domain:philippelemoine.com
ulyssessword
10m ago
one slot is all but reserved for the pocket watch that stops time when you open inventory.
My pet peeve: degraded-by-default UIs that cost in-game resources (often substantial amounts of them) to partially fix. Most recently, I could spend a perk point on zooming out farther in Star Valor (top-down spaceship game) so I didn't get sniped from off the screen, and install an armor module in Outer Wilds that highlights interactive objects at a longer range so I can tell them apart from decorative objects.
My other pet peeve: High-speed menu navigation as a mandatory minigame.
Skibboleth
It's never 4D Chess
31m ago
I'm not sure I agree with that equivalency, but nevertheless: Louis CK wasn't fired (and, as with many cancelled individuals, couldn't be fired by the very nature of his work). He got in trouble for actions taken in the course of his professional career that were not even political, which led to people disassociating from him for a while. Bret Weinstein got in trouble for statements made in his capacity as an Evergreen State professor, and also wasn't fired (he resigned). Damore got in trouble for statements made in his capacity as a Google employee; whether or not they pertained to his regular duties does not strike me as particularly relevant (to illustrate: suppose Damore had made unambiguously fireable remarks to a fellow employee over his lunch break. The fact that this was outside of his normal duties is irrelevant). The argument in Damore's favor is not that Google had no basis to fire him over stuff not directly related to his job duties, but that he was punished for something that didn't warrant it.
However, as I said, I think this is an incredible narrow conceptualization of cancellation that doesn't match common usage, would exclude many instance that are generally considered to be central examples, and would capture all sorts of things that don't fit common understanding.
Like, hypothetical: someone makes a film disparaging MLK Jr (or whoever; it doesn't really matter). Outraged social media mobs lobby to have showings pulled and the director and producer blacklisted. Under your criteria, this would not be cancellation.
orthoxerox
If you can read this, you're using a custom theme
38m ago
I think young unmarried women have overtaken them, thanks to social media.
ulyssessword
38m ago
What better evidence could there be than him and his defense literally saying it?
Do you think the defendant in a criminal trial and his attorney are honest and forthright neutral truthseekers? I don't, so I don't rate that evidence very highly.
In fact here's something interesting, I asked chatgpt to run some numbers. "Per participant, was Jan 6th or BLM more violent towards cops?"
That reminds me of Contra Grant on Exaggerated differences:
Suppose I wanted to convince you that men and women had physically identical bodies. I run studies on things like number of arms, number of kidneys, size of the pancreas, caliber of the aorta, whether the brain is in the head or the chest, et cetera. 90% of these come back identical – in fact, the only ones that don’t are a few outliers like “breast size” or “number of penises”. I conclude that men and women are mostly physically similar. I can even make a statistic like “men and women are physically the same in 78% of traits”.
Add a ton of noise that overwhelms a valid signal, then declare that the noise is meaningful. I simply don't care about the BLM protests that were (actually, not "mostly") peaceful, so I wouldn't add them to the denominator.
orthoxerox
If you can read this, you're using a custom theme
39m ago
He's wrong. The distance between spoken Mandarin and Cantonese is greater than the distance between French and Italian. It's more like the difference between English and Greek.
Here's what ChatGPT suggests for translating your post into various Chinese languages:
- spoken Mandarin: Wǒ nàge Zhōngguó tóngshì shuō, zhè zhāng túpiàn dàgài néng dàibiǎo dàjiā zài zhēnglùn Pǔtōnghuà hé Guǎngdōnghuà dàodǐ shì fāngyán háishi yǔyán. Nǐ zěnme kàn?
- spoken Cantonese: Ngo5 go3 Zung1gwok3 tung4si6 waa6, ni1 zoeng1 soeng2 caa1 m4 do1 doi6biu2 zo2 gwaan1jyu1 Pou2tung1waa6 tung4 Gwong2dung1waa2 hai6 fong1jin4 ding6hai6 jyu5jin4 ge3 zang1leon6. Nei5 dim2 tai2 aa3?
