DradisPing
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User ID: 1102
DradisPing
4mo ago
The random jihadi style attacks are less ideological than people assume.
Islam liberalized a lot of social policies, but also froze them. One of the problematic rules was that low level officials had unlimited tax power over their regions. These could be enforced on a small level.
One of the things that travellers between Christiandom and Islamdom often commented on was that in the Christian lands peasants often had carts. Under Islam they did not.
A cart was too much of a visible investment and could be sized by the local lord (not sure about the correct title) at any time.
How does a family protect it's wealth under those circumstances? One strategy it to convince everyone your family is too dangerous to mess with. The local lord or his relatives are frequently vulnerable to a mob of people with knives, they can't be hyper aware and guarded all the time.
However committing suicide makes you, and thus your family look weak. And therefore vulnerable to exploitation.
So you have things like "Running amok" where a brooding person suddenly lashes out in random violence.
So the attacks are often closer to "death by cop" than some deep ideological motivation.
You could probably eliminate a lot of it if there was some way for men who feel they've failed at life to die gloriously. But that's a big step for society to take.
Perhaps we could just start off by sending them on "the Hock".
DradisPing
4mo ago
Jewish students at UCLA had to go to court because protesters were blocking Jews from entering the campus and UCLA argued it had no responsibility to stop them from doing so.
https://www.cnn.com/2024/08/14/us/ucla-campus-protests-court-ruling/index.html
There has been a lot of targeting of Jews for being Jewish by protesters over the last few years.
DradisPing
4mo ago
The problem with ransom attacks is that they require the victims to do an individual rational cost benefit analysis and pay.
Most of these companies would refuse to pay out of moral indignation, which collectively gives them a herd immunity.
There are also types of insurance to cover some of the losses from business interruption.
DradisPing
4mo ago
The obvious answer is "Elon Musk." Certainly everyone seems to assume he's in charge of DOGE. He (and Trump) talk like Musk is in charge of the effort.
I think Musk's role is akin to the tank role in video games. He's drawing aggro and absorbing damage. He's basically taken over Trump's shitposting duties.
The contrast to Jack Smith is interesting, because that was a very clear violation of the appointments clause. Smith was signing court documents as a prosecutor without being confirmed as a prosecutor.
Whereas I doubt anything Elon has announced on Twitter is actually backed up by documents signed by Elon in official capacity.
DradisPing
4mo ago
John Eastman goes into the the types of jurisdiction and birthright citizenship in this interview: https://rumble.com/v6me54x-sidebar-with-john-eastman-birthright-citizenship-executive-order-lawfare-an.html?start=936
Unfortunately there's no transcript I'm aware of.
DradisPing
4mo ago
The key point here is that this is in SDNY. SDNY likes to pretend that it's not a normal district, instead it's a second DOJ.
The prosecutors are resigning in large part to promote that myth.
Of course that's not true. SDNY has no special legal status over say the Northern District of Alabama.
Barnes specifically has long been critical of the Federalist Society. Culturally it skews more pro corporate and more authoritarian than most of the right wing base would like.
DradisPing
4mo ago
It is not working yet! Judges have blocked almost all of his big cuts. Because they aren't legal by established law and precedent (Impoundment Control Act).
NGOs have run to DC and SDNY to get blocks because those are the most politically corrupt districts. The problem for them is that the TROs are so unprecedented and off the rails that higher courts are going to need to step in quickly.
DradisPing
4mo ago
Hasidic Jews got minority status for federal programs back in 1974.
I think this was actually a key plot point in War Dogs, Jonah Hill had to pretend to be Hasidic.
This rule seems to be just extending that, since trying to determine if a given Jewish person counts as Hasidic or not is probably pretty difficult.
It is kind of silly that the two wealthiest religion groups in the US, Jews and Hindus, get special treatment for loans.
DradisPing
5mo ago
People in the State Department and on the left in general want Trump to give funding to Hamas to "rebuild Gaza".
Their usual game is to play up the humanitarian disaster.
Arguing that the US should take over and rebuild with direct management counters that, because the pro-Hamas people suddenly have to argue that Gaza is fully capable of running itself.
I don't think it's any sort of real proposal, just an indication that US money isn't coming without control on the ground.
DradisPing
5mo ago
But the terrorist designation activates specific regulations in the financial system. Sure, they could pass new laws and regulations to do the same thing. But this does have an impact on it's own.
DradisPing
5mo ago
So, thoughts. San Francisco continues to generate weird murder suicide cults just as it has for the past... 80 years? This really needs to be investigated because the effect has persisted over numerous different ideological movements.
Climate is a big part of it. There are a lot of people who like it hot and won't admit how nice the SF climate is.
But it really is. Apr-Oct there's no rain, no heat, no cold. Just sunny days with pleasant breezes. You can just wander around in a light jacket in a dreamy state without nature ever forcing you back to reality.
