FCfromSSC
Nuclear levels of sour
No bio...
User ID: 675
The point is reasonable enough, but my observation is that Umberto Eco's writings on the nature of Fascism are straightforwardly bullshit. A supermajority of those engaged in conflict at any scale are going to see their opponent as a threat ("strong") and also both deeply flawed and weak enough to be defeated ("weak"). There is no contradiction here; "Strength" and "Weakness" are not objective criteria, but rather meta-poles in a fuzzy, highly-multidimensional space.
From what I've seen, the rest of his analysis is shot through with similar problems.
FCfromSSC
Nuclear levels of sour
2hr ago
Yeah and that's old fart behavior. People joke about 9/11, and suicides, and all sorts of other dark crap. Wanting to be immune to it is another form of cringe and invites even more jokes.
An interesting position.
Big leak of the Young Republicans groupchat, spanning multiple high level members across the nation's "premier Republican youth organization" (as it calls itself), including staffers for GOP representatives, at least one Trump admin employee, at least one elected official, and other high ranking conservatives. "Young" in this case is 18-40, adults working in a professional capacity....
Shit, that doesn't seem very consistent. Reading this thread, it seems like you think people "joking" about "dark shit" is a very serious problem, sufficient to make a long and highly-uncharitably framed post about it, provided it's your outgroup in the hotseat.
Sir, there's been four new Nazi/Hitler/antisemitic issues in the conservative community in just the past day[.] Following the recent Politico expose on the Young Republicans groupchat leak among mid 20s-30s leaders of the organization containing comments about gas chambering their political opponents and antisemitic remarks like this[.] “I was about to say you’re giving nationals to [sic] much credit and expecting the Jew to be honest,” In the followup to this, yes you heard it right, at least four new antisemitic and/or Nazi controversies in the past day or so.
Damn, check that out, a whole additional post and extensive comment thread where you very much seem to be attempting to frame this as a really serious, chronic problem that demands action! Can you point out any place in either of these posts or the subsequent threads where your critique of "old fart behavior" or "wanting to be immune to it is another form of cringe" impinges on your analysis?
Let us speak plainly. I don't think you actually believe anything you write here. You are a committed Blue Tribe partisan, and in each post you say whatever you think will advance your short-term partisan interests in the immediate context, with zero concern for any sort of long-term principle or consistency. You will (and have!) argued in favor of free speech when you perceived free speech to be of benefit to you, and you will (and have!) argued for censorship when censorship is of benefit to you. If you have anything recognizable as actual principles, I do not believe you have ever shared them here; certainly I do not believe that I have seen them.
Now to be very clear, I do not think you are breaking the rules by behaving this way, and as far as I am concerned you are perfectly free to continue as long as it pleases you. This place is for arguments, and you certainly bring arguments. To the extent that your pattern of argumentation is viewed as obnoxious by others, I encourage them to simply remember the things you have said, and repeat them back to you, and those who agree with you, when the moment becomes opportune. As an example, I think it is pretty likely that Blue Tribe is going to, at some point in the next few years, start experiencing what it's like to be on the receiving end of actual, motivated, grassroots political murder. And when that happens, and when Blues here discuss how prominent members of their tribe being publicly murdered worries them, I am going to quote them this line right here:
Correct, the feeling was bullshit. It was a real feeling but that's because people are paranoid idiots.
...along with a bouquet of similar quotes from your previous posts. And why shouldn't I? These are the arguments you choose to make, and the other Blues here choose to accept, are they not?
FCfromSSC
Nuclear levels of sour
15hr ago
From the analysis I heard, Farage pulled this stunt because he is probably going to be censured by Parliament, and that censure would trigger an automatic by-election. His goal was to trigger a by-election of his own, win it, and thus moot the censure. Now, though, he has a slim chance of actually losing this election to a joke candidate, and even if he wins it, his opponents in parliament can credibly claim that it wasn't a "real" election anyway since he ran "unopposed", and thus proceed with the censure and a second by-election that they can actually contest in a serious manner. The miscalculation on Farage's part seems quite severe.
Restore, the insurgent party running to Farage's right, seem disinclined to come to his aid, percieving him to be an obstacle between themselves and mainstream legitimacy on the Right.
