domain:felipec.substack.com
Walterodim
Only equals speak the truth, that’s my thought on’t
15m ago
I don't know who the hell the supporters are, to be honest. On the flip side, at my local farmer's market, there are about a dozen or so RFK supporters holding up big RFK 2024 signs every Saturday morning. They seem to be adding materials too - they had a Nicole Shanahan sign this week too! I actually ought to stop and talk to them to try to figure out what exactly they're excited for.
On the flip-flip side, our farmer's market also includes Veterans for Peace, a Libertarian booth, some young Earth creationists, guys handing out Qu'rans, PFLAG, and god knows what other oddball interest groups, so drawing big lessons from the handful of people showing up to celebrate health freedom or something might be a mistake.
cjet79
20m ago
Not meant to be a ringing endorsement, just an honest assessment.
If you want a ringing endorsement from me check out Ar'kendrithyst or Mother of Learning.
netstack
Texas is freedom land
20m ago
Who is his audience? Covid warriors?
I predict less success than Johnson. The libertarian bloc surely benefited from running against a populist and a Clinton. A protest vote against the current choices isn’t going to look like RFK.
Seriously, I don’t know anyone IRL who supports him. That’s not true for the libertarians, who apparently adopt streets (?!) near me.
fartVader
21m ago
Tesla model 3 supply is piling up, so discounts should start coming through anytime now. If you're in a state/county with credits, then a Tesla model 3/Y ends up being pretty cheap for the car you're getting.
Is maintenance a nightmare
There is no maintenence unless you get into a lot of accidents. (I don't mean this passive aggressively, just a numbers thing. You know your stats). If you get into accdeints, then fixes are admittedly expensive.
How do they hold up to wear and tear?
Well enough. Teslas are known to have wierd manufacturing defects, but they're more often cosmetic than something that degrades over time.
If you are set on buying an EV, then I would recommend a Tesla purely for the charging network and the ease of availing credits. Every other EV is a pain in the ass to charge.
The model Y seems to strike the best balane of space, price, credits and convienence - https://www.consumerreports.org/cars/hybrids-evs/electric-cars-plug-in-hybrids-that-qualify-for-tax-credits-a7820795671/ . I am personally a small car guy and would buy a Mazda 3 turbo hatchback, but that's just me.
sun_the_second
34m ago
From the point of view of an average progressive normie playing as a black samurai is awesome and fun, and you're the one who is injecting politics.
The course of history is changed by many people with correct attitude and very rarely by one. History is changed constantly by the actions of people.
On many issues it is possible to take part and not have your life ruined. And if things change, it is precisely because inaction has made things worse. It can't be the case where on such issues there are enough people who argue inaction because they see it as uncool, or unnecessary, but also inaction is the best because it is hopeless.
This isn't to say that some types of actions aren't riskier than others. But we see people trying to discourage action in general beyond just dissuading Damore moves.
It isn't as if you supporting here regulations against the woke would get your life ruined.
Of course it is completely impossible to take a genuine stand against woke/progressive intersectionalists and not be hated and vilified by their broader political faction. For example if one takes a stand against progressive intersectionality, they are going to be hated by those liberals who support it and even some people claiming to be conservatives who genuinely buy into the idea that non progressive groups identity politics is evil and we should appease/promote/tolerate better treatment to progressive groups under this understanding that their historical movements were against nazism/white supremacy/slavery/Jim Crow/etc,etc.
I don't think inaction is chosen as the best, because it is the best, but because it is the preference of those promoting it. There is in fact an ideology of a liberal above it all "centrist" who is superior by not taking a position and is backed up by people outright promoting it and censorship, insults, negative criticism and even cancel culture, including of course forum bans. Basically those favoring appeasement towards the far left is a genuine influential faction that has plenty of crossover with the far left, making it hard to separate it. Then there are people who might make some criticisms but also prefer to appease it and to be hostile to hostile opposition to it.
In addition to that, the mythos of the not participating observer being the correct approach to culture war issues also exists. So, there is room for choice here. It is simply the case that plenty of people choose not to be decisively against wokeness. There are reasons for this, I mention the pressure in that direction, but it isn't Stalin like pressure. It is more that you will get people hating you, and arguing with you in forums, and probably higher risk of censorship. But it gets worse the more you tolerate it.
The woke have been winning because they have been willing to more aggressively push their agenda through. It becomes a self fulfilling prophecy if one's reaction is that there is nothing to be done, while in other issues this fatalism is absent. There is in fact plenty of energy of those who could act and don't. Just like the more extreme progressives started influencing a society that was more hostile to their ideology, it is possible to win over and change the minds of others.
