanted to live through it. This adjustment will be less dramatic but similarly disorienting for the people in the middle.
  17. I have feels on this as a subscriber in high school and junior high (well, mom and dad gave it to me), about 1993-2000. SI was not just sports news, it was good journalism and writing. I have plenty of long form pieces that I can remember, that stick with me even now, 15 years (oops. 25 years) later. I don’t know where you can get that quality of sports journalism now, maybe The Athletic? It went to shit along with everything else when we switched to “content” and not “writing.” I assume the Swimsuit brand is still valuable to keep going somehow although it became this self-licking ice cream cone of celebrating the swimsuit issue itself and how groundbreaking/impressive/progressive/inclusive SI swimsuit was. At its peak SI swimsuit was SO much better than internet porn, it was literally the most famously hot women in the world in next to nothing. I guess the one-name supermodel is also dead along with SI; I couldn’t tell you who are the supermodels now like every human could back in SI heyday (Rachel, Elle, Heidi, Tyra, Claudia, Kathy, Cheryl, etc). Believe me, a stray nipple peeking through a fishnet top in SI was MUCH more exciting than one on the silicone wonders you found in 1994 Playboy.
  18. Countries become high income in large part because the emancipate women to work outside of the home and have reproductive control; this will always lead to lower birth rates because women prefer not to always be pregnant. High income citizens also prefer to invest heavily in fewer children.
  19. GTFO out of here with this incredibly stupid shit.
  20. Former director of the All-Domain Anomaly Resolution Office (AARO) comes in hot on this topic. https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/heres-what-i-learned-as-the-u-s-governments-ufo-hunter/ TL;DR, “whistleblowers” refuse to provide evidence upon invitation, the media and congressional furor is circular reporting, Harry Reid is kooky.
  21. The shift from “this company exists to make money by (selling airplanes, computers, etc)” to “this company exists to make money” is seemingly subtle but toxic and now basically everything is about being a credit card issuer.
  22. Bad news, although on this one— airframe manufacturers don’t make engines. But people will just see Boeing 747.
  23. Yeah, that’s one I wonder about too. I fully support legalization/decriminalization. But I think we need a pretty big stigmatization campaign like we did with cigarettes and public drunkenness. Getting baked all the time in public is not conducive to social cohesion and probably will have a lot of negative effects on the individual level. You can responsibly partake in alcohol and cigarettes while still pushing for some social restraint around their use in public and we should be doing that with weed, too.
  24. It is going to be “interesting” to see the long term effects of vaping and the societal shift on weed smoking (formerly done socially/in private) becoming a thing people do basically all the time, everywhere.
  25. Say it again, Boeing becoming an MBA company and not an airplane company is how we got here: https://americancompass.org/airbuss-industrial-flight-plan/ “An airplane company making new airplanes is bad for business,” is such a crystalline distillation of the MBA mindset. It’s atrocious to think about how much human capital is tied up in PowerPoint formatting and delivery at American companies.
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