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.
11mo ago
know the difference between lethal and less-lethal violence
This is the kind of misapplication of scientism and legalism that is divorced from the real world. This is the same line of thinking as "just shoot the bad guy in the leg!"
Immediate personal combat is pretty much a zero-to-100 situation. If a body decides to stay and fight instead of flee, cognition hyperfocuses on the swift application of violence until the thread is wholly neutralized. There are no half measures. You see this even in professionals where many cops - experienced ones, often - will mag dump into a suspect, only stopping to assess the situation when they've finished all of their rounds. Trying to calibrate an in-time response is asking a human being to perform a level of parallel cognition that is simply impossible. You are asking them to slow down time. You are asking them to read the minds of others. You are asking them to simultaneously put personal safety concerns aside in order while also adhering to codified law they probably are not personally familiar with.
Can a punch be either lethal or less-lethal? What's that dependent on?
What if you are, in fact, a professional, using professionally sanctioned techniques to subdue but, because of unknowable physical and pharmacological conditions, the restrained person dies? (I am talking about the George Floyd case here).
Again "know the difference between lethal and less-lethal violence and make an honest attempt to act on that knowledge" has so many failure modes built into it that it reads to me as "You can defend yourself, but only if you don't, you know, defend too hard." What's too hard? I agree that it's "whatever the jury says" - which is going to be influenced by a bunch of circumstantial factors like race, gender, occupation, cultural history etc. And this is because there isn't a good standard here. And this is because we have a weird societal deference to the crazy and homeless (see recent main thread on homelessness).
unless you are the kind of right-winger who favours summary execution of street crazies
This is an unfair hyperbole.
I am the kind of right-winger who doesn't want to wait until the street crazy has the knife to my neck before responding. That's why my initial question involved a circumstance in which violent gestures were already present. If I feel like someone could, in a matter of seconds, represent a clear physical threat to me or others, my first instinct is going to be to get the hell out of there. But, failing that, I need to know what my options are. If the other party isn't mentally capable of perceiving reality, then I really need to know what actions I can take to defend myself (or others) because that person, by definition, cannot be reasoned with, cannot be expected to respond in "normal" ways and, in fact, may have a perception of the situation utterly divorced from the reality around them.
100ProofTollBooth
Dumber than a man, but faster than a dog.
11mo ago
I'm of the mind that communists can innovate but only to a point.
The limiting factor certainly isn't intelligence, scientific organization, determination, or even centralized planning. The limiting factor is that if innovation really happens, you're going to get growth and the new generation of wealth. If that wealth then begins to proliferate through even a moderate portion of society, you're going to start to see the people want to do things with their wealth. In fact they'll want to do more and more with their wealth and, all of a sudden, you've got the makings for demands for more personal liberty.
Personal liberty is obviously directly antagonistic to the authoritarian systems that any "communist" or "socialist" nations eventually become. The response by the central government would be to clamp down here in order to regain control. The secondary and tertiary effects of that, however, is that you'll end up artificially stifling innovation currents in your national economy. Innovation, especially across industries, functions kind of like a rainforest. It's very organic and stochastic, it's hard to point to one section or another and say definitively "that part is the real innovation engine." Let the whole damn thing grown unkempt and uneven. Trying to corral one part of it (or the downstream wealth generation effects. see: corporate tax rates) is messing with a pretty fragile system. You'll likely disrupt the whole thing.
I also don't believe you can effectively "capture" all of the growth and new wealth, funneling it to some sort of inner-circle elite. In the few places where this has been accomplished (I think Saudi Arabia is the best example) have (1) really tight kinship affiliation as opposed to ideological affiliation and (2) are usually extraction based raw materials economies. It's easier to constrain the growth when you're immediately shipping the money units out of your boarders and getting paid wholesale all at once by foreigners. China makes its money, largely, by making new things or refining raw materials. They're export oriented, but they're pretty diverse and they have a complex and multi-stage economy. It's not as simple as just sending the magic beans out the door.
