BurdensomeCount
Singapore is the only country that learned the correct lessons from the British Empire.
The neighborhood of Hampstead is just at present exercised with a series of events which seem to run on lines parallel to those of what was known to the writers of headlines and "The Kensington Horror," or "The Stabbing Woman," or "The Woman in Black." During the past two or three days several cases have occurred of young children straying from home or neglecting to return from their playing on the Heath. In all these cases the children were too young to give any properly intelligible account of themselves, but the consensus of their excuses is that they had been with a "bloofer lady." It has always been late in the evening when they have been missed, and on two occasions the children have not been found until early in the following morning. It is generally supposed in the neighborhood that, as the first child missed gave as his reason for being away that a "bloofer lady" had asked him to come for a walk, the others had picked up the phrase and used it as occasion served. This is the more natural as the favorite game of the little ones at present is luring each other away by wiles. A correspondent writes us that to see some of the tiny tots pretending to be the"bloofer lady" is supremely funny. Some of our caricaturists might, he says, take a lesson in the irony of grotesque by comparing the reality and the picture. It is only in accordance with general principles of human nature that the "bloofer lady" should be the popular role at these al fresco performances.
User ID: 628
BurdensomeCount
Singapore is the only country that learned the correct lessons from the British Empire.
2mo ago
During commute hours there might be almost as many office workers as cracked out addicts.
This is not the win you might think it is.
BurdensomeCount
Singapore is the only country that learned the correct lessons from the British Empire.
6mo ago
Killing the president does very little damage to the US military industrial global hegemon, which is what they are opposed to, that would just make the US population hunger for blood and go after them even harder. Plus, why would you even want to kill Biden? He's like the most milquetoast person you can get, any replacements will be worse for you.
BurdensomeCount
Singapore is the only country that learned the correct lessons from the British Empire.
11mo ago
Therefore, I submit that The Motte was created by Jesus Christ himself.
New Zorba origin story?
BurdensomeCount
Singapore is the only country that learned the correct lessons from the British Empire.
11d ago
yaslighting
I am so so using that term from now on...
BurdensomeCount
Singapore is the only country that learned the correct lessons from the British Empire.
13d ago
Why would changing from yourself to your daughter being in the forest change anything? The bear is far more dangerous in either case (assuming we're talking about an average male human vs average bear) and can't be reasoned with. If anything your daughter is better placed to charm the man and get him to sacrifice himself for her if needs be than you are.
On the other hand if the comparison is between a particularly dumb human vs Yogi Bear then I would go with the bear...
BurdensomeCount
Singapore is the only country that learned the correct lessons from the British Empire.
7mo ago
Oh, I don't trust the foreign governments at all. It's more that the foreign government has less power to hurt me than the local government.
BurdensomeCount
Singapore is the only country that learned the correct lessons from the British Empire.
8mo ago
Current zero covidians are not NPCs, the NPC's have had their beliefs patched since 2022 and now don't mask.
BurdensomeCount
Singapore is the only country that learned the correct lessons from the British Empire.
8mo ago
· Edited 8mo ago
Money, job and education matter far less for dating than what people think. I know plenty of people with fantastic careers, high levels of education and high income who are reasonably looking and decent people who barely get any dates. Some end up dating women who are clearly unattractive.
Not to harp on again about it but this is once again a symptom of modern Western social norms. Back home "fantastic careers, high levels of education and high income" are like the top 3 things families look for (definitely all three are in the top 5 once you remove dealbreakers like religious compatibility) when suggesting men for their daughters. Long term I expect that valuing these things is beneficial for society as a whole compared to the current modus operandi of the West.
BurdensomeCount
Singapore is the only country that learned the correct lessons from the British Empire.
1mo ago
Trump had a policy where he wanted rich European countries to pay the same amount that gets charged to medicaid/medicare for these medicines however he wasn't able to get it implemented before he was booted out and the Biden admin scrapped it.
