DradisPing
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User ID: 1102
DradisPing
3mo ago
E Jean Carroll's account is inherintly less beliveable because she has no evidence of contact. It's just a claim that a random celebrity raped her in a store fitting room years ago.
Tara Reade at least had verifiable professional contact with Biden.
I have a problem with both accounts. Carroll comes off as a nutter. Reade looks like she's coming forward because of some other grevances. I think Reade could be exagerating.
DradisPing
3mo ago
I think Moldbug nailed it with his analysis. Researchers want to work on the most important problems in their fields. In viral research it's deadly airborne diseases. There's a shortage of deadly pandemic viruses to study, so they create them. That way they have something to write papers on.
DradisPing
4mo ago
"I'll repeal Obamacare and give everyone MUCH BETTER healthcare!"
This is always framed as a swipe at Trump, but it really shows how incompetent the establishment GOP is. They have hundreds, if not thousands, of people working for think tanks, policy assistants, lobbyists, etc who were supposed to be crafting a Republican alternative to Obamacare. They had multiple votes to repeal Obamacare before Trump was a political player.
It turns out they had no plan. Apparently they were just cashing paycheques and playing Candy Crush.
John McCain repeatedly voted to repeal Obamacare, campaigned in 2016 on repealing Obamacare, then cast the deciding vote to save Obamacare. He was hailed as a hero by the press for opposing Trump, but he knew that there was no plan to replace Obamacare for all of those votes and during his campaign.
Trump just assumed someone in GOP healthcare policy had done their job in the past six years.
Legislation is the job of the legislative branch. The President should have input, but he shouldn't be expected to go into more depth than broad strokes about ideas he supports and opposes.
DradisPing
9mo ago
I think schools should have libraries, but I admit I'm not sold on the importance of advanced degrees in library science.
DradisPing
1mo ago
Here's a big point you're missing:
Video games stole the action movie audience. These days if a young man wants to see some explosions, gun fights, and mild titillation he's not going to go to a movie theatre.
DradisPing
3mo ago
What does he provide over Desantis/Haley/Ramaswamy? He didn't build the wall the first time, why would he do it now?
He tried to build the wall but was blocked by Paul Ryan and Mitch McConnell.
DeSantis is an old pal of Paul Ryan and has been getting campaign advice from him. He's likely to be talked into not doing anything on the border and only paying lip service to MAGA policy items.
Haley is funded by Bilderburg billionaires like Reid Hoffman. She would never ever try to build the wall. Her major goals would be American troops in Ukraine and Syria.
Trump did deliver economic gains for blue collar workers that DC types have been insisting were impossible for generations. He avoid starting new wars. He improved trade deals. For the "borders conservatism" voter he was the most successful President in a long time. He delivered some major wins in the face of intense opposition from the establishment.
Voting in an establishment friendly politician would be silly.
DradisPing
10mo ago
California officially banned racial quotas in universities in the mid-90s. Schools responded by doing detailed evaluations where the results just happened to exactly match the now banned quotas.
DradisPing
1yr ago
"J. R. R. Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings: This book popularized most of the cliches found in fantasy today, but modern readers may well find it unspeakably boring, purely because everything in it has since been subverted, inverted, parodied, and otherwise done to death. Aside from that though, it also has lots of Unbuilt Trope which are actually not like what non-readers think the book contains."
It was first published in 1954 and has been very influential. The problem is that you won't find anything new there now if you've already read other fantasy books.
DradisPing
1yr ago
In 2010 Canada decided that "Money for Nothing" by Dire Straits was now too edgy for Canadian radio.
Mid 1990s - early 2010s have been described as an "interglacial period" where there was a lot of freedom to discuss ideas and cover edgy topics in entertainment aimed at adults.
It turned out to simply be a censorship interregnum while our conservative overlords were replaced by progressive overlords.
DradisPing
3mo ago
No sane country wants to risk getting their national power grid shut down any time the state department is upset with them.
