100ProofTollBooth
Dumber than a man, but faster than a dog.
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User ID: 2039
100ProofTollBooth
Dumber than a man, but faster than a dog.
1mo ago
"I'm doing all the stuff you said would send me to Hell and I'm loving it!"
Yep. Pretty common for sin to feel good in the moment. That's the whole "trick" of it.
She plainly has very conflicted views about her father, who seems in the small extract she provided to have been a sadistic piece of shit.
So having to face "sexual abuse as a child"
Childhood trauma does not entitle you to a lifetime of unlimited compassion from others.
I've been seeing this meme more and more across wide swaths of social media - and from all corners. People are starting to point backwards to "childhood trauma" (ill-defined, subjective, and often shrouded in mystery) as the root of all their problems. This is neo-Freudianism but, somehow, with less rigor and logic.
The entire process of adolescence and early adulthood is the process of recognizing that when bad things happen to you, you have some level of control in how you react to them. Yes, there are some things that are incredibly and objectively traumatic. They will take time to heal, but you have the tools and capability to fuel that healing process if you developed emotional maturity.
When people fail to do this, they not only become unreliable, they become socially dangerous. Most of the men in prison right now had a childhood of neglect and abuse to at least some degree. They are repeating the patterns they were exposed to. Sadly, many of them lack the IQ to even sort their emotions into reasonable buckets, let alone manage them constructively. Should we extend our inexhaustible supply of compassion there way, let them out, and hug them until they've changed? Alarmingly, about half of the voting population would YesChad.jpeg this idea.
This is all part of the rot and incipient counterproductive nature of "therapy culture." It invites negative feedback loop rumination on bad feelings, the opposite of personal agency, all while promising constant absolution from responsibility that one can presume and demand of others. It's a kind of inverted religion; a kind of satanism, if you will. A self-referential cult of the victim ego.
Returning to Aella, and the sexy-rationalist-e-girl archetype, perhaps you had some level of childhood trauma. Let's assume this trauma was real and not cultivated by a very online life that invites all of us to make emotional mountains of molehills. You're (self-proclaimed) like, really, really smart or whatever. Perhaps you ought to take the time to sort through your own emotional baggage and then move beyond it. In her tweets, she is literally calling for internet friends and strangers to defend her honor to other (mostly) internet strangers. This is an obvious sign of emotional immaturity. She is outsourcing emotional regulation to other people through the odd mode of chivalrous honor codes.
(Side note: I bet Scott does it)
100ProofTollBooth
Dumber than a man, but faster than a dog.
10mo ago
was actually a pretty impressive bit of political maneuvering.
In some countries, they refer to this as a "coup".
I generally agree with the rest of your post, but it isn't Kamala's race to lose. Right now, this is a toss up, which means it's about the next "thing" that turns into the "current thing" that each candidate has to respond to. Remember, Harris got a two free news cycle passes in a row - when Biden dropped out followed immediately by the DNC. In the next few weeks some-"thing" will happen. Then, the race actually starts.
100ProofTollBooth
Dumber than a man, but faster than a dog.
1yr ago
There's no such thing as a good debate for Trump. He's an incoherent windbag.
There's also no such thing as a good campaign for Trump. He's an incoherent windbag with non-existent managerial and executive skills.
None of that matters.
47% of the country votes blue. 47% of the country votes red.
Because of the demographic makeup of states and the electoral college, that remaining 6% has slightly advantage to Red team. So, it's always Blue team's job to hold a bit of an edge. Incumbency advantage is 1-2%, the rest is usually the economy.
Biden has needed to find a simple narrative on the economy plus one major issue (default: abortion) on which to campaign. He's failed to do that. I wondered why for a long time. I thought it had to do with internal conflict within the Democrat party or an inability to sustain a consistent core narrative through the constantly shifting news cycle.
Nope. The fact of the matter is that candidate himself isn't up to the task at all. That's what we learned conclusively tonight after a few months of secret-not-secret speculation. This election has been Biden's to lose all along and he probably just did.
Now, can The Democrats still win? Probably. Their biggest obstacle is themselves. I doubt Kamala will go quietly into that good night, but she's utterly un-electable and Gavin New some was in the Biden green room tonight. Trump? His debate performance was exactly as it has always been - pretty much abysmal and an easy win for anybody not named Joe Biden. His strongest issues are immigration and inflation and he consistently overplays both (that's how we got into "We're living in hell right now!" territory). Trump will not win votes, you (the Democrats) can only lose them.
100ProofTollBooth
Dumber than a man, but faster than a dog.
6mo ago
Your critique of @HaroldWilson is a touch indelicate, but fair.
Let me try to steelman.
Under ZIRP, a lot of companies, especially those with Silicon Valley style startup funding, raised more money than they could reasonably deploy. There are a lot of reasons for this but, suffice it to say, it was quite common up until 2020 for a startup founder to have far more money than he or she knew what to do with.