China has always had to try to balance one central dilemma: control or growth. It can look like a continuum and, therefore, possible to balance. I'd say that's actually a red herring and if you attempt anything besides growth-with-personal-liberty you eventually get into a recessionary situation. Then, economic realities appear that cannot be overcome with government subsidies or printing money, especially when you aren't the world's reserve currency. In the worst of cases (though repeated many times in Chinese) you might get a popular revolt because of a declining quality of life. In trying to "balance" you've actually pre-committed to an eventual collapse. The only way to avoid it is to make a fundamental change the the governance and political systems - embrace democracy and true market based capitalism. Don't worry - you can still wage a culture war :-)
100ProofTollBooth
Dumber than a man, but faster than a dog.
11mo ago
Fucking epic.
100ProofTollBooth
Dumber than a man, but faster than a dog.
11mo ago
The bulk of fat people do not want to be fat.
I agree.
But I don't think the bulk of fat people actually want to lose weight. To be a little more charitable and specific; they don't want to do what is required to lose the weight. That's because what is required is a radical and permanent change to dietary habits and exercise patterns. You don't go on a diet to get off a diet you change how you eat forever. You don't start an exercise regimen to stop it you make daily or near daily exercise a non-negotiable part of your existence. And this is all very not easy to do. Is it asking too much? I'd say it's relevant to what you actually want (see my first sentence here). Where are your relative values and how strong are they in their ranked order?
Most people (myself definitely included) prioritize stability, loss aversion, and generalized "comfort" in life. If you're not yet fat / obese you can have those things (and stay in ok shape for at least a while) by simply watching what you eat and staying generally active. If you're already fat/obese - you have to actively chose to value a difficult to achieve future state over immediate comfort, stability, familiarity. Wha'ts more, getting to that future state requires and incredible amount of intermediate DIScomfort. So you're not only changing your relative value preferences (which is in itself difficult) you're also committing to objective ow this hurts pain for at least some amount of time. That's quite a bit to ask (side note: this is, I think, the same mechanism by which people stay in jobs they don't like even though it's often fairly easy to move to a better job if you aren't time pressured).
But this doesn't mean fat people are ethically lazy or something. Not at all. I view it as self-knowledge problem. If you love basketball, but are 5'3", you're never going to the NBA no matter how hard you practice. If you have a certain genetic profile, you need to be aware that should you cross that threshold into actually fat/obese you might be there forever unless you make some pretty herculean life alterations. Prevention is key and, even then, not perfect.
As I write this, I realize it would be easy to take my argument all the way to "fat acceptance" which I am utterly opposed to for a whole host of reasons. Yet, here I am. Huh. I'll have to keep thinking on that.
100ProofTollBooth
Dumber than a man, but faster than a dog.
11mo ago
When talking about the concept of "difficulty" perception is absolutely reality. In fact, in lifting, there's literally the term "RPE" for "Rate of Perceived Exertion"
I don't think fat people are morally inferior, but I do think they lack habituation in exerting effort in a physical sense. I have known a former water polo player who let himself go absolutely transform in about six months because he knew how to (and could endure) 2 hours a day in the gym. On the other hand, I have seen an otherwise focused and driven career type (master degrees, high powered consulting job) fail to make any detectable weight loss progress. I wasn't their personal trainer so I can't evaluate details, but that's besides the point - they obviously had the character traits required to commit to something difficult.
Or did they? Physical exertion is different than mental / emotional exertion. Plenty of very smart people who can pull all-nighters on cognitively demanding tasks, perform in professionally high pressure situations (think arguing in court or giving some large format public address) will fold nearly instantly when something physical confronts them. It's strange and hard to describe, but I've seen it throughout my life. There are simply some otherwise exceptional people who can be defeated with two flights of stairs or a ten block walk.
This is why I feel the elimination of meaningful PE classes in primary schools was such a tragedy. It's some level of habituation to doing stuff with your body (side culture war note: I also think bullying is important. It teaches you that assholes exist and how to deal with them).