- formal Mandarin: Wǒ de Zhōngguó tóngshì shuō, zhè zhāng túpiàn shì duìyú Pǔtōnghuà hé Yuèyǔ shì fāngyán háishi yǔyán de zhēngyì de hélǐ miáoxiě. Nǐ duì zhège huàtí yǒu shénme kànfǎ?
- written Mandarin voiced like Cantonese: Ngo5 dik1 Zung1gwok3 tung4si6 syut3, ze5 zoeng1 tou4pin3 si6 deoi3 jyu1 Pou2tung1waa6 waa6 Jyut6jyu5 si6 fong1jin4 waan6si6 jyu5jin4 dik1 zang1ji3 dik1 hap6lei5 miu6haai2. Nei5 deoi3 ze5 go3 waa6tai4 jau5 sam6mo1 hon3faat3?
It is really interesting to see different Political Weirdo Forums' assessment of public mood re: the Current Moment. Because they're... all over the place.
has anyone else noticed this new “lawmaker” noun?
It picked up like a while ago as a catchall for elected officials (especially sub-Federal). It's suitably generic so you don't embarrass yourself by accidentally calling a county councilor a county boardmember, plus it sounds more impressive to quote a "lawmaker" instead of county board member from Tumbleweed County.
ArjinFerman
Tinfoil Gigachad
1hr ago
If it was disavowed, why did people who stabbed, tasered, threw bombs at, or otherwise attacked cops get pardoned?
Because what they were subjected was a kangaroo court that was an affront to justice.
MadMonzer
Epstein Files must have done something really awful for so many libs to want him released.
1hr ago
· Edited 47m ago
de Gaulle went on to win it
Lol Gaullist propaganda. The British, Americans and Soviets won it and graciously allowed de Gaulle to take some of the credit in order to ensure an anti-communist government in post-war France.
I wasn't relying on the wiki article for analysis - I was using it for links to interviews with George Lucas. The claim that Lucas was inspired by those three comes from his own words. My personal view is that the dominant historical inspiration for the Galactic Republic and early Empire is Rome, including via Isaac Asimov (Coruscant is obviously Trantor, and Asimov was always explicit that his Galactic Empire was inspired by Rome).
eagerly voted excessive powers by a legislative body feeling lost and ineffective
A fairly accurate description of how Augustus and Napoleon spun the grants of extreme power post-coup, even if it isn't what actually happened. As with Augustus, Caesar and Napoleon (Hitler is a grey area) the Senate meeting we see on screen was a stage-managed ratification of a coup that had already happened. And there is no vote on-screen, and canon material consistently describes the declaration of the Empire as a proclamation, not the result of a vote.
I suggest the Wikipedia analysis, insofar as it ignores the words, is misguided.
I wasn't there, but I don't think Petain was installed "to thunderous applause" given the miserable circumstances.
remzem
1hr ago
ou know there's also an interesting thing to consider in right vs left violence discussions. The gender gap!
Or you could just poll people.
https://today.yougov.com/politics/articles/52960-charlie-kirk-americans-political-violence-poll
Very liberal more likely to say its acceptable to be happy about public figures deaths and more likely to agree that political violence can be justified.
Browser
1hr ago
The Christians saw a quarter of opportunity to advance themselves via either joining Israel or heading overseas and took it for the most part on account of not being insanely irrational.
Palestinian refugee crisis would come even if they were totally peaceful under their own administration right now. Glancing at the plethora of other nearby states shedding large refugee numbers to the West despite nothing to actually take refuge from apart from their own lack of welfare
FtttG
1hr ago
It seems to me that if Israel wanted to take over Gaza, they could have just - done so, at any point in the last twenty years. Israel doesn't want Gaza, and offered the territory back to Egypt on at least one occasion. Egypt doesn't want it either, of course, and constructed a massive wall along the Gazan border which extends several metres underground specifically to stop Gazans from tunneling under. If the blockade is an indictment of Israel, it's just as much an indictment of Egypt. And yet Hamas rarely, if ever, fires rockets at the other enforcers of this blockade.
