netstack
Royalty is a continuous selling-out motion
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User ID: 647
The simplest explanation is that arguing lab leak makes one (EDIT: look more like) a principled free thinker, which is usually a coveted niche. Once the MAGA movement gave lab leak a bit of status, it worked as a tribal signal, too.
I think this dynamic applies because the lab leak discourse mostly occurred via social media. It wasn’t like the Rogers Commission or a criminal trial. Even the people who insisted that it merits war with China had no expectation of getting that outcome. Thus the debates revolved around status games.
netstack
Royalty is a continuous selling-out motion
17hr ago
No. Like other good conspiracy theories, we already have more or less all the evidence we’re going to get. If that wasn’t enough to settle it there’s not going to be a smoking gun in 10 years.
He talks about searchers, who look for the truth, and blockers, who try to keep people from finding it.
This is conspiracy 101: partition everybody into free-thinkers and sheep. You, dear reader, must be intelligent and brave to have seen through the sidelining and even ridicule! Unfortunately, having critics does not actually mean that someone is right.
The difference between lab leak debates and the Challenger investigation comes from skin in the game. Remember that almost nobody arguing for or against lab leak had any expectation of consequences, moral or material. “I don’t want their blood on my hands” has different incentives than “I want to prove this asshole wrong.”
Fat Tony
Tell him somebody ate a diseased bat in west China. Epicycles about Laos and pangolins and steel beams are beside the point; Fat Tony don’t care.
rootclaim
I didn’t bother to watch this either. I read Scott’s summary and the followup. Do that if it sounds like fun, because it’s not likely to change your mind.
But I’d still say it’s the opposite of a Gish gallop. Both sides went in with the expectation of throwing a bunch of shit at the wall. Good for them.
netstack
Royalty is a continuous selling-out motion
1d ago
She had lovely legs. I would say that for her. They were a couple of pretty smooth citizens, she and her father.
I can’t say why this one hit me so hard. It’s so stupid. I love it. Material for the Lyttle Lytton contest.
But the best scene so far has been the four-way confrontation in some jerk’s apartment.
I hit Agnes on the head with less delicacy than before, kicked her off my feet, and stood up. Brody flicked his eyes at me. I showed him the automatic. He stopped trying to get his hand into his pocket.
"Christ!" he whined. "Don't let her kill me!"
I began to laugh. I laughed like an idiot, without control. Blonde Agnes was sitting up on the floor with her hands flat on the carpet and her mouth wide open and a wick of metallic blond hair down over her right eye. Carmen was crawling on her hands and knees, still hissing. The metal of her little revolver glistened against the baseboard over in the corner. She crawled towards it relentlessly.
I waved my share of the guns at Brody and said: "Stay put. You're all right."
I stepped past the crawling girl and picked the gun up. She looked up at me and began to giggle. I put her gun in my pocket and patted her on the back. "Get up, angel. You look like a Pekinese."
I went over to Brody and put the automatic against his midriff and reached his Colt out of his side pocket. I now had all the guns that had been exposed to view. I stuffed them into my pockets and held my hand out to him.
netstack
Royalty is a continuous selling-out motion
1d ago
Sir, the goalposts are back there.
quite wrong to lose the ability to control the destiny of your people
They have not lost it. They are choosing—of their own free will!—policies which might give it up. Why do you think that is?
More importantly, why do you think they need to “correct” it? If you’re trying to give them “control of their destiny,” maybe a military dictatorship is a complete nonstarter.
netstack
Royalty is a continuous selling-out motion
1d ago
I, too, would be interested in a local perspective. Coverage of the CDU says they came out of 2025 federal elections alright. Now they’re falling out of individual states?
Maybe their economic stance is that unpopular. There’s some sort of landlord crisis in Berlin proper, so residents have started going full socialist.
But what’s up with M-V? It’s the least dense state in Germany. Is this an urban/rural split? Are there even any immigrants over that far?
Even if the AfD were to somehow convince every single ethnic German in the city to oust the Ausländer, ethnic Germans will soon be a minority in their own capital city.
I think this is pretty silly. AfD has decidedly not convinced everyone that it’s the last hope of the German race, so the 25/42/50% equivocation is beside the point. As discussed downthread, it’s also not obvious how many of those 25% actually get a vote.
netstack
Royalty is a continuous selling-out motion
1d ago
I can think of a couple from Germany.
netstack
Royalty is a continuous selling-out motion
1d ago
That’s nice, but they didn’t lose that ability.
Ethnic Germans still have majorities (almost?) everywhere. They are choosing not to vote as a bloc. I think this is a good thing; coalition governments are more accountable than one-party states. Note that naturalized citizens apparently aren’t voting as a bloc either. They’re just much less likely to go AfD.
netstack
Royalty is a continuous selling-out motion
1d ago
I tried a couple Poirot short stories recently. Not super impressed. Sherlock Holmes if he only had 10 pages to work it out. Not that there aren’t some redeeming qualities, but it didn’t wow me at all.
My wife and I are continuing our tradition of reading aloud before bed. We started with Wodehouse but the current novel is Chandler’s The Big Sleep. My God, this is incredible. Marlowe just sort of stands around until people get uncomfortable and either leave the evidence or try to kill him. And there are so many hilarious phrases.
Least expected feature: Los Angeles. I always assumed noir was a New England thing.
netstack
Royalty is a continuous selling-out motion
1d ago
I just read that one!
Not nearly as self-contained as M&C, but it’s fun and badass and absolutely hilarious.
netstack
Royalty is a continuous selling-out motion
1d ago
Yes! It’s a beautiful, unique work. Not even imitated all that often.
