Cats are smarter than we are. Really.

See update for April 5, 2021, at end of post.


A clarifying question as to whether something might—emphasis on might—be a social construction is whether it would make sense to your cat.

If you think your cat might understand it, then there’s a decent chance it has some reality in the physical world. Yes, that excludes a lot of things we take for granted, and part of the charm of a cat is that they see right through those things to physical essence. Read more

The Kincade fire and the limits of human hubris

To understand my thinking on the Kincade fire in Sonoma County, California, you need to understand the location of the transmission line that sparked the blaze.[1]
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  1. [1]Reis Thebault, Kim Bellware, and Andrew Freedman, “High-voltage power line broke near origin of massive California fire that forced thousands of evacuations,” Washington Post, October 25, 2019, https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2019/10/24/fast-moving-wildfire-ignites-northern-california-wine-country-prompting-evacuations/

Hillary Clinton needs to just shut the fuck up

Hillary Clinton needs to just shut the fuck up. She lost an election that even Donald Trump says she should have won, because she is a neoconservative and a neoliberal. She is wrong and her allegation that the Russians have “got their eye on somebody [almost certainly Tulsi Gabbard] who is currently in the Democratic primary and are grooming her to be the third-party candidate”[1] has drawn well-deserved criticism.[2] Forgotten, though, is that these comments expose her own sheer hypocrisy.
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  1. [1]Hillary Clinton, quoted in Dan Merica, “Hillary Clinton suggests Russians are ‘grooming’ Tulsi Gabbard for third-party run,” CNN, October 21, 2019, https://www.cnn.com/2019/10/18/politics/hillary-clinton-tulsi-gabbard/index.html
  2. [2]Dan Merica, “Hillary Clinton suggests Russians are ‘grooming’ Tulsi Gabbard for third-party run,” CNN, October 21, 2019, https://www.cnn.com/2019/10/18/politics/hillary-clinton-tulsi-gabbard/index.html; Nathan Robinson, “Hillary Clinton’s attacks on Tulsi Gabbard are embarrassing,” Guardian, October 22, 2019, https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/oct/22/hillary-clinton-tulsi-gabbard-embarrassing-paranoid