And as for how awful it is that Israel places strict limitations on which products and goods go into Gaza - I will reiterate that Hamas are an entity which literally digs water pipes out of the ground in order to fashion crude rockets out of them. When Hamas officials say they hate Jews more than they love life, they are not being hyperbolic. People tut-tut about the invasive and humiliating procedures Gazans are subjected to when they want to travel into Israel for work, but seriously - if you were an Israeli official, and there was a group of people who hated you this much on your doorstep and who will resort to any underhanded tactic just for a chance to hurt one of you (up to and including employing women and children as suicide bombers), what would you do differently? Tear down the security checkpoints so Gazans can come and go as they please, immediately resulting in hundreds of Israeli civilians being killed in terror attacks? Allow the free flow of industrial products and fertilizer into Gaza, so that Hamas can use these to manufacture rockets and suicide vests? I genuinely want to know what you'd do differently if you were in their shoes.
functor
1hr ago
30% of Palestine was Christian before Israel started to destroy the Christian population of Palestine. Non of the war mongering has helped the countries in the middle east.
Also if they are so civilizationally incompetent, the last thing we would want would be a Palestinian refugee crisis. Therefore they need to stay put.
FirmWeird
Randomly Generated Reddit Username
1hr ago
They can import as much food as they like from people willing to sell to them.
This is actually not true. There are real limits to the amount of food that can be imported to Israel due to their security situation - and remember that in this case we're talking about an Israel several years into the future from now, where their reputation has been torched and nobody is willing to support or trade with them. No more US money to Egypt and the other nations around them means no more land trade. The US giving up (well more than they have already) at dealing with the houthis means there's no more shipping, either. How does Israel import the materiel and energy required to exist without US support? This is a serious logistical question, and as far as I can tell the answer is that there's no way for them to do so once the US teat is removed.
As we've seen with Russia, both food and energy exports are not constrained.
Russia in the present day is an entirely different beast from a Pariah Israel. Not only was Russia able to continue to trade with China, they kept on trading with Europe as well - via India. Russia is a gigantic country sharing land borders with multiple trading partners that increased their investment in Russian trade after the US attempted to impose sanctions. Not only is Russia not dependent upon imports of any critical requirements, they have a substantial industrial and energy base which is actually superior to the US in several aspects. If Israel had the size and breadth of Russia, I'd agree with you that they wouldn't have anything to fear, but that's not the world we live in. There is a very big difference between having your exports of energy be cut off and having your imports of energy cut off, especially when that specific type of energy is mandatory for modern military equipment and logistics.
On the same note Russia, historically, has been an exporter of food - and there's a big difference between being a net exporter of food and a net importer of food when you get cut off from international trade. How does Israel import food, energy and fertiliser when they are cut off from Western support and largesse? Seriously, how? It can't be over land or sea, and air travel just isn't cheap enough to be viable. Throw in the difficulties of dealing with the black market (mandatory BDS laws seem like a safe assumption in this hypothetical) and you end up with a thoroughly untenable situation.
Sanctions and boycotts have not stopped these countries. Inconvenienced? Yes. But no sanctions regime is airtight.
The cutting off of aid to Israel would be far more significant than the sanctions and boycotts. US support for Israel is more than just the 3 billion number that gets bandied around - there's immense amounts of financial support put into supporting Israel and their security environment. Even if Israel wasn't sanctioned at all, simply cutting off the vast flows of free money will have huge negative impacts on their society. Being forced to accept a worse price on your exported goods is one thing - being unable to import the basic materials required for human life and economic flourishing when you are unable to source them domestically is an entirely different one.
I don't know why you insist on this being the silver bullet that fells the Zionists, but it's clear you in some form or another believe in the priors of BDS.