There was no conceivable act of individual heroism that could have shattered the power of the Catholic church at the height of the Inquisition, or hastened the fall of Soviet communism during the reign of Stalin. There was no "war", just those with power enforcing their will on their powerless, with very few meaningful avenues for rebuttal. Only through the accumulated weathering of decades (or centuries) did a change of conditions eventually become possible.
The power of Communism and Catholic church was broken also because plenty of people when they had an opportunity to do so opposed it. And there was plenty of sacrifice involved too. I don't get the impression that you are advocating to do this in a strategic manner. It is not a Stalin like situation yet, even though things aren't good.
There are a whole lot of things you could be doing without you having the fate of opposition to Stalin. Now, I am not trying to be a dick against people who prefer not to, but I am going to argue that inaction is far from ideal. Still, at the very least it is easy and not hard to not preach disengagement. To argue for hopelessness takes more effort than not to. I guess I would say that those who are actively hostile to action are having a less understandable position to those who aren't acting when they should.
There are dynamics involved that relate to this idea of the holy left and how it is cringe and symbolically bad and symbolically far right to have a strong position against its excess.
Ioper
35m ago
Ok, thanks for the info! I might check it out and see if its for me but that wasn't really a ringing endorsement ;)
SomethingMusic
36m ago
Wow, there's certainly a lot of conversation going on that I guess I've inspired! I apologize I haven't been active as I've been busy with my personal life, so I don't always participate off of surface level comments.
Is correct, I posted the OP, not him. The focus on the male side of the lack of participation in the labor force is simply because that's the current headline and more noticeable trend. Population - wide employment participation seems to rarely fully recover after any financial or social crises. Even 7-8 years after the 2008 financial crisis labor participation never recovered. The male participation is more newsworthy, since the past 25 years has seen a 10% decrease of male labor participation compared to the ~3% decrease in female according to FRED. My goal wasn't to focus solely on males, but rather point out the most noteworthy trends and the underlying reasons behind them.
Whether males or females should increase their participation in employment is another discussion entirely.
netstack
Texas is freedom land
39m ago
You’re coming in a bit too hot, here.
Huh. This is actually your first mod warning at all. I guess that means you definitely know better, and just hate tattoos that much.
Walterodim
Only equals speak the truth, that’s my thought on’t
39m ago
Not terribly relevant, but Mansa Musa has some of the most interesting game mechanics in Civ 6. Come to think of it Civ 6 does racially diverse leaders in a fun way that I don't remember anyone really bitching about.
quiet_NaN
42m ago
Even if we grant them that they have discovered a new thing which can carry momentum, I am kind of puzzled about the implications for conservation of energy.
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Friction and air resistance aside, the most effective method to convert energy into momentum of your vehicle is a railway (or car). The other mass involved in the conservation of momentum is Earth, which is much heavier than your train, so almost all of the energy you invest ends up as kinetic energy in your train. We know from high school physics that the energy you have to invest to reach velocity v is E=m/2vv.
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Rockets are a lot less energy efficient than that. Because their momentum-balancing mass is much smaller, they end up with most of the energy being carried by the exhaust. Tyranny of the rocket equation and all that.
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Photon drives powered by onboard reactors may or may not fall under some weird relativistic version of the rocket equation (after all, your reactor will become slightly lighter as it provides energy), but are in any case laughably inefficient.
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A drive which provides a useful constant, rate of acceleration while using a constant amount of power would be better than the train, eventually, thereby violating conservation of energy.
Another way to think about it: If you are using undiscovered massive particles (perhaps dark matter) to dump your momentum into, the rest system of these particles will define an unique frame of reference. If you are in the rest system, you can accelerate very efficiently with your magical drive: just suck in particles and expel them with a tiny velocity (say 1m/s) to carry your momentum. If you do that for a while and now move through the particles with 10 km/s, you will notice that your job becomes much harder: to carry the same momentum, you will have to accelerate the incoming particles, which you see at 10km/s, to 10.001 km/s. This costs a lot more energy than accelerating them from 0m/s to 1m/s. (You will also see more particles per time, but this will not save you, fundamentally, the amount of energy you require to dump a marginal amount of momentum (dE/dp) will become very unfavorable.)