DradisPing
5mo ago
Cheetah's become more feminine coded once you find out that they meow.
DradisPing
5mo ago
Big cats are a massive money sink. A world leader having a private zoo big cats is basically proof that they are crooked and impoverishing their people.
DradisPing
5mo ago
A couple of things do that.
First the facial feature proportions of house cats are close to human babies. This activates nurturing instincts in women. More so than other small animals.
If you pay attention you can really see how that affects how men and women interact with cats. Men tend to see their cats akin to jobless friends crashing at their place. Some women become deeply concerned for their cats socialization and emotional life.
They match up better to yin and yang traits, cats being yin.
Most people these days have met enough loud outing women that yin traits don't strongly code feminine to modern eyes.
Some languages need to classify everything as masculine or feminine and from what I've seen there's a lot of randomness. In French cheese is masculine but apples are feminine.
I'll try to tie this together for a closing. Their wariness towards new people is seen as traditionally feminine coded. As is their quietness compared to a puppy. Dogs interests match up better to traditional masculine tasks -- patrol the boundaries of territory, go on hunting expeditions. Cats keep an eye on the homestead.
In modern life the feminine coding comes more from women who get them because of unmet baby desires. Also men are expected to at least pretend that they regularly trek through the wilderness.
DradisPing
5mo ago
Listing cartels as terrorist organizations is actually a big deal. It enables the government to aggressively track money.
It's widely suspected that payments from the cartels to Chinese chemical companies are being laundered through Canadian real estate.
DradisPing
5mo ago
Ridley Scott is 87. I imagine that he's been handing off duties on the film that he used to manage himself.
DradisPing
5mo ago
Well there is this: https://instagram.com/p/DA8kWHdPBRw/
But for something longer format the rehab stories from John Mulaney: Baby J were hilarious.
DradisPing
5mo ago
There was a push on Twitter to start calling them "Para-Governmental Organizations" instead of "Non Governmental Organizations" because they are intertwined with the government but don't have normal oversight like government groups do.
DradisPing
5mo ago
Blair is allegedly working for free
He's working for free in the sense of drawing no salary. But by doing this he gets to maintain the world leader lifestyle to a certain degree because the NGO covers all his expenses.
Eg fly by private jet, expensive dinners with important people, stay in nice hotels, etc.
DradisPing
5mo ago
Since he's inherited one of the richest and most powerful activism networks, I thought it'd be worthwhile to look up Alexander Soros' dissertation to try to get some insight into him.
"‘Jewish Dionysus’: Heinrich Heine and the Politics of Literature"
https://escholarship.org/uc/item/4x51t409
However I am completely unfamiliar with History PhD dissertations. Skimming it over I only noticed that he seems very into being Jewish and also that I find the text incredibly uninteresting.
Does anyone who has some subject experience have any take aways?
DradisPing
5mo ago
Things like Flash Attention, https://arxiv.org/abs/2205.14135, suggest that there's a major problem where US AI researchers don't have enough of an understanding of the realities of what GPU hardware actually is at a low level.
DradisPing
5mo ago
Paul Graham released an essay "The Origins of Wokeness" a few weeks ago. If you're not familiar, he's one of the co-founders of Y-Combinator and a key person in kicking off the post 2005 tech startup scene. His early 2000s essays were sort of proto-rationalist.
https://www.paulgraham.com/woke.html
He's strongly anti Trump and a prominent figure in the tech scene. I'd guess that essay got enough exposure in the leftwing tech scene that people who were used to saying "woke is just being a good person" suddenly found that they needed better arguments.
DradisPing
5mo ago
Since renaming bodies of water is a thing these days, I'd like to point out that the "north sea" is a particularly bland name. Are there any better historic names?
DradisPing
5mo ago
Their 'innovations' were things like a fucking talking paperclip which would try to distract you in word.
MS pushing Microsoft Bob and then the cartoon assistants in Office makes a lot more sense once you know that the future Melinda Gates was a marketing manager on Bob and later Office and thought that the assistant technology was an amazing step forward. Bill Gates came away from those meetings thinking he heard some amazing ideas. Eventually he realized what was up and started dating her.
It's actually been going the other way as there are special benefits to identifying as non-white these days. Back when there were restrictions on non-white immigration Indians fought to be classified as white and won. Similarly hispanics includes a lot of people with 80%+ European ancestry. A nearly 100% European ancestry kid who doesn't speak Spanish gets to identify as hispanic for college applications because his grandparents were born in Latin America.
Steve Sailer has a bunch of articles on "the flight from white" that are worth reading.
One of the interesting battles within the Democratic Party has been about how Jewish activists see themselves as non-white, but a lot of the activist base sees them as white.
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