Crowstep
1mo ago
I would say it's less about Scotland and more specifically about the Scottish National Party. The Holyrood parliament doesn't have to deal with grown up issues, like deficits, foreign policy or immigration. They are guaranteed a constant subsidy from England (or more accurately, London). After the failure of the independence movement, they need to redirect their grandstanding elsewhere or the public will ask what their purpose is.
As for COVID, that was clearly a case of the SNP purposely trying to distinguish Scotland from England. Their model of governing for years has been to create distinctions where none need exist, to be different for difference' sake. For COVID that meant copying the government in Westminster, but being more restrictive on every axis.
Crowstep
5mo ago
If you've ever used Amazon then you have benefitted from Bezos' success. You've benefitted from the consumer surplus generated by Amazon's existence. Whether that is from cheaper goods, faster delivery, greater choice, more convenience, the fact that you've used the website demonstrates that you've derived value from doing so relative to what else was available. The same goes for any other company that you've ever interacted with.
And if everyone's jobs get replaced by AI without any financial recompense, then nobody will have any money to spend on these companies that have done the job-replacing. They would need to compete with eachother for what small purchasing power remains, which means lowering prices to near-zero. This is easy enough when your labour costs have been reduced to zero by the AI that took everyone's jobs.
AI represents a potential increase in productivity, and increasing productivity is literally what economic growth is. From the industrial revolution to now, increasing productivity is why we were able to escape the zero-sum world that existed before.
Whether it destroys the world is another thing, of course.
Crowstep
8mo ago
Serious question, how do you envision the consent-seeking process working for these?
For example, I want to greet or congratulate a male friend. Should I really ask him 'may I slap you on the back?'
It's worth noting that the people's favourites were, in order:
- Croatia (an energetic, rock-adjacent anthem written in broken English)
- Israel (a standard Euro-ballad that was originally called 'October Rain', forced to change by the producers)
- Ukraine (a vaguely ethnic, vaguely religious ballad with light effects very reminiscent of bombs)
- France (a minimalist love song by an established French singer with an impressive voice)
- Switzerland (the jury winner)
The juries came with a similar list, but put Switzerland much higher, and gave very few points to Israel. So either Israel's song was great, and the juries were biased against them, or it was meh and the public were biased in favour of them. Also the juries love a man in a skirt.
Other highlights include:
- Finland - A comedy song by 'Windows95Guy' which involved him running around on stage wearing nothing from the waist down, his skin-tone pouch strategically blocked by scenery a la Austin powers.
- Ireland - Another non-binary (a woman this time) seemingly trying to summon a literal demon.
- UK - A gay guy sings while buff male backing dancers gyrate on eachother. Somehow not the gayest entry this year.
- Audible booing every time the head of the European Broadcasting Union appeared on screen (for letting Israel compete).
- Several coded anti-Israel statements from national representatives (ostensibly talking about peace and love).
- Plus lots of 90s throwbacks, obscure ethnic instruments and young women in Beyonce-esque bodysuits.
Altogether a fairly standard year for Eurovision.
Crowstep
4mo ago
I was always impressed by the way that my mother was able to bring someone round to her point of view, while making them feel like it was their decision. I would contrast it with rhetoric or debate, which is usually about convincing third parties rather than the person you are talking to. This was more like counsel. Men are better debators, but most of real life happens on a smaller scale where female tact is more useful.
She is also very wise. Intelligent, but intelligent in a way that was practically useful and leads to good decisions, although I'm not sure how female that is.
Thomas-Alexandre was briefly shown in the film as I remember, but I think the actor was full blooded African rather than biracial, which would have been more accurate.
Josephine's maid was also afro-Caribbean, which is plausible since she grew up on Martinique.
But yeah, there were a few other Africans that were thrown in awkwardly. My suspicion is that Scott did the absolute bare minimum to keep the diversity-mongers happy, which is all we can expect from him I guess.
