2rafa
1yr ago
My point, then, is that the specific conservative hysteria over 2020 was because Donald Trump specifically couldn’t accept that he lost (whatever the ‘rules of the game’), not because historically unprecedented corruption occurred. This is the country of Tammany Hall, of Chicago machine politics, of comical gerrymandering, in that context 2020 just doesn’t feel special.
It’s actually a commonly discussed topic in the global supermarket and FMCG business because the cost of fresh produce and indeed the majority of even shelf-stable goods is upwards of 50-100% higher in the US than in much of Western Europe. Identical groceries that cost $50 in the UK can cost $100 or more in HCOL regions of the US. Freight costs alone don’t explain it, the most common explanation within the business is indeed that the much larger average square footage of eg. a Kroger in the US vs a Tesco in the UK and associated higher costs are a core part of the reason, plus higher margins across the supply chain.
What’s your explanation for why groceries cost less than 1/2, sometimes 1/3 of what they do in the US in Germany?
2rafa
1yr ago
Is a world in which the West drops all support for Israel likely to be particularly welcome to Israeli Jewish migrants?
2rafa
1yr ago
Kevin MacDonald’s analysis of the role Jewish intellectuals have played in Western 20th century history, and his theory on group selection, isn’t really what I’m talking about when I discuss KMac antisemitism. I disagree with his theory, and I think it’s motivated by antisemitism, but I’m talking about his actual politics and those advocated by himself and his writers on TOO etc.
I do think it’s interesting though, that it’s unclear whether the criticism is that Jews engaged in radical criticism of ‘gentile culture’ (the traditional gentile culture they were critiquing was not substantially different in many social, sexual and moral dimensions from the traditional Jewish culture pre-Haskalah) at all, or that they engaged in it and didn’t criticize their own pathology. The latter (that critical theory could be turned on the left, turned on itself) was actually a major objection of orthodox Marxists to Derrida etc.
2rafa
1yr ago
Do you think the woman is telling the whole truth about the alleged offer of euthanasia she supposedly received?
It really is so wonderfully charming how devoted Texas Republicans are to ensuring poor and underclass women are forced into having more babies than they currently do. This certainly won’t lead to problems down the road, because impoverished single mothers famously raise the most well-adjusted sons who commit crime at well-below-average rates.
Hopefully SCOTUS eventually limits this specific form of depressing ridiculousness.
The relative wages shown between England and low end US labor seems appalling.
The same is true for almost all Western Europe, it’s not a UK-specific problem.
And from the article you link:
This assumes that AI does not turn out to be a steam engine- or electricity-level invention.
Clearly this is not a smart man, as AI is vastly more significant than even either of the above.
2rafa
2yr ago
I'm not a liberal. I don't believe in universality. If it turns out for a variety of reasons that we discuss here regularly that black kids in this part of London need this extra support with literacy then I don't have a problem with the (largely black, as I understand it) Saturday school teachers doing their best to fix the issue. This is exactly the kind of stuff that, if it works, is actually worth my tax money, as opposed to so much of government spending.
2rafa
2yr ago
I don’t think it’s of no concern, I just think that the intersection of the venn diagram of:
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Native
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Poor/working class
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Bad literacy
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Lives in this part of Haringey and attends one of the schools that is part of this program
..will be almost nonexistent. How many white working class Dutch-American boys go to public schools in the Bronx?
2rafa
2yr ago
Perhapse this is an issue of poor translation between Indian and English
actually kind of racist comment
2rafa
2yr ago
"Diversity is code for anti-white" is based on the logic that since efforts to diversify organizations/companies/government/etc. typically involve reducing the relative proportion of whites and increasing the proportion of non-whites, diversity is anti-white.
"Anti-woke is code for anti-black" is based on the logic that since 'anti-woke' efforts include as a central pillar the elimination of affirmative action (in education, employment, federal contracting and so on), thereby certainly reducing the relative proportion of black people in those organizations, anti-woke is anti-black.
You can take a principled libertarian stance that 'diversity' is manipulating the ratios and 'anti-woke' merely restoring the natural order of things, but from a consequentialist perspective one linearly reduces the proportion of whites in major organizations and one linearly reduces the proportion of blacks. A white person advocating the latter and a black person the former are both displaying ethnic self-interest.
2rafa
5mo ago
To be replaced with more equally boring training on how to identify phishing emails, ‘interacting with coworkers from different cultures’, communications skills and networking workshops.
2rafa
6mo ago
Stuff like Bridgerton is openly alt-history if that’s what you’re referring to. It’s explicitly alt-history even.
2rafa
6mo ago
Because it shows absolutely that both the victims and the handful of dads who intervened were at the absolute bottom of the British social hierarchy, to an extent you literally cannot comprehend unless you live here and understand the caste system in this country, which is almost as hereditary as it is anywhere in the subcontinent.