There have been worse presidents than Trump, by and large our institutions have held against his efforts to get around them.
I would argue that the end of America was initiated by Trump's election, not because Trump is a uniquely bad president, but because his election is the point where the conflict/escalation spiral between reds and blues went from potential to actual in a self-sustaining way. What might be described as "efforts to get around" Trump are, to me, examples of institutions bending and blowing out under a level of values-stress they were incapable of surviving.
He'll be gone in a little over two and a half years. No successor to him has been really able to gain any kind of traction to his cult of personality.
I am a Trump supporter. I have continued to support Trump because it is obvious to me that all potential alternatives to Trump would have involved an unacceptably high chance of capitulation to Blues, of a "return to normal". And in fact, it seems obvious to me that steadfast support for Trump has in fact steadily eroded the "normal" my opponents wish to return to, such that when Trump is gone we have a much better chance of maintaining our movement as a coherent vehicle for our values and goals. We have in fact heavily reshaped the Republican party, and I would argue that we have even significantly reshaped the Democratic party and the American public sphere as well, in ways that I consider strongly net-positive. I am hopeful that our movement will transition to a new champion when Trump retires, without compromising the values it currently advances, and perhaps might even advance them better.
The US is able to handle the bumpy road of a bad presidency, SCOTUS court packing is a different animal as there is no foreseeable end it to.
What is a "forseeable end" in this context? I would imagine that it would involve a return to some sort of highly-stable base state, but it's not clear to me that such a base state has existed for some time. SCOTUS activism of the sort typified by Roe v Wade did not have a "forseeable end", did it? It made the court a partisan prize, triggering an escalation spiral as both sides fought over majority control of the Court, and when Reds won that fight sufficiently Blues escalated to ignoring SCOTUS rulings they did not like while simultaneously threatening to pack the court, among other strategies. And obviously, some escalations are bigger and more obvious than others, but it's the same incentive gradient all the way up the spiral.
The US is able to handle the bumpy road of a bad presidency, SCOTUS court packing is a different animal as there is no foreseeable end it to.
The methods employed to "handle the bumpy road of a bad presidency" have long-term consequences, which erode both the methods used and the legitimacy of those employing them. What is best is when such methods do not need to be employed at all, when there is no conflict because such conflict is seen as unproductive and pointless by a supermajority of the population. This was the status quo prior to Trump; a wide range of values and concerns had no representation and no obvious path to representation under the existing system, and consequently those in power believed they could be safely ignored. Trump was the point at which this range gained actual representation, and its opponents had to stop ignoring them and start actually fighting them, a fight it seems to me they have been steadily losing ever since.
America, as it has been commonly understood is not compatible with the sort of fight we now have, and so we see the proliferation of un-American behavior and ideas on both sides as the escalating conflict generates common knowledge of the failures throughout the population. When the conflict was only potential, the incompatibility of our values could be ignored or papered over. Now neither are an option, and we devolve toward straight power concepts. This process takes time, but it seems to me that it is obvious, irreversible, and deeply necessary.
We have been in worse culture war situations than now. Cooler heads must prevail.
I do not think we share a common understanding of what "cooler heads" means in this context. To me, "Cooler heads" means that my values and interests get fucked forever, that I am ruled badly by people who hate me and who have perfectly insulated themselves from any accountability for the harm they inflict, no matter how egregious. Why should I hope that such "cooler heads" prevail?
I also note that the internationally recognised government of Somalia has not controlled its internationally recognised territory for decades, meaning that de facto sovereignty was there for the taking. And the only people to take it were a group of locals who got their act together (Somaliland), pirates, and jihadis. And the pirates and jihadis aren't about freedom, they are about using "borrowed" Somali sovereignty as a base for predation.
Westerners tried projects of the sort you're implying here repeatedly in the ~60s-70s in various African nations. My understanding is that they stopped doing this when Western governments (that I think could be fairly described as "the UN") made it clear that they would not tolerate further such attempts. If those same western governments gave the green-light to private colonialism by their citizens, I think Somalia would have very different outcomes more or less immediately.
I actually also agree with the main thrust of his post, but orbital datacenters make zero sense unless you’re wrongly thinking “space = cold” instead of “space = vacuum”.
