smenor/tangents

Correction: 1997 not 1977

Hey there I'm Scott and this is tangents.

Well this could be a long one although I

I have like seven pages worth of notes and sometimes that means

I've gone for like two hours from half a

I really genuinely can't but we'll see.

Today is as I'm recording this the 16th of September 2025, 1736, not that

I'm still in Tokyo for another few days.

It's Tuesday.

I'm

I have to say I can't believe I can't

Well I guess this is just how things go.

You know things seem

Seems like it was

It's spent like two months out of the country and now I'm

It's actually more held.

Completely

I shaved yesterday

I'm not a fan of it.

But annoyingly I really think it's

Like it looks good.

It actually, it looks good.

My friend

And it does.

It actually does, but it bothers me.

And you know, it like it

I look at it in the mirror and I'm like, fuck, it

It does look good.

I wish the suit didn't look good too.

Because I hate wearing a suit.

And yet when you're wearing a suit, you look better.

You feel better.

And I just, yeah,

Not that this is anything at all to

So again, since this is going to be potentially long,

So today, I'm calling this one words have meaning or maybe

But I feel like I'm just luring my words sometimes.

But words have meanings

And this one is basically a friend a couple days ago mentioned that he's

And these insults were things like people calling people

And

And so, you know, it gives him a little pause and gives him a little time to sort

And consider what is actually like the underlying thing there.

And so, I want to talk a little bit about these and in practice, I think there are several

And one of these problems is that there are people who genuinely just throw around words

People just throw

And it's very annoying because when people do this, it dilutes the meaning of the words,

I wish

And then similarly, and closely related, a lot of people don't know

Sometimes also deliberately throw

Not that they're necessarily trying to obfuscate the meaning of the words,

And like a common one, right versus

If you look at the history of these terms, and it's very complicated, but the history of

And in the national assembly, people would sit

In the left wing, based on sort of whether they were in support of the

And in the left wing,

And that's where that originally came from.

It's of course

There's a lot to it beyond that.

It gets more complicated.

And again, also, this is only one dimension, and there are many, many

But I think most importantly, people really don't have any

And when I say this, I mean, most people that you talk to, especially in the

government is supposed to work.

But in terms of political theory, most people have no idea what socialism is, or communism,

And, you know, what is conservatism? It's an interesting problem.

And I'm going to get into some of those in a minute.

But like socialism is just like the social

So like, if there's a factory, and the factory has a bunch of

And then they get to decide what to do, and they get to put their

Whether that's reinvesting,

Another system of economics that you can use is capitalism,

And they get to decide, you know, okay, I'm going to hire these people,

And

It's mine.

Yeah, it's not my favorite system.

Let's just say.

But people don't really understand, like they throw around these terms, socialist capitalists,

A lot of people, like one of the that I really get

And when I say right wingers, I don't actually even mean

A lot of people, I think, just do not evaluate and do not really understand, and they have

So that's all complicated.

So in that, I really think a lot of people who consider themselves to be right wingers,

They're like culturally raised that way.

A lot of people who consider themselves

Often, like when I throw it around, I'm talking about neoliberals,

It's interesting that they get people, if you explain that to people,

One, the overton window in the

It's shifted so far to the right

And the window that people see

And in fact, they're absolutely, absolutely right of

And again, also, like there are many

The funny thing is also, of course, if you actually go to the

Like,

Of course,

And, yeah, maybe, like, put some regulation,

But when people really

The Republicans are radical,

Radical, crystal fascist, anarcho-capitalists.

I'll get into what that

They are absolutely radical.

They're not interested in

They're not interested, and other than the, without getting a little bit too

They're racist, horrible, kind of people.

I'm just, like, the juxtaposition between that and destroying the environment and thinking, like,

Not having any

The party is not conservative, and it annoys me to know in that

So anyway, that's, it's

And I think the broader problem here, and the thing that is really important to

And, you know, this is, if you actually look at what the parties stand for, not necessarily

They don't align,

This has been very well studied, but it's between zero correlation,

And one of the things that's kind of eerie when you start

Well, I guess she was like Hillary Clinton, she did the Goldwater thing,

2020, I almost didn't because, frankly, Biden, before he was

That's a basically direct quote,

He's somebody who is

He said, row went too far as recently as 2024,

This is another thing, because, you know, people like to throw around lives and call themselves

The neoliberal consensus

So Republicans and Democrats,

They don't really,

That was one of the problems

You know, lots of things,

It's something that is just like a service that we pay for

It's a free thing, free public, or free

Obviously, things cost money, but for the end user, it is free.

There are so many

Everything has to make money.

Everything has to have revenue come in and, you know, the amount that's coming in has to

Using sidewalks, walking on the road, driving, things like this, free to the end user.

And, you know, it's just, it's just wild.

So the Democrats under Bill Clinton absorbed

And I've talked about this before, but the thing about means testing, the thing about having

It doesn't actually save money.

If you actually look at the amount of time and money and effort put into determining like,

It's like public transit.

It costs more very generally to run the tolls and do all of this kind of

And the amount that you take in from tolls, it doesn't actually cover any

You know, it's significant amount of money, but the amount of

So anyway, coming back, we have this really big, kind of awful, false division

And again, remember the parties don't represent people.

And if you, if you take away

But many, many

But if you take away the labels and you look at policy positions

I think I

But I think we should all kind of think about each issue and

Like be open to the possibility that you think,

And then be open to the idea of,

And if somebody does need it, but for some reason, you know, like their situation

And they've suddenly lost their job or had to, you know, something happened and suddenly

Who is the decide who needs what? That's a massive thing.

Who

And, you know, this kind of thing, like it gives you a terrible situation

You'll have people who are against it because they're

And you'll also leave people out, you'll

And I mean, if you know anyone who has a disability and they're in

It's a pitence.