100ProofTollBooth
Dumber than a man, but faster than a dog.
11mo ago
Yep. I'd say it's actually nearly the same as a diabetic who wants their insulin levels to be more stable but simply can't willpower their way to it.
But we also have to understand the very obvious future reality that many folks will gobble ozempic and similar drugs while making zero lifestyle changes. Perhaps they lose weight, perhaps not.
100ProofTollBooth
Dumber than a man, but faster than a dog.
11mo ago
The democratic bloc all seem to be veering towards deep-state governance, censorship and economic protectionism.
Right! Which is a bad thing and will ultimately fail.
That China is already firmly, obviously, and enthusiastically autocratic, highly censored, and attempting to use everything from currency manipulation to slavery to favor their domestic economy should be a warning to us.
There's a lot in your post that jumbles together disparate macro/micro economic theory, state capacity, theory of the firm, and market feedback loops. I'm not going to try and ... debug ... all of it. I'll zoom in on this:
They can pick losers or they can pick winners.
They should be picking neither. Because as soon as they do, they make the larger market inefficient and make customers the losers. Housing policy (federally guaranteed mortgages) almost ended the whole damn thing for everyone.
100ProofTollBooth
Dumber than a man, but faster than a dog.
11mo ago
their entire appetite regulation system is being overridden.
This is what I was trying to put my finger on. Thank you.
Ozempic etc don't reduce complexity in the system. We're already dealing with complex interactions between the human endocrine, neurological, and gastrointestinal systems and I think we're prematurely celebrating by myopically focusing on the success of appetite suppression. But how does that reverberate through the entire system? People eating fewer calories but also eating lower quality calories? Inconsistent eating timing? Maybe the secondary effects are benign (I'd like that!).
100ProofTollBooth
Dumber than a man, but faster than a dog.
11mo ago
I don't see much of a persuasive argument here.
That's fair. Internet arguments often fail to persuade.
Can you break down your final paragraph (reprinted below)? I'm not quite smart enough to understand some of the allusion and references embedded in it.
So far the PRC story seems to me to make a compelling case that you can suddenly and massively crank up the wealth of great numbers of people while making them less inclined to pursue freedoms outside of your prescribed window. The main line of work the devil is making for idle hands there appears to consist of mobile game daily quests.
100ProofTollBooth
Dumber than a man, but faster than a dog.
11mo ago
There is no such thing as an objectively good or bad policy.
It's all about relative value prioritization and tradeoffs. Furthermore, the devil is always in the details.
Taking your line on "good housing policy"; "produce housing to meet the needs of the population"
Who determines what the needs-vs-wants of "the population" are? To what level should they be met?
Who actually produces the housing? Private firms or public? Who finances the construction? How do the tax dollars work in?
And that's the essence of policy with unintended consequences. People start with a highly value judgemental aspiration like, I don't know, "build [infrastructure] cheaply and cleverly." Then you have to write how it all works and you end up with perverse incentives, or cost diseases, or some other kind of obvious economic malady that was hand waived away because the policy decision was just so blindingly, obviously right ... right?
We live in an incredibly complex world that only grows in complexity. All "easy" solutions are either misleading or take out massive debts on the future. Human nature is not going to suddenly improve by leaps and bounds. We work within the systems we have.
100ProofTollBooth
Dumber than a man, but faster than a dog.
11mo ago
If it was an AR platform, yes.
BTW Nobody shoots 30-06 anymore.
100ProofTollBooth
Dumber than a man, but faster than a dog.
11mo ago
Just a random, totally out of the blue question here:
What's the male/female authorship ratio here?
100ProofTollBooth
Dumber than a man, but faster than a dog.
11mo ago
This is incorrect.
Trump picked Peter Thiel as his VP.
J.D. Vance is the in-game skin downloadable content.
This is partly sarcasm, but I don't know how much.
