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Home » Open thread 4/17/23

Open thread 4/17/23

The New Neo Posted on by

When I was a small child, I was afraid of dragonflies. I’m not sure why; maybe their name?

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Open thread 4/17/23 — 55 Comments

  1. Weird fears are weird. As a kid I was scared of high voltage and volcanos. I’m still very wary around electricity, and I read a book about Icelandic volcanos recently which convinced me that the island is okay to visit, but not to reside.

    And skeletons! They creep me out. Even cartoon ones like Grateful Dead logos and sugar skulls associated with the Day of the Dead in Mexican culture. I can touch and handle skeletons and bones, but I’m uneasy when I do.

    I said it out loud to my ex once, and she said, “Oh, I’ve known that for years. You avoid skeletons. I wondered if you knew you were doing it.”

  2. I generally don’t watch many videos — they seem like time-wasters, even when sped up. This one, however, was very good (as most of Neo’s turn out to be), and ended up by putting me onto another video that sounds good, but I’ve not yet viewed.

    Thanks once again, Neo!

  3. I was afraid of quick sand. Seems there isn’t as much as the old TV shows used to show us, because I have YET to step in any.

  4. I’ve never been afraid of them, always loved them, but when I was a child I managed to get bitten by one. It was resting on a fencepost, and I came up directly behind it and grabbed its tail. It bent completely around, spread its frightening and impressive mandibles, and bit my fingertip, drawing blood. I’d had no idea they were able to do that.


    Some more on this.

  5. @Gordon Scott:I said it out loud to my ex once, and she said, “Oh, I’ve known that for years. You avoid skeletons. I wondered if you knew you were doing it.”

    I’m sure I will regret asking, but what do you and your wife both do that involves enough skeleton avoidance for her to notice the pattern?

  6. https://glennkbeaton.substack.com/p/the-fall-of-the-fbi-takes-james-comey

    “the Left – and, increasingly, mainstream Democrats – have decided that their political opponents are not only mistaken, but illegitimate. Democrats coddle criminals, and want to exterminate Republicans.

    The end they seek is one-party rule, and they are willing to employ any means to achieve that end. In America’s major cities, they’ve already achieved it and we see the results.

    Willfully blind to basic notions of honesty and fair play and incapable of the art of persuasion, they instead riot, shout down speakers, cancel careers, and make death threats against Supreme Court Justices after slandering them with false accusations.

    They circumvent both the political and the legal process by fabricating wild and defamatory pee-pee stories, tricking judges into approving illegal surveillance, and employing the firepower of the FBI.

    Their unscrupulous allies in the “news” media report their defamatory accusations on Page 1, but report the debunking of them on Page 19, if at all.”

    We are seeing more and more commentary like this. America is heading for a showdown. If Democrats don’t turn the wheel from their game of chicken, people are going to get hurt.

  7. @stan: The end they seek is one-party rule

    Change “Democrats” to “Uniparty” and I agree with all that. There are too many Republicans who have been enabling it, and stabbing other Republicans in the back when they try to do something about it, for it to be just a D vs R thing.

    The FBI is not hassling all Republican politicians, or even most of them. They’re not raiding the offices of National Review.

    The illusion of choice and opposition is valuable even to states much farther along the totalitarian path than we are. The People’s Republic of China allows eight other political parties (including the one that lost the civil war in 1950).

  9. the process is the punishment, see mark steyn, a dozen years after mann’s lawfare, the dominion extortion scheme,

  12. I was on a zoology kick, when I was wee lad, the whole time and life series, not so much about insects, i recall

  13. now entomology is racist now, I haven’t got the cue cards so I don’t know but i’m guessing now that grub is on the menu,

  14. They scrubbed the big SpaceX launch this morning due to a stuck pressurization valve which caused a fueling issue. It’ll take at least 48 hours to cycle out the fuel and try again.

    For those who may not be aware, this is the Starship+Superheavy launch. If successful it will be the largest rocket in history. Even larger than the Saturn V.