And not only is it a pitence, but thanks to the welfare reform and giant air quotes and all of this,

Plenty of people who are disabled

And, you know,

They're not able to keep any savings.

They're not able to work.

It's a funny thing because we have means testing and we have this stuff that is like,

If you taper it off, it's a little bit better, but if you just give it

So in doing that, you're giving a false

You're actually like, the system is set up through these things that are

They're actively punished for trying to work.

But anyway, getting back in this false division,

I'm not saying that all air quotes conservators are watching

Obviously things are much broader than that,

The plenty of people never

They're presenting something that is utterly, utterly incongruous, both with each other

They're presenting existential threats, and this existential

I don't think that's a, well, it shouldn't be a really controversial statement.

Unfortunately,

But nonetheless, in both cases, you have people saying you have to vote for so-and-so because

And in one case, maybe it's more true than the other,

And I don't think that's, you know, I don't think

No, he's a fucking racist.

And I mean,

It's really fucking annoying to me, that people just, I don't know.

I don't even want to get into that, but it's, it's annoying.

But you have to vote for Biden,

And then you have the other ones going, well, you know, you don't align

And it's funny, too, because the ways that they suggest Biden is so bad is they're like,

And first off, I wish, if the Democrats were the people that the

If they were actually socialists

But in reality, you know, a lot of the reasons

A lot of them are things

They're both interested in funneling shit tons of money back into

You know, I mean, you had Harris at the debate stage arguing with Trump

And it's extraordinarily, like it should be a planetary

And instead, you have the two major parties in this country arguing with each other

I mean, both of them are trying

That's who these people are.

And because you have this

It makes it very difficult for people to actually rationally sit

But actually, you know, is, is Harris this bad that you have to vote for somebody

And the fact that, like, out of 330 million people,

Just to be extremely, extremely blunt there.

But anyway, I think the worst thing about it is

And this is, this is again, like, one of these things about these

It's one of the reasons why I almost called this trigger words.

Because if I say certain words,

If I say that Trump is a racist, a lot of people will

Because I don't know, he's not a, he's a fucking racist, like both.

It's kind of funny, because it's also, like, he's an open-over racist.

You know, it's not,

Just the current stuff

Biden also a racist.

And I would even go so far as to say that Harris,

And I'm going to talk a little bit more about what that means.

But it's something that, you know,

I'm saying more, like,

And part of that is also

And so both of

It's kind of a, they're, I mean,

And it's

It's kind of interesting that they're all so similar in this regard, especially when

It's, I always, this is not in my notes, but this is something I always think of that,

You know, you have this situation where, you know,

I'd say both hang out the same bars

They do the same things.

They're all

They're putting on a show.

And within the

So at

I know more about the Democrats than their Republicans, but,

At one point, it was Joe Lieberman.

At one point, it was hereston cinema and then it's somebody else and, you know,

It'll be somebody and there's always somebody there to point to,

It's kind of a fucking show.

And when you start seeing it as a show, it gets really obvious that

So anyway, coming back to my notes and what I wanted to talk about.

So one of the

And so like, you'll get people

People, people, because obviously

We used to know that being a

And now, now you get people on the Fox News saying that they're a Nazi,

We're reclaiming the word or some bullshit like that.

But anyway,

And how lots of things that we do that don't necessarily seem overtly racist are racist

And they're real danger.

Again, it's easy to see the overt

But it's the subtle stuff that actually ends up being really difficult.

That doesn't mean that the over the top stuff, you know, like somebody lynching somebody

But those are things that you can kind of point to and it's more

Whereas the things that a lot of people, I would even argue,

They're not necessarily

Another one that is really like people get very reactive to is to be told

And I know that the problem is with this.

And I think people sit there

And I'm sure you, I'm sure that's true.

I'm sure, you know, you've had a lot of difficulties.

I'm sure things are not going as

I'm sure, you know, you could be doing a lot better.

But the thing

Whereas people who are not white,

And you can argue, like, oh, no, it's not.

The things that we're

You can look at the statistics.

It's very clear.

Look at any job and

And then look at the actual decomposition

It's very clear that there's some very strong bias there.

It's not subtle.

It's not at all subtle.

And this also doesn't mean that our lives are perfect.

It doesn't mean

But it does mean

And the thing also, I mean, here's one that I see a lot of people get very reactive to.

Racism requires systematic power structure and differential.

And again, this is going to be very

And, yeah, I'm just resurfacing it.

Don't get shut down and don't get reactive here.

But you cannot be racist in the United States against white people.

You can be prejudiced,

But to actually be racist requires that power structure.

And the power

The history is not there for that.

You would have to have a massive revolutionary change in order for that to be something that was even

And again, like, you know, I get the, you could be like, oh, but, but,

It's not a thing.

And I understand that you may think it is, but the accusations of that and the idea that that is

And part of this comes to something called Darvo.

Darvo is

And this, this was created by, uh, or not created by,

I was, it was kind of on gaslighting, and it's this tactic that abusers will often use,

Um, and, and when you do this, you're muddying the waters and you're confusing

Fulls complexity is a massive

It's one of the things that protects is real a lot because right now,

I would say unambiguously, um, at least probably 600,000

And, uh, yeah,

I don't even want to get into that, but it's not complicated.

If you, it's one of these

And when you start looking at it, it's like, oh, well, there's actually one group

And there's a group that does not.

You have one group that has like a super modern

There's one group that does not.

They have improvised weapons, they have, you know, very

Now, if you look at, like, how many,

If you look at pictures of Gaza has been leveled, like, just absolutely decimated.

