Chrisprattalpharaptr
Ave Imperaptor
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User ID: 1864
Chrisprattalpharaptr
Ave Imperaptor
1d ago
It beat's not existing at all. Which is where Ukraine's demographics are heading after sending most of their men off to die in trenches and their women are finding new lives abroad. But I guess Zelensky can pat himself on the back, king of the ashes, when the TFR of native Ukrainians is 0.21 ten years after his "victory".
While I share some of your concerns around TFR, it isn't the sole measure of worth of a nation. Somalia has a TFR of 6.3, mid-19th century Ireland had a TFR of 4 while illiterate peasants slaved on increasingly small plots of land and starved. Continuity is important, but so is the right to self-determination. If the Ukrainians had rolled over and collapsed, I expect there would have been a lot of finger wagging and recriminations but we wouldn't be having this conversation. If they choose to fight and are willing to die for their country, if they choose to risk their country being reduced to rubble and their TFR being reduced to some arbitrarily low number you pulled out of your ass, I don't think it's your place to lecture them.
Or when their political future is now determined by the flood of migrants which repopulates the region, as opposed to their coethnics in Moscow.
Somehow I suspect Ukrainian affection for their 'coethnics' in Moscow is experiencing a bit of a dip at the moment.
But sure, "Ukraine" would still be an independent nation, even if no Ukrainians are left in it. Not sure why a Ukrainian today should fight for that future though, being cut out of it completely.
Again, that's not really your or my determination to make, is it? I'm not supporting pressuring them into fighting a war, I'm strongly against NATO troops ever fighting in Ukraine, but revitalizing our defense manufacturing infrastructure while arming Ukrainians to fight for independence strikes me as the best action we could take at the moment.
Chrisprattalpharaptr
Ave Imperaptor
1d ago
Are we pretending Yanukovych wasn't overthrown?
Indeed; the automaton peasants (who lack agency) of Ukraine were told by their CIA handlers (who have agency) to riot and oust the hapless Yanukovych (who lacks agency) and was replaced by American puppet Zelensky (who has agency and should use it to sue for peace). This led noble leader Putin (who lacks agency; anyone in his shoes would do the same) to regretfully declare war.
"Presidents come and go but the policies remain the same." - Vladimir Putin
Makes sense. As you say, they're beset by the same scenario and conditions. Anyone in their shoes would do the same.
Chrisprattalpharaptr
Ave Imperaptor
1d ago
If it wasn't Putin, any other Russian leader would be beset with the same scenario and conditions.
If it wasn't Zelensky, any other Ukrainian leader would be beset with the same scenario and conditions.
If it wasn't Biden, any other American leader would be beset by the same scenario and conditions.
Chrisprattalpharaptr
Ave Imperaptor
2d ago
I freely profess my ignorance of Russian politics. To clarify, do you think if Putin had not wanted to invade Ukraine in 2022, it would have happened regardless? Or if Putin had wanted to invade and his advisors had not, it would not have happened? Or is your position some bailey that Strelkov's actions set in motion a series of events that made Putin's decision to invade inevitable?
Because option 3 still sounds like Putin had plenty of agency to me.
Chrisprattalpharaptr
Ave Imperaptor
2d ago
Will they tire of being NATO's cat's paw? Ukrainian men are getting a raw deal in an effort to reconquer lost territory, whose residents probably want to be part of Russia anyway. Why should Ukrainians fight and die for some abstract geopolitical goal of NATO?
Are you suggesting that the existence of Ukraine is an abstract geopolitical goal of NATO? The fighting today may center around the east, but the Russian invasion was clearly aimed at decapitating the Ukrainian regime and either installing a puppet government or annexing it outright. If the Ukrainian army crumbles, is there any doubt that Russia would roll into Kyiv and Ukraine would functionally stop existing as an independent nation?
Since you seem concerned about the right to self-determination of Ukrainians, let me ask you which course of action better serves that goal - arming them so they can defend themselves, or paternalistically telling them 'Sorry, we've all decided your cause is hopeless, now you have to take peace on whatever terms you can get it. Good luck!' People below have argued that Boris Johnson (and presumably the US was on the same page at the time) sabotaged early peace talks - I'd agree with them that this was bad, and Ukraine should be able to choose for themselves - but others have linked polls showing strong support among the Ukrainian public for the war.
