Cultural appropriation is a broad enough term to functionally be meaningless, but I’ve found it helpful to think through 4 distinct interests at play, that I think are legitimate:

Proper attribution/credit. We don’t like plagiarism or unattributed copying in most art. Remixes, homages, reinterpretations, and even satire/parody are acceptable but we expect proper treatment of the original author and the original work. Some accusations of cultural appropriation take on this flavor, where there’s a perceived unfairness in how the originator of an idea is ignored and some copier is given credit. For a real world example of this, think of the times the fans of a particular musical artist get annoyed when a cover of one of that artist’s song becomes bigger than the original.

Proper labeling/consumer disclosure/trademark. Some people don’t like taking an established name and applying it outside of that original context. European nations can be pretty aggressive at preserving the names of certain wines (champagne versus sparkling wine) or cheeses (parmigiano reggiano versus parmesan) or other products. American producers are less aggressive about those types of geographic protected labels but have a much more aggressive system of trademarks generally: Coca Cola, Nike, Starbucks. In a sense, there’s literal ownership of a name and the owner should be entitled to decide what does or doesn’t get the label.

Cheapening of something special or disrespect for something sacred. For certain types of ceremonial clothing, wearing that clothing outside of the context of that ceremony seems disrespectful. Military types sometimes get offended by stolen valor when people wear ranks/ribbons/uniforms they haven’t personally earned, and want to gatekeep who gets to wear those things. In Wedding Crashers there’s a scene where Will Ferrell puts on a fake purple heart to try to get laid, and it’s widely understood by the audience to be a scummy move. Or, one could imagine the backlash if someone were to host some kind of drinking contest styled after some Christian communion rituals, complete with a host wearing stuff that looks like clergy attire.

Mockery of a group. Blackface, fake accents, and things of that nature are often in bad taste when used to mock people. It’s hard to pull this off without a lot of people catching strays, so it’s best to just avoid these practices. With costumes in general, there are things to look out for, especially if you’re going out and getting smashed.

I’m going to answer from the perspective of U.S. law, because that’s what I know.

age is a protected class

The idea of protected classes comes from whether Congress or a state legislature protected that class by passing a valid law prohibiting that kind of discrimination. We can describe that generally with protected classes, as a broad summary, but if you’re actually going to get into the weeds of whether some kind of discrimination is legal or not you have to figure out the specific laws.

First, you have to ask what the context is. Is this employment discrimination? Public accommodations discrimination? Housing discrimination? Education discrimination? Each is governed by its own laws. For example Title VII prohibits employment discrimination on the basis of race, color, sex, religion, or national origin. Title VI has the same protected classes, but applies in programs and activities that receive federal financial assistance (like universities and hospitals and others). The Equal Credit Opportunity Act prohibits discrimination in providing credit on the basis of race, color, religion, national origin, and sex (like the Civil Rights Act) and adds on marital status, age, receipt of public assistance.

The Fair Housing Act prohibits discrimination on the basis of race, color, national origin, religion, sex, family status, or disability.

The Americans with Disabilities Act and the Rehabilitation Act add protections for discrimination on the basis of disability.

The Pregnancy Discrimination Act prohibits discrimination on the basis of pregnancy, and the Age Discrimination in Employment Act prohibits discrimination against those over 40 on the basis of age.

So if you’re talking about neighborhoods, you’re only looking at housing discrimination, and not public accomodations or employment or schooling or anything like that. The Fair Housing Act doesn’t prohibit housing discrimination on age. The Age Discrimination in Employment Act doesn’t apply to housing discrimination (and is one of the few that only goes one way, in protecting only people above 40).

How is that not the same as an “active white living” community that bans other races?

Because the Fair Housing Act prohibits whites-only neighborhoods, or any other kind of race discrimination in housing.

On a side note, there’s also constitutional Equal Protection claims for governmental discrimination that comes from the Constitution rather than any law passed by Congress. Those aren’t discussed in terms of “protected” class, but rather in “suspect class,” where non-equal treatment on the basis of race, color, or religion is reviewed by the courts with “strict scrutiny” (and almost always struck down). Unequal treatment on the basis of sex or citizenship is subject to “intermediate scrutiny,” which sometimes survives court review. Unequal treatment on the basis of pretty much anything else, though, gets “rational basis” review and basically survives if the government can come up with any rational reason for the rule.