Despite being killed off remarkably fast, Fëanor is one of the characters of all time.
My copy has this crazy painting of an exploding castle on the cover. I was able to trace it back to “The Fall of Numenor” from this calendar. No; I have no idea why that rated the cover. If you haven’t seen those, enjoy.
netstack
Royalty is a continuous selling-out motion
1d ago
Do you have any reason to believe it’s not stereotypical midlife crises?
FWIW my dad doesn’t appear to have changed behavior at all. He’s gotten more interested in whiskey, I guess.
netstack
Royalty is a continuous selling-out motion
1d ago
That is a more interesting one.
The Republican Reconstruction agenda which Johnson opposed mostly made it into law anyway. He stirred up a lot more resentment against it, but I can’t say if it would have been more or less enduring if he had rubber-stamped everything. I suspect that ship had sailed after his first year, by which point several Southern states had reconstituted their old governments and sent their war heroes to Congress.
Maybe you could preempt the Lost Cause by refusing amnesty to Confederate personnel? But then you’ve still got the remnants of the aristocracy trying to hold on to their plantations, putting up statues and moaning about the good ol’ days. Can you avoid that without going full damnatio memoriae?
Also, preventing ex-Confederates from getting into state or national government probably reduces support for black suffrage. That would give voting southerners license to, well, recreate their whole underclass again. That’s an injustice and probably still reinforces the aristocratic myths.
netstack
Royalty is a continuous selling-out motion
1d ago
I’d use a test along the lines of “would believers in the original cause endorse my goals?” Or maybe “would I care about endorsement from the original cause?” So neo-Nazi groups might count even if they don’t have a specific opinion about Versailles. But they’d have to deploy that iconography in service of a Nazi-approved goal like, say, purging ethnic Russians from a region. Merely defending Ukraine’s territorial integrity wouldn’t count.
By this standard, there are definitely people who still identify with the Lost Cause. They’re not expecting to bring back plantation economics but they do still want to maintain a black underclass. Or they have strong opinions on federal authority: courts, banking, interstate commerce. It’s a different world but I think you can still show continuity, especially when it comes to civil rights.
netstack
Royalty is a continuous selling-out motion
2d ago
A rump government which couldn’t secure the interests of slaveholders wouldn’t have stayed together long.
netstack
Royalty is a continuous selling-out motion
2d ago
Other commenters have given good reasons why winning the war was more or less out of JD’s hands. You’re relying on foreign recognition and the addition of more border states to even force a stalemate.
Lincoln, on the other hand, has a few opportunities to avoid Union disasters. Several of them involve McClellan.
netstack
Royalty is a continuous selling-out motion
2d ago
Cold Days turned out way better than I expected.
Freedom’s Forge is a WW2 biopic about setting up military-scale production. There’s something aaqc-worthy there about the change in expectations over 80 years, but I’m not sure that I’m the right person to write it.
netstack
Royalty is a continuous selling-out motion
3d ago
I understand that dealing with Shakes is frustrating. Don’t stoop to personal attacks. Seriously, block him if you have to; we don’t enjoy banning good contributors.
Take a week off.
netstack
Royalty is a continuous selling-out motion
5d ago
Precisely. If you had Roman levels of communications and records, we’d have much less material on Smith. Self-proclaimed prophet flees across country, murdered by a mob. Followers remain dedicated enough build a city in the desert.
netstack
Royalty is a continuous selling-out motion
5d ago
Dude, this is one of the most unhinged things I’ve seen you say. I’m not even sure I parsed it correctly.
The Clancy case isn’t an ideological touchstone, and it’s certainly not analogous to urban warfare. I have no idea how or why women “handing back the wheel” would fix the Middle East, if that’s even what you have in mind.
netstack
Royalty is a continuous selling-out motion
5d ago
The informed, truthful, people, would say something like 80-99%.
First: I’m not sure this passes the sniff test. Think about your nearest urban center. Then think about how it would look if 80% of spaces in it contained at least one valid target. A weapons cache in every mailbox. Each store clerk a combatant. Multiply this over the ~100 km2 controlled by Hamas. Would it look like the pictures?
Second: I don’t think this is actually the sticking point for most people. The question of acceptable casualties is deontological, not utilitarian.
Basically everyone would answer 99%-100%.
See, that 1% makes a big difference. Americans have the privilege of being choosy about our involvement. Support for Palestine is almost entirely predicted on whether one thinks the collateral damage is avoidable.
netstack
Royalty is a continuous selling-out motion
5d ago
How far does the association go?
Hamas is obviously antisemitic. Some of their defenders doubtless fall in that category. But I have to believe it’s possible to defend a group without endorsing all its positions, let alone its motivations.
Consider a single-issue antifeminist. He holds no opinions about Jews but wishes that sharia law applied to women everywhere. As such, he approves of Hamas’ actions. Is he an antisemite?
Consider a Westerner conservative influencer. He says things like “Islam is right about women” in an attempt to put progressives between a rock and a hard place. Is he an antisemite?
Or consider a Western zoomer. He repeats edgy proposals he hears from people like the first two. He’s not sure if he’s being ironic, post-ironic, or serious…but is he antisemitic?
I don’t think you can draw a line from Hamas to CUAD to Macklemore and keep the ideology intact.
netstack
Royalty is a continuous selling-out motion
6d ago
Yeah, I take option 3. What I struggle to understand is why you go for 1. It feels to me like the worst of the options, but obviously that’s not the case for you.
Which option would you say applies to Catholics?
I get that you really, really really hate progressives, but I feel obligated to remind you.
Reversed stupidity is still not intelligence.
More options
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