As for your language about Ukrainians just being our hapless puppets that we carelessly throw into the meatgrinder, I feel like you've fallen for Putin's narrative. The west has a propensity to believe that they are the only actors on the world stage with any kind of agency; see the oceans of ink spilled about how the west is solely responsible for every conflict and humanitarian crisis in the past 100 years whether they've been directly involved or not. The one actor responsible for this war is Putin, and all the kvetching about NATO expansion and Euromaidan elides the fact that Putin singlehandedly launched an expansionary war of aggression to conquer territory, massage his ego and restore the glory of the Russian empire. Putin was under no personal threat from the west, nor was Russia.
Lastly, for those complaining about the atrophied defense production capacity of the west and shipping money off to Ukraine: two thirds of the 60 billion is earmarked to be spent with American defense manufacturers. If your goal is increasing defense manufacturing capacity in the west, how would you do it if not spending money on domestic defense manufacturing?
Chrisprattalpharaptr
Ave Imperaptor
12d ago
Capitalism as a source of problems, perhaps, rather than an unalloyed good? There's likely a difference between textbook definitions in the communist manifesto or the little red book and the way people use these terms colloquially. If you want the former, I'm not your guy. I read both a decade and a half ago and that was about the extent of my interest. Reading Hayek now, it's interesting to see how much the meaning of the term 'liberal' has shifted in the last 70 years. Gives me a better understanding of the gap between the way my generation uses these words and the way I expect some of the older posters here think.
To turn the question on it's head - if I supported free markets, welfare and socialized medicine, am I a communist? It's advantageous for the right to say so because communism calls to mind Soviet Russia, gulags, starvation, stasi, etc. But I'd argue there's a very material difference between Canada and the USSR, and only the latter would widely be regarded as 'retarded.' I'd agree that many intellectuals on the left fetishize Canada (if Trump wins a second term, this time we're definitely moving meme), but the number who'd want to live in a USSR-style communist hellscape is much lower.
Chrisprattalpharaptr
Ave Imperaptor
13d ago
To your mind, is there no difference between the various flavors of social democracy and communism? Because:
Intellectuals think Communism is great (though many are smart enough nowadays to not call it that).
simply isn't true. Most leftist intellectuals would support various levels of welfare, various levels of socialization of the healthcare system and so on but aren't interested in a centrally-planned economy, one-party rule, state-run media, etc.
Chrisprattalpharaptr
Ave Imperaptor
16d ago
But I do believe it's possible for people to change their minds, even if just in small ways. Then small mind changes lead to bigger ones.
It's happening, just centered around the local Overton window. I admit to having my mind changed on a number of issues, although most weeks this place is a parade of events that make the left look bad while events that paint Red tribe in a bad light are largely ignored. If you want to see the future of the Overton window, look at the two recent threads on natural selection and epistemology. They actually generated discussion and genuine disagreement in ways that posts about Trump, trans issues, gun rights, police violence, immigration etc. never do anymore.
Cthulhu swims ever farther right. I have to say, it is interesting to have watched it happen over my last five odd years here.
Chrisprattalpharaptr
Ave Imperaptor
18d ago
I see. Despite being on hiatus though, you managed to dig up a pretty obscure post.
Hope you're doing well!
Chrisprattalpharaptr
Ave Imperaptor
18d ago
- How often do you use generative AI, and is it for leisure or work?
- How are you using it, and how deep down the prompt engineering rabbit hole have you gone?
- What is your favorite model?
Sadly, in my workplace, use cases in descending order of frequency are: Generating funny images for powerpoint slides > generating funny names for things > asking scientific questions. I subscribed to Chatgpt4 and have been using it a fair amount over the last several months, and while it is quite helpful, it's far from accelerating my work in a largely meaningful way. I'm curious whether people have any recommendations for other models or specific prompts beyond 'take a deep breath and answer step by step' or 'my grandmother will die if I get this wrong.'
Chrisprattalpharaptr
Ave Imperaptor
21d ago
So let's build a wall says the right-winger.
No you can't do that says the left-winger, you just can't. You really can't says the left-winger, so the right-winger says, ok we'll jan6 then
You mean the wall I was promised Mexico would pay for (oops), the wall that was actually built by Trump after refusing compromises offered by Democrats and instead built by appropriating funds from the military? The wall that, as far as I can tell, has had virtually no effect on the number of illegal immigrants showing up at the border? That wall?
Leaving aside the fact that your implied definition of 'having agency' means 'getting whatever policy you want at the federal level.' By that definition, you're denying me agency every time you vote for a Republican. Nobody has agency.