Plenty of countries, including the US, will export nuclear reactors: https://oec.world/en/profile/hs/nuclear-reactors
Which countries are you expecting to be clients of this program?
DradisPing
5mo ago
On the other hand, I have heard a lot about the alleged "rise of the far right" in Ireland over the course of the last few years, and the fact that it happened so soon after Geert Wilders' election is certainly odd timing.
I think there are a few factors.
A big one is the CIA and State Department. They've traditionally viewed right wing parties in Europe as the enemy, and made efforts to keep them from winning. However they've been incredibly distracted the last few years by the Afghanistan withdrawal, China, and focussing on Ukraine / Russia as well as neighbouring countries in Eastern Europe. Note that the right wing party in Poland just lost.
Pro-Hamas protests have brought longstanding issues with integration of people from poor Muslim countries to the forefront. The excuse from the internationalist types has always been that they just need time, but after 20 years of hearing that people can see the situation has gotten worse, not better.
Another issue is a general economic decline in Europe. Things aren't awful, but they aren't great and there's less faith in the long term outlook. So people aren't feeling as generous as they used to.
DradisPing
7mo ago
There are a few reasons for the lack of candidates...
First the racial organizing that the Dems do. It's worked out well for them for the past 40 years, but there is a problem. It's hard to make a jump from being the top black organizer or the top hispanic organizer to being a leader of the entire state. So the ethnic organizers can't jump into leadership, but they are also too powerful and experienced to be thrilled about falling in line behind some white guy in his 40s. So boomer politicians (and earlier) tend to dominate because they have influence going back to before ethnic organizing was dominant.
So big rich blue states that should have deep talent pools have past their prime senators occupying space who can never launch a presidential run. To name some names, Dianne Feinstein, Dick Durbin, Chuck Schumer, Patty Murray. Old Republicans like Mitch McConnell tend to represent lower gdp states where a replacement won't have the resume to launch a presidential run.
Next the Obama effect. Obama was more popular than his policies, he was dragging them into power with his charisma. However at the state governor level he was toxic. Dem politicians without his charisma or ability to excite black voters had to run defending his policies. So purple states were not generating politicians that could make presidential runs.
There are other factors. The two Obama terms were expected to be followed by two Hilary terms, so anyone planning to run for president before 2024 just didn't get involved.
There's also a split between how left wing the press expects a D nominee to be and where the country is. Keep in mind that Obama campaigned in 2008 as a prays every day Christian who believed marriage was a union of one man and one woman.
DradisPing
1yr ago
America's Army also had a neat feature that I haven't seen elsewhere.
The player's team was always America. Enemy players saw themselves as America in their UIs.
DradisPing
1yr ago
What's concerning for me is his excuse.
Taking him at his word, he accidentally picked up the wrong back. Instead of owning up to an honest mistake and fixing the situation, he disposed of all the clothing by leaving it in hotel room drawers.
This tells me that he probably shouldn't be in charge of disposing nuclear waste. Defaulting to "dump it somewhere to avoid any blame" is just the wrong personality type.
DradisPing
11d ago
Apparently the arrest warrant just said "the court" without any reference to a specific court or case number so everyone involved should have known is was invalid. No criminal liability but they are going to be sued individually.
DradisPing
9mo ago
Disney's PR team is very very good at manipulating entertainment reporters and online forums. They no how to kick up a mob to attack a competing movie.
Reviewing films is actually quite hard. You get to watch them once and you need to come out with some kind of take based on your notes. You need to do this with multiple movies. Often they are watched without much of a break.
So there's plenty of room for a friendly PR person to offer some notes about other studios movies that are easy to string into an article.
My take is that Disney is upset about TSOF embarrassing the new Indiana Jones movie and in response they are kicking up a culture war storm. A lot of reporters are joining in the gang pile because it's fun and easy.
Beyond that, a lot of people in DC at places like the State Department see the cartels as useful. The CIA has most likely been co-ordinating & manipulating them quite a bit over the years.
