DimitriRascalov
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User ID: 450
DimitriRascalov
11mo ago
They are even confused and disoriented about the flashpoint of the current disorder: unlike what their prejudices told them the person who killed the three girls in Southport was not a fresh of the boat Muslim migrant but rather a black Welsh 17 year old child who had been born in the UK having a schizo moment. The true facts about the stabbing coming out did not placate their desire for an orgy of violence in the least.
Ignoring the unseriousness of the rest (great bait, btw), this bit struck me because I've seen this take a lot from commentators on social and traditional media. I don't get what the rioters are supposed to be confused about, has a large number of them or some kind of representative spoken out about these riots being specifically directed against Muslim immigration? Under the idealized policy that most of the rioters would likely endorse for the past and present UK, the actual perpetrator wouldn't be in the country because his ancestors wouldn't have been let in, regardless of his religion.
DimitriRascalov
10mo ago
Putting aside I guarantee in the late 19th century there was in fact plenty of examples of massive population changes, even in more rural parts of the country. Ironically, many of the same people who put forth those population changes are now the ones scared of immigration, so in 50 years, as is American tradition, these Haitian immigrants will be saying we shouldn't be letting in the Bangladeshi's or whomever.
The various European groups that migrated to the US in the past were and are more similar to each other in terms of political views & shared cultural history than they are to the populations that arrived post WWII. Concluding that current migration is going to work out favorably from past European migrants being able to form a coherent new identity under vastly different socio-economic circumstances is a reach. From surveys like the GSS or others, it seems pretty likely that adding more migrants from places like Haiti, Central America or Africa isn't going to result in a smooth temporal continuity of extant American cultural sentiments about various things like immigration, free speech or the economy like you seem to imply.
As an aside, I remember reading a similar argument by you in the past, and sure enough going through my post history this turns out to be the third time I post this objection to the same kind of argument put forth by you. I don't expect you to concede, but given that you've never responded so far to me or others pointing out more or less the same thing, it'd be interesting to hear where you think this counterpoint goes wrong.
DimitriRascalov
5mo ago
Normies don't decide what's popular. They adapt to what people with power tell them is. I you aren't yet convinced of this you can look at all the people who will suddenly become fine with Trump and his administration when they are the ones distributing treasure.
I think an even better example of this is Covid. A highly cautious view of Covid and of what measures were appropriate are highly correlated with class status and were particularly unpopular with less affluent, less white and overall less 'priestly' people both in the US and Europe. But at the end of the day, the priestly class still got its will for 1 to almost 3 years, depending on location, and hugely shifted norms of hygiene, social activity and economic behaviors like remote work among the rest of society. I still regularly see people here in Germany, mostly elderly and often of MENA heritage (confusing given that at group level they certainly had the least respect for any of the Covid theater), wearing a mask without covering their nose, and given the medical absurdity of this I struggle to think of this as anything other than an illustration of memetic elite dominance.
Really? How many right wingers are there on here that thoroughly dislike race & AI discourse, argue for DR3, think that online nu-rightists and leftists are the same at their core, frequently use invective against sissy intellectual elites, tend to write think pieces as top posts, and like snappy one liners as responses, especially those with certain trademark expressions like "what's the old saw"? Not to mention that the account was created in June 2024, i.e. a short time after Hlynka's ban, but frequently talks like it's been part of the wider SSC-sphere for more than a decade.
DimitriRascalov
5mo ago
My impression is that in terms of organized political resistance middle and lower class whites were certainly the drivers of that, but in terms of simply not giving a shit and going on with life regardless of what the state says that's definitely more of a minority thing, at least here in Germany. For the US I'm less sure, but it also depends more on the group. Using vaccine uptake as a vague proxy, Asians were all-aboard, but they're also more affluent on average, Hispanics were more likely than red whites but less likely than blue whites to take the vaccine, blacks were least likely overall. Another example are the riots after George Floyd's death which, while featuring plenty of white people as well, were disproportionately minority, and they were AFAIK the first large scale breakdown of public Covid discipline.