The one thing you can't do is not spend the money. So, companies would do all sorts of odd stuff. Usually, you just overhire sales and marketing as even if the ROI isn't great, you're still probably driving revenue. Others would launch new product lines willy-nilly. Others would turn into acquisition firms without saying so.
It stands to reason that DEI may have been an actually earnest attempt to capture talent that had been "overlooked" somehow. You can say "well, the very fact that they think the talent was overlooked is evidence that these people have horrible biases blah blah blah" - but that's thinking too deeply. They had too much cash, they had to do something with it, and this was the very noisy-random something they came up with.
100ProofTollBooth
Dumber than a man, but faster than a dog.
1yr ago
A significant portion of the population have these orientations, and the broad public didn’t realize how widespread it was.
Well, no.
It's pretty much always been 3-5%. The recent uptick has been because people get social status for calling themselves bi while never, ever actually engaging in bisexual behavior.
And this is exactly why the PMC is so insidious - it takes its preferred hyperminority positions, signal amplifies them to the moon, and then targets as immoral "literal hitlers!" anyone who doesn't pledge histrionic fealty to the issue.
100ProofTollBooth
Dumber than a man, but faster than a dog.
1yr ago
if you say rain is caused by a rain god, you should be corrected and taught about the hydrological cycle.
This is a pretty hearty endorsement of forced correction of "wrong think" coming from someone who, I presume, really likes to talk about their belief in free thinking.
And this is the problem with edgey online Atheists. They're obsessed with getting people who disagree with them to agree with them. It really is an inverted evangelical style fervor.
I don't understand why they get to make outrageous false claims with impunity but I'm somehow the bad guy here.
Because it doesn't matter if someone is making outrageous false claims. You can respond with contradictory evidence or simply choose not to respond. Responding by saying that the claim itself being outrageous is inherently disqualifying is not only contrary to an open discourse, it amounts to in-group based censorship.
Religion isn't disputed by any rational person, it is dismissed out of hand
See..see that's happening right here. "Anybody who is smart won't believe X. So anyone who believes X isn't qualified to discuss topic y,z,a,b,c etc..."
The world operates in a certain way, that is indisputable
This entire forum is based on disputing how the world operates. I don't know how I can help you here, my guy.
100ProofTollBooth
Dumber than a man, but faster than a dog.
3mo ago
I just feel like being excessively harsh on illegal immigration is punching down.
But this isn't being excessively harsh - this is complying with the laws (and punishments as written). There's nothing "excessive" about it.
Do you feel intense competition for jobs or homes from illegal immigrants?
That's the thing about national economies - we all experience warped market conditions (for employment, housing, healthcare, and basic goods) because of illegal immigration. That these experience may be more acute in TX,NM,AZ doesn't mean they are not experience elsewhere in the country.
A massive percentage of the American agricultural workforce is of questionable legality. Yet they've become so endemic that any agricultural concern that tries to play fair and not hire illegals finds their production costs are too high and gets competed out of business. Think about that for a second; there is a large American industry wherein the only way to remain viable is to flirt with legally dubious hiring practices.
I would like to see swift and stubborn crackdowns on that. Excessive would be letting illegal employment continue to be de facto all across the country.
100ProofTollBooth
Dumber than a man, but faster than a dog.
6mo ago
Any recommendations for "brain off" YouTube channels?
I find all TV / Netflix is insufferable nowadays. Sports, of course, being the exception.
I'm looking for YouTube channels that are entertaining / mildly interesting that Mottizens enjoy.
100ProofTollBooth
Dumber than a man, but faster than a dog.
9mo ago
"That is a damning non answer" is hilarious coming from Walz.
You said you were in Hong Kong during the deadly Tiananmen Square protest in the spring of 1989. But Minnesota Public Radio and other media outlets are reporting that you actually didn't travel to Asia until August of that year. Can you explain that discrepancy? You have two minutes.
Walz' response (bolding is my own):
Yeah. Well, and to the folks out there who didn't get at the top of this, look, I grew up in small, rural Nebraska, town of 400. Town that you rode your bike with your buddies till the streetlights come on, and I'm proud of that service. I joined the National Guard at 17, worked on family farms, and then I used the GI bill to become a teacher. Passionate about it, a young teacher. My first year out, I got the opportunity in the summer of 89 to travel to China, 35 years ago, be able to do that. I came back home and then started a program to take young people there. We would take basketball teams, we would take baseball teams, we would take dancers, and we would go back and forth to China. The issue for that was, was to try and learn. Now, look, my community knows who I am. They saw where I was at. They, look, I will be the first to tell you I have poured my heart into my community. I've tried to do the best I can, but I've not been perfect. And I'm a knucklehead at times, but it's always been about that. Those same people elected me to Congress for twelve years. And in Congress I was one of the most bipartisan people. Working on things like farm bills that we got done, working on veterans benefits. And then the people of Minnesota were able to elect me to governor twice. So look, my commitment has been from the beginning, to make sure that I'm there for the people, to make sure that I get this right. I will say more than anything, many times, I will talk a lot. I will get caught up in the rhetoric. But being there, the impact it made, the difference it made in my life. I learned a lot about China. I hear the critiques of this. I would make the case that Donald Trump should have come on one of those trips with us. I guarantee you he wouldn't be praising Xi Jinping about COVID. And I guarantee you he wouldn't start a trade war that he ends up losing. So this is about trying to understand the world. It's about trying to do the best you can for your community, and then it's putting yourself out there and letting your folks understand what it is. My commitment, whether it be through teaching, which I was good at, or whether it was being a good soldier or was being a good member of Congress, those are the things that I think are the values that people care about.