The trouble with Vance is that we don't know who he is. Hillbilly Elegy is a good character origin story. But what follows? After serving with distinction as a Marine Corps ... Public Affairs ... yeah, nevermind ... he went Yale Law School and time at Thiel backed venture capital firm where he invested in ... an agribusiness?. Vance lived mostly in San Francisco before running for Senate in Ohio. He's a Catholic Convert married to a non-practicing-anything. His children are Ewan (not Evan), Mirable, and Vivek.
In 2016 he's a Never Trumper. When he runs for Senate, DJT helps get him over the finish line (along with Mitch McConnell but, hey, the real one's always operate from the shadows). In the Senate, he's staunchly pro-Israel, questions support for Ukraine, and says Lina Khan has done a good job.
As a VP pick, the move is to try to lock down Pennsylvania's electoral votes. Anointed as Trump's successor? Dyed in the wool MAGA? I think not. Another commenter mentioned Palin. I think that's a good comparison.
Trump has been moving to the middle on everything this cycle besides immigration and tariffs. The true believers are already losing their primaries (Bob Good in Virginia). OG MAGA (which was Tea Party 2.0) is on the way out. MAGA 2.0 is really riding a lot of the currents that popped off with COVID and BLM riots. Throw in a bunch of Grey Tribe Tech Bros and Vance makes a ton of sense.
The real question is when Trump finalized the decision - before or after the assassination attempt?
100ProofTollBooth
Dumber than a man, but faster than a dog.
11mo ago
Moby Dick and Bood Meridian (aka Moby Dick on land) are two of the few books I'll do a focused planned reading day on.
Get up. Breakfast. Read straight and take notes until Lunch. Repeat until Dinner. If mental energy still available, continue until bedtime. No work, no TV.
100ProofTollBooth
Dumber than a man, but faster than a dog.
11mo ago
This is low effort and antagonistic enough that I considered reporting it for a moment. I am, however, generally opposed to reporting (there have been some exceptions).
Can I invite you to explain what you mean here in more detail?
Nothing at all wrong with marrying a foreign man or woman. Nothing at all wrong with naming your progeny using his/her cultures names. All very well and good and points to a healthy marriage.
But your median to less-than-median Appalachian white trash (I get to use that word. It's our word) is going to, at the least, point and laugh at your goofy kids' names. And that's fine - fuck those morons, right?! J.D. Vance went to Yale Law School and did big tech things with venture capitalists in California and now he's the Vice President!
Except, wait, no, he gets those Appalachian / Rust Belt people because he is so totally still one of them. Oh, there are problems with the culture, but he is one of you!
And he totally also gets law and the economy because he went to Yale (did I mention that already?) and then helped Peter Thiel build crypto-mars or something.
The point I'm trying to make is that you have to know who you are and be it. If Vance wants to tell the simple (and good!) story of "Hey, I almost fucked up my life when I was a kid, but then joined the Marines etc....I now realize a lot of my cultural upbringing led to some bad perspective and habits and I don't think it's a good thing" then more power to him. I have forever been waiting for the Black candidate who will publicly state a similar repudiation of what was once called "inner city" culture. (Fun fact: both of these groups adhere to highly male versions of an honor culture.) People get to change and you aren't defined by the zip code within which you came of age. It's helpful if you clearly state this.
If he wants to tell the story of "I represent the lost Appalachia / Rust Belt. Those swamp creatures and Washington have killed us!" that's fine too. But mixing them gets really dangerous because it leads to a lot of just so stories and cherry picked emotive reasoning. I don't think Vance has ever published anything that's factually inaccurate, but I think he weaves a narrative that gives some interesting (and highly varying) emotional perspectives on things.
But does it even matter, isn't it all about policy anyway? Yes. That's the point precisely. Policy is inherently tricky and if you can't commit to your own personal story, how will you commit to a policy (or, hopefully, a cohesive political-economic philosophy) and not say "Fuck it" and follow whichever way the weather vane of your base is pointing? If Trump is serious about tariffs on steel, then Vance will be part of the final nail in the coffin to whatever remains of the Rust Belt. But listen to his story about memaw!