So let's gather all the gang-members says the El Salvadoran President. But at what cost??? Asks the NYT.
Sure, we could crack down on crime in the US as well if we instituted a police state. This is diametrically opposed to what most conservatives want. When is the last time you saw a conservative cheering on NSA wiretappings or the FBI?
How's 'relocating' working as a strategy generally? Plenty of 'relocated' Americans homeless on the streets of blue cities, not sure what good it does them.
You do understand that homeless make up a minute portion of a state's population (~90k for New York out of a population of 19 million), and the number of them that were shipped there from red states is a fraction of them? Meanwhile, there are plenty of kids who leave West Virginia for college, work, etc and never come back - and they do just fine. People typically refer to this as a negative as the talented are leaving West Virginia, exacerbating the problem. Any hard data on the subject would suffer from selection effects as well, so maybe it isn't a solution for someone with a high school degree or less, who knows.
Doesn't really matter though. You seem more interested in 'zingers' and waging the culture war, right?
Chrisprattalpharaptr
Ave Imperaptor
21d ago
When the government takes half your paycheck and gives it to a swarm of party-aligned parasites that live off grant money, the government is denying you agency.
Hey man, I don't like that the government is subsidizing traditionally red tribe occupations either, but you should really pressure your elected officials if you want it to stop.
Not to mention the income tax rate tops out at 37%, so it's not half your paycheck, and even if you are in the top tax bracket...you really don't have anything to be complaining about because you're making over half a mil per year.
When politicians coordinate with megacorporations to enrich themselves by impoverishing american workers, they are denying you agency.
Based. How do you want to bust the megacorps, comrade?
When your child isn't allowed to take algebra in school because a leftist "education consultant" got paid $5000/hr to call math racist while sending her children to a private school, they are denying you agency.
That's an impressive 10,000,000$ per year. Do you have any idea how I could become an education consultant?
Anyways, I'll ask you the same question as last time. I largely agree with you about the problems in the country. Do you have any realistic, well-thought out plans to address them? We could zero out budgets for all the education consultants, all the minority-owned business subsidies, most of the other stuff you complain about as woke, and your buddy would still be struggling to feed his family stocking shelves. If you want to cut taxes, we probably need to cut medicare and social security (I'm assuming you don't want to touch the military), so your shelf-stocking friend will age into being a senior who both can't afford healthcare and has to keep stocking shelves until he keels over and dies.
But seriously, I'm listening. I'm open to having my mind changed. What do you actually want? What's your positive vision for the future?
Chrisprattalpharaptr
Ave Imperaptor
23d ago
Alongside his personal history, Vance raises questions such as the responsibility of his family and people for their own misfortune. Vance blames hillbilly culture and its supposed encouragement of social rot.
In retrospect, it's wild to me that someone with a law degree from Yale and who worked as a tech VC with Peter Thiel got elected to the senate with that message. But yes, I'll grant you that one.
Chrisprattalpharaptr
Ave Imperaptor
23d ago
There's Cernovich, or Bronze Age Pervert, or dozens of smaller accounts.
Fair enough, I confess to not reading BAP and I've never heard of Cernovich. I'm surprised you wouldn't mention Joe Rogan or JD Vance, but I know the phenotype you're referring to.
Maybe you're thinking of Ben Shapiro and Cadence Owens and Hanania types
Well, also the vast majority of the Trump administration, people like Steve Bannon, Alex Jones (I guess he hawks his supplements) and other conservative talk radio hosts, red coded media (fox news, OANN, Breitbart), most of the local commentariat, most any public figure on the right whose schtick isn't self-help/redpill/MGTOW style. You know the rhetoric I'm referring to, right?
Chrisprattalpharaptr
Ave Imperaptor
23d ago
Much of the core messaging on the right is explicitly 'anti-agency,' for lack of a better word. You're unemployed because the government shipped your jobs overseas, you're addicted to fentanyl because of corrupt doctors and politicians in bed with Chinese companies flooding the country, men are depressed and committing suicide because of feminism/hostile society/subversion of traditional gender roles, you're poor because immigrants are driving down your wages.
When is the last time a politician or right-wing influencer told someone from West Virginia that they have the power to improve their life by relocating, retraining or abstaining from drugs? I can accept that even if they did believe that, saying so publicly would be political suicide...but do you think that they believe it? Do you yourself believe that, or do you agree with most of the statements I made above?
