DradisPing
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User ID: 1102
DradisPing
5mo ago
One of the strengths of John McCain as a candidate was that due to torture in Vietnam he couldn't raise his arms up very high. Thus the press could never run with the "Nazi salute" narrative.
It's an old slur the press loves to run with. The reality is that people wave at crowds all the time in ways that can look like Nazi salutes in short clips or photos. Republican candidates are actually taught to avoid waving in certain ways so that photographers can't claim that their waving is a roman salute.
Musk, of course, never received such training.
Meanwhile Dems can wave freely with gleeful abandon. Lady Gaga introduced Hillary Clinton while wearing some sort of ode to an SS uniform.
DradisPing
11mo ago
What are some good ideas, as an individual, for decreasing street crime in highly Democratic-leaning cities, other than just moving away?
Fundamentally the issues are caused by wealthy leftists not having to live the consequences of their ideology.
If you really want to improve things I'd suggest spending your weekends operating a shuttle service that takes the rougher individuals from downtown to and from the upperclass parks and neighbourhoods.
DradisPing
10mo ago
The people pushing MeToo didn't really understand the situation.
The first sexual harassment was in 1974. By the 90s lawsuits we common enough that Michael Crichton's Disclosure (1994) featured a fake sexual harassment complaint as part of a conspiracy.
Business men protected themselves through a mix of better behaviour, legal strategies, and other techniques to avoid trouble.
However since the lawyers involved were strongly left wing, liberal strongholds like Hollywood and the Media were given a pass and ignored. This was compounded by the fact that those industries attract a lot of pretty girls, have powerful men at the top, and look down on traditional sexual rules.
This wasn't well understood on the left, and they all insisted on believing that Republican businessmen are the worst people ever and much worse about things that MeToo covers.
So activists pushed MeToo hard. Then they noticed that all the big fish going down were on their side. So they sort of stopped talking about the whole thing.
DradisPing
10mo ago
When I hear that something like half of Trump supporters claim to literally believe that the 2020 election was stolen from Trump, yet I also see that basically none of them used guns to do anything about it, it gives me some doubt about this whole "bulwark against government tyranny" train of thought
Most people in the US have a vision to Tyranny built around English aristocrats oppressing them with uniformed troops.
The reality is any tyrannical group coming into power is going to be too weak at first to use the police to oppress their enemies. Instead there's a gang of government supporters who are allowed to commit crimes against the disfavoured groups without the police intervening. Often they are masked, but not always.
This is a very loose category that includes everyone from the KKK to Hitler's brownshirts to Antifa. Maduro has 'colectivos'. They are just everywhere.
The second amendment is very effective against this loose category. Without it inner city crime gangs would have been driving out the the suburbs and rural areas to rob and kill.
Things like the 2020 election are about allegations of widespread corruption. Guns aren't helpful there. They need to tighten laws and gather evidence.
DradisPing
8mo ago
It feeds into the culture war. This was a multi agency raid with judicial warrants to kill a squirrel and racoon.
Blue tribe members love to talk about how much government money is spent on rural people. But then things like this are counted as spending money on rural people.
It touches on other aspects. The agents used the search warrant as an opportunity to grill the woman of the house on her immigration status, which is something they never would have done to someone in NYC.
It's common to hear online that people can't understand why other parts of the state would want to separate from NYC when it brings in so much tax revenue.
But a rural view of the situation is sort of like this: A man from the government walks up and demands $5. He then pays his friend $10 to slap you as hard as he can. Then the man goes on a long rant about how much he spends to govern these fucking takers.
Sure, the government man is net spending money. But the rural guy isn't exactly happy about the transaction.
DradisPing
3mo ago
As a side note, the Trump administration seems to REALLY hate US assistance to foreign countries and they're doing their damndest to shut it off.
I think it's more accurate to say that he sees foreign policy as solely within the power of the President and doesn't like the fact that there are a bunch or orgs around DC funded by the US government with official sounding names that are undermining the foreign policy of the White House.