Have you actually done the math on this, or has someone else? My understanding is that it's totally doable with relatively modest radiators; I'm open to this guy not knowing what he's talking about, but all I've seen from the other side is sneering.
FCfromSSC
Nuclear levels of sour
1d ago
I don't see how a court packing does not signal the beginning of the end of the US
We have pretty clearly initiated the beginning of the end of the US some years ago, arguably with the election of Trump in 2016.
The Dems would have to lock out the Reps from power for at least a generation or face a retaliatory court pack the second the Reps return to power
Obviously, and this is pretty clearly the plan, at least arguably on both sides. Blues and Reds do not share sufficient compatibility of values to make cooperation possible, so the only remaining options are separation or war. Legacy social institutions obstruct these natural solutions, and so we observe the culture war blastwave striking, bending, and blowing out those institutions in sequence as it propagates through society. SCOTUS won't be able to hold it back any more than Free Speech Principles or Liberalism or the Courts or Academia was; things made by humans can be unmade by other humans.
FCfromSSC
Nuclear levels of sour
2d ago
Could you elaborate your point? Is it that they've tried and failed, and so are likely to try more in future, or that they've tried and failed, and so are unlikely to succeed in the future?
FCfromSSC
Nuclear levels of sour
2d ago
This is true, and as a consequence Trump is currently President. This does not mean that a decisive Blue Tribe victory is not possible, nor that significant effort will not be expended (and norms/cohesion burned) in pursuit of such a victory.
It does not appear to me that we are off the escalation spiral.
FCfromSSC
Nuclear levels of sour
2d ago
Interesting that you can see the case for the collapse of SpaceX, but not the implosion of the Democratic Party as a nationally competitive entity. The national party is losing the fundraising race badly
- fundraising does not determine the outcome of elections.
- Measurements of formal political fundraising foes not capture partisan political cashflows or their effects. Sizable portions of the federal budget and national GDP are locked up in explicit or implicit subsidies to partisan Blue Tribe institutions and populations, and this seems unlikely to change in at least the short to medium term.
- The Democratic party is large, entrenched and diversified to an incredible degree, and is quite lindy besides.
I am fairly confident that our current democratic party is well-positioned to outlive America as a coherent sociopolitical entity.
FCfromSSC
Nuclear levels of sour
2d ago
"harder" is not "impossible" or even "sufficiently hard to successfully deter the motivated", and it seems to me that the Democrats and Blue Tribe generally are at this point highly motivated.
Packing the court is likely to happen soon in any case.
Loss of actual capabilities is not a significant obstacle; the federal government is very comfortable wallowing in infrastructure and technology mediocrity for indefinite periods of time.
I would not be comfortable betting my freedom and well-being on Presidential Pardons being the norm that shall forever stand, but I'll grant that a pardon is likely and should offer at least some protection short-term.
What would be the obstacle to a federal wealth tax aimed exclusively at trillionaires?
And of course, straightforward murder is always an option.
FCfromSSC
Nuclear levels of sour
2d ago
High on hype? Come on, make an argument. My argument is bounded by the theory that the US Government will bail out SpaceX in the worst case because it's important to a generation of American military power, and that SpaceX will be extremely economically productive in the medium case
The democrats are going to get back in office at some point, and they are almost certainly going to try to permanently remove Musk's access to anything resembling wealth or power when they do so. This creates an obvious avenue for generating a fiscal crisis for SpaceX correlated with an obvious obstacle for the sort of bailout you're suggesting. At a minimum, I would expect a "bailout" under such conditions to require the removal of Musk and all Musk loyalists from the company's leadership, and the installation of people deemed politically reliable. I would expect such a "bailout" to effectively destroy the company.
FCfromSSC
Nuclear levels of sour
3d ago
Ms. Reade’s accusation was taken very seriously and thoroughly investigated. One deep investigation concluded the “rape”, as described by Ms. Reade, was not feasible.
Do you agree with that investigation's conclusions? Could you quote the parts of the linked article that you consider authoritative?
Whether it was necessary to go to that depth to prove Biden’s innocence is another question for another day.
What standard of evidence do you believe an investigation of such accusations against someone of Biden's stature should have applied? What do you think of prominent proposals for other standards, or the people championing them?