Not that I disagree with the core idea of the argument here, but it's not unlikely that Finland would ultimately end up the same as a Russian province in comparison to staying part of the Western system. Russia is undergoing demographic change as well, and while it's not as fast as in Central and Western Europe, the Russia of 2100 will be a whole lot more Muslim and Central Asian than it is now, at least based on the trends of the last few decades. Whether that's better than the Afro-Arab Finland that seems to be the destination at the moment is of course a matter of debate.
Three days ago, my hometown Berlin witnessed an event (German news article) that combines several culture war flashpoints into an almost absurdist melange: a cyclist was driven over by a concrete mixer truck (who was at fault is unclear at the moment, initial statements by the police indicate that the cyclist fell over by her own and that the driver could not react in time, though he might still be at fault for driving too close to her), the driver, as he was leaving his vehicle to call for help, was attacked and wounded with a knife by an unknown and currently fugitive homeless* person, resulting in him needing hospital care, and finally, to top it all off, the special emergency service vehicle purpose built for rescuing people stuck under heavy vehicles was hindered in its approach to the scene of the accident by a traffic jam caused by climate activists who had glued themselves to one of the main highways of the city, losing valuable time and forcing personnel that had made it to the scene to "improvise", in their own words. The woman has died of her injuries today, the driver will survive, as far as is known.
It goes without saying that this story has something for everyone: car drivers vs bikers & new urbanists; crime, homelessness and decay of public spaces; climate activists vs people wanting to go about their day without disruption; and of course the extra comedic cherry on top that this happened in Berlin, notorious for incompetence and embarrassing gaffes.
In the days that followed, several notable people weighed in on social media. One particular take by one of the luminaries of German climate activism quickly made waves on social and legacy media for its display of a pretty cold-bloded pragmatism:
#cyclist mortally injured: "special vehicle for lifting the truck came late due to blockades and the traffic jam they caused"
shit, but don't be intimidated: it's climate fight, not climate cuddling & shit happens.
(image of the now deleted original)
Now, this guy in particular was always pretty radical, but until now this exact scenario was always waved away as something improbable that no activist of good conscience would allow to happen. As already mentioned, after the backlash he quickly deleted it and apologized, but his output since then has been to basically affirm the content of the tweet in a more polite tone, and the scene around him seems to agree AFAICT.
The last few months have seen an increase in highly visible stunts by climate activists, most notably a constant flow of people gluing themselves to the glass casings around famous paintings throughout Europe's museums. Highway blockades such as the one from this event are becoming a regular occurrence here in Berlin and other large German cities. It seems as though climate activism is becoming more and more serious. Up until now, reactions have been more annoyed than angry, with most people I talked to or saw posting on social media dismissing these activities as childish stunts. This and the rather unapologetic stance of the people involved might change things a bit. It remains to be seen if the reaction will be a decrease in happenings as activists are slapped down by prohibitive fines or a further radicalization. Demographically, the protestor seem to be a mixture of almost entirely urban and college-educated young people and a few younger Boomers and older Gen-Xers. I don't know if that's the stuff which refinery bombers or electricity-cable cutters are made of, but perhaps an event approaching significant eco-terrorism might be on the horizon.
* I remember reading something to this effect initially, but that seems to have been retracted or deleted. For now, nothing but the assailant's gender is confirmed.
Although this is not exactly what you're looking for as it's neither text nor particularly rigorous, I can warmly recommend Peter Santenello. He does vlog-style videos where he goes into communities and tries to get into conversations with people. While he does obviously have a certain viewpoint that shines through, it's very far from the sort of highly-online politics you're alluding to and he mostly lets the people he is interviewing do the talking. Relevant to your specific request, he has done videos on black neighbourhoods in LA (e.g. 1, 2), New York, Chicago as well as on the Black Belt or Gary.