And,

They even, if you take out the current,

You have one group, and this is a thing that you could have seen,

And then you have

You have one group who live under, uh, you know,

If you, if you search for that, that's a cool one.

Uh, that Israel was doing

Um, and then you have another group that just is completely

There's no, that the power imbalance is

And when you start having that and you start using this Darvo, uh, you are

Um, you can, uh, and I'm, I'm trying

And

And to think maybe maybe some of this stuff that you've been told is a little bit bullshit.

Maybe maybe some of this stuff is actually just the tool of people who are doing the oppression.

And some of it is like, it's an interesting thing about this because it's not like,

But a lot of this kind of stuff

It's like an external magnetic

And they end up doing things that seem kind of coordinated.

They seem like there's almost

Um, so one of the big examples of Darvo is

So affirmative action is basically just to, uh, to try to level the,

You're trying to take things where there are existing biases, where there are existing

And I have, um, I think it's going to

We'll be this old cartoon, um, that's basically showing, um, I guess

And, uh, it's, it's showing three different people standing, watching the

And there's a fence.

One of the people's short, one is going to medium height and one of

And, uh, on the left hand side, you have equality, which is the thing that, like,

It doesn't matter.

It sounds like, oh, everything is fair, everything

And the one that's kind of medium height, they're struggling on it,

And then the short person is screwed out of seeing the game.

And then on the other side, you have equity.

And in this case, the tall person gets to see the game.

The medium height person standing on a crate, they can see the game.

And the short person,

That is what DEI is trying to achieve.

Now, there's also, uh, people have extended this and

And then we

And then you don't need the crates, uh, which would be ideal.

And,

And until you have massive, overhauls of society, um, you need to do something about this.

And if you don't do it, uh, then you end up with the person who can't see the game.

It's, it's a massive, massive problem.

And it's one of these things also, like the, in this picture,

And reality is a lot more complicated, because systematic and, uh, oppression is not something

It's something that you can measure.

You can see statistically

And certain groups can advance

But you can't really see it.

You can't really see

Um, you have to, you have to do some work.

And because of that, it makes it

Like, people who,

The medium height person is kind of like,

Um, they sort of know, they, they're pretty, yeah, it's there.

The tall person is like, well, what's the problem? Yeah.

You have to, you have to do work.

If

And this is, this is just so

And it's such a thing that, um, yeah, and I'm not, I'm not trying to say,

But white supremacy is built so much into the American culture that

I would rather call it that because American, the Americas or North

But it's

And you don't realize, and you don't understand

Uh, it's very easy not to know that if you're, yeah, if you're white, you can be

You can be Joe Biden or Donald Trump.

And it's one of the things actually about these two,

They are mediocre, racist, old white dudes who have their entire lives

Both of them, uh, Trump has lost a billion

Biden has done so much harm and so many terrible things.

He lost

He, you know, like, I mean, he got us here.

And yet, and yet they're both,

And then I, I will say, also,

But one thing you can say about Obama is he was exceptional.

He was, you know, his whole life had to be exceptional, had to be so much better than either of

And even then, you know, gets the chance, the chance to bullshit treatment.

Even then gets, uh, called BO by people who definitely are not racist by the way.

But anyway,

You have to be either through luck or probably through practice and

And this gets into this, again, myth of air quotes reverse racism

And it did, you get a little anecdote here, but years ago,

But he wanted to be a firefighter.

And he went in and did his interview, prepared all that kind of stuff.

And when he was there, he was explaining that the guy who interviewed him also a white dude

And the thing is, A that's not true, B, I'm trying that the, I feel like

But, you know, D.I.

and affirmative action,

It means you're doing what you can

And it also for a job like being a firefighter, where there are way more applicants than

And this guy, this racist guy that was doing the interviewing, is throwing this thing out about

and he's getting to tell so many other mediocre white dudes who probably,

It's not because they weren't the best candidates,

It's because somebody who's

And the reality is, if you look at

But if you look at the population,

It's kind of interesting.

And then you kind of go through

And then you start digging in and you're sort of like, well, why is that? Why?

They have intrinsic biases.

Some of those are not even, you know,

But there's a lot of stuff that is very subtle, but you don't even notice that, you know,

And this actually goes a crop like,

Or, you know, you'll have a higher standard for the black person than the white

Again, it's not that you are necessarily like overly militantly racist.

It's just that we

And also, you think you're being fair.

You think you're being

And if you're one of the people who wins, you have this thing called,

If you're one of the people who wins, you think, oh, it's me.

I'm actually good or things are fine.

And this is one way actually where black people who end up

But they're doing

And it's, it's a really fucked up thing.

We do this all the time.

It's, you know, survivorship bias.

You look at people who go through a process.

And that process

Maybe has some kind of uneven odds.

And the people who win

The people who lose, you're like, they kind of suck.

And people looking at them think that people who win are just more qualified than the people who

When in reality, a lot of it is just sort of genetic lottery kind of stuff.

And when I say that, I mean, you know, how, like, what family did you end up in? What situation

And there's one of those things also where

It's really

You know, it's really easy.

And even if you think about it and

But then a minute later,

And it's just like, it's not there again.

You have to

And especially, especially if you're white because you're, you're just, you know,

And you don't feel all the little, all the little things pushing

And so if you're not actively looking for it, you're not going to see

It's, it's, it's a very big problem.

So anyway, this is, this is one of the ways where

When in reality, they're just sort of telling people who we're not going to get the job anyway,

And it helps also the, the culture is set up so that

So, you know, a lot of people are poor

And so there must not be, you know,

And in reality, it's just that, you know, you being white is not part of why you're in

It's not part of why you face the challenges that you have.

Despite what

So anyway,

And

Like, I am, this is not my domain of expertise.

