DBDr
9mo ago
Dude, yes.
The rules based international order is totally a soc-dem jam, they are all about that shit.
DBDr
9mo ago
The most intractable problem, with the fucky-est answers of all.
My own deeply unhelpful yet deeply held belief is that nobody can teach anybody anything; you simply place people in various combinations of prison/laborcamp/cult/skinnerbox and alternately whip them/ give them treats until their brain falls into the correctly shaped hole and they learn something almost by accident.
's why I find the various flavors of Xavier's school for the gifted deeply unconvincing also. You mean to say your product works when every rule is followed by committed users who were probably going to succeed regardless? You don't say.
DBDr
1yr ago
Because they (meaning the white middleclass subset you refer to and also myself) don't actually hate America, they hate the red tribe.
When they criticize America, they are implicitly only criticizing the Red parts of the present and the past. Eg, the native genocide, slavery, apartheid, social conservatism, republicans even existing at all, etc and so forth.
Having filled the pages of my passport, I actually think that America is the strongest, most important and most vibrant nation in the world, and so do american leftists only implicitly. Only america has the freedom to be ontologically evil, because we are so powerful that nobody could stop us from being perfectly good, style of thing.
Like when the Reds go off on the downfall naratives they are only talking about their hobby horses; which is why the countries they point to as positive counterexamples are usually kinda pathetic in the ways that I care about.
DBDr
5mo ago
It's a real thing. When temperature and relative humidity get high enough at the same time, homeostasis breaks down. Sweating can no longer bring your body temperature low enough to prevent heat stroke, you brain starts to cook, your kidneys stop working, etc.
Eg, when the wet bulb temp. is above homeostasis and you have 100% relative humidity, you physically can't cool down even in the shade and you are guaranteed to die pretty quickly if you can't get inside or in a cave or something.
This is an unusual condition in the modern history of the planet and even in the BAD climate change timeline will be seasonal and local, but it has already started to happened in short bursts in eg. pakistan and the punjab region of india; where you get just extraordinarily shitty weather even in good times.
DBDr
5mo ago
Man, don't ask chat GPT. Doesn't know dick about shit. Try getting it to say anything deeper than buzzfeed for your area of expertise for a laugh.
Speaking of not knowing dick, mobile homes are a closed book to me. I assume you are in a community of such; if they have a managment office they'll probably know. Failing that, probably normal house shit needs done in addition to mobile home shit.
EG, check your roof, check your door sweeps and insulation, change the anode in your water heater if it's gone, clean the filters in your range hood and furnace, flush your water heater, etc.
DBDr
9mo ago
Good post, I like the straight Japan perspective.
+1 Tsushima provided false weight to japan (and everyone else kinda) re. decisive battle doctrine.
Some other things weighing in on decisions (IMO): the perpetual and inevitable rise of gearfuckery. Our planes are so pretty, they fly so high and fast, their cannons are so BIG and STRONG and ERRECT! Our ships sail so well, are so beautiful, surely nothing could oppose them!
Helped along by the fact that they were early adopters and actually did lead the world for quite a while in naval aviation (and military aviation in general, arguably). Just not by as much or for as long as they may have thought.
DBDr
5mo ago
As a lilly white former trady in the brown zone FROM the brown zone: big shrug lol.
I also just don't believe it when people tell me their solution to immigration is to eg. criminalize it even harder instead of paying like 20000 guys total to just roll around various job sites factories and farm feilds, do green card checks, and fucking ANIHILATE any company that fails to pass.
If hiring illegals to do osha violating skut work for pennies is punished with a stern finger wag is it actually a crime?
It's the classic identiterian nationalist/ rich dude who thinks the first guy is a fucking idiot coalition imo.
Just bring back legal temp workers, let them stay for a harvest season and then if they can do that a couple years in a row without driving drunk or some shit let them apply for a green card and don't make into a 8 year long Brazil style nightmare to actually get.
DBDr
5mo ago
I worked in the field for quite a while, but even before that I was simply extremely poor. The choice was learn how to plumb or have no water, because the landlord wasn't gonna do shit.
This applies to you too! Use your common sense here, but most things aren't that bad if you fuck them up. (excepting gas, electric, and non ground floor plumbing, those can be bad. be careful). Worse comes to worst, you have to do the call of shame and have someone clean up your mistake.
