100ProofTollBooth's profile

100ProofTollBooth Dumber than a man, but faster than a dog. 4d ago

This reminded me of something that is not quite on topic, but close enough.

Towards the end of summer 2018, I broke up with my girlfriend. Given my age and maturity at the time, I, of course, took care of the most important things first; I hid all of our photos that we had posted together on Facebook.

Well, not actually all of them. All of the one's that popped up on my "wall" at the time (I actually deleted Facebook for good about a year later, so my appreciation for both the terminology and function of the site is now out of date. Apologies if what I detail here isn't how it works anymore). These were typical couples photos; lots of couple-selfies of us eating things or being in places or even eating things in places.

As with any millennial breakup, however, I didn't actually unblock or unfriend my ex. No, no. You see, there is etiquette to the Facebook break-up. Although there can be a a period of mutual blocking, you never hard delete one another. But you also never interact with one another. You simply cyber-stalk one another to see who rebounds first.

Being a career technology dude, however, I noticed something interesting. Within just one or two days of my totally-not-crying deletion of the various wall photos, I became aware that my ex and her friends were no longer getting prioritized in my newsfeed. This was a stark contrast to just a month before where every damn day my newsfeed was filled with whatever new photos she had posted that day along, often, with the goings on of her friends (whom I had friended on facebook when we began dating). Quite the abrupt shift! I double checked to see if anyone hand blocked anyone else. Nope. Should I navigate to any of these profiles directly, I could still click on stuff without any new limitations (pro tip: don't get caught liking a photo from six years ago).

The realization didn't take long to formulate in my head. It seems to me that Facebook detected the pattern of "relationship status change followed by rapid hiding / deletion of photos only featuring two people ... those previously in a relationship" and then quickly, and easily, followed the random forest down to "breakup protocol." To help spare my feelings, it began to algorithmic shadow-censor the new things my ex and her friend's were doing (why the friends? Probably just in case my ex popped up in their photos. A likely outcome).

But then I realized something else that really gave me an "oh shit" moment (and, happily enough, made me forget about my ex). Facebook must have hundreds of these kind of behavioral decision trees. Breakups, divorces, graduations, new births, deaths in the family ..... deaths in the family .... wait, what kind of deaths? old age, cancer, car accident .... suicide.

It then became apparent to be that Facebook likely has a fairly reliable (though probabilistic) means of identifying social media posts that evidence suicidal ideation. Then, thinking back on my own situation, I wondered if there was some sort of correlation between breakups and suicidal ideation (it's my understanding that, yes, there generally is. I think job loss is the other big one.)

So, in 2018, instead of doing normal break up related stuff, I'm trying to piece together how accurately fascebook can predict suicide, or drug overdose, or alcoholism, or intent to harm others (I stumbled across a bunch of articles about how cops would try to find ways to infiltrate private instagram feeds because, apparently, gangs would literally announce their intended targets that way).

And this is the bigger conundrum to me than just the collection of data. If the data available to a company could be used to make these reliable behavioral profiles and, in fact, probably is. Then, to what extent do we want them to take preventative measures for all of these potentially horrible outcomes? But think about what that is -- it's corporate sponsored Minority Report. Hell-the-fuck-no! The level of dystopia that comes with "Hi, we're the cops, facebook told us to visit you" is off the charts.

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100ProofTollBooth Dumber than a man, but faster than a dog. 8d ago

That's a pretty good piece of evidence for the hypothesis that Glock saw/sees HK as their primary in-market rival, whereas SIG may have been viewed as a "discount supplier", or just a non-direct competitor. Firms want to win battles they view as being "on their turf." Ford doesn't care if their small car sells less than Toyota or Honda. They absolutely care if the F-150 is losing to Chevy.

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100ProofTollBooth Dumber than a man, but faster than a dog. 8d ago

There's something biblical about the idea that the men who build homes (and other buildings) are the same men society has determined aren't quite worthy of being a full part of society.

