Johann Amadeus Metesky:

From George Harrison to Roger McGuinn to Tom Petty. Here’s a fun comparison of the Byrd’s “I’d Feel a Whole Lot Better’ and Petty’s cover:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xua_PilOPtU

Love those ringin’ Rickenbacker guitars!

Someone might not notice this after clicking “xx Replies”, since that takes you to the comments. It is apparent by scrolling up.

I saw it too, and I don’t know what’s going on. The posts are still on the back end, plus the comments for them, just as before. But they’re not showing on the front page.

I did a test post for today, and it posted. So I’ll see whether it’s a continuing problem. I’ll also try to fix it, of course, and make the old posts show up again. That could take some time.

I hate glitches like this.

Another thing I noticed is that some of the comments that are showing on this thread are from one of the disappeared threads. I think the clue is in that fact.

There’s more than one way to measure, but any list of the most successful life forms would have to include beetles, who don’t need intelligence for what they do. Neither do the eusocial insects; ants and termites are doing pretty well…

To say that something is “dysgenic” is to say that the environment is rewarding traits we don’t like, i. e. what was better suited to a different environment and is thought to have got us to where we are today. In America we typically look to the Revolution, the frontier days or maybe the Depression and WWII, and we compare ourselves now to what we perceive we were then and say what a falling-off there was and project that into the future and call it “dysgenic”.

The future may well belong to the ADHD-afflicted couch potatoes and their smartphones if we create an environment which favors them a la “Idiocracy” or “Wall-E”. But it’s not obvious that it’s morally right to desire an environment that makes us smarter or tougher or more energetic (however you define), seek to avoid changing the environment in a “dysgenic” way, if the corollary is increased human misery.

Evolution “improves” only the fit of a species to its environment. A better fit may require more slowness and stupidity (consider the koala). The organisms that cause gas gangrene are the best at thriving while causing gas gangrene.

The Greatest Generation that survived depression and global war also enjoyed big cars and air conditioning. They didn’t seek to stay poor and at war just to sharpen themselves up. Even the Spartans couldn’t keep that up forever. The revealed preference of practically every human ever is toward more comfort and convenience.

During one conversation they tried to rationalize away the lack of a full lockdown and the end of mask mandates here in Maine by noting the much lower population of Maine compared to CA. I tried to point out that similarly populous states like FL and TX did not do lockdowns and had voluntary mask programs and yet had lower case and death rates than shutdown and fully masked CA. To no avail.

Government and the media have scared the bejesus out of some people, I’m not sure how long, or if, it will take for them to recover.