BurdensomeCount
Singapore is the only country that learned the correct lessons from the British Empire.
6mo ago
it fair to say that elderly care in the US and Western countries in general is based on the unstated rule that you as a frail and elderly person pretty much only deserve to have a quality of life worth a damn if you have loving, caring children and grandchildren living nearby, visiting you regularly and looking after you if needed
I would say it's the exact opposite of what you're saying that is happening in western countries. They are places where you can spend all that wealth you earn with your DINK lifestyle on yourself during your 20s,30s and 40s without raising future taxpayers and still expect in your old age to be funded by the surplus generated by the children of those who sacrifised their own enjoyment for the next generation.
South Korea and Japan are the right way we should be treating old people who never had kids, not the west.
BurdensomeCount
Singapore is the only country that learned the correct lessons from the British Empire.
7mo ago
· Edited 7mo ago
The Ukranians have the right to fight back, not because their land was once stolen, but because their land was very recently stolen. The further back in time you go, the less your right to push back becomes, if Finland today attacked Russia to try and recover Karelia (this happened around the same time as the creation of Israel) people's sympathies for them would be nowhere near the level they have for Ukraine, and rightfully so.
Indeed, even in western countries like the UK, there are laws on Presciptive Easement where if someone uses a piece of land openly for some use for 20 years they do not own, eventually the government recognizes their claim on the land and hands it to them if the original owner tries to complain, and there are good reasons why such laws exist.
In Israel's case the land theft happened so far back and they have done so much to transform it that what exists now is nothing like what existed in 1950 (on the Israeli side at least), so they have a claim to keep it. And no, I don't expect "if you steal land you will be given 75 years (a lifetime) of hell, after which you'll be allowed to keep the land" to be much less of a deterrent/cause more moral hazard than "if you steal land you'll be given perpetual hell" in stopping people from stealing land.
BurdensomeCount
Singapore is the only country that learned the correct lessons from the British Empire.
8mo ago
Reading this I wish L the best of luck in making a successful life in the USA. Economic migrants (of all stripes) are one of the few groups for whom their version of the American Dream is still a possibility.
BurdensomeCount
Singapore is the only country that learned the correct lessons from the British Empire.
1mo ago
SK's protectionism worked because it was done with a spear pointed at the ass of the local companies who were always told it was going to be time limited and would be wound down gradually and so they had 15-20 years to become internationally competitive or they were going to die out anyways. Most crucially this threat was believable to the point that the local companies shaped up and actually became competitive on the world stage.
Unfortunately you can't replicate it in the modern day US because their culture of lagresse and gibs mean that tacitly the companies know that even if the current government says the tariffs/support will end in 15 years political considerations near expiry time will lead to it being probably extended because who wants headlines like "poor salt of the earth car factory workers left destitute after government pulls funding to cut the taxes of the wealthy"? As such the car companies have zero real incentive to modernize and can just coast off of government subsidies and having a captive market. The ultimate loser of all this is going to be the taxpayer who now gets his hard earned money given to these relicts and just to add insult to injury is forced to buy worse products at higher prices.
BurdensomeCount
Singapore is the only country that learned the correct lessons from the British Empire.
4mo ago
This is the sort of stuff which grinds my gears. Newag should be sued until they collapse and the company has to be sold off completely to someone else, who will hopefully be less shitty.
BurdensomeCount
Singapore is the only country that learned the correct lessons from the British Empire.
4mo ago
massively increase marginal tax rates on the second worker in any household
This just leads to a massive drop in household formation where a man and a woman who both have a job they like decide to keep everything casual and live separately to avoid these massive taxes instead of moving in together. Of course, this lack of household formation will probably lead to lower birthrates too.
BurdensomeCount
Singapore is the only country that learned the correct lessons from the British Empire.