  15. it seems we finally went dd harriman* after choosing every other path for 60 some years,

    the space baron, from heinlein’s timeline,

  19. Dragonflies?

    Well, they DO look like little, monster, metal helicopters, sometimes. 🙂

    I think in the 1960s or after- there was a week in [the Peanuts comic strip], where Snoopy + Woodstock get afraid of dragonflies.

    I think they heard a superstition that- dragonflies want to sew up people’s mouths, or some superstition like that. Strange stuff. *shrugs*

  20. Open thread?
    Many of the blogs that I read regularly and the people I follow on Twitter are written by women: Neo, Althouse, Small Dead Animals (Kate McMillan), Bari Weiss, Mollie Hemingway, Megyn Kelly. Why is that? I think it is the great combination of smarts and compassion that results in common sense. Not all of these people agree with each other or with me, but they give challenging, well-thought-out interpretations of the subject at hand.

  22. I don’t think that the fact there are RINOs precludes the one party idea. Every group has its double agents, what to prevent avowed Republicans actually being hidden Democrats acting as such double agents. A good portion of the South Vietnamese leadership were actually Vietcong.

  24. I too was very wary of dragonflies as a child. Somehow I got the idea they were aggressive toward humans and stung or bit. Around the age of 13 or 14 a friend told me that is not true, they do tremendous good by eating insects that are harmful to humans and they are rather amazing. Since then I have admired them for their incredible aeronautic capability; as I do hummingbirds.

    I have always been creeped out by realistic illustrations (or ceramic statuary) of animals anthropomorphized and depicted in Edwardian or Victorian era dress. Beatrix Potter’s illustrations are an example. The late rabbit with the vest and pocket watch from Lewis Carrol… And it tends to just be smaller, common field or marsh animals. Bulls or dinosaurs in top hats and or tails don’t bother me. Nor do rabbits, toads or doormice in modern clothing.

  25. Fascinating and informative video, which I never would have found on my own. Thanks. Dragonflies really are beautiful –but beautiful in the same way that a Japanese katana sword is beautiful: utterly defined by, dedicated to, its narrow purpose. If you’re going by percentage kills, the dragonfly is the apex predator.

    I am careful always to greet them with respect when I meet them.

  26. Amadeus 48,

    I would add Heather MacDonald to your list; Abigail Shrier, Kayleigh Mcenany, Harris Faulkner, Riley Gaines, Posie Parker.

    There are quite a few intelligent, fearless women making a stand to protect our children and our freedoms and liberties. Megyn Kelly’s daily podcast/Sirius XM show is well worth a listen. She is incredibly skilled at communication and does not hesitate to speak her mind.

  27. I can’t watch this dragonfly video now, but I think I’ve seen it before. If it’s the one talking about how they’re essentially the perfect predators, able to target and strike their prey with a near 100% success rate, then yeah.

    I can’t remember if that video talked about Meganeuropsis, an ancient relative of Dragonflies and Damselsflies that existed about 300 million years ago and had the largest species of insects of all time. Just imagine a dragonfly like creature the size of a small hawk. If it had a similar predatory behavior of modern dragonflies you could see how such a beast would be a terror, able to snatch birds and bats right out of the sky. Of course, birds and bats didn’t exist when Meganeuropsis was around during the Carboniferous era.

  28. As a youngster I spent much time in and on the banks of Cibolo Creek in South Texas. I collected dragonflies for their myriad colors, mounted each with a single pin to keep them safe in a show-box. My best was a bright red dragonfly. What a trophy! I guess I used chloroform on them.

    Intimidated by them? Heck, no. I was also killing water mocassins at that age. My parents never knew, and had no need to know. Childhood life was either in school or out-of-doors!

    Of course most kids today do not play outdoors. A generation is being ruined by digital devices.

  29. When I was a boy I had the Time-Life book on dinosaurs and I spent much time going through it, looking at the pictures, mesmerized by the long-ago vistas when life on earth was so weirdly different — including dragonflies, more precisely their ancestors, the huge griffinflies.