Chrisprattalpharaptr
Ave Imperaptor
24d ago
And who can forget the dogpill?
Chrisprattalpharaptr
Ave Imperaptor
30d ago
I believe what you're describing could happen. The closest analogy I can think of is companies black boxing equipment to prevent you from working on it yourself:
LESTER GRAHAM, BYLINE: About an hour south of Detroit, Mark Metz and his father farm 1,800 acres of corn, soybeans and wheat. He says a computer error showed up on his dashboard in his tractor. With no access to information about the tractor software, he had no choice but to ask the dealership to send someone out to look at it.
MARK METZ: We deal with a dealer that's a little over an hour away. And, of course, you're paying for their road times. So, I mean, we pay a good two to 2 1/2 hours of just time just to get them here.
GRAHAM: The dealership's guy found it was just a wire that had come unplugged. He plugged it in. The initial bill for that repair was $800. Metz says had it been his truck, he could have taken it to a nearby auto parts store.
Or someone posted the crazy story about the trains in Poland. I'm too lazy to find their writeup on TheMotte, but hopefully this reddit post will point you in the right direction if you missed it.
That being said, you're conflating congress and private industry under the umbrella of busybodies:
If you assume these are pathologically controlling busy bodies, which I think you are right to assume, the fact that anybody can program anything probably terrifies them. They barely understand technology to begin with. Just look at any time they haul a tech CEO before congress and attempt to get sound bites for their constituents. It's horrible.
Tech companies have a clear profit motive to force you to buy their software, same way that John Deere has a clear profit motive to stop you from repairing their tractors when they can charge you 800$ to plug in a wire themselves. They're not afraid of you shitposting about your waifu LLMs on reddit, they want you to buy the latest and shittier version of Windows, Now With More Advertisements And Less Functionality. It's the Suits, not the HR and DEI consultants.
Chrisprattalpharaptr
Ave Imperaptor
1mo ago
Trans/queer; the new punk
A plague is corrupting the youth of Athens. Men dress like women, sport long, dyed hair and refuse to wrestle in the coliseum or participate in polite society. Women dress like men. Both mutilate their bodies to the consternation of their elders and abscond from their parents homes in droves.
I am, of course, talking about punks. And emos, goths and metalheads if I can lump everyone into the same bucket to make my life easier.
Having a fluorescent blue footlong mohawk, tattoos, piercings and a leather jacket made you eminently unemployable outside of menial service jobs and was the fashion equivalent of telling the world to go fuck itself. ‘Posers’ would get a tiny tattoo on their ankle or something and listen to the wrong music, then cover it up for their day job. Plenty of people will be nonbinary on the weekend and just pass as whatever gender they were assigned at birth Monday-Friday. 15 years ago, the mainstream was sharing cringe videos of emos and goths instead of the ‘it is ma’am’ person.
I believe that there are genuine trans people in the world who have always felt uncomfortable in their body. Numerous posts here have already described the rapid rise in trans youth so I won’t belabor the point, but my thesis (which will no doubt tank my career when this account is doxxed) is that a large fraction of these youth are protesting the gender binary and heteronormativity rather than experiencing a true, deep-seated gender identity different from what they were assigned at birth. A man wearing a dress, long hair or makeup is rebelling against arbitrary norms around clothing/fashion that evolved for a vastly different society with different needs. Spend some time on Feeld, okcupid or other dating apps (especially within the poly community), and you’ll see many people who identify as trans or queer and aren’t so much trying to pass as telling the system to go fuck itself by refusing to conform to gender norms.
Boomers and Gen Xers decrying trans youth and trans culture are Barbara Streisanding the phenomenon; the fact that you hate it is what makes it appealing to many kids in the first place! In the same way that being a punk is a nonissue today, the future of trans is becoming a minority of the population who wear the clothes that they want, use the bathrooms they want and nobody cares. Meanwhile, we’ll all be losing our minds about otherkin or pluralkin. Or maybe this guy. This isn’t to dismiss the harms that punks and anarchists may have caused in their time; I can think of a couple small-scale riots and businesses burned in my hometown during Mostly Peaceful demonstrations that got out of hand. The trans movement undoubtedly isn’t an unalloyed good and criticism will likely be valuable to reign in the excesses as it evolves into whatever the endgame is.