There

I'm just kind of like a amateur.

So I'm

Some of the things that might say declaratively may have some

So race is a made up concept.

It is, it is purely fiction.

It was made up and especially like

And there's no genetic basis for it.

There's not even,

So like phenotype and get the, the calipers out and

It's not, it's just not a thing.

It's a purely fictional concept.

And this actually makes you wonder, like, well, Scott, you're making the whole episode about

And yes, I am.

And the reason that

It actually matters.

It's like money doesn't exist.

Money is just a fictional

It's just made up.

But whether you have a high score in your bank account or not,

Just like that, whatever your race is, not a real thing,

So

And it was done for a variety of reasons.

But one was that people who were

Although this is

It's not that you're Spanish or Irish or German or whatever you're just white.

It's part of the

It is a thing that people made to create this artificial hierarchy,

It's kind of interesting because when you look at the

This is going to, this will probably be controversial

No, they're not compared to a billionaire.

Though the wealthiest person you know,

They're actually poor

They have, they're as close to being completely broke

You get that person who, again, is poor to suppress and Oprah's and exploit the people under

They don't have to be

It's really easy for people to understand that landlords are a villain.

You can look at

You don't have to give somebody

You don't have to give somebody like a nice house or a couple houses or whatever.

You just give them the idea of whiteness.

You give them the idea that, yeah, you're poor,

Probably is basically

They're basically at the same level.

They're basically

This is really

It's like the old saying, like a poor white person is more in common with a poor

So you get people who have no

It's really dangerous, but it's also something that I think, and I hope you can open your

Maybe it's those people that we should be looking at.

So again, it's a fake concept,

You have to talk about it.

You have to

It's something that really makes a big difference.

It's something that I'm not going to say.

It's like the biggest thing in any of our lives,

Again, it doesn't mean that automatically you're going to be successful

If you're white and really against you,

Anyway, this brings up white supremacy, and it's really easy again.

This is one of the things that I'm trying to make as the theme to this, but it's really easy to

Somebody who is

That's an extreme,

Those people are definitely malignant,

The thing that

Like when you're unaware of stuff, you don't realize what you're doing

You don't realize the judgments you're making, you don't realize the biases that you have,

They affect a lot of stuff, and your life, they determine

They determine things like you're going to

They determine

It's also something that really makes a

The people who are most responsible for it are us.

They're not like, again, the David

And so this gets into this idea of like, what is an agent of white supremacy?

But the thing is, there are a lot of black people who are

There are a lot of black people who are sitting there and propagating these

And I don't just mean the people who are sort of like, you know, clownishly pick me kind of

I mean, like, people who think that they're doing a good thing.

People who think that they are

And they're in this position.

And, you know, it's that

It's that, you know, I was much better.

And so, everyone else who looks like me

And blah, blah, blah.

That's a massive, massive problem.

And it's a massive area

And you can also get kind of false reassurance from people because you'll get people who look

And they tell you certain things.

And you don't realize that partly they are just

Or the opposite

So it's very much actually also like misogyny.

And that, you know, like, there are lots of women who are actively agents of misogyny,

You have to, you know, just because you're a

And it doesn't mean also that you're not sitting there saying, oh, you know,

And you can't do that.

And then when you do it,

Just because they happen to be in your category does not mean

It's, it's, it's part of how this stuff works.

And it's also

There are other people who are experts

But I mean, look, look at their material,

So one, and I think, you know, again, this is just an important thing to the really unpack

Like,

If you're

It takes a lot of effort.

This also gets to, you know, and this is something that just drives me to fucking bonkers,

There aren't no fucking blue lives.

Black lives are an actual thing and black lives matter

It's basically got to implicit

And the reason that you have to say it is because the implicit bias and the systematic

People who lynch

It's just the way things are in the U.S.

and not seeing that, not accepting it is actively perpetuating it.

It's something that you have to

It would just

This is kind of abstract, but people look at me and even if I'm fucking up,

They tend to assume like, oh Scott

And yeah he just he made a hiccup there,

And then if you imagine in contrast you have a black woman who may have actually

People see her do that and they focus on the

They assume that she's not qualified.

They assume that she got

This is one of these things.

It's like, it even better

I'm allowed to get heated, I'm allowed to get

I'm allowed to be upset.

But if a black woman gets just like a little bit elevated,

It's even briefly uses like a change in tone.

Suddenly she becomes

And this is again like it's not, it's not allowed.

You have

Straight jacket on you.

And I can you like you don't notice it

The person in that position definitely knows it.

Now you can ask her,

But if you're just watching from afar, you don't see it.

You don't know it

So anyway, I think hopefully that's enough on that.

Again, other sources are better than me.

I will

I'm sure, but it's something that I think I think we all need to know.

And I'm

Maybe you won't be quite so triggered and you'll

The people you

And not just another random white dude.

But again, I think sometimes

That's that's my hope.

That's that's why I'm why I'm like an hour talking about it.

So getting on on other words, like fascism is a system of government marked by centralized authority

Obviously there are many other

You can go through another dictionary.

This is a pretty good one.

I think it's fine.

I think it's good enough as a first order approximation.

And when I say Trump is a fascist,

And it's frankly, and I understand, like, I feel like I'm talking

I'm sorry.

I'm saying it this way because I'm not trying to be condescending just

And yet it's, I can feel you shutting down and pushing back and just like reacting

Go through the list of stuff that

It's extremely, extremely blatant and obvious.

He's very clearly seeking

He's very clearly a capitalist.

He's strictly controlling

He's imposing all kinds of economic controls.

He's taking percentages of companies.

He's doing all of these fucking things.

He's sending beliefs and the military and to violently

He's making this idea that, you know, like, oh, crime is rampant.