Followed by this absolute banger from the mods;
MB: Governor, just to follow up on that, the question was, can you explain the discrepancy?
Tim Walz is the politician you get with a highly censored and early prototype ChatGPT. You can see that he's snatching bits and pieces of talking points and stringing them together in loosely probabilistic ways, but there's no coherence. It also lacks that wonderful post-modern impressionistic word salad of both Harris and Trump.
The Democrats really love doing this. Back with Hill Dog, they chose Tim Kaine and, IIRC, leaned in to calling him "America's Dad." Walz pick reinforces something that's obvious but hard to see - the Democrat party is absolutely loathsome of effective masculinity. A squishy assistant football coach who was part of the National Guard (but never deployed) is just fine. Or a "technically I was in the Navy!" gay dude. But an actual Man with hard coded male sensibilities is a non-starter.
I think the election is mostly back to a 50/50 toss-up, with some big risks for Harris (the longshoremen strike and fallout from Helene being the first of the October surprises). What is not a 50/50 toss-up is the relative Male-Female support. Regardless of the winner, the exit polls are going to reveal a societal level bifurcation at the sex level.
100ProofTollBooth
Dumber than a man, but faster than a dog.
1yr ago
Agree with this. I have also never, ever seen a coherent definition of "rape culture" that didn't boil down to "young men gasp are interested in having sex with young women." There's this weird craze with the idea that in the inner sanctums of locker rooms and frat houses that otherwise median males are gathering together to trade strategy and tips on sexual assault. This is pants-on-head insane.
100ProofTollBooth
Dumber than a man, but faster than a dog.
10mo ago
I think status, at the societal level, is a chicken and egg problem. I'll use a sort of related historical example.
Through the 1960s and maybe 1970s, if a family had a son decide to become a priest, there was a good chance it would be met with esteem in the community. An honorable decision informed by faith seen as something to be respected if not quite emulated (after all, we want grandkids). Flash forward to today, and outside of religious sub-communities, it's probably looked at as an extreme personal journey decision. "Oh, wow, the Johnson boy went to the seminary." Community pillar? Not really. Invited to speak at the High School? Definitely not. Probably awkwardly danced around at supermarket aisle run-ins.
Why the change? This one's pretty obvious. Religiosity in America has declined precipitously since the 1960s/1970s. The society level value (and, therefore, status) has evaporated. It's not longer a "worthwhile'' decision.
Maternity is different because it's never (well, I hope) going to decline by 30-40% in one or two generations. Even in PMC circles today that make a lot of noise about not having children for environmental reasons, a public pregnancy announcement is always met with excitement (side note: if the pregnancy isn't announced publicly, there's a decent chance it isn't going to come to term for one reason or another. That's a different post). It's never going to be "oh, wow, really?" weird to be a mother.
That being the case, I'd gesture at trying to status boost a lot of maternity adjacent things - kids, first of all. But also "homemaking" pursuits, I suppose. I think the fundamental tension, however, is between women-in-relation-to-children and women-in-their-own-right. Is it possible to applaud a woman for her personal and professional accomplishments? Sure! But is this done at the expense of praise for family and maternal pursuits? The kneejerk reaction may be "No, of course not! We can praise a woman for being an accomplished scientist and a Mom!" ... but if you walk through the incentives in a hyper-individualistic society, it gets complicated and uncomfortable. As a quick example - I bet people know the best player on their favor sports team immediately, but can they name the official captains? (There's a bit of a hack in that, in a lot of cases, these individuals are one in the same, but the point still stands).
If you want to raise the status of a role that is fundamentally non-individualistic, you have to raise the status of communal accomplishment as a category in a society. I have no idea how to begin doing that in the west today.
100ProofTollBooth
Dumber than a man, but faster than a dog.
1yr ago
That said, I weakly believe that both claims are more-likely-than-not true in a Rashomon sense of true: they reflect the internal experience of the women who made the claims.
Agree. It's hard to overstate just how extreme this can extend, even in a totally non-sexual context.
I once had an HR interview as a bystander to an incident between two other colleagues. It look me 15 minutes of variations on "wait, what are you talking about?" to the HR rep to realize what I had seen as an forgettable, minor disagreement between the two was reported as "verbal assault and harassment" by one party.
And that reporting party was a Dude.