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100ProofTollBooth Dumber than a man, but faster than a dog. 8d ago

After years of examination and multiple lawsuits (that are worth examination on their own),

Legally protesting a contract is an incredibly common corporate strategy for the mega contracts. Oracle and Microsoft did this several years ago when Amazon won what was then called the "JEDI" contract for cloud computing at the Department of Defense.

I'm not an expert in the legaleese, but I've seen enough of them happen. From what I understand, the bar to pass an initial review for a protest is pretty low. Once that's passed, the process drags on for at least months and often years. Nobody really cares about who wins or loses. What this forces is for the department or agency who initially offered the contract to suspend or cancel it, and then re-issue another competitive RFP for the exact same services, but under a different contract name.

This lets the losers of the original contract re-try their bid. Maybe the drop prices, maybe the try a different technical approach, whatever. The whole point is that some contracts are so existentially important that various firms will go to whatever lengths it takes just to 'stay in the fight' - even after they've, technically lost.

This is one reason, although nearly most important one, why Federal acquisition and procurement is such a shit show. The process has completely overtaken the product / outcome and so firms that live on Federal contracts have become masters of the process, selling horrible products.

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100ProofTollBooth Dumber than a man, but faster than a dog. 8d ago

The MBA-generalized response to this would be:

When you are selling low volumes to highly motivated customers, you can capture niche's (or "sub markets") by doing a lot of direct marketing and building brand loyalty.

When you're operating at scale (Glock, SIG, et al) you have to go after larger markets with customers who blend concerns beyond ultra performance (i.e. price) and so you start to make some level of compromise. This is where your strategy comes in; are you the "cheap" brand (Taurus, I guess? idk), are you non-innovative but dependable (Glock), are you the innovator (SIG ... I guess?) etc.

The same logic can be applied to a lot of different industries.

As an aside, but it's interesting, this is why there are dozens or hundreds of ultra-speciality rifle manufacturers. Some only specialize in barrels and then plop them on other companies' hardware. Many of these places like to boat about their contracts with the Navy SEALS / Special Forces / CIA whatever. In reality, this can be 1 - 3 guys in their converted garage more or less hand making every product they ship.

They're selling to a price insensitive (gov't dollars!) ultra-niche customer with super high performance requirements and, to no small extent, the "fuddlore" mentioned above. More charitably, customers operating at that level of performance just tend to develop biases that are mentally hard to shake. Does the trigger being polymer-x instead of polymer-y make you shoot better? Probably not, but being mentally comfortable with your gear probably does make you shoot better.

What happens to shops like this is they either go out of business because they lost one key customer (often, their only customer) or they become reliable enough lifestyle businesses for the owners - they make a very comfortable living and work on something they have a genuine passion for. Very few of these companies get purchased by one of the big names in the gun world unless there's something truly interesting going on. Things like actually interesting engineering development, perhaps something patented, or the development of a new product or market. Custom, tricked-out AR-15s weren't really a thing until after the Global War On Terror was several years into its run but, then, dudes who never go to the range were suddenly ready to drop a few thousand dollars into AR mods. Enter Bravo Company Manufacturing and all the others like it.

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100ProofTollBooth Dumber than a man, but faster than a dog. 10d ago

I want to start fishing.

Rough location; Eastern US. Mid-atlantic to as far north as Boston and as far south as South Carolina.

For any anglers that might be on here, I'd be interested in recommendations for books, apps, YouTube channels, and subreddits (or other forums altogether) to help me get started.

Please and Thank You.

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100ProofTollBooth Dumber than a man, but faster than a dog. 16d ago

and I might claim what I see as a simpler explanation - they wanted cheap labor but felt bad about it.

Yes! So ask the next logical question; why is labor so expensive? Why is there the need to exploit interns? Why can't they just hire a guy or gal who wants a job for a reasonable price? Because labor laws make it too expensive to hire people cheaply!

The government should have an agency or committee dedicated periodic review of laws to see which laws can be retired, or if multiple overlapping laws can be combined for clarity and brevity.