And so we

Again, crime in the US, US is a more dangerous country than a lot of

But crime is very low.

Like it is an extremely safe country.

Your perception

But people are

It's genuinely not.

The odds, if you don't

But in reality, you know, by and large, you can live your entire life and you probably will

It's not something that

That's the perception people have.

But the reality is actually things are

So he pushes that idea and then uses that as justification to send

He's blatantly

The fact that he even have to say that is motto is literally America first.

Like that's this.

You can't get any more nationalistic than that.

Also, I mean, this is a motto

It's a motto for the

Nativeists, you might do some math on that.

Does not mean indigenous people

It was a motto used by the KKK and length of 1930s.

It was very closely

And in fact, again with fascism, like Hitler and the

And this is not me like speculating on this,

Very heavily inspired by things like Jim Crow,

Things like the Indian

Eugenics was another thing

A lot of, it's easy to focus on Trump and the Republicans,

It's a country that I always, I'm nervous about

The US is kind of what would have happened

Because there was a genocide on a scale of again hundreds and millions of

Like we don't know the exact numbers because there were no censuses and

It wasn't just like land that

It was a massive, now in some of it was disease,

A lot of it was very deliberate.

A lot of it was

forcing them to dress like the settlers, forcing them to adopt the settler religions,

It's an extremely scary thing when you start realizing that, you start thinking

If you would have been able to destroy a group of people and things

And again, like Hitler and people there, we're open about that.

They literally

It's not like me saying it.

So, the thing about this is just, it's not

The Trump is a fascist.

It's not ambiguous that his party is a crystal fascist party.

His party, and the crystal fascism is just sort of like the intersection of essentially a brand

The people who kept talking about that the most are the Christians who talk about how oppressed

You know, the US, like it's majority

And they talk about how oppressed they are.

It's such a fucking Darvo thing,

It's really ridiculous.

And it's, again,

It's so fucking obvious.

I wish that you would fucking see it.

The party is also anarcho-capitalist.

So it's going to sound like, you know, what is anarch?

We had, in some sense, the companies and the country

Those are, are things.

But also, like the anarcho-capitalism is that the

You know, they don't want to have to deal.

They might,

And the country is like embedded

But at the same time, in, in, in archo-capitalism, they don't have like

They don't want to have to deal with that

Don't want to have to deal with things like food safety.

Things that cost money and take time.

And, you know, it's annoying to actually have to control

So

You know, let's just not have any consequences for people who just

And who cares if they poison people,

So that is essentially what they are.

And, you know,

It says they're seeking to develop and maintain, and this is that my language, but you know,

Like, this is stuff.

They literally openly say, um, and it also, you know, I guess, I don't

But, um, these are, these are not just like names.

I'm not just like throwing insults of people.

I'm not just like saying, oh, you're a fascist.

And that doesn't mean anything.

No, I'm saying Trump is a fascist.

And by the definition of a fascist,

He checks every single box.

And no uncertain terms.

Like, absolutely.

It's not even, it's not ambiguous.

It's not like there's a question about it.

It's not the

And the fact that people react so strongly is extremely frustrating for me, because,

No, it is language.

It is the correct

And, you know, the fact that I even have to argue this or to talk about

And it is one of these things where like, you know, like, people

Um, but, you know, like, the guy that came up with Godwin's law,

And then he also said,

And, I mean,

Like, that's, that's who he is.

It's not like, I'm just like randomly pulling out the Hitler comparison

I'm not just making shit up.

I'm not, you know, like, you can look up that definition.

You can look it up from another source.

And you make the list.

And, you know, you can go through

And, um, or eugenics,

And you go through that list.

And it's pretty objective.

It's pretty clear.

So I, I wish the, um, but I do wish people would not throw around these terms.

I wish people

And I wish people would consider that if you're throwing them around

But I also want you to understand, um, calling him a fascist is not just me

Um, calling him a white nationalist is not just me, like,

Calling him a crystal fascist, calling him

You know, these are, these are descriptive terms.

They're not just insults.

And, and I, I'm just, I don't know, I just am hoping I am attired.

I'm really tired of having to

You know, it's like, I feel like I'm arguing that the sky is blue with a bunch

And I was like, why the fuck? Why do I always have to spend so much time explaining that

You know, I mean, just like, at a first order approximation,

Like, it's, it's not a question.

It's not like, well, is the sky really,

I'm really

I'm tired of bad face, too.

This is, I don't mean to keep harping on Charlie Kirk

I know he's not decent or was.

And not a good guy.

He, but the damage that he and people like him have done to, like,

And, and also, like, you have this situation where, um, that this will be the last thing I

But, you know, like, you have the person who's getting heated,

And if the person who's very calm is sitting there

If somebody's saying a bunch of racist shit and sexist shit and nativist shit and all of this

Yeah, it's, it's a very twisted kind of sick, um, gross thing.

It really is.

If it, which is not the say that like being emotional is always the right thing,

They're a big part of, um,

And this idea that somehow you're going to just be disconnected from them and that, in addition to that,

It is

And sometimes that gun is verbal and that gun is like saying, oh,

People tend to get emotional about that kind of stuff,

And when they do get emotional about that

And, and again, like, this is, um, going back to this concept of the, again, air quotes,

And also, like, one of the best educated and most competent,

Children are basically treated as the property of their parents,

Uh, but other than, other than children, broadly,

And they're the ones that are the least allowed to do it.

They're the ones that

And if they react,

And it's just, it's, it's so twisted.

It's so fucking twisted.

So anyway, with that, um, I think hopefully that's a, that's a good place to, and, um, hopefully

And the, the balance that I'm trying to strike there

I want you to understand what I'm talking about,

And, um, because these are things that we need to talk about, these are things that, frankly,

Um, it's like, it's like ableism, but you can work on it,

Um, but if you work on it, if you really put time and effort into it,

And that is a place to get to.

