EVERY New Zealald City RANKED from WORST to BEST I'm quite entertained by this. I live in 16th out of 17. When I first visited NZ, I thought nothing of Palmerston North. Wasn't on the tourist circuit. I drove through and found nothing nice to look at, and kept driving. If you are interested in beautiful public spaces, whether natural or man made, water fountains, tiled squares, great architecture, walks by the river, ... Palmerston North is 16 out of 17. But if you want a nearly self-sufficient area where anything you might need to operate a farm or lifestyle estate is within a 10 km drive .. tractor sales/implements/repair, custom v-belts, fencing parts, welding gear... then Palmerston North has everything you need. And if you want a place that can easily produce all of it's own food and plenty more to export, again Palmerston North hits the bill. If you want the youth-energy of college students, we have 5 colleges here including Massey University. And we do have a river and an esplanade and a large central square park. And we have windmills on the hills at the horizon which I think look nice. I think it should be much higher ranked for a place to live, even while I admit it's nothing great to visit.

Just some rambling on the "intellectual dark web"... after watching Piers Morgan have Sean Carroll and Eric Weinstein debate. I used to think Eric Weinstein was a reasonable and smart person. As I did Sam Harris and Doug Murray and Jordan Peterson. Back around 2016 with the "intellectual dark web". I agreed with them all about identity politics, political correctness, free speech, wokeness, etc. But all of these people have fallen in my estimation. Eric Weinstein is embarrassing. Like a child desperately trying to prove he is smart. Sticking to some ideas he had in college but isn't smart enough to put together anymore... desperately trying to make his mark on the world and prove himself. Hoping physics works in a way to make us multiplanetary rather than taking reality for what it is. I watched part of a video of him lecturing to a classroom. Except there were no questions from students, no coughs, no sniffles, no sounds of paper shuffling... I'm pretty sure he was videoing himself lecturing to an empty classroom. And his scatterbrain couldn't keep on any one subject he would say something he thought was deep and profound and then jump to something else without connecting his ideas. And he blames physics gatekeepers for blocking out his ideas. Sad, really sad. He has some great abilities to think out of the box, but too far out and disconnected, pathologically so. His brother Bret is far more healthy. I'm sure his wife has a major stabizing influence on him. He's not always right, but he's can explain himself coherently, his thinking remains connected, and his creativity is properly bounded by logic and reason and data. Sam Harris I can't even be bothered to critique here. But I don't think he is worthy of being listened to. Douglas Murray... just listen to his Joe Rogan episode with Dave Smith. I found Dave Smith through that, and I learned who Douglas Murray really is... two improvements in one. Jordan Peterson started to look bad when he tried to redefine "truth" and redefine everything in terms of Jungian theory and "stories". I think he helped lost young men, to his credit, and I am absolutely on his side about the Canadian law of compelled speech. But he started to fall off my radar when he started tweeting "Glass Gaza", and went on about how great Europe is and European things... and how other cultures essentially suck. And then his latest debate with 20 athiests was enlightening. Anyhow... the intellectual dark web wasn't really very intellectual. I'm glad they pushed back against the cultural woke nonsense when they did, but each member is not really the intelligent person they might have appeared to be at the time. Never could compete with the intellectual prowess of the new athiests: Daniel Dennett, Richard Dawkins, Christopher Hitchens.

People used to "trust the experts". Less so after COVID. We've woken up to the fact that the people in positions of authority often have ulterior motives, and generally didn't get into those positions because they were good at finding out the truth, or moral and honest about sharing it accurately. Most people are not good at discernment. When someone says "don't do your own research" I consider that correct for the broad audience. Most people are not qualified to do their own research. What they should instead do is find people who are, and then trust what those people say... that is... find and follow the experts. But importantly, YOU choose the experts. Because naughty "experts" will try to get you to chose them. That includes (however) both social media personalities as well as government shysters. So how can you choose the right experts? And/or how can you find out if you are better served by being your own expert? Most of it is based on personality. 1. High Openness -- without this, people simply don't bother looking into alternative explanations. They stick to one story and are not open to questioning it. 2. Low Agreeableness -- without this, people too easily accept wrong information from their peer group. 3. High Conscientiousness -- without this, people don't bother to do their own research deeply enough. 4. Low neuroticism -- less important, but emotional instability can cloud judgement 5. High IQ -- less important, but higher IQ improves the capacity to come to correct conclusions. People with these traits naturally choose to carefully cultivate their understanding over time. They choose to avoid lying, even for their own benefit, because the corrupting nature of lies corrupts their most precious asset - their own understanding. They generally strongly defend free speech, and engage in debate with people of differing opinions. If you are one of these people, by all means do your own research. If you are not (and most people are not) then find several people who are and listen to them. Even as I do my own research, I follow a number of "social media influencers" who I consider to have these traits and who I get much information from. They may well be wrong on some things, but they are less likely wrong. I have 4 out of 5 of the traits (I'm neurotic). When I argue with someone, it's pretty obvious where they stand on these traits and whether or not I can take their worldview as reasonably accurate. Michael Malice's podcast today with Bret Weinstein (the intro, I haven't listened to it yet) led me to post this.

I couldn't find the droids I was looking for. All I got is C-2PO and R2D1-beta.

YHWH is the name of the Jewish god, who claimed to be Elohim (or El), the previous word of god. The pronounciation of YHWH was apparently kept secret by the high priests and was eventually lost. Nobody knows how it was originally pronounced. Some have suggested YaHWeH, others say JeHoVaH, but these are just placeholders. I think it is pronounced YeeHawWooHoo