100ProofTollBooth
Dumber than a man, but faster than a dog.
11mo ago
It's been happening far longer.
The opening line of "One Piece at a Time" by Johnny Cash is;
"I left Kentucky in '49 / went to De-troit working on the assembly line".
The rust belt / Appalachian natives of today (and certainly of Vance's childhood) are either directly involved in or one step removed from aggressively anti-social patterns of behavior. Mostly substance abuse related. It's compounded my multiple generations of degeneracy. The Johnny Knoxville documentary The Wild and Wonderful Whites of West Virginia does a good job of showing this in detail. It papers over some more thoughtful commentary with goofy fun (hey, it is a Johnny Knoxville movie).
But this is why it's so important for people who "make it out" to turn around and point out that what passes for normal and expected in these communities is anything but that. When everyone from memaw to your parents, brothers, sisters, and cousins are actively participating in government benefits fraud, small time drug dealing and abuse, and constant alcoholism, you can't expect a child to look around and go, "oh, I should really focus on that linear algebra course [that isn't offered] at High School."
100ProofTollBooth
Dumber than a man, but faster than a dog.
11mo ago
This is - incredibly sadly - perfectly accurate.
100ProofTollBooth
Dumber than a man, but faster than a dog.
11mo ago
but let’s be honest here that Trump the Character is uniquely toxic for American politics
Don't assume this is a consensus feeling. It is absolutely not.
What does "toxic" mean? I hear it all over the place. "Toxic masculinity," "Toxic work environment," "Toxic relationship." But what does it mean besides "bad ++" ?
100ProofTollBooth
Dumber than a man, but faster than a dog.
11mo ago
I've always had the theory that Tenacious D started as a joke band, Jack Black's acting career took off but he felt an obligation to keep it going for Kyle and kind of always wanted to shut it down.
100ProofTollBooth
Dumber than a man, but faster than a dog.
11mo ago
from excessive profits.
There is no such thing.
You can sustain your profit margins through a fantastic product, a moat, whatever else. Or, they gradually erode to competition. Sure, software margins look eye-popping but the deeper financials bring the back to earth. Also, remember that, because of bad tax policy developer salaries were able to be categorized as R&D expenses for years instead of COGS, which artificially boosted margins.
Much more likely, your margins come back down due to competition. That's how the market works and it works well.
In the Government Contracting world, so much of pricing a project comes down to a "fair and reasonable" standard that is (a) loosely defined and (b) ultimately, subject to the whims of a mid level bureaucrat. How do they determine "fair and reasonable?" largely through vibes based "Gee! that seems like a lot!" reasoning. Bear in mind, too, that the GS pay scale tops out at maybe $160k (even in places like LA, NY, DC) and these gov't employees know that the VPs on the other side of the table from them are north of $400-$500k, and it does come down to pretty Kafka-esque jealousy sometimes.
The result?
Government Contracting, especially for weapons platforms and airplanes, is THE poster child for cost diseases, budget overruns, and takes-forever delivery. The government gets to feel smug for its penny-pinching at the unit margin level, meanwhile there's an ocean of cash they light on fire over 20+ years.
100ProofTollBooth
Dumber than a man, but faster than a dog.
11mo ago
Seems like it takes two (or more) to tango in the land of "toxic." Is this correct?
100ProofTollBooth
Dumber than a man, but faster than a dog.
11mo ago
The service providers will metaphysically cuckold you,
Dude, this so bleak and correct.
There's going to be a Stanford educated Product Manager at some waifu SaaS company with a dashboard full of metrics in front of him thinking, "hmmm...it looks like the 35-40 demo at over $200k isn't making as many daily touch points with their AI girlfriends as we'd like...Hey, maybe we can introduce a feature where the gf starts to casually mention polyamory...yeah..better put that on the roadmap."
100ProofTollBooth
Dumber than a man, but faster than a dog.
11mo ago
Take a chance on love.
"All good Samaritans must be licensed and up to date with their paperwork"
-- New York State, 2025.
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