This of course suggests another test for the emDrive: Michelson-Morley experiment, dark matter edition. Measure the thrust per energy (probably in z direction, so don't pick the poles?) at different times of the day and the year, so that the relative velocity of the particles in the direction of the thrust is different. If you get fluctuations consistent with Earth moving through some particle field, this should be enough for at least one Nobel.
ChickenOverlord
45m ago
At least William Adams has a decent amount of actual historical documents about him (and written by him!). Yasuke has about 6 lines total, that say he was gifted by the Portuguese to Oda Nobunaga, and then returned to them after Oda Nobunaga's assassination.
you-get-an-upvote
Hyperbole is bad
56m ago
I don't think that's a preference cascade.
Primaprimaprima
Bigfoot is an interdimensional being
59m ago
Not engaging and being critical is a default victory for the minoritarian/woke supporters. Does this means you are obligated to take part in the culture wars? Well, kind of. Like it or not, those who show up are those who win.
Depends on what you mean by "show up", and what you're expecting to get out of it.
There was no conceivable act of individual heroism that could have shattered the power of the Catholic church at the height of the Inquisition, or hastened the fall of Soviet communism during the reign of Stalin. There was no "war", just those with power enforcing their will on their powerless, with very few meaningful avenues for rebuttal. Only through the accumulated weathering of decades (or centuries) did a change of conditions eventually become possible.
I certainly think it's virtuous to not be afraid of the censors. Do what you want to do, and don't let them stop you. But don't have delusions of grandeur either. If the only reason you're waging the culture "war" is because you think you can change the course of world history, then you should consider if there are better ways you could be spending your time.
Walterodim
Only equals speak the truth, that’s my thought on’t
59m ago
When it comes to Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion, the first two seem to take top billing. Diversity is brought up regularly in the context of affirmative action and quotas, with hot debates about whether diversity is our strength, potentially a neutral value, or even a liability. Equity is discussed in fiscal policy, with questions raised about the relative virtues of desserts, redistribution, and fairness. I rarely hear people talk about inclusion though and even among DEI skeptics, I rarely hear it raised as a point of contention. I get the feeling that this is because saying you're against inclusion sounds just plain mean. Nonetheless, I want to broach that a little bit, at the risk of being mean, since I think rejecting inclusion as a terminal value is necessary for achieving the results I actually seek.
The examples that keep popping up as the most intense culture-war fodder involve trans inclusivity. The most aggressive form of this putative inclusion is including trans-identified males in women's sports, but it's also showing up in places that I would have expected even less. In Wisconsin, we have a group called the Women's Medical Fund that has had the primary mission of funding abortions for the indigent and under resourced. While I am well aware that abortion itself is hotly debated, I am personally happy to grant that the people that are carrying out this mission are intending to provide a service that they think women should have available to them. This is, unfortunately, not an inclusive mission because of the emphasis on women. With a new director, they now have a home page statement:
The organizational leadership of WMF Wisconsin shares a commitment to gender inclusion, and we seek to hold ourselves accountable to supporting abortion access for people of all genders. We are in the process of changing our name to reflect that. As of this year, we have been trying to use only the acronyms “WMF” or “WMF Wisconsin” in our written communications, until we have a chance to do a full re-name and re-brand. However, we recognize this is not reflected everywhere in our website and other materials. We also know that it’s not just about changing gendered language; we need to continue to learn and grow our gender justice practice.
When this was brought up on a local subreddit, the comments emphasize that this was about inclusion and making sure trans men are including as well. While the private organization can do what they want here and it's no surprise to see such an organization embrace the farthest left gender politics of its day, I can't help but see such "inclusion" as actually being rather alienating to women, or at least as a complete waste of time for an organization that surely has bigger problems to deal with at the moment.
This doesn't actually get to the heart of why I think the persistent emphasis on inclusion can be poisonous though. As I have mentioned approximately 37 million times here, I really enjoy running - the physical activity, the competition, the camaraderie of groups, everything about the sport has been great for my life. Many runners pride themselves on being inclusive in the sport, welcoming everyone in, and meeting them where they're at. I agree that this is good! Everyone's got to start somewhere and I want people to feel welcome and to enjoy the sport whether they're talented or experienced or not. Nonetheless, there are aspects of the sport that are exclusive and taking an inclusion-maxing philosophy would be damaging. On a small scale, my club has one night a week that is intended for a faster group; not a hard speed workout or anything, but a fast enough pace (typically 7-8 minutes/mile for about 5-6 miles) that it excludes quite a few people. That filter is still pretty broad, but it does tend to cut down to people that are generally more serious about the sport. This isn't inclusive and that's a good thing.
