Christopher Arndt

Author & Bassist, Music, The Doc Project @docprojectmusic

Be more kind online than in person and the world will be a better place.

[Christopher Arndt @cfarndt]

Foreign military adventurism is completely un-American.

Our founders had many disagreements (e.g. Hamilton/Jefferson on banking) but they were very much aligned with respect to the limited, defensive role a military should play in a free society.

Some relevant quotes:

"War involves in its progress a train of unforeseen circumstances that no human wisdom can calculate the end. It has but one thing certain -- and that is to increase taxes." -- Thomas Paine, 1776

"The means of defense against foreign danger, have been always the instruments of tyranny at home. Among the Romans it was a standing maxim to excite a war, whenever a revolt was apprehended. Throughout all Europe, the armies kept up under the pretext of defending, have enslaved the people."
-- James Madison, 1787

"Avoid the necessity of those overgrown military establishments which, under any form of government, are inauspicious to liberty, and whic hare to be regarded as particularly hostile to republican liberty."
-- George Washington, 1796

[Jeremiah Johnson 🌐 @JeremiahDJohns]

The two American parties are not alike

It is astonishing how much the Republican base is in thrall to a cult of personality and blindly approving of whatever the leader does.

[Christopher Arndt @cfarndt]

@hausfath 👍 I’ll update !

[Christopher Arndt @cfarndt]

Love this use of Fable 5 — so here's my own test of it, and a friendly complement to your chart.

The global mean in °C is the right metric for science and policy, but for a general audience I really worry about it understating what's actually at stake. As you know, warming is amplified at the poles, and the poles are where the consequences live: the ice sheets, the shorelines, and the potential for abrupt climate swings. Nobody lives in the global average.

So I asked Fable 5 to rebuild central Greenland's temperature history in Fahrenheit — the units most Americans think in — straight from the published data. The left half of the chart is the violent lurching of the last ice age: swings of 20°F+ within decades. The right half is the calm plateau on which every human civilization was built. That stability is the thing we're putting at risk, and the global average tends to hide it.

My hope is that climate communication swings in this direction as a general matter.

Sources: Alley (2000) GISP2 reconstruction, Quaternary Science Reviews 19:213–226, via the NOAA WDS Paleoclimatology archive (proxy record ends 1855). Modern point: instrumental 2001–2010 mean at the GISP2 site, −29.9 ± 0.6°C, from Kobashi et al. (2011). Converted to °F. Fable 5 pulled the full 1,500-point dataset from NOAA and plotted it — proxy and instrumental segments kept visually distinct, no hidden splice.

[Christopher Arndt @cfarndt]

“If you don’t have any borders, you don’t have a nation… Has the United States done well historically under Democrats and Republicans at protecting the border? The answer is no… we should have a secure border and it ain’t that hard to do.”

Who's quote? ... Bernie Sanders

Here's the problem: I don't think you, Nigel Farage, or almost anyone on the far right would care to post this quote -- or admit that most mainstream Democrats hold a very similar, reasonable position with respect to the border.

Instead, you choose to paint "Democrats" and independents -- anyone not on the far right -- as holding some kind of crazy, extreme position with regard to the border (and that's true in other areas as well). You do this to keep followers in a state of fear and distrust, a state where free democracy has a hard time functioning.

In this way, yes, you and the misuse of this platform are a part of the problem.

("The lady doth protest too much methinks")

[Christopher Arndt @cfarndt]

“If you don’t have any borders, you don’t have a nation… Has the United States done well historically under Democrats and Republicans at protecting the border? The answer is no… we should have a secure border and it ain’t that hard to do.”

Who's quote? ... Bernie Sanders

Here's the problem: I don't think you, Nigel Farage, or almost anyone on the far right would care to post this quote -- or admit that most mainstream Democrats hold a very similar, reasonable position with respect to the border.

Instead, you choose to paint "Democrats" and independents -- anyone not on the far right -- as holding some kind of crazy, extreme position with regard to the border (and that's true in other areas as well). You do this to keep followers in a state of fear and distrust, a state where free democracy has a hard time functioning.

In this way, yes, you and the misuse of this platform are a part of the problem.