5mo ago
I was forced to watch the three recent special episodes with David Tennant back (absolutely the best doctor of the reincarnated version of the show) because of friends and was surprised just how much the quality had dropped since his original series with Rose Tyler. No 15. did seem cool though from the last few minutes of the last special episode (the plot of the last third of this episode was really stupid though), not cool enough to make me watch the show again, but definitely better than Whittaker.
BurdensomeCount
Singapore is the only country that learned the correct lessons from the British Empire.
5mo ago
Jews basically got it declared that talking about Jewish success is antisemitic.
I’ll note Jewish success as an acknowledgement of their success but it’s also done by some right wing antisemitism.
They get 40% of Nobels, at one point 30-40% of Ivy league spots (now lower due to affirmative action), I would guess 25-30% of US billionaires.
Yet another consequence of the western belief in equality. If your society was set up in such a way that accepting that certain groups are better than others was completely mundane and unremarkable Jews wouldn't need to pull levers so that talking about Jewish successes became antisemitic. They only do that because they have correctly reasoned that in the modern western world people noticing their disproportionate success rate in society would lead to them becoming disfavoured compared to other groups, which is something nobody wants.
BurdensomeCount
Singapore is the only country that learned the correct lessons from the British Empire.
6mo ago
· Edited 6mo ago
Words have meanings, and the way fascism was being used here was in a negative perjorative sense, that doesn't apply to "absolute totalitarian monarchism" if only because that's too big of a mouthful for the average man and is also too much of a fargroup for westerners in a way that "fascism" is not. Using words incorrectly is a slur treadmill and a bad thing, and deserves to be called out and ridiculed.
But if you ask about the difference for someone living there:
Fascism is a one party society, Monarchism is a zero party society. This obviously influences how much personal political power you can get if you start out with none but are determined to make something of yourself.
In fascism your loyalty is to the country, in monarchy your loyalty is to the royal family. The "country" needs not even be a well defined thing beyond a necessary legal fiction for the modern world, indeed "Saudi Arabia" is named after the House of Saud, the family which rules it.
Fascism glorifies its state and ruler as being better than others, there is no such thing in monarchy: you are a subject of your monarch, therefore you must serve him, even though other monarchs may well be better.
In fascism, power comes through seizing it (or rising up the ranks of the party), in monarchism power (generally) comes through being born into it.
Monarchy tends to be more internally stable (as long as the ruling king does his duty and properly nominates and grooms a heir before he dies), because there are fewer people who can legitimately claim power and thus cause internal strife, fascism is vulnerable to coups in the leadership by any strong enough random who thinks he can serve the country better than the current leader, this leads to civil strife and suffering for the whole population.
Fascism is very atheistic as it raises the state above everything, a totalitarian theocratic monarchy is obviously very religious (it's literally in the name). But still Fascism is probably fine with your religion as long as you don't make it interfere with state business, totalitarian theocratic monarchies would not be happy with you being a member of the wrong religion.
Fascism is more egalitarian on a personal level than absolute monarchy, as long as you glorify the state and are a citizen everything is well and good, in monarchy there are more divisions with some people being elevated higher than others (titles of nobility).
Fascism is generally like a planned economy, it's corporatism done on a state level (the state run like e.g. Apple), Monarchy doesn't have much to say about how the economy is best run.
etc. etc.
These are massive differences between fascism and totalitarian state monarchy, even the last one on its own is a huge difference to the life of the average person (akin to the difference between a capitalistic/communist society). The inhabitants do get both nationalism and authoritarianism and a bunch of other similar things, but their lives under the two systems are very different on a day to day basis.
And if you're going to use this to say that fascism sounds better than totalitarian theocratic monarchy for an average citizen then fine, you can make that argument but that still doesn't make it OK to say totalitarian theocratic monarchies are "fascism", no different to how getting punched in the face is better than getting your leg cut off, but saying someone got punched in the face when they got their leg cut off is comepletely wrong, and using it as hyperbole (bacause society has memetic antibodies against punching in the face but not legs getting cut off) is straight up wrong and deserves to be called out, mocked and ridiculed for being next level stupid.