On a broader scale in the sport, some races have qualifying times to enter. Most famously, most Boston Marathon entries are granted based on qualifying times and the cutoff marks for it are often thought of as capstones for being a solid amateur runner (young men need to run a marathon below 3:00 to qualify, meaning a 6:52/mile pace). I've always been dimly aware that some people don't like that setup, but became more acutely aware of it when the Boston-area running apparel company Tracksmith released a running jersey that was exclusively for Boston qualifying athletes and pissed a bunch of people off:
Diverse We Run, a popular Instagram account that promotes racial representation in the running world, responded to Tracksmith’s apology, writing, “No one is saying we shouldn’t celebrate achievements or have standards. No one is saying a race can’t have qualifying times. The problem is when a brand (or race event, or governing body … etc) claims to be a ‘champion for the AMATEUR RUNNER‘ (ie, ‘for everyone’) in theory, but actually still reinforces exclusion and elitism in practice.”
Some argued that the outrage wasn’t just about the singlet, but larger issues they see with the brand, like its limited sizing options (women’s sizing caps out at a 32-inch waist XL, or size 12 dress equivalent), or its decision to feature predominantly thin bodies in marketing, among other critiques.
...
The running community’s response brings up questions about whether it’s possible to be inclusive in substantive ways and yet still reserve some things as sacred and vaunted, only earned through fast performances.
Can you have it both ways?
Well, I have my answer. Yes, I want to include everyone in the sport. No, I don't want everything to be for everyone. There's nothing wrong with saying, "this is for fast guys", regardless of where you put that cutoff. People rightfully derive pride from putting in the time and work to develop themselves at the sport and it's good that they are able to have symbols, groups, and events that are exclusive.
This gets to my core objection with inclusion as an important value in and of itself, and it's the desire to include everyone in everything flattens people and groups out into boring sameness. It's not possible to distinguish by merits, preference, difference, or interests if the top goal is to provide an inclusive environment to everyone in every place. If I embrace inclusivity as a top priority, I lose the ability to select for people that actually demonstrate their interests, merits, and loyalty. The implications of this broaden out at every level - if anyone can be American, it means nothing to be American.
So, the next time you're thinking that you're not a fan of DEI, don't stop with noticing that diversity is a liability, and that equity is about taking your home equity, remember that the progressive conception of inclusion sucks too.
FaibleEstimeDeSoi
1hr ago
Russian Smeshariki(that were for some reason renamed kikoriki in English release) are mainly story focused in the main series, but I think at least a third of russian-speaking zoomers know what mortgage, string theory or DNA is from one of the spin-offs.
Folamh3
1hr ago
Like that George Carlin bit, that if Jesus was born 40 years ago in the US, Christians would be wearing tiny electric chairs around their necks.
faceh
1hr ago
A fun game would be to get the woke upset that Ubisoft thinks so little of black civilization that they insert black characters into other civs instead of doing a game based on black history.
The slightly humorous explanation for that is it would entail a black character running around incessantly killing other exclusively black characters.
Maybe they could get away with setting it during the "Scramble for Africa" colonialism period. But they'd have to pull some explanation out of their butt for why Africa was so fundamentally undeveloped BEFORE the Europeans arrived, i.e. why did the magical illuminati people ignore it until then?
From your original post:
Low male employment, antiwork, and the rise of NEET-dom
I am not @SomethingMusic
CertainlyWorse
Dedicated Pessimist
1hr ago
Thank you. I think I need to go and read the book.
faceh
1hr ago
Yes, lack of accountability does end up gelling with my other theory on institutional failure
As I hinted at above, I would hope that the end of an era of low interest rates enabling all kinds of corporate shenanigans would meant that financial performance again becomes the dominant metric by which decisions to fire are made.
Inclusion has a weird status in culture, because its opposite is not always seen as a bad thing.
Diversity : Homogeneity :: Equity : Unequal :: Inclusion : Exclusive
Exclusivity is still a widely accepted marketing and branding decision. Media networks love to brag about exclusive events, where only they get to show something. Hollywood in general loves exclusive events where only the biggest stars can attend. Clubs brag about their exclusive requirements. High end brands love to use cost as a way to exclude the riff raff and readily imply that only the rich and discerning can afford to choose their brand.
I do wonder if exclusion has enough staying power to survive scrutiny by the culture. I am 90% sure it will stay around. Marketers will just have to very carefully tiptoe around who is being excluded, and the rules on who it is ok to exclude will likely shift randomly depending on the whims of internet mobs.
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