    My most memorable image from the book was not dinosaurs, but the griffinflies.
    ________________________

    Insects reached their biggest sizes about 300 million years ago during the late Carboniferous and early Permian periods. This was the reign of the predatory griffinflies, giant dragonfly-like insects with wingspans of up to 28 inches (70 centimeters). The leading theory attributes their large size to high oxygen concentrations in the atmosphere (over 30 percent, compared to 21 percent today), which allowed giant insects to get enough oxygen through the tiny breathing tubes that insects use instead of lungs.

    https://news.ucsc.edu/2012/06/giant-insects.html

  31. Of course most kids today do not play outdoors. A generation is being ruined by digital devices.

    Cicero:

    Quite true and tragic. As a child I spent much of my free time at the beach, in the woods, or just plain roaming at will. I was a free-range kid and it was glorious.

    The trend away from that has been going on a while. Here’s a book with one of my all-time favorite titles:
    _________________________

    Where Did You Go? Out. What Did You Do? Nothing. is a 1957 bestseller written by Robert Paul Smith. It serves as a nostalgic and often wry look back on his 1920s childhood, where he agitates against what he perceives as the over-scheduled and over-supervised lives of suburban children as he celebrates privacy, boredom, and time to oneself away from adults.

    –Brave AI

  32. I recall that my stepfather, a country boy, called them “snake doctors”.

    Dwaz:

    What great slang! I wonder if there is more story behind it.

    It also answers the question, “Where did Dennis Haysbert’s callsign, ‘Snake Doctor’, come from in ‘The Unit’?”

    Haysbert played the leader of a special forces group. Everyone had a cool callsign, but I thought his was the coolest.

  33. well dennis has always been cool as heck, his david palmer role, on ’24, made it hard to take obama seriously, by comparison,

    kieffer has a new series out himself, rabbit hole, where he plays the flipside of jack bauer, it often jumps the shark,

  34. When my mother saw me reading a book in the house during daylight hours, she usually would tell me to stop reading and go outside and play.

    I actually spent an enormous amount of time outside playing with the neighbor kids, which often involved roaming and exploring. It also involved traditional street games like hopscotch, jumprope, ball bouncing games, spud, Simon says, etc.

    I would walk all by myself to my grandmother’s apartment to visit her, from about the age of four on. It was a very safe neighborhood at the time.

  35. “It was a very safe neighborhood at the time.”

    I think that is the key, Neo. So was my suburban neighborhood growing up. Unfortunately, for many today, such assumptions of safety are not justified. However, on a much more positive note, the neighborhood we currently reside in (rental house) is so reminiscent of my childhood area. Very middle class, everyone watches out for everyone else, and guess what?? Kids are outside playing, riding bikes and scooters around,etc. A blast from the past.

  36. What happens when crooks are in charge of the guvmint, the insane are in charge of the asylum, the malgnantly dishonest are in charge of the justice system and the thieves are in charge of the treasury:
    “Los Angeles Elites Scrambled to Sell Homes ahead of New “Mansion Tax”;
    “New tax likely to contribute to California’s ever increasing economic turmoil and affordable housing crisis.”—-
    https://legalinsurrection.com/2023/04/los-angeles-elites-scrambled-to-sell-homes-ahead-of-new-mansion-tax/

    Just another mad “tax the rich” scheme that will make the virtuous feel good while the state circles the drain of disaster.

    As California goes, so goes the nation?

    Yes, in fact, if “Biden” has “his” way…
    …and who is there to stop “him”?

  37. Barry, my brother is a retired middle-class guy living in Los Angeles. LA is already unable to maintain order, and without the tax revenue from the very rich, it’s only going to get worse. I worry about him.

  38. “It was a very safe neighborhood at the time.”

    Yeah, not so much where I grew up. Then again, good for developing a heightened situational awareness.

    Didn’t stop my brother and myself from hopping our bikes and riding all day. Usually due west from Armourdale and out ten miles or so to a pig farm and crop fields (K.C.K. was smaller then). All day up until just before sunset and death by hunger.

    I gave my daughter a bit of that in K.C.Mo. by letting her roam on her bike and later, skates. Not as long per stretch, it was West Port, central K.C.