And then what?

The only body who can actually change laws in Congress. Do you know how many congressionally mandated reports there are? Approximately eleventy billion. Do you know how many congress deeply reviews to implement their recommendations? Approximately negative eleventy billion. What would be the point of your hypothetical new agency? And, in order for it to be created, Congress would have to authorize and fund it. That's not going to happen. You're suggesting a "fix" that is obviously and demonstrably untenable.

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100ProofTollBooth Dumber than a man, but faster than a dog. 16d ago

I don’t know, im personally of the opinion that there are good and bad ways to achieve any goal and that there are always trade-offs that come with any of it.

...

I just want a country where the bulk of people can live a reasonable lifestyle, and where a setback isn’t fatal.

Define "reasonable." Because what you define as reasonable may be reprehensible to me.

A lot of the tradeoffs we're implicitly talking about have to do with security over possibility. If the shot at a successful and independent life means that I could also, with equal or even higher probability, end up destitute, i'll take the deal so long as I am in control of myself. Sacrificing autonomy and independence so that the government can spoon feed me a "comfortable" (but dependent) life? No thank you.

I’m generally with at least tge idea that whatever the form a government takes, the most important thing is customer service.

For a lot of bedrock constitutional reasons, the American government can never be good at what you term "customer service." The only way is to let the customers help themselves - i.e. less government.

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100ProofTollBooth Dumber than a man, but faster than a dog. 16d ago

I didn't know these things.

Can you provide any good rec's for a "State of the SSPX vis-a-vis the Vatican" at present?

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100ProofTollBooth Dumber than a man, but faster than a dog. 16d ago

Good or bad depend entirely on which law we're talking about.

My whole point is that we should be talking about fewer laws.

When you use legislation and regulation on a case-by-case basis as you described, you're playing whack-a-mole without ever looking up at the bigger picture. You create a patchwork of laws that, unintentionally, start to bleed into one another and now you have "spaghetti code" of legislation. Businesses - and consumers! - are painted into corners without realizing it and after it's too late. It is also extremely unlikely that these corners will "balance out" fairly across various industries and consumer segments. And then you have the situation we have today.

Complexity is the enemy, especially when refactoring of the system is slow or difficult. Congress likes to pass laws, but it very, very rarely retracts previous legislation.

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100ProofTollBooth Dumber than a man, but faster than a dog. 16d ago

The second is a general distrust of the profit motive. Several of my (mostly male) friends who are much more successful than me (managing-your-own-company or high-tier BigCorp middle-manager successful) have had more than enough personal experience of engaging in what they perceive as anti-social behaviour just to keep their company/section afloat

I've seen a lot of this too. It's pretty simply a lack of awareness about the last 50+ years of the political-economics of employment law and state regulation. I've written about this before.

The champagne liberals who engage with the "capitalism - but nice!" fantasy fail to see that many of the market dislocations that result in a race to the anti-social bottom have been created by well-intentioned but economically illiterate federal and state policy. "The road to hell..." and all that.

One of the more effective coups of the left has been to make the term "deregulation" associated with Enron and Lehmann Brothers scale fiascos in the popular conscious. When, in reality, deregulation means more, cheaper, and better houses in the places that need them most. Or, as my self-linked comment outlines, a much lower friction coefficient in hiring. Or making it possible to cut women's hair without demonstrating you can shave a man with a straight razor. (I'll admit that the "licensing to become a barber" meme is a but of a trope at this point.)

But change is scary and real meritocracy might mean you aren't quite as sharp as you think you are. Credentialism is the soft mattress of the careerist - so long as they/them have the right master's degree from the right university, they can probably secure a coastal sinecure for between $150,000 - $250,000 depending on level of technical rigor and direct connection to revenue generation. These people who want "capitalism - but nice!" sure are excited about changing the marketplace, so long as their jobs aren't effected. "No, you see, I am an enabler for my team. I remove obstacles for them so they can do the really cool work! I'm just so thankful I get to be around such amazing people," says the functionary who will later fire one of their staff for being a "bad culture fit."