This is why physical evidence standards, documented intent, provable patterns of behavior etc. are so important in any cases wherein emotional salience is so high. I think in both of these cases, a whole lot of that is lacking.
@FiveHourMarathon is objectively correct in stating that the award and verdict is an own-goal on the part of Trump. The compensatory vs punitive damage awards clearly indicate that the bulk of the $83 mm is to convince Trump that he should really quit talkin' shit about Carroll.
100ProofTollBooth
Dumber than a man, but faster than a dog.
1yr ago
(Mixed rant / actual CW post. I defer to the Delphic wisdom of the mods to discern this)
New book by Blake Butler out.
What caught my eye was the uncharacteristically vitriolic nature of Tyler Cowen's post. He flatly states "I don’t know of any better argument for social conservatism than this book." That's the culture war angle which I invite comments on. It produced some thoughts regarding household privacy which I hadn't thought of before. Would there be progress across all of the trans/COVID restrictions/guns/abortion issues if we frame it as "just don't talk about some stuff and we're all fine."
But on to the semi-rant part.
It seems like both Butler and his wife are people supremely in touch with the importance of their own emotions and, even worse, their own perspectives of their own emotions. It really does seem like the unending continuation of a sophomore's first late-night dorm room pseudo-philosophy discussion. "But like, I feel like ... I kind of ... get it, man."
Take this from the review:
She is a ferociously hard worker, committed to her writing and her teaching (she is a professor of creative writing), and also to baking—an art, like poetry, that depends on precision. She loves philosophy and nature, Melville, Cocteau, the Detroit Pistons, and “The Office.” He is touched by her fragility, her willingness to expose herself to him. “Love someone back. / You just begin,” she writes in her poem “Hopes Up,” and, eventually, he takes her advice.
Philosophy. Nature. Baking. The Office(!). And two sentence platitude poetry. Forgive me if I'm not with "it" or, even worse, if, like Abe Simpson, I don't even know what "it" is anymore, but this seems like almost a parody of a bad basic b*tch dating profile. I wonder, would she have described herself as "quirky." I'll quickly chastise myself here for disrespecting someone who has taken her own life. Let's move to a deeper question.
From all accounts, Molly, Butler's wife, seemed to be a deeply troubled person who allowed her mental health issues to fester to such an extent that she behaved extremely poorly. True emotional spousal abuse, almost gleeful infidelity before and during marriage, and some questionable professional-personal decisions. Yet all of it seems to have been hand-waved away through a self-serving belief in some sort of deeper understanding of "the human condition." I remember thinking something similar when reading Christopher Hitchens on his own drinking. Hitch was a raging alcoholic, and he knew this. When he wrote about it, however...
I work at home, where there is indeed a bar-room, and can suit myself.… At about half past midday, a decent slug of Mr. Walker’s amber restorative, cut with Perrier water (an ideal delivery system) and no ice. At luncheon, perhaps half a bottle of red wine: not always more but never less. Then back to the desk, and ready to repeat the treatment at the evening meal. No “after dinner drinks”—most especially nothing sweet and never, ever any brandy. “Nightcaps” depend on how well the day went, but always the mixture as before. No mixing: no messing around with a gin here and a vodka there.
Oh, ho ho! What a card! Yes, he's sauced beyond belief, but have you seen his turn of phrase?.
It's a simple assertion; no amount of genius - real, imagined, or self-perceived - excuses you from being degenerate, abusive, socially irresponsible, or actively antagonistic. My worry is that Mr. Butler and his late wife were constantly so self-absorbed that they used a mix of literary romance, hyper-rationalization, and substance abuse to avoid engaging with a very normal, good, and productive feeling: guilt.
I've written before about how modern society ripped away traditional male gender toles and how that could be good, bad, or a mix. That's beside the point. The point is that it failed to produce any sort of replacement. It's a void and we're seeing the fruits of that.
In terms of guilt, a movement away from traditional religion may be good, bad, or mixed, but there's been no secular alternative. The Catholic church has a very prescriptive system and process for the sin-guilt-penance feedback loop[^1] I do not see the same in the modern secular culture. In fact, I see the opposite. The pop-psych concept of "self care" appears, to me, to be a blank check for instant and unequivocal absolution from responsibility. Did you sleep with a bunch of your spouse's friends, randos, and some of your own students? Do you have a drinking problem that's causing you to fail in your high trust relationships? Do you use social media as a social weapon? - take some time to understand your own trauma and experience. Where's the part about going "holy shit, I fucked up bad here and need to say sorry."?
This all ties up to a larger theory that modern and postmodern culture does two things that are mutually reinforcing in a downward spiral. (1) Emphasize the individual above all else (even the immediate family) and (2) Remove traditional social structures, expectations, and rituals and replace them with nothing so that the only refuge is deeper back into hyper-individualism. Sprinkle in our du jour oppression narratives and class struggle and you've got the perfect recipe for a level of personal-self deception that leads, ultimately, to self-destruction; suicide, in Molly's case.[^2]
Nature abhors a vacuum (I can use that cliche because I'm a bad writer who can't get published). It follows that those going around in their Hoover Uniforms and actually creating vacuums are truly deplorable.