History may rhyme, but it’s true that it never directly repeats itself. The punk community, obviously, placed a large emphasis on music and art. While queercore is a thing, as was PWR BTTM pre-cancellation, the trans movement clearly isn’t centered on music in the same way. This could just be a shift in protest/underground culture, as neither punk nor metal carry the same bite that they used to - I saw Rancid about 10-15 years ago and even then no amount of cocaine could give them the energy they had in the 90s. Napalm Death was a hell of a time, but it hits a bit different when the entire crowd is in their 30s-50s instead of their teens. Kids are on their phones instead of listening to the radio, hanging out at the skate park and going to punk shows - as a result, protest culture just looks different than it used to, but I believe the trans movement are the ideological inheritors of the punk movement.
The other major difference, and one place where I expect the most pushback, is that punk was anti-authoritarian, anarchist and explicitly ungovernable. On the other hand, major media outlets, schools and ‘The Cathedral’ are explicitly pro-trans. I would argue that while the progressive activists are genuine they are vastly in the minority, and opposed by an equally loud minority with inverted views if not quite the same institutional reach. The majority in the center make pro-trans noises, but at the end of the day they aren’t going to date a trans person or wear clothes that don’t match their gender.
As an aside, if I can ramble for a bit - the corollary to Cthulhu swimming left is that youth crave rebellion and transgression, only to grow up and normalize whatever was shocking to their elders. Septum piercings and tattoos were ‘big deals’ growing up, whereas I have friends who are academics in good standing with visible tattoos and piercings. Going way back, lindy hop in the Savoy ballroom 12 was viewed as scandalous, whereas now it’s largely practiced by white retirees in their 60s-70s and millenial STEMlords who like dancing predetermined patterns. Elvis shocked the nation with gyrating hips in a performance tamer than 99% of the content on instagram. Punk and metal have vastly less appeal for Zoomers in the same way that the Beatniks and Hippies held no sway over the Millenials; each generation of youth pushes for progress and wants to do something transgressive. I’ll leave it to someone smarter than I to make the case that this freedom and spirit of rebellion is core to what makes America and the West great, but I do genuinely believe it.
Anyways. I, for one, can’t wait to see 60-70 year old millennials trying to dance like this. See you all grinding on the nursing home stripper poles in a couple decades.
Obligatory statement to head off some remarks: minors being able to medically transition against the wishes of their parents makes me deeply uncomfortable. I don’t support public school children being forced to attend drag queen story hour, but have no problem with people who want to bring their own children. Most other trans-associated culture war topics (pronouns, bathrooms, clothes, whatever) I'm fine with.
Chrisprattalpharaptr
Ave Imperaptor
1mo ago
The point is that one side has disseminated rulebreaking, because there are a lot of them. Hlynka had concentrated rulebreaking, because there was one of him. Take the bottom percentile of shitty posts distributed across a dozen people and always direct them towards Hlynka. If he were to respond in kind, he'd eventually eat a permaban while the others would take a day here or there.
I've studiously ignored every single one of the threads he would get involved in, so you and the other mods know the situation much better than me. That being said, the forum is a worse place without Hlynka. This is how you end up with conformity and groupthink even with neutral and fairly-applied rules.
Conclusion: US security is as big shitshow as it had always been.
I'd be interested for someone much more qualified than myself to make the steelman for US intelligence being quite competent, actually. We rarely hear about the successes, failures are isolated incidents that cause major scandals and garner a lot of news coverage. It's 'common knowledge' that the US government is massively incompetent. All of which leaves me itching to make a contrarian take.
US intelligence publicly told everyone that Russia was about to invade Ukraine weeks before it happened. My recollection is that people on this very board laughed at their stupidity and incompetence. Early in the conflict, the Russian military was so riddled with American spies that we knew exactly when and where they were going to strike. We had a spy so close to Putin he was sending photos of the papers on Putin's desk, which we extracted in 2017. We used to have major sources high up in the CCP, although I have no idea what the current situation is like.
This is just the stuff that gets leaked to news orgs. Who knows what goes on behind the scenes? And how can you expect to make an accurate assessment of their capabilities by looking at the tip of the iceberg that's visible to the public?
Chrisprattalpharaptr
Ave Imperaptor
1mo ago
This, right here, is exactly the thing I was talking about.
Ah. Was I 'gaslighting you while celebrating it at the same time as denying it's happening?' Slamming the Overton window leftwards on you? Or something else you edited out of your post?
I don't think my post was particularly celebratory, nor do I think I made any comment on the object level issues you raised in your post. But whatever, the one leftish leaning person who bothered to reply to your post managed to perfectly demonstrate all the problems you were complaining about. Bravo.