2rafa
6mo ago
So men’s physical preferences are simple biology, completely unaffected by culture, while women’s physical preferences are determined largely by cultural forces?
2rafa
6mo ago
A lot of this is that non-fiction is filled with filler as it’s considered more respectable to publish a book rather than a pamphlet or booklet (so diminutive!). You can glean a lot of the valuable information of a non-fiction book from reading reviews and seeing discussions online.
The first sign of a dullard is that they read non-fiction.
2rafa
7mo ago
You can have that conversation, but it would lead to a lot of aimless women rather than many more children because most 24 year old men don’t want to be married with three children at that age.
2rafa
11mo ago
Has Russia not tried to assassinate Zelensky many times? AFAIK he is only being kept alive because Western intelligence is in charge of his movements.
2rafa
1yr ago
One, illegally allow in tens of millions of people into the United States; two, trick the (hopefully) absolute morons in the GOP to pass a "compromise bill" which allows a hostile administration to staff a army of bureaucrats which can more quickly adjudicate asylum claims under a "more strict" standard (it's really not) than one which could be adopted by executive fiat and then quickly stamp "approved" on large percentages of the illegally released people who now get automatic work permits. And it would have worked if it wasn't for that stupid Trump who is just so bad, doesn't care about immigration or the country, and opposes it because he just doesn't want Biden to get a win. And thank God for that
Literally none of this matters.
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Almost all illegals are eventually released or make it into the interior. That was true even with Trump’s remain-in-Mexico policy because there is no wall and Trump is no closer to getting Congress to build one than he was this time in 2016. That is to say even migrants turned back eventually make it into the interior, where they’re never deported unless they commit serious violent crime and ICE arrests and deports them which of course only happens to a tiny minority of illegals migrants, and even in those cases most return illegally.
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Because of 1 (a fundamental issue which, again, Trump has zero realistic plan to fix), the only difference between handing every migrant a green card (or, hell a passport) and not doing so is one generation. Every child of every single illegal migrant in the US born on US soil is a full citizen of the United States. That’s the trick with ‘amnesty’; it means nothing, because the demographic impact is guaranteed in any case. Birthright citizenship is the ultimate incentive for illegal immigration. Talk about “work permits” is hilarious; their sons and daughters have the same rights and privileges as you.
So, yeah. The only two things that would do “more” than this bill would be a meaningful end to most illegal inflows (impossible without transnational coast to coast impenetrable wall, and even then asylum seekers could just come legally and overstay visas if they could get them) and an end to birthright citizenship (almost certainly impossible without constitutional amendment). So this magic alternative to this bill (which again, would allow a GOP administration to take minor incremental steps to somewhat reduce inflows) does not exist. There is no plan, there never was, and Trump killed it because he didn’t want to give Biden what he felt was some kind of ‘win’, whatever the cost.
2rafa
1yr ago
To some extent Pygonyangification is a risk, but the current elite already has the power to ruin your life, strip you of your livelihood and take your money (something that effectively means you're going to have to move out of Manhattan anyway), so what's the difference?
2rafa
1yr ago
As I’ve said here before (I think last year when we had the last big Argentina discussion) I completely agree with you that some unique quirks like the ability for state governments to effectively print money are substantially responsible for Argentina’s condition.
But I think that again you discount the weirdness of Argentina. The stagnation is unusual for a population of that quality and historic development even with severe economic mismanagement. Look at the regular catastrophic economic decisions taken by successive postwar Italian governments, for example, the endless (stupid, to appease unions and voters in the short-term) devaluation of the Lira. And yet Italy saw a huge amount of growth and was (the worst parts of the south excepted) broadly a prosperous modern country well before full Euro integration. Franco’s abortive attempt at autarky was quickly fixed. Ireland saw a huge economic boom after liberalization. Yes, these examples all have confounding factors. Yes, you can’t ignore proximity, EU economic integration even pre-Euro and so on. But the sheer mismatch between human capital and population prosperity in Argentina versus country of origin (ie Spain/Italy) is unmatched in any settler population, anywhere in the world.
Even bad politicians, provided they don’t literally abolish even the last vestiges of a market economy, which even Peron didn’t, don’t typically result in growth charts as bad as Argentina’s.
2rafa
1yr ago
True, but as long as they believe the people would vote for it it’s no more of a contradiction than any policy by the bourgeois capitalist state is. For example they probably support gender self-ID or trans bathroom laws because they believe firmly that these would be policy in the revolutionary anarchist commune, even if the laws are implemented and enforced by the hated bourgeois neoliberal capitalist state.
Is Aloy fat? I don't play capeshit but as I recall MJ in the Spider-Man games was again an average looking redheaded woman, and certainly not fat.
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