[^1]: I know this religion the best, which is why I named dropped it. My assumption is that the other Abrahamics, at least, have something similar. [^2]: Caveat that I am not wholly blaming modern culture for causing Molly's mental illness, but I am saying it probably abetted its growth and the lady's ultimate demise.
100ProofTollBooth
Dumber than a man, but faster than a dog.
9mo ago
Any insight from your friend on why Altman feels this way?
100ProofTollBooth
Dumber than a man, but faster than a dog.
1yr ago
Exactly. It's a pretty bog standard ThinkTank wishlist of policies and politicos that they want to put into some of the literally thousands of political appointee positions that follow any election. Every other major ThinkTank does this.
The "fear" of Project 2025 is a strange media / twitterati / very-online-people invention. I think it allows a lot of vague gestures to the idea of shadowy planning by unnamed (but somehow very influential) "party insiders." They kind of did this with the Federalist society people after Kavanaugh and Barrett got confirmed. It's quite literally the same as, all of a sudden, telling you friends, "Did you know that the GOVERNMENT is, like, storing all of these old BOOKS in these, like, secure buildings and you have to get an official identification card to ACCESS them?!"
All you've done is dramatized a dusty old library
100ProofTollBooth
Dumber than a man, but faster than a dog.
1yr ago
I've been on a True Crime spree habit over the past few weeks. This happens every year or so. This year, among other material, I listened to the audiobook Hunt For The Green River Killer about the initial investigation into Gary Ridgway (I do recommend this book). Additionally, earlier this week, I watched American Nightmare on Netflix about the so-called "Gone Girl" case in Vallejo, California. Netflix streteches out what should be a 90 min doc into 3 almost hour long episodes. The directors also shoehorn in a MeToo theme towards the end and, with some selective editing, make a single female police look like the only pure police hero. They are swimming as hard as they can against the riptide of a poor business model.
In Hunt For the Green River Killer, you see just how complex a "Task Force" investigation at scale is. The various intertwined jurisdictions in and around Seattle threw everything they had at trying to catch (then unknown) Ridgway in the 1980s. The result was so many possible leads and suspects that they drowned in their own noise. At one point, the lab work backlog was over 50 years. At other points, they had at lest two suspects that, at the time, looked almost like sure things. The authors do a good job of then demonstrating how obvious it was that those suspects were in no way sure things. This shows the level of confirmation bias and motivated reasoning that can crop up in these kind of investigations even in otherwise experienced and talented cops.
The Ridgway people even brought in the legendary FBI behavior psych unit (of "Mindhunter" fame). Their composite profile of the killer was along the lines of "white male between 30-50, does a manual labor type job, drinks beer, smokes, may have prior military service or outdoors interests." Again, the authors point out that that profile narrows it down to .... 40% of all men living in Seattle! Interesting and also infuriating to see how far people can build a career off of what amounts to a Forer statement.
As a fun side note: Even back in the 1980s, you had pro-sexworker women's groups who demanded the police "do more!" with the investigation, complete with statements like "if this had happened to a bunch of high school cheerleaders and not prostitutes, we would already have an arrest!" It's turtles all the way down, and Witches v. Patriarchy all the way back up, I guess.
With American Nightmare, due to its recenecy, I won't give out any spoilers. Suffice it to say that the police actually try to employ Occam's Razor and go with a basic explanation first but reality intervenes and a fairly wild story unfolds instead. The initial investigating cops don't come out looking good - although I feel like the Netflix editing team was responsible for thumbing the scales hard in this case.
The question I find myself asking in regards to both is; just how well equipped is American law enforcement (outside of the FBI) for complex investigations without a pretty obvious narrative with a lot of obvious circumstantial pointers? An example of what I mean here is; when a drug murder happens, any decent police in the area will know "this was a drug murder. the victim was a known dealer." A slightly above average police probably has some awareness of the recent conflicts between the locals gangs and can therefore say, at least, "It was probably this crew that knocked this guy off, now I just have to try to figure out who exactly did it."