"My car has been driving for hours since I filled up the petrol tank, so I don't know why you insist on the tank being empty being the silver bullet that stops me from driving."
Beneath all the abstractions of economics are hard material realities. Modern first world societies are reliant upon vast amounts of energy and various other inputs in order to function - and Israel is simply unable to provide those inputs without extensive external support. This does not mean that Israel is going to immediately collapse overnight, but it does mean that Israel will be unable to continue in its present form. This is why I keep asking the questions I do - how does Israel maintain itself when it is unable to import the fertiliser it needs to grow food, let alone the extra food required to make up for the shortfall caused by lack of access to fertiliser and all the other imports required to maintain their agricultural sector?
Sure, that's a crisis they could probably deal with if there was nothing else going on - but when the US military support is cut off at the same time all the money required to fix the farms will be going to guns instead.
Israel will always have American sponsorship, if only because it is where most of the world's Jews live, so it is a hypothetical of hypotheticals.
Israel is currently losing support in the US on both sides of the aisle. Have you looked at recent polling on attitudes towards Israel? I don't think this is nearly as much of a surefire bet as you - assuming present trends continue Israel support is going to be a hard sell for the political right in a few years, let alone the political left. Given that we're talking about a time in the future, what exactly do you think is going to reverse that trend?
My evidence, to counter your 'history', is all of the real-life regimes right now who ignore sanctions and embargos without great difficulty.
How many of them are as reliant on external imports and support as Israel? How many of them are dependent upon security guarantees from other powers? How many of the real-life regimes that got killed by sanctions and isolation have you looked at to compare with Israel? You have the start of a good argument here, but you need to actually point out the points of comparison and why they're a good fit. Claiming that Israel can handle sanctions because Russia can is like saying that a chihuahua can protect a herd of sheep from wolves because a Pyrenean Mountain Dog can do the same thing.
ResoluteRaven
1hr ago
I know the native Alaskans have done quite well for themselves by selling drilling rights on their land to oil companies. Other stories that have come to my attention over the past few years include the Squamish Nation's proposed high-rise housing project in Vancouver and the court battle over whether half of Oklahoma was actually tribal land and outside the state's jurisdiction.
ResoluteRaven
2hr ago
The inferential gap between modern Anglophones and people from more complex linguistic situations (diglossia or even polyglossia) is quite large and usually makes it a waste of time to argue about such things. Your average English speaker will have only ever encountered languages that are either completely unintelligible to him in writing or in speech e.g. Russian, or that are nearly identical to his own e.g. New Zealand English. If we lived in a world where a billion people spoke Jamaican Patois or Scots and our formal education was in Old English there would be a lot less confusion on the matter.
As to the nature of Chinese specifically, more or less all formal writing in the Sinosphere (including Korea and Vietnam; Japan was more complicated) prior to the early 20th century was in standardized Literary Chinese. No Koreans were under the impression that the language they were speaking was Chinese, even if that was the only language they could write, but your average Chinese scribe would tell you they were speaking and writing the same language, the same way Arabs do with their vernacular dialects and Modern Standard Arabic, or a Carolingian monk might have with Old French and Latin. If you define languages by mutual intelligibility, or from a learner's perspective ("do I need a different textbook for this?"), then they are clearly wrong, but if you then conclude that something like Ottoman Turkish is just a language like any other that you can learn to speak (good luck!) you are also missing something important about how it was used.
When China transitioned to writing in the vernacular, only Mandarin successfully made the jump, which meant that your average educated person in Guangdong went from speaking Cantonese and writing in Literary Chinese to speaking Cantonese and writing in Mandarin. A generation or two ago this person would not have been able to speak Mandarin except as a sort of cipher or word for word translation into Cantonese, but nowadays they will be fully fluent in both spoken forms. While there have been attempts to standardize written Cantonese in Hong Kong and written Hokkien in Taiwan (basically selecting or inventing new characters for all the words without obvious cognates in Mandarin), no one outside of a handful of hardcore separatists and language nerds (and speaking as a language nerd I'd rather they adapted something like Korean Hangul instead) cares about them, and even the spoken forms are on the road to extinction alongside their failed political projects.
marinuso
2hr ago
When you merely piss off your enemies, and on top of that in doing so make them look sympathetic to previously neutral parties, you don't actually win.
