Item #1:
Asian kids whose parents did not finish high school crush black kids whose parents have PhDs on the SAT.
This remarkable fact is a function of two things: (1) Grossly unequal group IQ distributions and (2) PhDs earned by blacks being diminished by affirmative action admissions… pic.twitter.com/bhqKTBrFV4
— i/o (@eyeslasho) August 15, 2024
HBD wins again. IQ is of more predictive value for individual and group outcomes compared to SES-status (except perhaps for extreme outliers like having billionaire parents).
Item #2:
The reason this works is that unless you do really extreme stuff like drink an entire blender of milkshake or something, you are very unlikely to eat over 2,000 calories in a single half hour sitting.
You take in calories only during .5 hours out of 24.
— VB Knives (@Empty_America) August 18, 2024
There is scant to no evidence to suggest OMAD works better than any other diet. True, it’s harder to eat 2,000 calories in a single sitting compared to only 1,000 or something, but the problem is getting hungry later and then eating more total calories anyway. Or overeating during the single meal, which is easy to do. Yeah, OMAD works great if you can somehow find a way to distract from the inevitable hunger between meals. Meal frequency has been debated forever; if OMAD worked, it would be obvious by now, not debated as much as it is. I personally have had success with frequent smaller meals.
Item #3: How Many Subscribers Has Mr Beast Lost?
The entire Mr. Beast ‘controversy’ is a creation of the media. No one had a problem with him until the media decided to invent one. Such reporting follows a predictable template or pattern: the media casts a huge net looking for any disgruntled former employees or contestants to come forward. Given Mr. Beast’s long career and having employed many people and having many contestants on his show, it’s statistically certain at least some individuals–even under the best working conditions–will come forward to air any grievances against him, especially for an opportunity to make a name or out of envy. Now the media has a story to run with: “Former Mr. Beast employees allege unsafe working environment!!” This is why the media is a joke. They can do this for anyone.
Item #4: Kamala Harris Leads Polls and Betting Odds Against Trump as DNC Starts.
Of course the 2024 election is going to be very close, as I said. Trump’s post-Kamala slide means that things are back to being a nailbiter. It will not be at all like 1996, 2008, or 2012, but more like 2000 or 2016. It will come down to the handful of swing states, likely no more than 100,000 votes divided among them. Kamala has seen a surge of support among young people, but that demographic also tends to be the least reliable in terms of turnout. Trump has the Electoral College advantage, but does worse at the popular vote. RFK Jr. as a spoiler also hurts Trump. All of this means a close election.
The recent events have reminded me why I do not bet on prediction markets. Although I have an edge or demonstrable skill in so far as forecasting stocks or the economy are concerned, I have no such advantage when it comes to predicting political events, but I don’t think anyone does for that matter. AFIK, no one predicted Biden would bomb that debate so badly, and that it would lead to him dropping out, and then that Kamala would do as well as she has, especially given her terrible performance during the 2020 primaries and being so polarizing and unimpressive. The assumption was she was the least-bad replacement in what was a crisis situation for the Democrats. I don’t think anyone imagined that she would surpass Biden by so much. Somehow she not only filled the role, but then surpassed all expectations wildly.
Item #5: Trump’s Campaign is Too Online.
Elon’s widely-hyped livestream call with Trump ran into technical difficulties:
It’s worth noting that sites like Twitch and Kick semi-regularly host livestreams with half a million to a million viewers – and those sites are streaming video+audio. Twitter’s engineering team should absolutely be able to handle a million people tuning in for just audio, but Elon fired 75% of the company when he bought it so maybe the guys who knew how to do that are working for Meta now. At points, Elon dropped from the call and you could hear a still-connected and unmuted Trump shuffling around in the background.
This is yet another example of ‘concerning’–as in a verb–to express concern about something otherwise trivial as if it’s a big deal, when it’s immaterial. This can either be concern trolling or out of desperation or point scoring.
No one really gave a shit that the livestream was buggy. Young people are used to tech being unreliable. The only people who cared were the anti-Trump, anti-Musk media, who are looking for any bad news they can latch onto. In this case, it was the glitchy Twitter livestream feed, as if this was a major indictment against Musk for not having a feature work flawlessly when subjected to enormous demands. The vast majority of people were happy to see Trump and Elon together. Whether or not the stream worked well was irrelevant. No one cared also if Musk sounded boring or if Trump spoke with a lisp. Musk is not known for being the most electrifying of public speakers.