There is such a thing as best practices, you can usually get good specific advice on youtube and reddit, and be mindful of common safety failures. Eg, read the warning labels on everything, climbing on roofs is taking your life into your own hands, never trust an angle grinder (or any tool that spins faster than you can pedal a bike), etc.
DBDr
6mo ago
Re. the apology thing:
I've noticed that an apology is an admission that doesn't guarantee forgiveness; so forgiveness has to be given before the apology or the apology is pointless.
This is similar to how it was in my small jungle town in the middle of nowhere; where you needed an intermediary to be sure the beef was crushed before anyone tried to do any actual working it out so you didn't eg get beat with some horseshoes on the end of a chain.
DBDr
1yr ago
This is one of those mexican standoff tragedy of the commons situations for me.
EG, I am strongly for NIMBY policies on homelessness until I am assured that YIMBY policies will be adopted state/nation wide.
Exemplified by the problems certain areas are having now: Some section of the nation are too cowardly to imprison or execute the homeless but poor enough in spirit to harass indigents until they fuck off somewhere else; all the way down the chain until they reach somewhere that has principles instead of standards which instantly becomes fucking awful.
If we could coordinate such that everywhere adopted YIMBY polices at once, it would be pretty much fine. Since we can't, I'm going to vote to give the brain fried PTSD'd out veteran a buss ticket back to el paso and they can go to hell.
DBDr
1yr ago
If the Cowboys have a million haters, I am one of them.
If the Cowboys have ten haters, I am one of them.
If the Cowboys have one hater, I am him.
If the Cowboys have no haters, that means I am no longer on this earth.
If the World is for the Cowboys, I am against the World. I will hate the Cowboys till my last breath.
Dallas Delenda Est, is what I'm saying.
And even better it's against the 49ers; who I am obligated to by family tradition.
If you can keep it contained to a triviality instead of just generally becoming a hater, I agree with your greater observation as well. I've enjoyed many long blood feuds about which piece of consumer electronics is superior.
DBDr
1yr ago
Basically all of them are Center-Center-Right except for social issues, where the Center prevails.
If you got lots of juice, go for the golden ring: Try for Rand, Hoover, CfR, Cato, or American Enterprise.
That said, there is no such thing as a principled think tank in general, and ESPECIALLY on the right. American Enterprise is the most straight down the middle Con think tank, with the knowledge they want you to own nothing and like it; eat bugs in a pod; grind orphans into paste to grease axial shafts and such.
DBDr
1yr ago
Universal mobilization means you are now an element of the war machine, and leaving is desertion. It has happened everywhere at different times for different reasons, and exists as an option for all developed nations in the world as we speak.
A principled stand for freedom here is worthwhile, but probably only if your particular set of borders has a bunch of nukes/is part of a nuclear alliance.
DBDr
1yr ago
I also hate Saudi Arabia, but reserve a special place for Russia because they have no god damned excuse.
They were the second hegemon of the world ready to burst through the Fulda gap, they put a dude into orbit before us. Their spies read our mail at will and their diplomats painted a decent chunk of the world red. They made some fukin WILD speeches in the UN about us and we had to take them seriously, and now what?
Their flaccid dick of an army is getting flattened in Ukraine, their science is just qualcomm with the numbers painted over, their spies are less effective than their facebook trolls, and their diplomacy can't spare a moment from getting clowned on to stop their own putative allies from killing eachother.
I never expected suadia ariabia to be anything but a shitty monarachy with lots of money, but Russia was better and could have been even more better, and instead is what it is.
TL;DR: the Soviet Union falling apart is the worst thing that ever happened to the USA, and I resent it. RIP Gorby, wish you coulda made it work.
DBDr
5mo ago
Perfect suggestion; they are for sure ready for some comics. I'll find some inofensive manga that they can binge if they like, maybe Dragon Ball. Some good clean slapstick and ultraviolence but fun.
Re. Tomes: The older one is about the age where I found a Wheel of Time book in the elementary school library for some god damned reason and was permanently afflicted with a love of 1500 page fantasy doorstoppers, but I don't want to scare them off.
DBDr
5mo ago
Convergent evolution is real!
Amazing how there is one optimal way to do SOCOM shit, and it's copying the SOG and SAS's homework from 60 years ago.