("The lady doth protest too much methinks")

[ArtButMakeItSports @ArtButSports]

Hercules and Nessus, by Giambologna, 1599

[Christopher Arndt @cfarndt]

It’s hard to overstate the possible consequences of this.

Per the chart below, we’ve benefited from the extraordinary relative stability of the Holocene.

This stability is now under threat.

If the chat, which depicts the last 40k years, looks more erratic than what you commonly see, it’s because it’s showing the average temp of Greenland in Fahrenheit — not the global temp in Celsius. The global temp understates the volatility of the world features we care about, such as ice sheets and sea level.

Nobody lives in the “global average”

[Christopher Arndt @cfarndt]

It’s hard to overstate the possible consequences of this.

Per the chart below, we’ve benefited from the extraordinary relative stability of the Holocene.

This stability is now under threat.

If the chat, which depicts the last 40k years, looks more erratic than what you commonly see, it’s because it’s showing the average temp of Greenland in Fahrenheit — not the global temp in Celsius. The global temp understates the volatility of the world features we care about, such as ice sheets and sea level.

Nobody lives in the “global average”

[Christopher Arndt @cfarndt]

True, but part of the problem is a tech centric nihilism about government.

Rather than viewing governance as either a blessing or a curse, and actively choosing the former (where governance is truly needed), it misleading posits that government is always a kind of sideshow, leading to poor governance through neglect.

If the brightest minds are always hostile to governance, what outcome would you expect?

It’s an unfortunate lazy habit of thought infecting your Moonshots podcast (which is otherwise quite good!)

[Christopher Arndt @cfarndt]

True, but part of the problem is a tech centric nihilism about government.

Rather than viewing governance as either a blessing or a curse, and actively choosing the former (where governance is truly needed), it misleading posits that government is always a kind of sideshow, leading to poor governance through neglect.

If the brightest minds are always hostile to governance, what outcome would you expect?

It’s an unfortunate lazy habit of thought infecting your Moonshots podcast (which is otherwise quite good!)

[Christopher Arndt @cfarndt]

@steveschale @thermoware

This post showed up adjacent to yours — seems like your kinda ride.

[Christopher Arndt @cfarndt]

@Rory_Johnston We are at that critical point where op ed writers are lured into precisely the wrong conclusion.

[Christopher Arndt @cfarndt]

Unappreciated, common sense point:

[Stuart Stevens @stuartpstevens]

As long as the civilized world allows Russia the benefits of civilized society,like open travel and participation in sports, it will continue to be a terrorist state with no penalty for a war of genocide.

Stop recognizing Russian passports. Let them apply for asylum if they want to leave their sick country.

[Dr Jen Unwin @drjenunwin]

Something we can all agree on
UPF is addictive
Just eat real food
Just feed your kids real foods

[Christopher Arndt @cfarndt]

The market still thinks this will be resolved with a resumption of supply, but that’s not where things are trending.

As long as both sides believe they are winning, it’s hard to see a change near term, even medium term.

[FT Energy @ftenergy]

Trump’s Iran war drains US oil supplies to lowest level since 2004 https://t.co/rHc9mgrOV9

[Pete Buttigieg @PeteButtigieg]

I am not making this up: Secretary Rubio actually sat before Congress today and said “the war is over.”

It’s a bizarre lie to tell when Americans know there’s obviously a war underway - not just from seeing it on screens, but from paying its costs every day at home.

Leaders with this little respect for the American people have no business in office.

[Christopher Arndt @cfarndt]

@KyleClark @daveweigel Cc @jaredpolis

What were you expecting?

[Dr David Unwin @lowcarbGP]

So in our UK NHS practice of the people with T2 Diabetes who chose to go low carb 50% achieve drug free T2D remission Basically they eat nutrient dense food that doesn’t put their blood sugar up and look at what also improved We published here https://t.co/MoDK29wd9B

[Christopher Arndt @cfarndt]

The second point here seems to be immensely significant.

I don't think all the discussion around AI progress & the massive pace of data center growth is hype, but I think it's possible that those unquestionably important trends are interfering with our collective ability to grasp the significance and implications of the pace of oil stock drawdowns, including where things are headed if we continue on this trajectory.

[Christopher Arndt @cfarndt]

@JessicaTarlov @SarahLongwell25 Good example of the aphorism “the fish rots from the head.”