It’s more nuanced! See page 52, section C-5.

Using scientific terminology in colloquial speech is weird and creepy in most contexts. Calling kids “juveniles” and women “females” carries certain connotations, most of them bad.

Yeah it’s a somewhat standard reporting structure, of an intro paragraph about the stat, 4 paragraphs about a specific person’s journey from unemployed college grad living with parents and mowing lawns for extra cash to becoming a CFO in the span of 15 years, and then a longer description of what the stats show, then placement of those stats in context comparing to Gen X and Boomers, and important caveats in what the stats actually mean (unclear whether this makes millennials better off when they’re expected to face higher lifetime costs on housing and healthcare). Then it dives back into the anecdotes, including how most rich millennials perceive the fragility of their own financial position.

Here’s an archive.is link:
https://archive.is/Gr6qG

I’ve read the article. It goes into detail in the stats across the entire generation. It talks about the big rise in both median and average household wealth for millennials between 2019 and 2022. It also acknowledges that the gap between 20th percentile and 80th percentile for millennials has grown to the largest in history for any generation.

It’s the rise in house prices and the stock market. For millennials who already owned that stuff before the pandemic, and in a position to take advantage of the huge salary gains from the great resignation, the last 5 years have been a financial boon.

They’re killing the middle class though

Some schools might be, but not places like Chicago or Harvard. At least not through their tuition policies. They give financial aid to those up to a pretty high income threshold.

UChicago, for example, gives free tuition to anyone who is the first in their family to attend college, or makes less than $125k a year. Harvard, as I mentioned, essentially gives free tuition up to $150k. MIT’s threshold is $200k. Families in these income ranges are doing pretty well for themselves.

And then when students graduate from these schools they have a pretty easy path to being rich themselves. The degree, the connections, and possibly the education itself provided a pathway towards six figure jobs, maybe $200k+, before the age of 30.

So no, I think these schools are a pretty good value proposition for even the middle class. Upper middle class has to pay the highest percentage of their own income, but it’s still worth the cost for them.

All the schools rip off the rich to subsidize the middle class. You’re essentially subsidizing a bunch of students who are paying close to nothing.m, because you can afford $70k tuition.

As another example, Harvard is free for anyone whose family makes less than $85k per year. Not just the tuition ($56k per year), but also the housing (worth $13k), food ($8k), health insurance ($1600), books, and a modest living stipend designed to cover things like a computer, commuting/travel, other expenses.

And those who make up to $150k per year are capped at 10% of their income to pay for all that. In the end, the average cost of Harvard for the typical student is about $15,000 per year including housing and food.

In other words, attending Harvard is cheaper than not attending school for anyone whose families make less than $150k, which is basically 75% of the nation. So if you’re actually paying full tuition, you’re probably pretty rich.

I’m more than willing to buy products elsewhere, but it’s so easy to default to Amazon.

One of the practices that the FTC sued Amazon over was their requirement that sellers list their lowest prices on Amazon and outsource fulfillment (and give up a huge cut) to Amazon in order to qualify for Prime and good search results.

The result is that even though most sellers can afford to sell on their own store and keep a larger percentage of the sales revenue, they’re not allowed to actually undercut Amazon’s prices. And so Amazon has shielded itself from price competition, despite engaging in pretty expensive practices (free 2 day shipping for most items and places, free 1-day or even same day shipping for some items in some places). And they did it with contracts instead of actually competing.

Well, efficiently, at least.

You can always heat up a hot air balloon and have it yank a system of pulleys, but you’re gonna lose a lot of energy that way.

Nuclear gets more expensive. That’s worse.

Okay, now solve for local transportation and create a single network that’s highly optimized for both long distance, medium distance, and last mile solutions.

Why does it need to be a single network? A shipping container can go on ship, train, and truck pretty seamlessly, and that combined multi-modal network can connect sources and destinations that no one method is sufficient for.

And once you design an optimized network under your parameters, it starts to look like a hub and spoke model, with high volume arterial routes connecting the hubs, pretty close to how parcel delivery tends to work. And once you have that, you can optimize specific segments, including using hubs connected by air for time sensitive stuff (same day, next day, 2-day service), waterways or rail for really heavy or bulky stuff, and all sorts of intermediate methods or a variety of last mile delivery needs for the specific needs of any given package.