Browser
2hr ago
The gulf states do okay since they are literally lottery winners. Islam is not a productive way of running a modern society in the absence of massive material wealth
VIM
2hr ago
Because they aren't actually being all that brutal. Depopulating and securing an area is quick and easy if you're willing to adopt the ROE of Ghengis Khan or the Greco/Turkish war.
The Israelis shot their own hostages while they were shouting in Hebrew and waving white flags, they aren't operating according to strict ROE. Just being brutal doesn't always translate to being more militarily effective: the perpetrators of the Rwandan Genocide were so focused on the genocide that they actually wound up losing to the much smaller Tutsi militias that prioritized actual military objectives over pointless slaughter.
functor
2hr ago
Again zionists end up advocating for mass immigration. We do not want a massive wave of refugees to any country.
functor
2hr ago
They have higher IQ than the gulf states which do fine.
Also if they are inherently civilizationally incompetent it is important that they stay in Palestine so that we don't end up with Palestinian refugees.
VIM
2hr ago
Israel unilaterally withdrew from Gaza because armed resistance made the cost of maintaining settlements too high, same with Lebanon. If the Gazans were entirely pacifistic they would have had no reason to leave in the first place.
functor
2hr ago
Palestine gets 17 out of 23 counties and Palestinians get full citizenship in the remaining six would be a substantial win for Palestinians.
VIM
2hr ago
Even the black South Africans aren't, as a whole, as genocidal as Palestinian Arabs.
Based on what, exactly? Jews lived alongside Palestinian Arabs for the past thousand years and the number of major anti-semitic incidents prior to the arrival of the Zionists can be measured on one hand. It's only after people arrived who hid explosives inside Synagogues and engaged in "assassination, terror attacks and even castration that the Palestinians became bloodthirsty.
Anyone forced to live under the domination of such people would eventually become pretty genocidal. Would they maintain this attitude in the event said domination ceased, forever? I've yet to see any evidence that they'd be any worse than Zulus or Xhosas.
Sigh.
Okay. Look.
If you take a look at the economic sanctions on North Korea as a cursory glance at Wikipedia, you see that they are not embargoed in terms of food, only its export. They can import as much food as they like from people willing to sell to them. Cuba is the same. Starvation happens in those countries not because of a lack of sellers, but a lack of hard currency to make imports with.
No one has ever accused of Jews of not having money.
As we've seen with Russia, both food and energy exports are not constrained. The technology necessary to maintain a modern economy is imported from a variety of sources, but even that can be overcome. The Mossad isn't experienced in playing shell games with corporations in Lebanon and Turkey. It is trivially easy for them to do so - that's how they got the pager bombs to begin with.
Sanctions and boycotts have not stopped these countries. Inconvenienced? Yes. But no sanctions regime is airtight.
I don't know why you insist on this being the silver bullet that fells the Zionists, but it's clear you in some form or another believe in the priors of BDS. All of these points are irrelevant, and as I said - fantasy. Eighty years of Arabs not trading with them have not caused them to collapse. BDS has gone on for twenty years and achieved nothing. Israel will always have American sponsorship, if only because it is where most of the world's Jews live, so it is a hypothetical of hypotheticals.
I don't know what to say but your beliefs in this regard are pure idealistic fantasy, and even if such events come to pass it would not result in the historical arc that you envision. My evidence, to counter your 'history', is all of the real-life regimes right now who ignore sanctions and embargos without great difficulty. Effort, perhaps. But existential they are not.
I'll report back next week!
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