Btw, Saudi Arabia is actually a pretty nice place to live these days if you are in any ways economically productive, I have cousins (including female ones) who went to live there for ~8 years or so, made a lot of money due to low tax while having a nice comfortable life due to modern day amenities that would be much more expensive to replicate in the west, then came back and used the saved money to straight up buy a house.
BurdensomeCount
Singapore is the only country that learned the correct lessons from the British Empire.
6mo ago
Eh, giving kusher 2 bn to manage so he can collect fees is like giving him like $20 million each year while his expenses will be minimal (he could literally stick it in an index fund and laugh all the way to the bank), not as blatant as giving him 2 bn, but still giving him a substantial amount.
I basically see this as bribery with extra steps.
BurdensomeCount
Singapore is the only country that learned the correct lessons from the British Empire.
7mo ago
Before the sexual revolution, if you ‘improperly seduced’ (‘took advantage of’) a girl of reasonable social standing and this behavior was revealed (by her or others), you’d answer to her male relatives. Now you will answer to the government (this in itself is not a new phenomenon, the same shift from responsibility of the tribe to responsibility of the state has happened with welfare, policing, consumer fraud protection etc).
The difference here is that the government is expected to be neutral between all its subjects while her male relatives are expected to be biased in favour of the woman. Equality before the law is fundamental to how modern societies are expected to function (and this is one of the few good sorts of equality there are), and the choices here are to either break that or come up with a settlement that the woman who got "taken advantage of" by and large wouldn't be happy with, as half the consequences would fall on her shoulders. There is no similar presumption (nor should there be) that private citizens are expected to treat random strangers as equal to their own family members.
BurdensomeCount
Singapore is the only country that learned the correct lessons from the British Empire.
7mo ago
This is old, but gold: https://youtube.com/watch?v=-evIyrrjTTY
BurdensomeCount
Singapore is the only country that learned the correct lessons from the British Empire.
7mo ago
· Edited 7mo ago
I've linked this elsewhere today as well, but you'll probably enjoy Nozick's The tale of a slave if you haven't seen it before.
Consider the following sequence of cases, which we shall call the Tale of the Slave, and imagine it is about you.
1. There is a slave completely at the mercy of his brutal master’s whims. He often is cruelly beaten, called out in the middle of the night, and so on.
2. The master is kindlier and beats the slave only for stated infractions of his rules (not fulfilling the work quota, and so on). He gives the slave some free time.
3. The master has a group of slaves, and he decides how things are to be allocated among them on nice grounds, taking into account their needs, merit, and so on.
4. The master allows his slaves four days on their own and requires them to work only three days a week on his land. The rest of the time is their own.
5. The master allows his slaves to go off and work in the city (or anywhere they wish) for wages. He requires only that they send back to him threesevenths of their wages. He also retains the power to recall them to the plantation if some emergency threatens his land; and to raise or lower the three-sevenths amount required to be turned over to him. He further retains the right to restrict the slaves from participating in certain dangerous activities that threaten his financial return, for example, mountain climbing, cigarette smoking.
6. The master allows all of his 10,000 slaves, except you, to vote, and the joint decision is made by all of them. There is open discussion, and so forth, among them, and they have the power to determine to what uses to put whatever percentage of your (and their) earnings they decide to take; what activities legitimately may be forbidden to you, and so on.
Let us pause in this sequence of cases to take stock. If the master contracts this transfer of power so that he cannot withdraw it, you have a change of master. You now have 10,000 masters instead of just one; rather you have one 10,000-headed master. Perhaps the 10,000 even will be kindlier than the benevolent master in case 2. Still, they are your master. However, still more can be done. A kindly single master (as in case 2) might allow his slave(s) to speak up and try to persuade him to make a certain decision. The 10,000-headed monster can do this also.