My friend is feeding his new daughter on the free expired baby food he gets from his grocery store job, while this instagram play-farmer writes grants for more money than he makes in a year.
Alright. Forget about the black person who got taxpayer money for a moment (we can go back to it later if you like). Imagine that I'm an actual human being and I want to help your friend and people like them - what should I do? What set of policies do you think would be most helpful to your friend? Was he significantly better off when he was stocking shelves five or ten years ago? And do you think grocery store workers had it better in 1990, 2005, or 2020ish?
I don't believe your motivation for engaging is to discuss the culture war. I think you're waging it by manipulating people into passive acceptance.
Hello, pot. Kettle here. You're black.
But then, give me some advice. How could I reply to your post in a way that wouldn't be 1) denying these are problems or 2) manipulating people into passive acceptance, short of agreeing with you on every point and accepting that leftists are evil? I'd invite you to sketch out a very brief outline of what such a post might look like such that you think you could have a productive conversation.
Chrisprattalpharaptr
Ave Imperaptor
1mo ago
Do you think you're better than him?
Nope.
The point in your favor for suggesting moderation is balanced by your politely-phrased smug tone.
As someone who supports some of the causes he decries to varying degrees, how do you think I'm supposed to participate in this conversation exactly? I could respond in kind and we could fling feces at each other while you tut tut and enjoy the show. Or more realistically I'm buried in feces by the largely right-leaning commentariat.
I could craft a thoughtful response to some of his individual points, but what kind of conversation do you think he and I will have?
I could be the apologetic, liberal whipping boy who takes his lumps for That Bad Thing The People I Don't Like Did This Week.
I've done enough of all three. At a certain point a spade is a spade, and a bad post is a bad post. I can link you to massive exchanges I've had extending weeks and tens of thousands of words with FcfromSSC, gattsuru, professorgerm (now desolation, I believe?) and others so clearly I'm capable of having a decent conversation with people who hold very different beliefs. The process certainly changed my worldview.
That hasn't happened in...upwards of a year, I don't think? I'm sure you could make the argument that I changed rather than the space, but then I'd challenge you to show me any interesting and civil back-and-forth between a real liberal and conservative here that's happened recently. At a certain point, what exactly am I supposed to do with OP?
But what's the point? Seriously, why even talk about this just to get gaslit by the people who are celebrating it at the same time as denying it's happening? You could spend your entire life writing tens of thousands of words explaining and analyzing this insanity, and all it does it give the perpetrators the satisfaction of gloating about getting away with it.
What are we even doing here? Are we just going to keep doing it forever as the country goes completely insane? Why? What possible good will it do? Is this whole place just a safety release valve to stop any pressure building up against the overton window slamming left faster than the eye can see?
Consider that in writing mindkilled screeds about how terrible everything is, you're probably part of the problem. Maybe engage in a bit of self-reflection. Consider compromise. Read the aspirational text at the top of the culture war thread. Do something that makes you happy. Touch grass?
More realistically, Trump gets elected, Republicans suddenly stop caring about deficit spending and cut taxes and voila - all of your problems are magically solved. Instead of crying about how bad everything is you'll be crowing about the liberal snowflakes losing their minds over Orange Man Bad and TDS.
Does anyone actually get any pleasure out of this? Does anyone think it's doing any good?
I used to. When the people like you were diluted by those who were well-meaning, who wanted to have actual conversations and maybe learn a thing or two from someone with a different perspective.
How about this? If you can manage to write a measured and polite post about any of the topics above, I'll respond in kind. If the though of trying to do that is so abhorrent, then maybe this isn't the place for you.
Chrisprattalpharaptr
Ave Imperaptor
1mo ago
I'm not certain how popular it is, but I've seen it come up in a few contexts in the circles I travel in. People around here will cite obscure Larry Niven books fairly frequently ('On the gripping hand'...thankfully the much more crass 'Rape my lizard!' from the same novel never caught on), so I thought there were decent odds that Beggars in Spain was also well known. Particularly given the themes of transhumanism.
I wouldn't say the West is minding it's own business - there seems to be a tit for tat in terms of proxies, espionage, fraud, hacking, etc. I would say that I've seen no evidence of attempts on Putin's life nor anything that could remotely be construed as NATO showing any interest in invading Russia or violating Russian territorial integrity. Would you disagree with that?
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