Incidentally, Oppenheimer has a similar 'bare minimum' moment where the camera lingers on the face of an African woman inexplicably attending a 1930s physics class in the Netherlands before never showing her again.
Crowstep
9mo ago
Probably because they're not demanding that people actually use their fake Danish diacritics.
I don't think you can reasonably conclude that Ana de Armas has any non-European ancestry. She's completely indistinguishable from a native resident of Spain. Her mother's parents migrated from Spain, and her father looks completely Spanish.
I compare her to Mitt Romney because while his ancestry is English and hers is is Spanish, both of those places are in Europe and both ethnic groups are equally European. The fact that you classify him as 'white' and her as 'latina' really highlights how bizarre both labels are.
A better solution would be to list 'European' and 'mestizo' on the census. That would more accurately capture the difference between Europeans from Latin America (like de Armas) and mestizos like Raymond Cruz.
Crowstep
10mo ago
Our ancestors grew up in very close proximity to their close relatives and tribe members, but they also grew up separated by vast distances from other groups of strangers. I think that's the key difference between your conceptualisation and Ace's.
Crowstep
10d ago
can.
Food has been getting cheaper, we're growing more of it on less farmland since the 1990s, and malnutrition is declining rapidly. There's no reason to expect that all of the trends that have been occurring since the industrial revolution will suddenly reverse, especially since global birth rates (gross) peaked in 2016 and global TFR is about to fall below replacement (if it hasn't already).
Crowstep
3mo ago
The Gulf states do not have open borders. You can't work there without a visa, and they aggressively deport visa overstayers and foreign criminals.
Plus they are not democracies, don't give citizenship to foreigners (or make it extremely difficult to get) and don't give welfare to non-citizen residents.
The Western countries that we're talking about are democracies that rarely deport illegal immigrants or foreign criminals, give welfare freely to both legal and illegal immigrants and give out passports like candy.
Crowstep
6mo ago
It's definitely something I've noticed. I think there are three reasons. Firstly, we put more weight on our spouses as our main/only social outlet. People had more friends in the past, so marriage was able to fill a different niche.
Plus, since cohabitation and marriage have become uncoupled, getting married is more of a symbolic choice. Therefore it's more necessary to emphasise how suited the couple are too each other.
Finally, in the past, most couples didn't write their own vows, they just used the traditional church vows. And the lord doesn't care about you 'marrying your best friend'.
Crowstep
8mo ago
But again, the authors didn't write that the photo of the British family was cheesy or staged, they said they weren't real Londoners. In a guide where they also said (multiple times) that real Londoners were diverse. There's really no ambiguity about what they thought here.
Crowstep
10mo ago
Apparently a lot of critics saw this in Knives Out, where the wealthy WASP author leaves his estate to his diligent South American nurse instead of his spoilt kids.
Of course, that interpretation only makes sense of you subscribe to the American view that Spanish people are their own race instead of just another European ethnic group...
Crowstep
8d ago
That 12% gap seems pretty large to me (presumably it's mostly driven by motherhood). But OP was talking about working in a particular field, not employment more generally. We should expect college graduates (who are smarter than average) to mostly be gainfully employed. That's different from studying Psychology and actually getting a job as a therapist or whatever.
Crowstep
29d ago
Do you have a wife, or children?
If you want to do something good for the world, passing on your successful software engineer genes would be right at the top of the list. If you want something meaningful, having kids will probably be the most meaningful thing you will ever do. If you're worried about living a selfish life, bringing new life into the world is pretty selfless.
Crowstep
7mo ago
Do you really think that Gaza has the human capital to be the next Singapore? Dubai has oil, Hong Kong has the Chinese, Gaza has...the same kind of Arabs you find in Jordan and Lebanon.
Crowstep
7mo ago
It's rather unfortunate that Jihadis have the habit of yelling 'Allahu Akbar' every time they're on video. I know intellectually that they're saying the equivalent of 'praise the Lord', but now the phrase is just burned into my brain as the thing that young Arab men say when they're desecrating a corpse.