With the "whodunnits" of serial killer victims and frankly just bizarre circumstances of cases like that of American Nightmare, do cops have a playbook / infrastructure / support to actually perform a full investigation effectively? The simple narrative (which Netflix eagerly jumps to without second thought) is that "Cops are often stupid / lazy / racist / sexist / corrupt and so they don't solve cases." I don't buy this for a whole host of reasons. You can debtate me on that, but I'd prefer we stay focused on the question of "are police departments setup to handle complex investigations?" The Ridgway investigation is particularly illuminating, I think; a bunch of well intentioned and talented cops eventually buried themselves in a volume of work that was utterly unmanagable. They really did pull out all of the stops and, in so doing, pretty much led themselves back to square one where their only hope was catching Ridgway in the act. (What ended up actually leading to the arrest was a 20 year wait and the advent of DNA technology, which is just as much of a magical solution)
The higher level of analysis, however, is; should police departments be setup for this? I'd actually argue they should not. Complex investigations are rare. American Nightmare gets a netflix special and Ted Bundy, Gary Ridgway, and Jeffrey Dahmer get hundreds of books, documentaries, and podcast about them because they are so rare and bizarre. The "murders that matter" to use a slightly indelicate phrase are those that are part of a larger anti-social pattern; drugs, gang violence, preventable domestic violence, etc. I'd much rather have a PD that is doing the leg work day in and day out to know about the goings on in bad neigborhoods so that once a murder does occur, they can jail the offender swiftly and, hopefully, interrupt a retaliatory cycle.
I have only the deepest sympathy for the victims of the "one in a million" crimes of serial killers etc. But I must admit that, at a societal level, these aren't things we can really systemically remedy (same goes for a lot of the more sensational gun violence incidients. See: Las Vegas). What we can do at a systemic level is police and enforce known areas of persistent anti-social behavior aggressively.
So, again, two primary lines of questioning:
- Can police departments launch effective complex investigations, or are they at a structural / organizational disadvantage here?
- Should they focus resources on the above capability beyond a small, dedicated "Major Crimes" unit (or some such) or, ought they double or triple down on basic patrol, fast response, and community intel work?
100ProofTollBooth
Dumber than a man, but faster than a dog.
1yr ago
I am a loser
What makes you say this? I'm not trying to give you an internet pump-up speech along the lines of "you're probably pretty great!"
No, I will accept at face value that you fucking suck, loser. Now, let's identify the problem.
Are you short and skinny? Do you smell and dress bad? You say you have a fair bit of money. Did you earn it or did someone die an leave it to you?
The point is that getting out of loserdom is really just a project like anything else. Identify what is lacking, create plans for compounding improvement, execute those plans, track and log progress, adjust along the way.
Here's a generalize bullet list that 99% of dudes benefit from:
-
I'm a physical loser ---> Go to the gym. There are a million beginner lifting routines. Do one. After six months, add a competitive sport. Doesn't have to be MMA / BJJ, just something where there is a definite winner and loser and people take it seriously. Don't do beer league softball.
-
I'm a social loser ---> Get good at small talk. Start by making short observations at checkout lines. Try to make simple jokes. If it goes poorly, you're in a checkout line and the interaction will end in literally seconds. You'll know you're getting good when it becomes almost second nature and you can get a chuckle most of the time. Next step, start going to bars and doing this with the bartender (doesn't matter if they're male or female). Most of their day is spent making small talk to medium talk (i.e. bullshitting with regulars about their jobs or whatever). They're pretty much on autopilot and also paid to be nice, so they'll help the conversation along even if you still kind of suck. This will help you get better at developing a few quick "lines" into full on conversations. An option but not really recommended step is to do this at strip clubs. Again, I don't recommend it but have great stories. I digress.
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I'm a loser loser, meaning I have no confidence in myself ---> Paradoxically, one of the easier ones to solve. Confidence comes from exactly one process; demonstrate competence in a difficult task. You will pick a medium term task or project that seems hard, and then you will do it. Build a website, build a birdhouse, organize a party, train for an complete a 10k, something that takes around 90 days. Pick it. Do it. Write about it as you are doing it in a journal style. At the end, after you do it, read the journal, relive the emotional journey and realize "I did it even though it was hard along the way." Boom, confidence.
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I'm an internet loser. This is guy code for "I watch porn." It's easy - stop.
This 'idea' has zero percent chance of ever happening. And it's not because of rich people lobbying.
It's because it would catastrophically destroy all markets (public and private) overnight.
This is because the price of anything is different at different times and, before an actual transaction occurs, is only an approximate representation of what a theoretical buy and seller would agree on. There are plenty of reasons zero buyers and zero sellers would want to proceed with any transaction at a given time.
Example A would be startups. Startups raise cash from investors to get off the ground, develop products, market and sell them, enter new markets, acquire other companies etc. Their "valuation" at any given time is largely a projection of possible future revenue and/or a future reasonable acquisition price. It is not, in anyway, a guarantee of a spot cash price for equity. I think Anduril, the cool new defense technology company, has something like a $15bn valuation after its last funding round. To make the math easy, let's say there are 100,000,000 shares outstanding all with equal seniority etc. (this is a toy example. The realities are always more complex, which factors in later). Is anyone going to pay anyone else the $150 / share in the secondaries market for Anduril? Fuck no. There are maybe some early investors who got in at $10 (or less!) who may want to sell at $50 or something to lock in gains, but the biggest holders (including insiders) are holding out for an IPO or acquisition.