If you like his content, I also highly recommend watching his videos on the NYC Hasidic Jews and the Amish, those are probably his two best series.
DimitriRascalov
3mo ago
Isn't he obviously Hlynka? My instincts could be misleading me here, but if that's the case there's a long history of exactly this behavior way beyond the lifetime of this particular account.
DimitriRascalov
2yr ago
It's likely that the author of the article misread the original study. Here's the source the article was referencing probably, it's the bar chart titled "Zufriedenheit mit der Bundesregierung". 20% are happy or very happy with the current government, the rest is not.
DimitriRascalov
1yr ago
The architectural preferences also suggest an aversion to experimentation which, while it can produce a lot of short term ugliness, is necessary in the long run to avoid boring homogeneity and settling for not-so-great local optima.
I realize that a lot of this is down to personal views on what constitutes short-term and local optima, but I don't buy that there is significant experimentation or perceivable progress going on. AFAICT, humanity has been stuck in glass, steel and concrete + mildly-to-weirdly-deformed geometric shape architecture for prestige buildings since roundabout the end of WWII. How many more of these are needed before we can move on? For more practical housing we went from stuff like this to this in the suburbs or from this to this in the urban core.
Here in Berlin, old buildings command significant rent premiums and the districts which feature coherent blocks of old architecture untouched by the bombs or post-war city planners are by far the most popular. I realize it would be bad and boring if we tiled the universe with brownstones or Parisian boulevards, but it doesn't seem to me like modernity has really been much more dynamic and creatively vibrant than the past in terms of architecture, instead we just have a different kind of monotony, albeit one that many people, me included, perceive as aesthetically inferior.
DimitriRascalov
2yr ago
My first reaction when I heard of Musk's plans here was that this does indeed sound a bit harsh, however, that was before I found out that Twitter apparently employs 7500 people. I get that Musk is controversial and has enough of a reputation by now that many people will view his suggestions with instinctive disapproval, but even as someone who doesn't like his personality, I can't help but agree with him here: what are they even doing with 7k people? When was the last time Twitter rolled out a significant feature?
DimitriRascalov
11mo ago
Wouldn't this same logic hold for all sorts of other policies that did and continue to get enacted? I'm thinking of stuff like carbon taxes, tariffs, tax raises etc. It's plausible that economic considerations held back anti-immigration measures, but if that were an essential part I'd expect more or less total gridlock on a large number of issues where, in reality, there don't seem to be any hesitations at all for the Western political class in comparison to immigration.
DimitriRascalov
11mo ago
How much of this is simply the result of selection? Muslims that make it to America are more educated, wealthier and probably more inclined towards typical Western sentiments to begin with than those that go to Europe. The ability of America to assimilate would have to be tested with, say, the unorganized crossing of several millions of Syrians through the Mexican border to make an accurate comparison.
DimitriRascalov
10mo ago
Demographic projections predict Russia to be Muslim majority towards the end of the century, at roughly the same time Western European nations will become majority non-European. Moscow and St. Petersburg might achieve this much earlier, similar to other European capitals like London. Russian (ethno-)nationalists have been angry for years about the higher fertility of Muslim minorities and Central Asian migration that are the causes behind this.
The Kremlin's line on this has vacillated between vague overtures towards blood-based nationalism and civic nationalism à la 'no such thing as an ethnic Russian' in their rhetoric and doing basically nothing to stem the tide or even facilitating it with migration treaties in practical terms.
DimitriRascalov
10mo ago
What's your opinion on how this will work out long term? If low fertility is the genuine preference of the average woman, as you say further down in this thread, and you don't approve of the more heavy-handed, right wing-coded measures that might have some success in pushing up birth rates, what will the solution be? As things stand, we will see massive problems with social welfare systems in particular and the entire economy in general in the next decades.