Crowstep
7mo ago
A minor quibble, the study you reference doesn't mean that only one in 17 men reproduced, as if there were a handful of men with giant harems.
Imagine that you have small groups of related men descended from a single patriarch, plus their wives and children. These clans would go to war with other clans.
If clan A defeats clan B, then all the men in clan B are killed and the women taken as war brides.
When clan A starts running out of farmland due to population growth, it splits and the splinter group goes looking for territory elsewhere.
Rinse and repeat these two processes, and you end up with a situation where someone alive today has far fewer male ancestors than female ancestors, because neolithic women did not face the same selection pressures as neolithic men.
It's also worth noting that weird, painful initiation rituals don't just exist for young men (although they are mostly for young men).
Crowstep
9mo ago
sperm donor
From the perspective of a committed genetic determinist, I think these women are making a rational decision.
The disadvantages of single motherhood (for the children) stem mostly from being the child of the kind of man who would abandon his children (and the kind of woman who chooses such a man to father her children). If your intelligent, conscientious friend can secure the genetic material of a similarly intelligent and conscientious (as well as tall and sexy) man this seems like the better option for her than perpetual spinsterhood. Sure, she'll be disadvantaged by not having someone to help her raise the child (both the dad and his extended family) but if the mother has enough money, she can just pay for good childcare.
I actually tried becoming a sperm donor myself, although I was turned down because my donation didn't freeze well. Apparently there is a shortage in the UK since the donation banks don't pay their donors and because they allow the kids to seek out their genetic fathers once they turn 18, which puts a lot of potential donors off. As is often the case, the free-market solution produces superior outcomes.
Crowstep
9mo ago
The choice to move away from ugly modernism (which should be considered separately from suburbia) doesn't really exist. If 99% of all new buildings in every city are ugly glass boxes, then your only option is to move to the diminishing number of places with no new buildings. But of course, these places are crazy expensive due to the massive demand from people who want to live in beautiful places (including, naturally, so many the architects that refuse to build beautiful things).
Crowstep
9mo ago
What exactly does it mean for an advance in science and math to not be useful for technological advancement? Aren't they all part of the same messy ball of human understanding?
What specifically would we be giving up?
I've heard it myself a few times from young women, although I would describe it more as a flippant comment, in the vein of 'Oh, big oil will never let electric cars succeed'. I'm not sure about the extent that they literally believed it.
I also saw the 'I wish exceptional women had the confidence of mediocre white men' meme just this morning from a woman who literally has a PhD.
Crowstep
7mo ago
Well, I'd hoped it would never come for me...
Last night my girlfriend, I and a mutual friend got into a discussion about nonbinary people. I put forward my position, basically that it's a fashion statement for people who want to feel different and special. My girlfriend has a couple of friends (I've only met one of them once) who prefer 'they' pronouns. Both are men, dress and act like men, although one has changed his name to a rather ironic noun (equivalent to someone renaming himself 'Drama', although not exactly that.
Anyway, now she's not happy. I attempted to compromise by agreeing to use they/them in their presence, but not when speaking to my girlfriend. Apparently this isn't sufficient. She feels it's akin to using racial slurs to refer to someone when they're out of earshot, even if you don't use slurs to their face.
I can't really see any third way beyond conceding or sticking to my guns. It's frustrating, because she is very much not the intolerant idpol type. Indeed her political beliefs are broadly conservative. Apparently not for this topic.
That Indian (politicians) in the UK have gone anti-immigration doesn't shock me. As a group, they are wealthy, well-educated, law-abiding and immune to accusations of hating brown people. They're natural Tories. Of course, that doesn't mean they actually reduce legal or illegal immigration, they just talk stridently about it.
What I'm curious about is why so many of the native Tories (Boris Johnson, George Osborne, David Cameron) were so open-bordery. Aristocratic disdain for the native proles? Desire for cheaper servants? Regular cosmopolitan posturing?
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