    ***

    Thanks again for a nice ento-film. Always enjoy. My favorite Odanata are the Malaysian ‘helicopter’ damselflies. Huge yet delicate and their mating dances (and fights) are full loop-d-loops.

    I like to make night lights for kids when I want a break from more ‘serious’ projects. They’re typically comical in nature. One theme is fairies. I pulled some silicone molds of large Odanata wings. Very hard. Took a dozen or so attempts before I got a good one. Cast with clear resin then a light wash of UV resin for patterns/color. Pleased.

    Little girl next door will be three come Christmas. Just right for one featuring Tinker Bell and Periwinkle popping bubbles.

  40. Regarding childhood and freedom;

    Mine was similar to what others have written and my wife and I tried to do the same with our kids. I agree that being outdoors was an important benefit, but I also think boredom is greatly underappreciated. I remember so much of my childhood involving “looking for something to do.*” A lot of wonderful things came from that. But it also allowed a lot of slow, gradual, iterative development and failure.

    One of a million examples: A friend and I decided to make slingshots. So we started looking for fallen twigs. Through trial and error we learned which branches were sturdy enough and flexible enough to work well, and what angle in the fork of the slingshot arms was ideal. And we had to figure out how to whittle off the bark. Then how to notch the arms and what material to use for the sling. We initially tried rubber bands but eventually settled on scraps cut from old bicycle tires. Then, what rocks worked best? Trial and error with a lot of failure. Then, put a can on a chain link fence and try to hit it. Over and over until we improved in skill. That one project probably occupied two weeks of our waking hours during summer vacation until we had good, solid, working prototypes. And we learned an incredible amount; including design and project management skills.

    We went through a kite building and flying phase. A paper airplane phase. Making parachutes and attaching them to toy soldiers. Building arrows and bows. We built soap box derby cars, from scratch, with absolutely no parental help from materials we found in the local junk yard and rummaging through neighborhood trash cans. And the sports we invented. We’d collect whatever gear we had (a couple random baseball mitts, a tire iron, a beach ball… We’d make rules and create a game and play it for hours.

    It’s doing all that stuff that makes one resourceful as an adult.

    And, often, the boredom was interminable and the thoughts I’d occupy myself with at those times; watching dandelion petals float on the wind, looking at clouds, watching ants and bees; for hours… Eventually it would stimulate thoughts and questions. Every day was complete immersion in the scientific method through boredom.

    Boredom is underrated.

    *Kids were generally expected to entertain themselves.

  42. Rufus T. Firefly:

    As you describe your youthful experiments and their importance, that was me too.

    You might be gratified to know that the Rich and Powerful tech overlords insist their children be taught with primitive old-school materials, while their children’s consumption of hi-tech phones and social media be strictly rationed.

    Do as we do, not as we say.

  43. Re: Language acquisition

    Rufus T. Firefly:

    I’m still on the case. I ran into this interesting video yesterday, which reminded me of our earlier exchanges on language learning.

    –“We DO learn languages through input”
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jl2qJxZOxBc

    You were recommending the importance of speaking the target language. I recognize the importance of speaking to become a fluent speaker, but not for acquiring the language. Perhaps a subtle disagreement.

    In any event the video above is a balanced exposition of the debate from the viewpoint of a person who bet heavily on the “Speak early, speak often” output school, then found himself making no progress after three years of study. He switched to input learning and his growth exploded.

    Which doesn’t invalidate your position of output as an important ingredient for language learning. (I’m starting to look for a tutor with whom I can converse.)

    You might find it interesting video, though at 20 minutes I would entirely understand if you had better things to do. The video guy presents a good summary of the current debate and does so with a fairness which reminds me of yours.

  44. The supposed “tax-the-rich*” scheme in California is not what it appears. It is much more sinister than “taxing the rich”. It’s a tax on all real estate transactions valued at more than $5 M, not just single-family homes. So it’s going to bite corporations who handle commercial real estate, anyone who owns a large apartment complex, etc.

    There will be exemptions from the tax for non-profits and people who build “affordable housing” and the like.

    So the real target is of course not “millionaires and billionaires” and their “mansions”. The real target is to push individuals and small businesses out of owning any valuable real estate, which large corporations and non-profits will take over, since they will able to get exemptions.

