Bingbong
1mo ago
Also I'd be shocked if I were to grab a pre-quickening advocate from that period, drag them into the twenty-first century and then explain that starvation is essentially a thing of the past and contraception is available but society still would like to make what would be essentially 'abortions of convenience' compared to the prevailing historical situation.
Bingbong
1mo ago
Exactly. No reasonable person would be hardline 'No military pensions ever' due to the nature of the job but there's also clearly been massive erosion of the issues assigned.
Bingbong
1mo ago
The Australian NDIS (National Disability Insurance Scheme) system has gotten absolutely shellacked by mental health claims in recent years, even if the government is attempting to fight back presently. Maybe the USA is less vulnerable to these claims, but I'm also aware that Veteran Health Claims frequently hinge on Psychological issues or physical issues that are similar to diagnose/attribute a clear causatory chain to like Tinnitus.
Bingbong
1mo ago
Yeah I get why there's a need for a 'not guilty by reason of insanity' verdict as a general social phenomenon, but it feels like as the modern mental health military-industrial complex has grown and grown and grown that it's far more likely to produce socially deleterious outcomes where people who are unfit to be members of polite society are given soft sentences as opposed to ensuring leniency for what I'd consider legitimate cases. Social programs that were originally predicated on 'Bob is injured down at the mines and lost his leg, give him a pension' are struggling to catch up with a world where you can just obtain diagnoses which, whilst I'm sure are serious and there are legitimate cases, are a lot harder to disprove as a third party.
Bingbong
1mo ago
Yeah. CEOs and Upper Management KPIs tend to be broad enough that it's hard to completely game them without doing something for the bottom line at the same time, even if you can argue all day about sustainability and short-term KPI optimization that's damaging to longterm business success.
Bingbong
1mo ago
Yeah. Industries with massive pull factors (Getting to work in gaming/film/whatever) and fairly weak bottom lines/hugely variable returns on investment are always going to have volatile and shitty working conditions. Either your sheer passion for making media has to cover a lot of ground or you're kinda shooting yourself in the foot economically by choosing to go work in an area that's never gonna be able to pay out commensurate to your skills' worth on the boring market.
Bingbong
1mo ago
Yeah no idea if it's a typo or it's a MtF who is on paternity leave for a recent childbirth? Or I guess maybe a non-birthing member of a lesbian couple.
Bingbong
1mo ago
I also learned recently that many Torii gates in Japan are sponsored by businesses and the Japanese characters written on their pillars are advertisements for those businesses, so they're roughly the equivalent of a "WALMART" or "DICK'S SPORTING GOODS" stamped on the gate, and learning this made me like these gates even more.
Sumos also get personal sponsorships and come out with garish but kinda contextually appropriate banners before their matches
Bingbong
1mo ago
Fair. I thought they were closer to the American Samoa model since I'm more familiar with it.
Bingbong
1mo ago
I mean the US have a working model for offshore possessions they'd rather not grant freedom of movement to. Far more likely to be a Puerto Rico, Guam or an American Samoa situation. Though even the US Military doesn't really have the slots required to process as many Venezuelans who'd immediately be hammering down the recruiter's door.
Bingbong
1mo ago
I think you're overlooking how quickly just become inured to their immediate circumstances. I'm sure the guys running slave markets, both today and in history, were largely 'regular guys' who made stupid jokes and fucked around a lot. I've worked in industries where I've done things that are fairly questionable morally (Mostly gambling) and like within two weeks you just get used to a lot of stuff.
I shill it a lot but the documentary Act of Killing is probably one of the best, simply since it pushes this reality. Literal mass murderers who are just wandering around as kinda-awkward uncles in Indonesian society now. https://youtube.com/watch?v=QKoP2PnU60s
Bingbong
1mo ago
usually the trajectory for this type of person is to join a right wing think tank or something.
Right Wing causes don't seem to have anywhere near the depth of roster or the funding to easily capture everybody of this ilk, though. He's got a big enough platform he can probably find a job/substack around, but I believe Arday would have found it a lot easier to land on his feet than Cofnas might.
Bingbong
1mo ago
Yeah they may complain about them, but actual antisocial acts are usually policed pretty hard even in countries where Western norms are totally different to the local ones.
Bingbong
1mo ago
I feel like cultural practices of 'just date men instead' are more abundant than women actually frontfooting relationships. Enough communal sodomy twink concepts flying around human anthropology.
Bingbong
1mo ago
Exactly, and being a woman who has a good 'eye for talent' and can tolerate actually driving somewhat with passive moderate autists can likely get you into incredible positions.
Bingbong
1mo ago
Most women can't overcome the ick on dealing with passive moderate autists enough even when there's massive upside in taking charge. IMO most women find it way easier to deal with the Dubai Portapotty kinda role since the proverbial Sheikhs will be cartoonishly aggressive, whilst taking on an autist (especially one tangled up in 2020s norms around workplace fraternization) should be taking candy from a baby but most women can't frontfoot.
Bingbong
1mo ago
No one from Albania comes from much money.
You'd be shocked how much illicit money from the region ends up in Albania for various reasons. Plus general Gini coefficient of places like that and being able to enforce your will onto the world fairly cheaply means the top 0.1% are actually kinda cartoonishly rich and powerful.
Bingbong
1mo ago
The Wikipedia page for that one being so litigious about deadnaming for a school shooter is kinda funny, gotta say.
Bingbong
2mo ago
Yeah they've transitioned into a University wealth in exchange for Visas program, but the initial idea behind gating immigration behind degrees was fomented when a degree was a top 10% thing to have.
Bingbong
2mo ago
Yeah. Massive Baumol effect makes arguing about relative GDP per capita frequently silly. QOL in most developed countries is not 4x the QOL that it is in upper-middle tier countries, despite the pay disparity. There are certainly poor countries in the world, but even then a rising tide in technology and developed world investments means that a lot of the benefits in living conditions have spread down the stack.
Bingbong
2mo ago
I'm on a Spousal PR at the moment in a country that essentially offers me zero path to citizenship. I wouldn't mind a Passport if it fell into my lap (though I'd have to trade my stack of other passports for it, which is probably a bad deal) but I'm also prettymuch fine with the deal as it is.
Bingbong
2mo ago
(Quick Google search, on that matter, suggests that annual number of spousal visas issued is about 15% the number of annual naturalisations in the US, so it can't be that big a factor.)
I'd also imagine it'd fall even further when you filtered for people of Multi-generational US ancestry bringing in partners, versus recent immigrants bring in diaspora spouses.
Bingbong
2mo ago
I feel like a lot of migration policy was set and ideated during the days were there was a Destiny to Manifest, social spending was negligible and Western countries had industrial jobs that needed bulk labor. Being a lot looser made more sense on those terms. Also the transition of University from something that only elite people did, to being widely available, means that a lot of educational Visas are just not really doing what they originally were intended to do.
These days it's pretty clear any common-sense program that's established will be eroded by the courts and politicians till even the tightest Genius-only Immigration policy inevitably gets used to import Deliveroo Enthusiasts 50 years later.
Bingbong
2mo ago
Plenty of countries don't allow massive runaway chain migration. A wife is probably fine, but when it's 20 years later and a swarm of everybody who she's even tangentially related to are trying to get into the West then it's clearly massively destructive of limited resources.
Yeah. Unless you're a subscriber to the 'Russia has completely solved social media marketing and somehow is completely controlling the algorithms of every online news source' tinfoil hattery then if anything Russia-Ukraine should be indicative of how difficult it would be for Russia to project power beyond it.
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