Projecting further out, because of large differences between birth rates between groups, the heavy-handed right wing-coded measures might be implemented anyway, because the vast majority of future people will be descended from disproportionately clannish, religious and generally non-Western-liberal demographics, and this will have obvious consequences on what society considers as the proper stance on things like women's reproductive rights etc. Given your stated preferences, this seems like an outcome that should be prevented, but I get the impression that you're more or less endorsing doing nothing.
Isn't the obvious objection here that during the first period, citizenship and power in institutions mostly rested with WASPs and similar demographics while in the second one, although immigration had been restricted, now a large share of the native born population consisted of (descendants of) Italians, Irish etc., i.e. ethnic groups that down to the present day have markedly different attitudes towards redistribution or even things like free speech in comparison to English- or German-Americans?
Unless the hope is that quasi-accidental effects like 'diversity reduces societal cohesion -> less unions form -> unions can't interfere with growth' outweigh this, I'd wager that continually adding more people who come from countries that practice more distribution and, when asked in surveys like the GSS, explicitly say that the government should intervene more and reduce income inequality, will in fact eventually result in a society that redistributes more and values economic freedom less.
After we reopened our borders government spending and union participation went back down
Maybe I'm misinterpreting you or you meant spending coming back down from the highs of WWII, this claim doesn't seem true, whether for overall spending or social spending in particular, both of which have a strong upward trend starting in the early 20th century.
DimitriRascalov
2yr ago
Maybe you think that the EU is less united than it appears, and winter will be harder than Europeans are prepared for.
This is definitely a side note to all the other things going in this thread, but I can't help but wonder how this will play out. I just received a notice from my German gas provider and the price per cubic meter has gone up x5, that's on top of a 60% increase in electricity price. Fortunately my wife works at a place where they're legally obligated to keep the heating on, I do WFH and am unusually cold-resistant and whatever else we'll actually consume fits comfortably in our budget, but not everyone has that privilege.
Across Europe, there will be a large number of people that will be unable to pay for some of the basics of life this winter. Assuming that they'll not just be content to lay down and die, this might have serious consequences starting from cascading economic consequences of non-payment of absurd utility bills to populist parties surging in support. Another thing to consider is that this winter we're still able to largely run off of Russian gas which filled our storage tanks over the summer. That won't be the case next winter.
DimitriRascalov
2yr ago
Even pro-UA accounts like Julian Röpcke are conceding that Ukraine is losing lots of armored vehicles with very marginal gains.
I don't think this says quite what you seem to want it to say. Röpcke is strongly pro-Ukrainian and fills most of his feed with praise for successful Ukrainian actions, true, but from the very start of the war he has had the tendency to wildly blow the potential consequences of any Russian success out of proportion in order to play up the "desperate Ukrainian heroes repelling the onslaught of the Russian horde"-angle to a hesitant German audience.
Leopards and Bradleys being lost in a weird traffic jam not even at the line of contact is a bad look for sure, but the fact that people like Röpcke immediately went into panic mode over it tells us next to nothing either way.
DimitriRascalov
2yr ago
It wasn't until after Biden's assuming of office that ultra-rapid vaccination rollouts, universally, became the cause celebre of the progressive press
Speaking of Biden, here's a pretty famous quote from July 2021:
You’re not going to — you’re not going to get COVID if you have these vaccinations.
I have no doubt that specific scientific writing was clear that a reduction in infections was a probabilistic thing and might wane as time goes on, but here you have the most powerful man in the world, whose administration was trying to mandate the vaccines in various ways and is still requiring them for entering the country as a foreigner, confidently stating that they confer sterile immunity. I'd say that outweighs whatever science reporting or personal anecdotes from upper-class London you can bring to the table.
Throwing in my own anecdotes, the German press was absolutely completely on the same wavelength as Biden here, solid looking and repeated promises about immunity against infection were like 95% of the reason I myself got vaccinated. A common talking point in German (social) media in early 2021 was how Israel had "vaccinated away" its Delta wave. For months on end, even as the divergence steadily shrank and several scandals in data collection undermined its trustworthiness, public health authorities and their lackies in the media obsessed over the differences in unvaccinated and vaccinated case rates, a talking point that is now completely forgotten.