These are multi-year equity holders. What does their tax situation look like? Are they taxed every year based on new VC funding and the follow on valuations of the company? If that's the case, they would end up paying more in taxes than they invested in the company while being unable to liquidate their holdings in a thinly traded private market. Investing in a start up would become financially impossible. Perhaps evening just starting one on your own. What happens then? Only incumbent, large, highly traded public companies can be invested in - but you still have to pay tax on your not-cash winnings. Very quickly, there are only a few nationalized companies doing any business t all. Retail investors mostly hold cash which inflates away to nothing and there is zero new capital formation and investment. That's stagnancy and inflation - aka stagflation - and is the very model for how to kill a country and, very likely, pave the wave for a populist demagogue to seize power.
Taxing unrealized capital gains is literally taxing a business for existing and operating as normal, but with some sort of arbitrary number thrown on top of it as "valuation." If that number is wrong, which it will be sooner or later, you divide the business by zero and it not only ceases to be viable, it implodes overnight.
Much like price controls, this is an "idea" that reveals profound economic and financial illiteracy. It is 100% vibes based in a Robin Hood aesthetic and is designed with all the depth of most sloganeering. It should be viewed for what it is, a very public display of a lack of interest in developing meaningful policy in any direction.
100ProofTollBooth
Dumber than a man, but faster than a dog.
1yr ago
This is a very narrow appreciation of the case and zero appreciation of the context.
Prosecutorial discretion is employed literally everyday in America. And it is up and down the socioeconomic chain and goes left and right. In Baltimore, they sometimes decide not to prosecute multiple felons on gun charges because ... racism or something. When it comes to campaign finance laws, as I understand it, it's close to impossible to run a national level campaign without accidentally breaking the laws a few times - which is why these are almost always handled by the FEC with, at most, fines and public disclosures.
Alvin Bragg wanted to shoot his shot with this case and he did. As @jeroboam said, no one believes this case would've been brought against any other politician besides Trump.
So, while what happened inside the narrow walls of the courtroom may be all on the up and up (which, right now, I believe more than I doubt) ... and while a good deal of blame here should be on Trump's defense team for going full retard ... the facts are that targeted prosecutorial discretion brought a case into a courtroom that would've never made it off a legal pad in any other context. I'm sorry if I hurt your feelings, Mr. Shapiro.
100ProofTollBooth
Dumber than a man, but faster than a dog.
1yr ago
I think this is a very valuable truth to highlight. Boomer's (and analyses of their life paths) tend to forget how easy it was to fuck around and NOT find out. I had an uncle who ended up in his 50s and 60s doing a very pleated khaki finance job who spent his 20s and 30s doing his best Jack Kerouac - bumming around the Western US, taking odd jobs to get from town to town, drinking, and drugging. He never had a rock bottom or come-to-Jesus moment, he literally just decided at about 35 "eh, better get on the straight and narrow" and more or less walked into a management job (insert something here about white male privilege if you like, but I think it's still a red herring). The point is a hop-on-hop-off respectable life was possible.
Now, you have kids who start out at 22 with $100k in worthless degree debt. You can't work at the grain elevator and scrape together a few hundred bucks to get closer to California when the service on your debt alone is $1,500 a month. The PMC has made hiring and firing such a bureaucratic nightmare that the interview-to-fully-onboarded process is benchmarked at 4 - 5 months. I think this is so that PMC HR types can then brag about themselves reducing it to three months when thirty years ago that timeline was probably three days.
All of this is to say that I don't think "The Path" is much different than it was. To @FarNearEverywhere's point, it's definitely more narrow because of PMC rent seeking and vampiric "I don't do the work but I help enable the work" grifting. More than that, however, we've setup these weird fundamental barriers to overcome that used to not exist. That's the real tragedy. It's important to remember that GDP and GDP per capita is still higher than its ever been (in a decade over decade sense, annual fluctuations notwithstanding) but the overall fluidity and flexibility of the system is greatly atrophied. There's a reason Andreesen-Horowitz (this is a mega VC firm that is the epitome of PMC not-actually-working-but-actuall-fucking-rich careerists) has a whole thrust for "American Dynamism." We've become the mass monster powerlifter who can still move a ton of weight, but takes 15 minutes to get out of the shower.
100ProofTollBooth
Dumber than a man, but faster than a dog.
1yr ago
I absolutely agree.
Direct quote from Singer: "killing a newborn baby is never equivalent to killing a person, that is, a being who wants to go on living".
This is why contemporary academic philosophy is bankrupt. The most influential living ethicist has concocted a pseudo-formal structure that result in infanticide being on the table, and no one has stopped to say, "Hey, that's fucking bananas."
I'm a big fan of engaging with potentially "dangerous" ideas. Not to try and figure out how to prove them actually valid, but as a means of understand the limits, logical extremes, and unforseen weaknesses in one's own argument or viewpoint. When you end up holding one of these crazy ideas, however, that's when you have to go back to the first draft and try to unravel the bad thread.
Singer, instead, sits in supreme comfort in his abstracted-away EA fantasy world where an affair isn't an affair per se and when a living human isn't really human-y enough.