That is a place, um, that would be nice to get to.

That's a place that we should work on.

That's a place that we should be aiming for.

Um, and again,

It's something that we need to work on,

And, and you just keep going through this stuff, and it's like,

But they're very recently,

Dude was lynched, and, you know, like, come on, come

And again, 2025, how the fuck long do we need to be dealing with this shit?

You want to think, oh, I'm, again, I'm not,

But understand that just by virtue of being raised

You've got

I started working on

And the thing that I noticed is, first off, the amount of things where you just use terms like

Even, even I've probably today, like talked about sick, talk about, you know, things that

It's deeply, deeply embedded in our language and in our thought process.

It's not just the words that you use, but the way that you think about stuff.

And, you know,

But then, as you're working on it,

And, you know, I mean, for me, I'm like several layers deep and you

This is just so deeply embedded in our

And it's really frustrating

And I think it's really important that we all think about that kind

Because in doing that, like we have this notion that, you know, like people who are unhoused

Like there was somebody just openly calling on Fox News, like a couple of weeks ago

Like, you know, like people

Not by helping people not by giving them homes.

But by just

But I just

That's huge inx, by the way.

That's pure huge inx.

And, you know, like even the

And this is killing on the low end, two times.

And on the high end, five or more times,

And we just let it happen.

And it's totally totally preventable without even doing that much.

But we just didn't want to do the work.

Biden and this just did get to the, yeah,

Don't want to go through the process of what it actually

They've got us in this position where,

And, you know, it's like if you would have just fucking

But instead, you cheated and you don't understand it.

And now this is just internal.

Do the work.

Just do the work.

Please be better.

Be better than these people.

Do the work,

And again, like, understand that we're all imperfect and that even when you do the work,

That's part of the problem.

Understand that and understand that even

But it does mean that you have to work on it.

It's

And the more you work on it, the better you get at it and the

And if we get, if we all get out and push, we can actually change

Like the world is what we make it.

Make it better.

With that, thanks for listening

And,

再见

Hey there I'm Scott and this is Tangents

Well, I recorded one of these yesterday the

I'm not sure I'm going to do

I don't know give

So I'm

going someplace else and something happens and they have to go

and that was thousands and thousands of dollars

being a health scape that dystopian

sucks in so many different ways and in so many

Crow president Crow these are people like kind of think of some of the other

Taco Bell is nice because if you are going around the US and you want

if you ask like why don't you have universal health care

Hacklight

Personally I

If you if you have a

再见

The last thing that I wanted to talk about rambling on and get it putting a cap on this and the thing that I'm really disliked about

I'm not just throwing words out there, but I'm not gonna

They completely have fucked things up so badly and it's not just them

I this thing that I have to get the score in my

It's a really horrible thing and I think I I wish and again, I'm not

I care about honor.

I care about reputation.

I care about these things.

They matter to me

I if I find out that I was wrong about something

I think how much

It's physically painful for me.

I have to leave the fucking room

I can't stand it because it's so

I'm sharing exactly the same memes except

It's the same and it's not surprising because they're coming from the same society

I don't know you know and it

I don't know and then you know the country is also full of

There's maybe

Maybe they're having dinner together

Maybe they're being paid by the same people.

Yeah, maybe it's pro wrestling

They're not even trying to hide it is the most it's one of the reasons why I'm losing my mind with people because it's so obvious

They don't care enough to make it hard to see

You can take the best you can make the world but you want it to be and

We could have universal college

We deserve it.

We're getting fucked over

再见

Hey there, I'm Scott and this is Tangents.

It is the fifth of Subtemper Holy Shit, 2025.

I'm recording this 1342, not that you need to know that,

I'm flying back to the Tokyo tomorrow.

Well tomorrow evening.

I've got to tell you, I feel so, I know I'm repeating myself here a little bit,

Don't get me wrong, obviously.

I'm not getting the same experience as if I actually lived here to be fair.

And also, you know, not perfect.

Like I could come up with a thousand criticisms of Bangkok.

One of them certainly is that there are so many,

You can go down a street here, and I really like walking.

And I don't want to walk and backtrack down the same street over and over again.

But if you go down a street here and you're not careful,

You'll go down something and you'll think you're going to get around.

And then it just dead ends.

And Apple Maps will even show you that you can do it.

And you'll follow that, and then you'll get to a point,

You have to backtrack 15 minutes to get back to wherever the fuck you were.

So it means that you're doing a lot of backtracking,

Either way, not my favorite thing.

And you know, I mean, I could just go on, but I won't.

I really like it.

I like that I am a five-minute walk.

Literally like I'm looking out of my window in my hotel,

It's awesome.

It's fucking awesome.

It's so much cheaper.

Like if you look at, I was at a organic grocery store yesterday.

And it's just mind blowing.

How fucking cheap produces, for example.

But in the US, I, this was something I noticed when I was in Paris.

So this is not a new thing, although it's gotten much worse.

But when I lived in Paris, it was actually cheaper

In the US, I've tried that, and I've tried,

And it's hard, it's fucking hard.

You can do it, don't give me wrong.

And there are things you can do to, to save a little bit of money

But for the most part, especially if you're just a single person

If you're that, it kind of ends up being at least a wash

And the food that you're getting out is not going to be good for you.

And then that also saves you from cooking, which is a pain in the ass,

I don't give you wrong, like I enjoyed making my pizzas.

Every once, once a week for a long time,

And it was a little delight.

It made my Saturdays kind of special.

It was a thing that I looked forward to.

It was like a little tradition that I had for myself.