FCfromSSC
Nuclear levels of sour
8d ago
Yeah. When I heard that the jury in Karmelo Anthony's case was 'all white' I could only imagine 12 obese Mexicans in buttoned up shirts with white cowboy hats sitting in the courtroom sweating profusely under the Texas sun.
It had no black people, but it did have asians, hispanics, etc, as was frequently pointed out. The people claiming it was "all white" were lying for their immediate social advantage; this proves nothing about how assimilation operates in the general context.
FCfromSSC
Nuclear levels of sour
10d ago
high-res photo of a bunch of stamps on mail
3d-model the stamp's shape
3d-print the stamp in a rubbery material with a resin printer, so no layer lines.
gently weather/age the stamp.
...would be one obvious and probably undetectable method. You could use this to match an existing stamp's "unique" flaws/weathering, or use it to create a plausible stamp that doesn't match known stamps, whichever is more useful.
FCfromSSC
Nuclear levels of sour
12d ago
Another layer is that Jonah himself is not destroyed. Even after doing as God commanded, he still wishes to see Nineveh destroyed, and is angry when it is not. The story ends with God attempting to reason with him, rather than simply smiting him for his rebellious attitude.
FCfromSSC
Nuclear levels of sour
12d ago
The comment above yours is still filtered.
Fixed.
That's one of the fundamental questions on the American right at present: Does classical liberalism necessarily produce a level of pluralism it cannot survive?
Speaking for myself, straightforwardly, obviously, unavoidably, yes.
Classical liberalism as it is commonly understood and described is built on axiomatic assumptions about the possible range of human values, and those assumptions are observably wrong because the observable range of human values is significantly wider. You can track the obvious cross-sectional ways in which those assumptions have decayed by degrees across our entire society over time, and how our institutions and social structures have decayed with them.
Classical Liberalism increases tolerance. Increased tolerance creates values-diversity, and then values-incoherence. Values incoherence creates conflict, which reduces tolerance. Perhaps this cycle can be retarded or bypassed in some ways or in some circumstances, but certainly classical liberalism cannot do it because it cannot even begin to adequately frame the problem. It believes tolerance is a moral precept, axiomatically, but Tolerance Is Not A Moral Precept.
FCfromSSC
Nuclear levels of sour
12d ago
....I think one of us is misunderstanding something here.
My understanding is that algae eat phosphate to grow, and therefore an algae bloom should reduce phosphate levels, not elevate them. Algae do not need elevated phosphate to bloom, but will bloom a lot more in the presence of elevated phosphate. further, my understanding is that the most common source of elevated phosphate in water is from fertilizer runoff.
Again, this seems like a pretty straightforward question of fact to me. CNN is reporting elevated phosphate levels in the pool; it seems a reasonable inference that these levels are elevated versus the water that's being pumped into the pool, but if I'm wrong about that, I welcome correction. If the water in the pool has more phosphate than the water being added to the pool, then phosphate is being added to the pool somehow. Given that there is an ongoing vandalism campaign being conducted with relation to the pool and its surroundings, it seems logical to me that the phosphate is being added by the vandals.
FCfromSSC
Nuclear levels of sour
12d ago
Why do we need a conspiracy here? Hasn't there been algae in this pool all the time?
Because it's not just the algae, it's the water having elevated phosphate levels feeding the algae, per CNN, at the same time that people are definitely intentionally vandalizing the nearby green, and also definitely intentionally damaging the new liner material. Again, I'm open to other explanations, but those explanations really ought to account for the observable evidence.
It's actually worse than that.
Aztec blood sacrifice is a legitimate religion. How should freedom of religion operate for people who wish to adhere to that religion? The answer, speaking plainly, is that it doesn't and can't, right here and now, not in some hypothetical "someday" far in the future. If we have a significant population that wants to seize outsiders and rip their hearts out, there's no way we're going to be able to coexist with that population long-term. Nor is there any principled distinction between their claim to toleration of religious practice or mine; there is, in fact, no objective definition of "harm", and yet there is no way to maintain society without enforcement against those inflicting harm; this enforcement will be both necessarily subjective and entirely indispensable.