When you throw in a disproportionate fixation on egalitarianism, it gets even worse. That's trading both sides of the distribution curve for the fat middle and stasis. If we deregulated at scale, yes, there would be even more giga-billionaries. But the wage floor for those who can simply work full time would shoot up as well. Those who would suffer? That sliver between about 80 - 90th percentile who are the poster children for bullshit jobs; HR managers, compliance (literally a regulation created job), some level of accounting, lots of legal-ish jobs, tons and tons of "report A into slot b" information processing jobs. And that's the sliver that contains enough people with enough extra time and extra income that their votes and organizing matter. And that's the sliver that, over the last 50 years, has zoomed to the left.

I'm not anywhere near the 'sperg level of Elon to say whatever he said about compassion being the worst virtue ever. In fact, as an ~~LARPing~~ practicing Catholic, I try to live virtues like that daily. But I do it of my own accord in my private life. I am against trying to turn personal, emotional relationships with virtue and metaphysical ethics into a political platform or party. Because, if you do that, you give yourself license to ruin a whole lot of materially important policy.

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100ProofTollBooth Dumber than a man, but faster than a dog. 17d ago

You gave an effortful and illuminating reply, so I'll do my best to answer your question.

When I say 'normalized', I suppose what I'm after boils down to two points.

A consensus that the SSPX is not schismatic and that attending their liturgy and receiving the Eucharist is fine and not illicit. This lets more people attend the TLM in parishes / dioceses that lack one.
The ability (built on point number 1) for SSPX clergy to evangelize and catechize. Regardless of one's political opinions regarding the SSPX, their seminarians come out extremely well educated and theologically solid. This cannot necessarily be said about many diocesan seminarians - with the major caveat that the variance across the USA can be quite large. I don't need to recapitulate the how and why of really bad liturgies emerging in the 70s and 80s, but suffice it to say, part of the cause was sub-par seminary training and study for priests of that generation. Although it does seem like the younger generation takes it more seriously, I met a friend-of-a-friend priest in his early thirties who, beer in hand at a wedding, announced he was "really into astrology." I'm not going as far as saying he's heretical or satanic. Quite the opposite - he was "father friendly / youth pastor / acoustic guitar" levels of spiritually flaccid. I wasn't scandalized, I was disappointed that this was a fairly recent product of a seminary.

The SSPX, I believe, has ordained just over 1,000 priests now (USA and rest of the world). That's 1,000 theologically sound clergymen who could be used for a whole variety of projects that require a strong theological foundation.

Regarding your excellent outline of the political realities regarding the SSPX, Vatican, and various groups of bishops, it all makes sense to me and I understand exactly the odd situation of conservative American Bishops. As a country, we always kind of make whatever the 'thing' is into our own, don't we?

Online tradcaths are mostly that - online. If every rando posting DEUS VULT memes would simply go to Mass regularly, we'd probably see some real demographic change across parishes. IRL tradcaths are too busy having big families and experimenting with various levels of crunchy-ness (small scale farming, local produce, raw milk etc. etc.) The theologically rigorous folks I try to spend time with also frame TLM discussion exactly as you did; TC isn't popular and needs to be loosened, but we probably aren't going to revert to Summorum Pontificum. My bet is that we'll get to a spot where any parish that goes to the trouble of requesting approval for a TLM probably gets it from their Bishop unless there are very peculiar circumstances. This would, I hope, lead to more diocesan priests seeking training in the Extraordinary Rite.

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100ProofTollBooth Dumber than a man, but faster than a dog. 17d ago

If you do an effort post that covers all of the topics you brought up, I'd be inclined to make a donation to whatever Patreon-enabled online cause you're into.

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100ProofTollBooth Dumber than a man, but faster than a dog. 17d ago

Suggestion:

Phrase your replies as prompts for Grok or any of the image generators.

