BANNED USER: /comment/212921
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JTarrou
11B2O/IDPAM/USPSAA/BJJB
User ID: 196
Banned by: @naraburns
JTarrou
2mo ago
Abbot's fight for vouchers has had the side effect of starving urban school districts, who are unable to raise funding because the state takes the majority of their property tax revenue through the "robin hood" program (and no longer even uses it for education -- now it just goes into the state general fund. It's purely kleptocratic now in a way that I don't believe it always was). My school district is getting rid of librarians and counselors as they can no longer afford them, cutting gifted and talented programs (very much done to piss off the rich -- it's not saving much money but it generates lots of ire), and generally laying off teachers and increasing class sizes.
That sounds awesome. Cutting government funds to religious schools is something I support wholesale.
JTarrou
2mo ago
Brandon Herrera is a firearms influencer on social media
Were Ak-50, Brandon?
JTarrou
2mo ago
A world in which we go from a significant Hispanic and African American Ivy League admissions rate to one that is virtually zero would not be tolerated by the existing social order.
We already have that. Virtually no poor black americans wind up in the Ivy Leagues. The children of wealthy black immigrants do. The children of foreign elites who are also black, or "hispanic" or asian do. Not the actual struggling communities here.
Your whole structure is built on the social identification of poor black americans with much richer, more educated and very culturally distinct groups based on nothing more than skin color.
Yes, so long as black americans think the reason they aren't getting into Yale is that Yale hates black people, not poor people, this will not be tolerated. But that's an assumption that could change quick.
JTarrou
2mo ago
As a first order effect, this is just internal political elbows.
From Michigan, there's a scenario where this could matter a lot in the fall, but it's pretty context dependent. Here in Michigan, the south of the state is essentially Democratic, it's where all the big cities are etc. But within the Democratic party, the battle is between the huge, corrupt, ancient racial regimes of the rust belt cities, the 75 corridor, and the more radical university-centered wing of the party headquartered in Ann Arbor and Lansing. Geographically and socially, the muslim community sort of connects these two groups.
Dearborn is at the conjunction of all the highways from Ann Arbor to Detroit. The heavily muslim community is strung out along the 94. The newer or poorer ones work on the Detroit side around the 95% black population, and the older families, with kids at the universities maybe, move toward the lilly-white suburbs of academia.
Same thing my ancestors did, only mine went north, along the 75 to the border with The North, where Republicans live.
JTarrou
2mo ago
Necro!
Anyhoo, I liked this particular bit.
Of course it's a lot more complicated, this was some Deep Thoughts With Jack Handy style analysis. I do think it's a useful frame.
Slavery counterfactuals aside, technology provided an option to slave labor. It didn't need to annihilate it. It just had to be a viable alternative, and I imagine that point in time was different for different technologies and different jobs. John Henry is a folk tale about this process, and he, of course, is a freed slave. Freed to have a labor competition with a steel-driving machine.
JTarrou
2mo ago
That is a good point. The social status of having more children levels off pretty fast with living standards, I seem to recall. I'm guessing for hyperfertility to survive the middle class income trap, it needs both above average income and ideological commitment, probably religious. Mormons, Amish, Quiverfulls, etc.
JTarrou
2mo ago
Neither. Polygamy is generally hyper-fertile, but polygamy as practiced in the Bay Area by socially awkward screen addicts seems not to be.
Probably more about the selection effect and less about the polygamy.
JTarrou
3mo ago
Technology as politics.
Feminism is more a product of the washing machine, the pill and air conditioning than it is political organizing. It is less an ideology than it is a set of opinions enabled by a certain level of technological advancement.
Anti-racism is more a product of the steam engine than it is of any moral progress. All of human history no one thought to free the slaves, until one day from out of nowhere.....the richest and most technologically advanced society on earth invented a way to turn fossil fuels into energy and all the sudden slavery and the racism that supported it isn't strictly necessary. Hence "moral progress".
Today, we all benefit from less-than-free labor in third world nations making us cheaper consumer products. In the most technologically backward parts of the world slavery still exists. That is not because those are worse people than those of us who can afford to pay for the labor that supports our first world lifestyles.
The "moral" arc of history bends toward whatever options technology provides.
What this means for the age of AI is anyone's guess.