Really liked it, but it was not cheap.

It was not really now, of course, pizza used to be super cheap,

But they're going out for pizza would have been ridiculously expensive

And anyway, I don't want to talk too much about this,

Anyway, what I do want to talk about is getting onto the subject.

I don't, not going to give you a 20 minute introduction,

I guess I should say, next week,

We'll see, there's some small possibility.

I also could record another one tomorrow if I'm inspired,

Anyway, there are a bunch of articles,

And, you know, today shared one that Florida

And, it's just,

We have this ridiculous,

We said, simply, right now there is a giant wave going on.

So, that's perfect.

And also, like, I really,

She has had her life fucking destroyed,

But there are plenty of people who,

It's a systematic infection,

It's not just like a respiratory infection,

It does cardiovascular damage.

It does a lot of organ damage.

It's not good for you in a lot of ways.

It's also immune-modulating and immune-vasive,

A lot of stuff that you don't want.

You know,

There are lots of people who get asymptomatic infections,

And I don't know about you.

I know I'm fucking weird here, I guess,

But I don't want to fucking cold.

You know, I don't want to get sick for two or three days,

I definitely, especially,

But I don't want that.

I don't want to be sick.

I definitely don't want to get flu,

That typically has a,

And so, like, when we took, when I took viralogy,

But the,

HIV, flu-like symptoms,

Did you just go through the list,

And then something else,

But that was,

And then people don't test,

And I,

Obviously, you don't know what you don't know.

And how would you know?

If you actually get the flu,

You get, like,

Typically, like,

It'll be gastrointestinal involvement.

So it's not just that you have muscular aches,

You get a fever,

It's just that you will feel like shit.

You will not be happy.

It's kind of a big deal.

It's much more than just a cold.

And of course,

Things are more complicated than the acute phase presentation.

And just the cold could be any of

It's not like people kind of think of rhino viruses

And then also,

And most people are not tuned in and off the notice it.

And so you're not taking tests.

You're not,

It should just be standard.

And there are countries where they have rapid tests

And then you can get sick,

To some extent.

Not that the treatment or the responses

But, you know,

Oh, this is embarrassing.

I'm not even going to be able to say,

And there are other things as well,

And, you know,

And that kind of stuff is useful.

It's also useful,

Like,

COVID is very contagious.

Anyway,

But just,

And anyway,

Now,

I don't know if you know that that's bad.

It might mean that you have to change the vaccines,

That is not,

If you're lucky you can,

But there could be very serious long-term consequences

It's not a good situation.

And that,

But you know,

So anyway,

And all the others,

And I,

They've made people not understand

They've done,

But I don't want to,

Many others have.

And I probably,

B, I probably couldn't do it justice.

And see,

I want to talk about stuff that maybe

You can find that kind of,

I hope,

I hope.

I just had a,

Part of,

But one thing that I think is very important

That's,

And you're not just born knowing how to do research.

Another thing you do is learning how to put things into context,

So,

That's not how science works.

You have to understand sort of what is the preponderance of the evidence,

You have to develop that.

It takes a lot.

And it's also something I think,

It's good.

Don't give me wrong.

I like teaching myself stuff.

I like learning stuff on my own.

But not having a teacher,

You're going to fuck up.

You're going to misunderstand stuff.

You're going to misinterpret stuff.

And it goes to this thing that I get all the time,

And they're like,

Show me the,

And the problem is,

There's no one article

All the things I'm going to be,

These are things that have,

And I've spent a lot of time

But it's not like I can just point you to a single source,

It is something where you have to do a lot of work

I feel like it conspiracy theory,

It is just like basically how research works,

We know,

It's not like one thing tells you anything.

And in fact,

You might,

And there's plenty of examples of that,

It's just you have to look at the,

It's,

I can't send you to you,

Like,

I've looked at a lot of stuff,

It's one of these problems with expertise,

It's a,

And there's definitely this issue

Was a thing.

Like,

That's not,

And I want to be very careful and clear

Although,

I don't want to stop on it too much,

I have studied that in high school,

I studied it many, many times,

I'm going to cover in very broad strokes

And when I do that,

I'm giving you the sort of sketch,

There are details,

There are a lot of nuances there,

Like,

But no better,

And I would say,

Like you brush on it,

And then you start studying,

And, you know,

That's not to say also,

But these are people like,

He's not as bad,

What the fuck is that guy's name?

He's like the archetype of this kind of person.

Good cow,

These are people who are definitely Paul Davies,

These are people who are definitely experts in a domain.

There are people who,

When you have a PhD with a thing,

As soon as you do that,

And all of the people that I mentioned have PhDs,

But like,

Yeah,

And this is a massive problem.

Like even if you get outside of,

There are plenty of evolutionary biology,

This is relevant actually,

So I know a little bit about this subject,

But all these people,

That is very important.

That being said,

So I have an undergrad degree in microbiology.

I have another one in mathematics that I have concurrently.

Almost got one in anthropology.

Those two don't matter.

But I took a lot of classes.

Suffice it the same.

I did that in four years,

I was like five or six classes every semester.

Took some summer semesters.

I did a lot in that.

And I mentioned it before,

It was like a 400 slash 500 level course.

It was my first virology course.

I took immunology.

I think I took advanced immunology.

I can't remember if I did that after undergrad,

I think I did both.

But either we have taken advanced immunology as well.

And I've taken a couple other immunology courses.

I have taken epidemiology at like the 400 level.

So I'm getting into my master's degree in microbiology,

But I stopped before doing the research.

So I did not have a PhD in the subject.

But I took all the coursework.

I've got the background that I would have had

The only difference is,

Many women says they're PhD ABD.

All the dissertation are all but done.

They're full of shit.