DBDr
11mo ago
I'd say yes.
The execution is good, the content is totally absent. It is teir 2 wizard van shit, not truth and beauty.
That said, it is Really good as a wizard van panel generator, hot damn.
DBDr
1yr ago
As a former tradie: Hell yes it is. (NOTE: This is a SoCal perspective, where the infrastructure is generally better and governance is more responsible vis. putting off essential maintenance in that it only does it as a treat(NOTE NOTE: This does not include anything that is privatized and not sufficiently regulated, which is a horror shit show as it is everywhere))
We could fix every god damn bit of decrepitude and disrepair (THIS DOES NOT INCLUDE RAILROADS, I DON'T KNOW SHIT ABOUT RAILS) without hiring anyone new and without going into wartime style crash programs in about 15-20 years; if we hire new people we could do it in less time, if we invest a zillion dollars in equipment even less than less time.
If we fully employed everyone who could swing a shovel in useful work, we'd run out of even marginally valuable shit to do after at most 30-40 years.
The problem is in order of severity: Political will, privatization, and regulation. Even taking contracting out of the hands of the contractors and giving it to civil engineers would vastly speed up and slim down timelines and budgets (until they got in on the contractor grift. Profit motive is a bitch, aint she)
DBDr
1yr ago
I just took another batch of IQ tests for some poor suffering undergrads and felt that they were hilariously swingy.
I've always scored around 130; but one or two questions can drop your right out of/into that bracket , and the pattern recognition questions are easy to get wrong through test format. Eg, in this test there was a sequence of numbers displayed such that the question number looked like it was part of the sequence. I only noticed because it made the sequence all fucky.
This ontop of the other (crapyer) test where you basically play word association half the time, the whole enterprise of IQ testing fills me with doubt. I have no doubt I am "intelligent" enough to be somewhere near where I test on the bell curve, but 97th percentile feels way too high to me. I feel like a better test would be to present my with a piece of broken machinery I've never seen before and timing me while I try to fix it, only that's kinda hard to feed into numpy for pretty graphs.
Are the IQ tests used for actual funded trials different than what is used by starving students, are all of them shakey as hell buzzfeed affairs, or am I just biased against them for some reason?
DBDr
1yr ago
I never get the calls for the west (the USA) to understand this or that about russia. We get it! This whole thing is kinda miraculous in a great power realpolitik way, even as it's a humanitarian disaster.
Russia is Pounding nails through their dick into Ukraine saying "We're crazy! We'll do it again" and uncle sam is just standing there like "Well, if you insist"
DBDr
1yr ago
That's probably them covering their ass incase they try to monetize someone's kink campaign by accident while appeasing left culture warriors with the language. We know the suits behind this don't give half a shit about "inclusivity".
All in all, fuck Hasbro. Absolute shitters the lot of them. They infected GW with one of their double capitalists too; an exec that moved over was behind their latest anticonsumer/antifan behavior.
DBDr
4mo ago
No, you right as hell.
You start with following the recipe exactly, measuring hydration, etc and so forth to get your eye in; then once you know what good feels and looks like you do that shit by eye.
Optimal results can never be achieved by measurement and recipe, because that recipe was written for 800 ft. of elevation at 30% humidity and 68 degrees; and you are at sea level 40% and 78 degrees, and that shit matters.
As someone who has a fake going on the computer job and a degree, I've gotten roped in to tutoring/babysitting a psuedo family members kids. They go to one of those classical academy style charter schools everybody is excited about and got dANG: These 3rd - 5th graders don't know how to fucking read.
They are learning through something like systematic phonics (probably), where you learn letter and syllable sounds first; resulting in two kids who REALLY slowly scan through a sentence like human recursive descent parsers and one brighter middle schooler who totally ignored the teachers and taught himself how to read on his own by simply picking up a book and plowing through it.
Interestingly, one of the two kids in elementary is doing pretty good in math, so I gotta assume that the IQ is there. Little dude might be a little dyslexic, who knows?
Apropos: Anybody have any experience getting kids who can read but aren't very good at it interested enough in a book that they are willing to learn on their own? What are the kids reading these days? I'm gonna see if I can't find them a bigass children's science encyclopedia, that was my jam as a little babu but I welcome any suggestions from ya'll.
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