JTarrou
4mo ago
Not me, I'm the exception that proves the rule. I have better things to hate people over than race.
JTarrou
4mo ago
are we all ok with calling BAP a racist, after posts like this?
I'm ok with calling both you and BAP racists. After all, isn't everyone?
JTarrou
4mo ago
Veganizm can't be argued with because it is an ascetic religious belief, not a material one.
Dietary restriction is as old as superstition. The "holy" will always try to display their moral superiority through dietary restriction, dress, and conspicuous consumption.
As a belief, it is an incoherent heresy of Jainism, which the modern vegan is by far too much of a pussy to take to the proper conclusion. If they believed truly, and were consistent, they'd be filtering their water to avoid swallowing a gnat, sweeping the ground gently in front of them to avoid stepping on an ant and starving themselves to death. Make Veganism Great Again.
JTarrou
5mo ago
This will be offset in Ukraine's case by the attrition rate. Many of those violent young men are or will be dead. The average age of Ukrainian soldiers is already north of 40, I believe, so the young must not be so numerous.
JTarrou
5mo ago
Rationalists have the flaw that they assume anyone will be well-meaning.
Fixed.
There are no well-meaning people, only cynics, liars and the self-deluded. Altruism is the first lie.
JTarrou
5mo ago
The same thing that causes all totalitarian regimes to collapse: becoming slightly less authoritarian. An edifice of such lies and violence cannot be maintained by politics. Dictatorships do not fall when they are most oppressive, but when they begin to liberalize too slowly for the populace. See also: France, the US.
JTarrou
5mo ago
Isn't .300 AAC a relative chonker of a round? I can't see how one can call it pistol tier even if it's subsonic.
With common subsonic rounds necessary for suppression, the ballistics are pretty comparable to the .45 ACP (or 10mm), a 220 grain projectile at 1k fps vs a 230 at 900. Of course, the downrange accuracy is much better, but in terms of power, we're in the same ballpark. You're not getting rifle damage at subsonic velocities.
I think you're a touch off base here. Yes, you can get a .308 with a ten inch barrel, but it's more regulated and it is going to be LOUD, and throw a fifteen foot fireball when you shoot it. Might as well fit a roman candle to your assassination gun. You're also going to lose all the power that would make you choose a .308 in the first place, because ten inches of barrel isn't going to get the round up to speed. Right about ten inches, a .308 round drops below the 2200 FPS mark at the muzzle, meaning you might as well use the .300 blackout because you've gimped the more powerful cartridge.
Now let's talk about the problems with .300 AAC. First, it's low power, essentially a pistol cartridge when suppressed. Second, suppressors are expensive and the legal process is lengthy. You can build or buy "solvent trap" cans, but those are on the police radar and they don't work nearly as well as proper cans. Third, even in the best case scenario, the noise is still significant and noticeable. We're talking 130 decibels roughly, and there is a phenomenon known as "first round pop", where the first shot in a cold can is louder than the subsequent ones. It's not hearing safe, the "whisper quiet" is more likely noticeably louder than a stadium rock concert or a jet aircraft.
Take it from someone who has a built-out suppressed.300, I wouldn't recommend it for an assassination.
FC has it mostly covered, but I thought I'd weigh in about one specific little bit, the "high powered rifle and scope". People who don't shoot guns often think hitting a target at even close distance is easy, but it is anything but. The technical skill needed is relatively high and unlikely to be present in teh sort of people who need to take out opposing drug gangs. But let's say you got a guy who grew up rural and knows how to hunt.
Ok, you go buy a hunting rifle. If you get a scope package, this whole thing becomes harder because the scopes most companies sell on their guns are trash. Or you do your research, buy a decent rifle, get some recommendations for scopes, get good rings etc. Already this is requiring a fair bit of knowledge and around a thousand dollars. You get it all put together and you go zero the gun. Here you need a range of some distance, and at least twenty rounds of ammunition, maybe more. Not a lot of shooting ranges hood adjacent, so you drive out to the country to go to a commercial range and try to keep the staff from reporting on the thugged out hood rats now practicing their marksmanship with brand new rifles. You get zeroed. Then you pack all your shit back to the hood. We're going to assume short ranges of maybe thirty to a couple hundred yards, but if you want to set up "on rooftops", the height of the roof becomes very important. Shooting at steep angles is difficult, and requires specific training to do well. It changes the range math. But let's say the range is short enough it doesn't matter.