Movies that paint the cartels as scary badasses who are just trying to make money getting cocaine to consenting adults are OK.
Movies that point to child exploitation or fentanyl deaths in the US make the CIA look bad by association, so they are attacked.
DradisPing
9d ago
I think the way the press reported him was never really accurate. His hero was always Octavian and has been sporting a roman haircut for like 15 years now. He was known to take new hires on long hikes and was always somewhat outdoorsy.
He's the sort of guy who would decide that learning some hand to hand combat training is important.
But if you're a white guy doing a VC funded bay area tech company there are certain cultural expectations you need to conform to.
After 2016 he was personally blamed for Trumps election by many. In 2020 he spent 400 million of his own money in a scheme to oppose Trump that put him in some significant personal legal jeopardy.
It didn't get him back in good graces so I think his attitude now is "I don't need those people anyways".
It's common for famous people in California to play down personality traits that don't conform to the ruling consensus. A good example is someone like Stephen Spielberg who's definitely a loyal democrat, but he's a former eagle scout who loves guns. People tend to assume he was a pot smoking theatre kid when he was young.
DradisPing
13d ago
A more workable slogan would be "We don't expect you to be white, but we do expect you to act white." They want to be in a society where white American behavioural norms are expected and not being white isn't an excuse.
DradisPing
7mo ago
I don't think there's anything new here. I'm quite certain that there's a long history of courts ordering employers to inform their employees about their rights regarding things like unionization, racial discrimination, sexual harassment, etc.
DradisPing
8mo ago
I think the moral dilemma is "Should you put yourself at risk to help people who endanger themselves foolishly?"
If you assume 20% of people will pick blue because they misunderstand the question then the moral calculus is very different.
DradisPing
9mo ago
has had such a good track record of making good on its promise of embodying
That's a poem by Emma Lazarus, and it's written on one of several plaques on the statue of liberty because she helped raise money for it's construction.
It was never adopted as any sort of national promise.
DradisPing
10mo ago
are people who are just not smart enough / knowledgeable enough to understand that actual 10D chess moves are rare in politics.
Twenty years ago the top ivies had an incredible reputation in the general public. Ivy League professors were magical wizards who you could only listen to if you got accepted to special schools for the brilliant.
A lot of it the reputation still remains.
Picture a red state factory worker. He knows Harvard grads are super brilliant. DC is full of them. Yet he sees them making obviously stupid decisions.
Some grand 10D chess move is an obvious answer.
People who have more contact with Harvard grads, even just reading their writing regularly, are much more aware of their human limits.
Watching the academic elite discuss politics on Twitter has also opened a lot of eyes.
DradisPing
1yr ago
The hot culture war debate of 20 years ago: incandescent lightbulbs vs. fluorescents. I've mentioned this a few times before here, but it's one of those culture wars that just disappeared, and I think many people would be genuinely forgetful or surprised if you brought it up to them now.
An underlying current of that was the US elite purposefully deindustrializing the US. Incandescent bulbs in the US were all made domestically by union labor. Offshoring didn't make sense because the primary expense was the equipment and the machinery in the US was paid off. It was low margin but provided a decent number of jobs.
So manufacturers built up CFL plants in China, got people in DC to invest in them, then lobbied to ban incandescent bulbs.
The incandescent factories are now long gone, rebuilding them would be very expensive. So it's not a practical fight.
This is similar in that the underlying motivation is anti-fossil fuel sentiment. The study about health is garbage. Deep blue cities in California were banning new gas installs long before it came out.
DradisPing
1yr ago
Next we'll be letting both parties at a trial send lawyers in to loom over witnesses while they are testifying.
Why can't people just trust the judges like we should?
SF voted to ban homeless tents on streets years ago, a judge stepped in and forced them to allow it.
These sort of things aren't decided democratically in California. The bill will fail but then a left wing group will get a friendly judge to mandate it's major points.
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