Mainstream COVID discourse was 100% thoroughly permeated with the idea that the vaccines are going to stop transmission up until late summer 2021. This only started to go away in the fall and died completely with the emergence of Omicron.
DimitriRascalov
2yr ago
I'm unsure if this framing illuminates much. If I, without your consent and neither any pressing need nor benefit to you or anyone else, performed a procedure on your house that gives it a <0.01% p.a. chance of spontaneously collapsing the tiny probability of something happening in your lifetime would not be a convincing defence. That the risk is small doesn't matter when there is no reason why anyone should tolerate being exposed to it in the first place, which is a significant difference to things like driving which you brought up in the post above.
DimitriRascalov
2yr ago
Go on /r/transpassing and sort by top all time. Even the MOST passing transwomen on Reddit as voted for by their own peers don’t pass. And that’s in posed photos!
To be fair, this is not as strong a point as you're making it out to be, given that you already know that each of these people is trans by virtue of the subreddit's name. I agree that many of these pictures look obvious but I'm not sure whether I'd have the same confidence if these were presented in a gallery of portraits of random cis and trans people.
On the rest I agree entirely. It reminds me of this post by @Walterodim. For any given measure men can come arbitrarily close to the female standard, but combine multiple and the difference becomes clear as day almost every time. From a probably highly curated sample like the top posts from your link a number could plausibly be women going by the image alone, but I've never met someone in real life where the full package including voice, stature, body build etc. didn't tip me off immediately.
DimitriRascalov
1yr ago
Is this true? This is what I could find online:
- (via Wiki) This paper from the 90s claims based on census data that between the 60s and 80s intermarriage rates between blacks and whites were much higher in the Western US than in the South. In 1980, 16.5% percent of all marriages involving a black person were with someone from another race on the West Coast in comparison to just 1.6% in the South.
- This map by Pew shows no obvious trend in the South. Metro areas in Texas and Florida have high rates, but basically the same as SF or LA and not that far above Chicago or NY. Elsewhere in the South it looks like average or slightly below to me. (caveat: this is for all races, not just black-white, and it's just urban areas)
- As a proxy for intermarriage, although 56% of all black Americans live in the south, just 41% of mixed-race Americans with black heritage do so. Naively, this seems to point to higher intermarriage rates outside the South, although this might be skewed by internal migration.
DimitriRascalov
11mo ago
This might be mitigated if Muslims are less likely to go through the civil marriage process in comparison to other groups. I have a friend from a German Evangelical free church that's not integrated with the state like the mainline Lutheran and Catholic ones, they refuse to register their marriages with the local magistrate and therefore their children count as born out-of-wedlock in the eyes of the state.
Going by the murder rate data from the government, black overrepresentation is actually slightly worse than the famous 13/52 in the US. The issue as a whole is way less pronounced because there are fewer murders per capita from any ethnic background, sure, but the relative differences are pretty much the same.
That's most likely not an inherent property of crime though, but of geographical racial segregation, at least in the US. That's obviously a fairly trivial observation, as an environment gets more diverse you'd also expect the ethnic backgrounds of murderer-victim pairs to be more random, but the discrepancies are still pretty stark, e.g. in 26% black South Carolina about half of all white murder victims are killed by a black perpetrator. Since roughly 2020 this holds across most states in the South too, with Hispanics chipping in in states like Texas with fewer black people, while interracial murders are rising as a share of the white total nationwide as well.
In other words: as a white British person, your protection against black knife crime isn't your whiteness, it's most likely your physical separation from statistically more violent groups. As places like Newcastle or Leeds become more demographically similar to today's London, even Northerners living in their supermajority native towns and cities might get caught up in that.
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