So you pop the guy, and now there's a .308 (or comparable caliber) slug somewhere and not many people get killed with long guns. Not a lot of long guns sold in a city. Not a lot of bangers with a bolt gun. You could destroy the gun, but would you rather destroy a two hundred dollar pistol or a thousand dollar rifle? It's hard to hide, the thing is four feet long. If you use it again, the police are going to link those crimes very early. Multiple bangers ambushed with a hunting rifle? A sniper serial killer? Gonna attract attention. Unlike handguns, some 70% of which are the same caliber, hunting rifles come in a staggering array of chamberings, making whichever one you choose relatively much easier to find even without a ballistic match.
Or, you could hand a fourteen-year-old a stolen pistol that retailed for $200 and have him walk up on a motherfucker.
JTarrou
5mo ago
My take is that SJ is just a product of the temporary cultural ascendancy of the clerisy. It will end the day it finally provokes the war it is working toward. Win or lose, social justice is incapable of fighting a real war as opposed to a cultural one. It will either become the fascism it claims to fight, or it will lose to its own creation.
The light at the end of the tunnel is a bloodbath.
JTarrou
5mo ago
Maybe more modern designs account for this? Or are you using dummy training rounds?
Yes. Most modern guns can be dry fired no problem. If you're very worried about your striker or have an older/rimfire gun, a snap cap will fix you right up.
JTarrou
5mo ago
A lot of artists/authors in the colonial period were famous for running off to Morocco or some such place where pederasty was winked at. Borroughs, etc. Some overlap with gay.
JTarrou
5mo ago
gay people
Gay people or gay men?
prominent intellectuals and artists.
Aside from the problem of defining such a group, given the rank bigotry of the class of people who decide who is and is not an "intellectual" and "artist", could be selection effects as well. I suspect if you took academia's word for it, a disproportionate number of "the most prominent artists and intellectuals" would be POC as well. And communists.
'Cause life is a game that no one wins
But you deserve a head start the way your life's goin'
So throw in the towel, 'cause your life ain't shit
No take that towel and hang yourself with it
Life's short and hard like a body-building elf
So save the planet and kill yourself
If you're feeling down-and-out with what your life's all about
Lift your head up high and blow your brains out
(Lift your head up high and blow your brains out)
Lift your head up high and blow your brains out
(Lift your head up high and blow your brains out)
Lift your head up high and blow your brains out
Suicide rates and murder among teens and the power of memes.
For those old enough to remember, these will be familiar times. Let me ask the '90s teenagers in the room, what was the dominant feeling of the age?
I would say that it was mostly a decade in which the youth aesthetic was of depression, sullen expressions, heroin chic, and underpinning it all, suicide. Suicide was in the air from the minute Cobain suck-started a shotgun. The music had song titles like “Hey man, nice shot” and “Lift your head up high and blow your brains out”. Subtle stuff. On the black side of the culture, gangsta rap was big. Drugs, murder, drugs, murder, booty. Still lighter than the white side.
Would it surprise anyone if I told you that the '90s were the only improvement in the teen suicide rate since the Depression? Murder rates peaked in '92 and dropped for twenty years.
Let's consider more recent history. The teen culture from 2010 to 2020. I'm not sure how those in it would classify that era, but to me it seemed like a decade of social media, politicization and gender. The Z discovered a giant pool of suicides (the lowest rate in decades) that they could save with hormones and surgery. They were the first generation to tackle racism and really make black lives matter. The aesthetic of the age is chipper, smug, vague, androgynous. Black culture has moved from the ghetto to the antiracism seminar. The result?
Suicide rates rose swiftly throughout the decade among teens, bringing them back into line with the already high rate before the '90s reversed course for twenty years. Murder rates started rising in 2013 and shot up in 2020. Mostly among young black men.
Death has a way of clarifying things, as it's tough to fake.
One cannot go back to the past, but we would do well to consider what sociopolitical norms and policies might have contributed to that massive achievement, and we absolutely must be extremely clear about which ones lead to the reversal. And no, I'm not talking about Lupus and Jimmy Pop.
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