They don't have a PhD.

That's what that means.

But they definitely,

Doesn't mean that they're an expert or that they've actually worked on

And they've that published or gone through the defense process

But they still have some decent amount of background in it.

Anyway, that's just an aside.

I get annoyed when people say that I haven't seen that as much anymore,

Maybe it was because I was a grad student at one point in time.

And then I was never a postdoc,

It was getting a PhD as a giant fucking pain in the ass.

But anyway, all of that being said,

And my specialties, there were virology,

Which incidentally, and I'm going to talk a little bit about epidemiology here,

It taught me not to get too deep into that subject,

And it's one of the most annoying things,

But anyway,

I've taught a bunch of introductory microbiology courses,

And I've done a lot of,

So I have a little bit of background.

I'm not claiming to be the biggest expert in the world

I mean, like,

Or at least two,

Nothing is perfectly correct.

Nothing is completely true,

So just laying that stuff out there.

And basically,

There are many different figures like this,

It's partially due to a large,

But this,

It's not specifically exactly COVID,

And so I think it's,

I'm going to be sloppy,

I'm sorry about that.

It's just,

But,

And again,

And I think an important thing to understand,

This is,

Public health is public health.

It is not like individual,

It is,

And like,

And herd immunity is,

And how,

Vaccines are not magical,

You do get protected by being vaccinated,

And it might,

Sometimes you can have a vaccine,

And if you vaccinate enough people,

So herd immunity is this idea

This is the idea,

There are nuances and details,

But basically,

And then,

So you can't propagate through the population.

And depending,

Some things are extremely,

You can,

There are other things like flu,

It's like,

You need longer exposure time,

And it takes a lot of long term kind of close contact

And all of these things are statistical too.

So you could be in a room with somebody

That's the,

And so those,

It's also,

You're not doing that to protect individuals,

That keeps disease from propagating,

And if you,

And you know,

It's zero.

It's like, you know,

And if you don't do stuff like that,

It can,

That's exponential growth.

And if you adjust the multiplier there,

And there are things that you can do as individual,

Some of these are more relevant to like flu,

Physical distance and staying home of your sick,

And if everybody does them,

It's one of these,

It's such a simple example of collective responsibilities,

And it's just,

So,

And one of the first things that you would do is surveillance.

And surveillance would be,

I used to not like waste water testing,

The problem that I have with it is just that you don't necessarily,

It's good at detecting the presence or the absence of something.

But even if you're doing quantitative PCR,

It is kind of related,

If you have,

But even with that though,

And it's something,

It's raining, it's beautiful.

It doesn't really take that much effort.

Like you don't have to get everybody individually

And you can get pretty good detection,

So that's part of surveillance.

Testing individuals is also a part of surveillance.

And frankly,

B, it tells you exactly who has what.

And the nice thing about this is,

You know,

And ideally,

You can treat people.

You can also,

It should just be on by default,

It's there.

It's not on by default.

It's only for people in certain apps,

But contact tracing,

And so,

Doesn't necessarily mean that you're actually sick,

You're not going to be part of that chain of transmission.

And this is,

I definitely,

I don't want to,

I don't want to get a cold,

But I also,

Who either dies themselves,

And when you think about it,

The mortality rate,

But when you think about,

And each one of them,

And so you go a couple of hops out.

And now if the case mortality rate

So you infect some people

You're killing at least a,

In addition to just,

So that's,

I wish,

And also,

And it's something that people just don't fucking know.

They don't think about it.

They don't think about the train of transmission,

And if they did,

They don't understand that you vaccinate populations,

And this is one of the things also that I get really

And again,

Absolutely.

Absolutely.

But Biden,

But what I will say is that some of the stuff that Biden has done,

Who is more responsible?

I mean, certainly like,

I'm responsible,

I think that,

And it really is a team effort between these two groups,

And so this is going to continue on to this figure that I have,

And if you have some good visual impairment,

So, yeah, don't worry about that.

But yeah, the Swiss cheese thing on top,

That's, that I think that's pretty easy to understand, I hope so.

It's something that, as,

And teaching people about Swiss cheese is educating people.

But one of the things Biden did,

So, he told people,

You can just go about your life,

That's not how vaccines work.

They're not magical,

They do not give you perfect protection.

They don't necessarily prevent you from

This is one of the things that I was talking about before

You know,

And to some extent,

They do decrease the basic replication number,

And if you do that with other interventions,

It really does help.

It's not just protecting you.

But they don't magically stop you from getting infected.

And they don't magically stop you from infecting other people.

This is one layer of Swiss cheese.

And so,

I wouldn't mind that she calls herself,

I think it's actually really deceptive.

If I'm in a medical,

Yeah, it's a little misleading.

It's just a little misleading.

If he is a doctorate in education,

No, do they?

Like,

And I don't want to take away from,

I don't want to take away from

and all this kind of stuff.

But when you start getting into

When you start doing that kind of stuff

It has real consequences.

And it's one of these things

So, just you're taking me.

But because she and her husband

And unfortunately,

It's really beautiful.

Like these people who,

And then they were getting people

And the thing is also,

I don't fucking like it.

I don't enjoy that I'm doing it.

Although,

Like there are other people doing it.

It's not,

It's depressing, disappointing.

But at least I'm not,

You know,

You get vaccinated or you mask.

And the problem is it's a both thing.

It's not an either or

Each one is an imperfect layer

And not only doing those things

This would have helped

I don't want to get into that subject.

But it's,

It would have been,

Making things especially in

What a what a nice

That's where the surveillance comes in.

In those cases,

But if you're in a medical setting

Just like you should just be wearing

People who get sick

People are not wearing

It's just annoying.

So

and you look at this

they're not perfect in a lot of ways