For example, @FiveHourMarathon would obviously be:

an anthropomorphized wawa sandwich that lifts a lot of heavy barbells, Graffiti art style.

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100ProofTollBooth Dumber than a man, but faster than a dog. 18d ago

I had a feeling you'd reply with some knowledge. Much appreciated.

Un-restricting the TLM and normalized SSPX relations are the two things I've watching for. I believe I'll be watching for some time.

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100ProofTollBooth Dumber than a man, but faster than a dog. 18d ago

Not exactly a question, but definitely small-scale (or niche) and probably not a good topic for the main thread:

Pope Leo has granted an exemption for a parish in Texas to continue the Traditional Latin Mass

Early this year, the Diocese of Charlotte, NC issued, then delayed, a reduction in the number of locations for the TLM. The open secret is that the Vatican probably told the Bishop "slow your roll, guy!"

Is this enough evidence, now, to develop some cautious optimism about restrictions on the TLM easing?

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100ProofTollBooth Dumber than a man, but faster than a dog. 20d ago

Side note:

Mike Tyson is the greatest SPORTS champion who ever lived ... probably. But we will never know for sure.

After Cus D'Amato died and the Don King organization brain fucked a literal homeless kid from New York, it derailed Tyson's career with no possibility for a comeback in boxing (although his podcast / movie / pot farm career seems to have been, and remained, quite lucrative).

He was a physical freak who also had an insane natural, prodigal understanding of boxing itself. If you watch the 80s videos when he's still pretty much a teenager, his movement is not only fast but anticipatory in ways that usually only come with experience. He sets up sequences before launching them - which is made all the more unstoppable by the fact that his punching power is generally beyond measure.

I've been contemplating the idea of writing a long effortpost on "Did Money Actually Ruin Sports?" and Tyson and boxing would be at the center of it rather than the usual suspects of the Big Four (Football, Basketball, Baseball, Hockey). The primary reason for that is that, with a longer lived Cus D'Amato and the blocking out of Don King et al., I think Tyson would be the absolute consensus pick for "Greatest American Athlete" of all time.

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100ProofTollBooth Dumber than a man, but faster than a dog. 20d ago

How long did it take?

Any major financial setbacks along the way? (Medical bills, non-insured damage to the house etc.)

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100ProofTollBooth Dumber than a man, but faster than a dog. 21d ago

They can be forgiven for wanting to shore up the progressive wing by running a woman of color with progressive tendencies, but not so progressive as to be at odds with the platform.

No, they can't. Because they didn't just run "a woman of color with progressive tendencies."

They ran Kamala Harris. Who was the worst candidate in the history of American Presidential races since WW2 (pre-WW2 Presidential stuff is really a completely different dynamic. It's kind of funny it almost parallels the deadball / liveball demarcation for baseball).

The "meta" of what @FiveHourMarathon wrote can be summarized as Democrats Often Neglect Reality (DONR PARTY). They professional politicos simply ignore the obvious. Not always, necessarily, in favor of something else (i.e. identity politics) but just because acknowledging a harsh reality is often jarring and uncomfortable.

Kamala Harris was bad as a candidate. Her interviews were atrocious. Her stump speeches were too volatile - she'd be doing well in one part of one speech but then nosedive in another part. Her "unrehearsed" interactions with her own voters/fans were awkward and seem bizarrely staged even for American politics. She had an awful laugh (which is something you can modify). This is America in 2024. Social media is understood. In fact, it's a cornerstone of mass communication, including politics. Beyond that, the "5 second clip" has been happening since the 2000s. You either have to be psychopathically on-the-ball sharp 24/7 (and this is why I still think Newsome is in the mix for 2028) or you have to develop a brand wherein gaffes and flubs are kind of part of the deal - this is what Trump has been doing ever since his first word salad speech in 2016.

How in the hell do you run Kamala Harris knowing all of these things? She's a dumpster fire of a candidate. But when you Just Say No (I LOVE YOU, NANCY) to reality ... anything can happen.

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