That’s why the county level data makes the trend that much more obvious, because the states tend to clump big groups together. Here’s an example.

There, you can see that Colorado is special in that its rural counties tend to be low obesity, compared to even its neighbors in the Rockies. You also see a sliver of green following the Appalachian Mountains.

And obviously it isn’t the only factor. Poverty is really important, as are lifestyles (and the intentional and unintentional features of any given community in incentivizing or disincentivizing things like walking, regular exercise, eating healthy, etc.).

Altitude is an appetite suppressant.

The trend of altitude being inversely correlated with obesity rates is really obvious from county-level data. That trend persists across multiple countries, but the specific correlation varies from country to country, in a way that suggests that rich countries have a stronger inverse correlation between altitude and obesity.

Yeah, the IRA and Infrastructure Bill steer about $67 billion to railways, $80 billion to transit systems. And even though a lot of the other spending goes towards the status quo of car-based passenger transportation, electrifying that will go a long way towards reducing carbon emissions.

And there are some more ambitious ideas baked in, too: redesigning cities to require less car infrastructure and overall energy use, etc.

I thought it was a big deal when passed and honestly can’t understand why people who care about climate don’t acknowledge just how big of a deal it was (and how devastating that so much of the money authorized will now be in control of a Trump administration).

The Inflation Reduction Act included $65 million in research grants for low emission aviation and $245 million in development of biofuel based Sustainable Aviation Fuel (aka SAF). And the $3 billion in loan guarantees for manufacturing advanced vehicle technologies included certain aircraft.

There were also $5 billion in loan guarantees for shutting down our heaviest polluting power plants or retooling them to greener generation methods.

There was $3 billion in buying zero emissions vehicles and charging infrastructure for the postal service.

The Inflation Reduction Act, which inherited a lot of the stuff from the Green New Deal, was a lot of things, and I don’t think I’ve ever heard it called deeply unserious before today.

I haven’t combed through the data in a minute, but I want to also say that they’re also leading in fossil fuel deployment too.

Yup, China is also leading the planet on new coal plant construction. As of 2 months ago, it seemed to be on track to add 80GW of coal generation capacity in 2024 alone, and accounts for more than 90% of new coal construction.

By way of comparison, the US peaked in total coal plant capacity in 2011 at 318GW, and has since closed about 134GW of capacity, with more to come.

In context, what we’re seeing is massive, massive expansion of electricity generation and transmission capacity, both clean and dirty, in China. We can expect China to increase its total carbon emissions each year to be closer to the West, while the United States reduces its own from a much higher starting point. Maybe the two countries will cross in per capita emissions around 2030 if current trends continue, but there’s no guarantee that current trends will continue: will the United States continue to shift from coal to gas? Where does grid scale storage, electrification of passenger vehicles, demand shifting, or dispatchable carbon free power go from here, in a future Trump administration? What’s going to happen with the Chinese economy over the next 5 years? What technology will be invented to change things?

The “Stan Kelly” persona itself is a fictional satire. The work is actually done by cartoonist Ward Sutton, whose standard political cartoons under his own name criticize the right wing directly.

Yeah, evolving lungs ended up clearing the way to make use of the much more plentiful oxygen in the air compared to what is dissolved in water. Amphibians and reptiles have pretty low metabolisms, but birds and mammals basically evolved endothermy (aka warm bloodedness), probably in support of much higher muscular power output. Ectotherms (aka cold blooded animals) have metabolisms that are correlated to temperature, which means they can’t exert themselves as well when it’s cold. Endothermy allowed animals to be warm all the time, and therefore use higher muscular power output in any environment, especially sustained.

That means mammals and birds were able to cover more distance, and survive in places where reptiles and amphibians can’t, and all the advantages that carries.

This article estimates at a 40kg sailfish uses about 2.7 megajoules per day of energy when hunting. That’s about 650 kcal.

An 80kg human weighs about twice as much and needs about 3 times the energy, without even exertion.

Warm blooded animals spend a lot of energy just maintaining body temperature. Plus water doesn’t have very much oxygen in it, compared to the atmosphere.