The logic of the First Amendment assumes that the range of religions is much narrower than the observable range of religions, just as it assumes that the range of ideologies and of values is much narrower than the observable range of ideologies and values. When you get out past the borders of the range it was built for, the logic it runs on simply stops working. The fact is that you cannot actually run even a minimally-cohesive society if your population is too values-diverse to cooperate.
FCfromSSC
Nuclear levels of sour
13d ago
Is that how the water system in question works? If so, I'd have thought I'd have heard of it by now, but again, I'm willing to be corrected if there's clear facts available.
FCfromSSC
Nuclear levels of sour
13d ago
I'm entirely willing to accept that interpretation, and in fact this is my interpretation of the culture war as a whole: we no longer have a cohesive society, and so attempting to pool resources or coordinate effort or share institutions in any way cannot be expected to work. You cannot build or even maintain memorials in a society that fundamentally cannot agree on what should be memorialized. Ditto for public schools, public libraries, public justice systems...
FCfromSSC
Nuclear levels of sour
13d ago
State bans on CNC aren't preventing the import of auto-sears for criminals by the containerload, and they can't prevent me from constructing a functional bump-stock out of cardboard and hot glue. The law, at this point, mostly functions in an attempt to keep people from talking about what a failure it is to actually exert meaningful control in the real world.
And sure, this allows people in blue areas to be oppressed, so long as the vast majority of people are willing to cooperate with maintaining the system. This balance is not stable, and cannot be maintained in the face of even a small number of people sincerely wishing otherwise. You are correct that neither I nor anyone else has a way to give you current society, only less oppression for you. But if you are willing to let go of current society, the oppression can also go, and speedily.
The Guardian is a leftist/progressive word-product-extruder. They have a credible claim neither to pop-culture insight nor to journalistic credibility. Like many nozzles studding the meta-Blue-Tribe superstructure, they say what they feel will be convenient to be seen saying at this moment in time. They arrived at simulacrum-4 many years ago, and are unlikely to ever leave.
It is not in the perceived interest of anyone involved in the extrusion of this particular word-product that Charlie Kirk be perceived as anything but a joke. It is not in their interest for people to take Progressive political murders seriously. It is not in their interest for people to take broad-based, grass-roots support for political murders of sympathetic victims seriously. Thus, it is important to them that the victim not be perceived as sympathetic. Unfortunately, a lot of people took both Kirk's murder and the obvious, undeniable and very widespread support for his murder quite seriously, and so this is a problem that needs to be dealt with.
The memeing of Kirk is the desired outcome of those managing this particular extrusion. They are not impartially reporting a fact of interest, they are selectively reporting whatever facts or slogans seem to make their desired end-state more probable.
The above three points cover the large majority of what it seems to me is useful to say about the article itself.
Yet! Growth mindset. On the other hand, his death did, I think, have a permanent and in my view highly salutory effect on intra-right wing discourse, creating large amounts of useful common knowledge within Red Tribe that move the conversation forward in a useful way.
Agreed. And yet, consensus on this point could not be achieved within our society, and common knowledge on that point likewise was generated within Blue Tribe. When the shoe is on the other foot, you are going to see large portions of Red Tribe responding to mirrored demands for unity against hate responding with quotes from prominent Blues from the Kirk aftermath, and flat rejection of the "unity" frame. If you would like an example of this process in action, check the discourse over the recent anti-immigrant riots in Ireland. Social cohesion is not an unlimited resource, and things like this are how it goes away.
It kind of was though, wasn't it?
Another way to frame this is that the right called on the ancient bonds of brotherhood and unity, and the reply was a brief period of initial, halfhearted opprobrium quickly transitioning into complaints about how these appeals to bedrock principles of social comity were all just "going too far".
Blue Tribe had no interest in allowing Charlie Kirk a legacy before his death, and they certainly have no interest in allowing him one after his death. Obviously, it is in their interest if Charlie Kirk's legacy is as a ridiculous meme, and to the extent that anyone anywhere is treating him this way, they will report it, and to the extent anyone anywhere takes him and his death seriously, they will either mock them or ignore them as seems most immediately advantageous. That is not my understanding of Kirk's legacy, nor the understanding of other Reds I encounter. I have no reason to prefer your interpretation to mine, nor to believe their interpretation is more accurate than mine. As for the youtube-slop video... I do not think your or the Guardian's read on such portents is accurate.
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