7. Though still not having the vote, you are at liberty (and are given the right) to enter into the discussions of the 10,000, to try to persuade them to adopt various policies and to treat you and themselves in a certain way. They then go off to vote to decide upon policies covering the vast range of their powers.
8. In appreciation of your useful contributions to discussion, the 10,000 allow you to vote if they are deadlocked; they commit themselves to this procedure. After the discussion you mark your vote on a slip of paper, and they go off and vote. In the eventuality that they divide evenly on some issue, 5,000 for and 5,000 against, they look at your ballot and count it in. This has never yet happened; they have never yet had occasion to open your ballot. (A single master also might commit himself to letting his slave decide any issue concerning him about which he, the master, was absolutely indifferent.)
9. They throw your vote in with theirs. If they are exactly tied your vote carries the issue. Otherwise it makes no difference to the electoral outcome
The question is: which transition from case 1 to case 9 made it no longer the tale of a slave?
BurdensomeCount
Singapore is the only country that learned the correct lessons from the British Empire.
7mo ago
· Edited 7mo ago
Sure, the attacks yesterday were by and large not done against recently settled land in the West bank, it was on land Israel has settled for many decades now.
Also, Gaza is under an illegal blockade, which they have every right to fight back against. Israel is a legitimate military target.
Sure, but Israeli civilians are not a legitimate military target, and what we saw yesterday was by and large indiscriminatory killing. It wasn't even "we wanted to kill enemy combatants and these civilians were collateral damage" like Israel says to justify its civilian killing, it was straight up "lets kill party goers because they are there", that's at least a few degrees worse.
They kill Palestinians, they have many Palestinians in torture camps. Israel continuous to destroy their farmland, steal their cattle, harass Palestinians and Palestinians are regularly killed by Israel.
Yes, absolutely, that still does not give you the right to wantonly go out with the intent to kill civilians, desecrate their bodies and then parade them around. There are things worse than death, and Hamas put them on display yesterday.
I freely admit Israel doesn't care about Palestinian civilians and accepts their deaths a collateral damage, valuing their lives at near 0, but what Hamas did yesterday goes a few steps beyond that, what they did actively put a negative value on Israeli civilian lives.
BurdensomeCount
Singapore is the only country that learned the correct lessons from the British Empire.
7mo ago
The aversion we have to executing women is once again an example of how the environment our intuitions developed in means that some of them are maladaptive in the modern world.
It absolutely makes more sense to execute the childbearing age women instead of fighting age men. The men you just need to hold in jails for 20 years after which they will age out of violence, however the women will continue pumping out more kids who eventually grow into either fighting age men or new childbearing age women who can then pump out more fighting age men and so on.
I think we have an aversion to executing such women (and I too have this aversion, my limbic system makes me feel a visceral repulsion to this that I don't feel towards executing fighting age men) because in the olden days the victors would take the women as spoils of war for themselves after executing the men, and doing so would allow the winning tribe to grow faster than it would do if it had just killed the women, hence favouring the development of a revulsion to killing women that isn't present for killing men. These days we rightfully frown on raping/taking as additional wives captured women and so this benefit to the winning society is no longer present, but the downsides are still there. Hence in the modern system it does make more sense long term strategically to eliminate the women (akin to economic damage through bombing factories in a war) more so than it does to eliminate the men (akin to killing enemy soldiers on the frontline).
However this line of thinking makes even me go "ick" deep down and I wouldn't want to see it happen at all. My estimation of Israel as a polity would go down a lot if they did something like this. Alas, I too am human, all too human...
Another valid solution is state sanctioned "beating the shit out of bad human beings until there is no more shitty behaviour left in them". This is surprisingly effective at getting those who are immune to reason to see sense. Operant conditioning works just as well on humans as it does on lower animals.
Six lashes for his rude behaviour followed by a solemn promise that he's going to get another sixty lashes if anything untoward was to happen to the woman afterwards would set him straight very quickly.
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