    *The “rich”, especially the rich in California, are NOT our friends, and they have been bankrolling most of the Leftist cause we all complain about here. They never have to live with the consequences of what they lobby for.

  46. huxley,

    I am very interested in seeing the video and will definitely watch it. I’m wondering if maybe I’m missing something in the terms; “input” and “output.” I was recommending conversing as being very useful. You then debated that using the terms “input” and “output.” If, by “output” you mean solely speaking, not conversing (in other words, asynchronous not bisynchronous) then I would agree that might not be very useful. You don’t learn without listening and hearing new words.

    However, if “output” means conversing and “input” means reading, studying, listening (radio, TV, cassettes, videos…) then I remain skeptical. All able minded children converse very capably using thousands of words before they learn to read and billions of people lived and died without ever reading or listening to radios, etc… We have to have evolved to learn language through conversing because that is the only way we had to do it for millenia.

  47. neo,

    I did enjoy it. Immensely. And, as many of the commenters shared on your post, I did every single thing you listed. Brought back wonderful memories; thanks!

  48. Compare and contrast:
    ‘ We’re Going To See A Lot Of Bankruptcies”: Former Home Depot CEO Warns ‘—
    https://www.zerohedge.com/personal-finance/were-going-see-lot-bankruptcies-former-home-depot-ceo-warns
    “David’s Bridal Files For Second Bankruptcy In 5 Years, To Lay Off 9,200 Workers”—
    https://www.zerohedge.com/markets/davids-bridal-files-second-bankruptcy-5-years-lay-9200-workers

    Indeed, “Biden” must be rubbing “his” hands in sheer glee!
    (As are Soros and Schwab together with his illustrious international gang of moral perverts.)

    Meanwhile, another of the “Biden” junta’s geniuses gets down to the nitty gritty: the racist nature of America’s roads and highways…
    …while earning heartfelt support for his views by the sorrowful and downtrodden in Chicago IL and Compton CA…..

  50. …And just another day for the “Biden” administration….(featuring a cameo phone call by Honest A. Blinken)…
    Matt Gaetz:
    “The @Weaponization Subcommittee can prove that the entire purpose of this letter at the outset was to influence the 2020 presidential election with some of the most senior people who have ever been in our intelligence community – using the imprimatur of their security clearances to pave the way for Joe Biden’s presidency.”—-
    https://twitter.com/RepMattGaetz/status/1648082302042251264

    + Bonus:
    ” ‘Jaw-Dropping’: Ron Johnson Responds to ‘Revealing’ Biden Family Bank Records”—
    https://conservativebrief.com/jaw-dropping-72594/

  52. with a rock I think.

    to be fair to major howdy, he was trying to impress ‘resist we much’ al sharpton, at 20 stone of him,

  53. I cannot recommend this highly enough.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XYaLgeEBgaU&t=115s

    Pandemic post Mortem with Robert Malone.
    The single best compilation of the past three year’s information –short of origin and motivation for the endless lies behind the policies–on the virus and the injections.

    Suitable for any and every human in your life.
    Explains it all–problem with multiple infections, side effects, current hospitalizations, risks or all MRNA products, ADE, natural immunity.

  55. However, if “output” means conversing and “input” means reading, studying, listening (radio, TV, cassettes, videos…) then I remain skeptical.

    Rufus T. Firefly:

    Dr. Steve Krashen is the academic linguist behind “Comprehensible Input” theory. By input he means reading or listening or both. He does not include studying grammar as part of input.

    By output he means speaking, i.e. constructing meaningful utterances and speaking them. The listening part of a conversation is input.

    By “comprehensible input” he means input one can mostly understand and may be able to fill in the gaps by context.

    By “language acquisition” he means the subconscious understanding of language which builds up over time through comprehensible input.

    His point is that output, according to his theory and subsequent research, doesn’t contribute to language acquisition.

    CI is a controversial theory and is counter-intuitive. Your skepticism is understandable. Take a look at the video, when you get the chance, and we can revisit the discussion.

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