100ProofTollBooth
Dumber than a man, but faster than a dog.
29d ago
Yes and no.
Biden / Pelosi style catholics are definitely solidly blue tribe and do vote democrat. There's even vestiges of old school machine politics for these kind of folks in states like Rhode Island and Massachusettes.
The problem is they aren't actually catholic. Just as "culturally Jewish" is a thing for totally non-observing "Jews" in the bicoastal cities, I believe "culturally catholic" exists as well for many democrat strongholds. To me, it's almost stolen valor. People like Biden etc get to say "faith is at the core of who I am" blah blah blah and infuse their speeches - and votes - with high minded moralism. But they aren't actually living or even trying to believe the doctrine of their faith. The Church is pretty damn clear on abortion and divorce, among other issues.
Theologically serious Catholics, nowadays, have to vote Republican because, of the two parties, it is the only one that isn't openly hostile to all of the bedrock elements of the faith. A lot of the politically motivated (and serious) American Catholics also get really into issues of religious liberties. One need look no further than the recent SCOTUS decision on tax-exemption status for faith based charities.
100ProofTollBooth
Dumber than a man, but faster than a dog.
6mo ago
I'd be willing to bet that the number of people who:
- Hop between these temporary jobs for their entire working life and
- Have zero substance abuse issues and
- Have zero contact with the criminal justice system and
- Make it to retirement age with no savings
Rounds to zero.
Let's say you get the "burger flipping" job because you're not really doing anything else. You're living at home (or with a bunch of other underemployed roommates). Sure, maybe you get some cheap beer every weekend - fine, whatever. If you retain that job for two years, you're going to be promoted to some sort of assistant manager position by inertia and availability alone. The cycle repeats.
Or, you get the burger flipping job, decide that, yes, it does suck, and figure out a new job a little further up on the skill/wage level. You like this and do it again. The cycle repeats.
My more controversial take is that this should be the path for pretty much everyone.
College has become a pay-to-play social proof mechanism for bullshit jobs that mostly fuels middle class over-capture of resources - especially housing. There are some hacks around this (military service, community college pathways) but it, most of the time, boils down to a family being able to pay between $100,000 - $500,000 to jumpstart their kid into the professional class. Oh, by the way, for something like 50% of graduates, this has not worked and has been a fraud for 20+ years. Please ignore that.
At the bookstore job I alluded to in my original post, I got unofficially promoted to assistant manager by my second month mostly because I would follow the store close down procedures correctly each night. This was as a 17 year old. Several of the other 20-somethings working there would routinely forget to lock doors, secure the cash box, or do basic cleaning and organizing. It doesn't take much to be an above average performer and, with just a dash of talent, you can accelerate quickly. I've seen too many graduates of "prestigious" universities who can't metaphorically close down the bookstore making $100,000+ per year because they have the fancy sheepskin on their wall.
100ProofTollBooth
Dumber than a man, but faster than a dog.
10mo ago
Does anyone have a link to something explaining how communities like Kiryas Joel and various Amish / Mennonite towns exist in a legal sense?
It seems to me that they would be in constant violation of eveything from the mundane - say, fire code in buildings - to the serious - unreported child abuse etc.
This is the actual meat-and-potatoes culture war topic coming out of the debate.
My model of a swiftie is a PMC or PMC-lite woman between 22-35 without much political awareness but who is very relative-status and fashion aware (in the cultural sense). She more than likely has a male significant other. This is where things get interesting.
Straight men who aren't hyper culturally attuned don't like Taylor Swift. Her songs are about break-ups and girl power, there's very little common ground there. Those same men generally don't care if their wife/girlfriend is a big swiftie - it's her thing, her hobby, go for it. But the Kamala endorsement is doing something tricky - it's, overnight, turning some portion of these fans into "politically aware." They will defend Kamala nearly as rabidly as Queen Taylor. Even a hint of disagreement could be met with "nuclear levels of sour."
The evidence for this was how women suddenly became die-hard Chiefs fans overnight after Swift began dating Travis Kelce and appearing at games (fun fact: If you watch chiefs games this year, and Travis Kelce scores a touchdown, the camera will cut to Taylor in the booth.). The online NFL community has a not-conspiracy-conspiracy that the NFL made sure the Chiefs won the superbowl last year because there was too much swiftie money on the line for them not to. I remember reading that Chief's merchandise sales more than doubled.
I don't get worried about political polarization between urban and rural, bachelors degree and non, even poor and rich. Those are the basic cleavages you see time and again through human history. Harsh polarization between men and women gets worrisome - this is how women end up with actually curtailed rights and the legal status of property of male relatives. Again - the worst victim of feminism is women.
I'm tired of this campaign and whoever wins in November, the country loses in a meaningful way. One of my effortposts last week was on the fact that neither candidate has any economic plan that's connected to reality. The one thing I'll be looking at with excitement (nervous in nature, however) is exit polls on men and women between roughly 20 - 50. If we see gaps of over 25%, strap in.
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