DC loves these para governmental organizations. In the case of USIP the Secretary of State and Secretary of Defence are ex officio board members. The rest of the board members must be appointed by the POTUS and confirmed by the Senate. So it seems like it's sort of part of the executive branch but also not when it comes to oversight.
DradisPing
11mo ago
Nerd wrangling is a specific skill. There are common patterns for failure for large engineering teams. Being able to recognize these and correct them is important.
Human behaviour inevitably means that organizations will be run by ambitions and internal alliances unless something stops it. Managers want to build their resumes by running ambitious projects. They often like or dislike ideas based on how much they like the individual who brought it up.
A tech leader needs to be able to bust things up a bit when they aren't functioning. That's why Musk is often described as being unstable and disruptive by existing management in the company. It's also why he has such a strong history of success at coming in as a new CEO.
Musk isn't deeply involved in developing tech, but when he gets a message from an employee about a problem and a response from the higher ups, he can tell if the higher ups are bullshitting him.
For that he does need significant tech skills, but doesn't need to be a specialist in any of the products.
Altman seems similar to me.
As for the tweet, general political commentary on twitter doesn't usually involve deep thoughts. He's stating a clear rebuttal that midwit followers can use in political discussions in their daily lives. The fact that a statement from the VP running for President can be rebutted with econ 101 says more about the state of the country than Musk.
DradisPing
6d ago
So it's the intersection of a few things.
The first major one is overspecialization in our society.
The typical person writing modern movies was super into pop culture in high school. Then they went to film school and studied screenwriting. Then they tried to break into the industry.
As a result they have very little life experience outside of school and Hollywood. They haven't even read a lot of fiction recreationally. There's a joke that comic book movies got so popular because nobody in Hollywood will read anything without pictures.
With significantly older generations it was common to go into the military for a couple of years either due to the draft or get your draft obligation out of the way. Then they'd try to be a real novelist. After failing at that they'd go into screenwriting. Those people are all long retired.
As a metaphor lets talk about being a commercial illustrator at an ad agency. It's a perfectly good career, but anyone talented should really dream of being a fine artist when applying to schools as a HS grad. Some people have even made the jump from commercial illustrator to fine artist, like Banksy. Similarly going straight into screenwriting shows a lack of love for the best examples of writing.
The next problem is the schools themselves. They have the same problem as architecture schools, where what the schools teach students to value isn't popular with the general public.
Basically all screenwriting grads want to write Barry. A fine show, but it's not for everyone.
Next by their nature a large production is a mix of interest and opinions. Disney makes a lot of their money off of merchandising. They care more about toy sales than having a plot that makes sense. Additionally people at the studio like to get their ideas in for ego reasons.
Mufasa specifically was probably seen as a cash grab movie. The writers and the studio just wanted to get it out and get their money.
DC movies are interesting because the live action movies are just seen as cash grabs for Warner Bros. They want merch money to spend on the movies they care about.
The DC animated movies are different. For western animators who want to do action adventure movies they are some of the most exciting jobs to work on. So they attract top talent who want to make them good.
There's also just a highly chaotic aspect to making a live action movie. Things like casting affect the script but are entirely out of the writers control, so there are always last minute rewrites, then the director shoots what he thinks he needs, then they have to edit together a movie out of whatever was shot.
DradisPing
2mo ago
A lot of departments want courses in the core curriculum because it guarantees jobs lecturing. They don't particularly care if the students learn anything or if it provides any value. Forcing students to write papers on indigenous studies is just the easiest path to getting paid to write their own papers on indigenous studies.
So basically everyone involved is a fraud, and it goes forward because we've let colleges control credentialing.
The students just want the credential. The lecturers just want their money.
DradisPing
1mo ago
I don't think he's actually particularly pissed at Harvard specifically. It's really the combination of a few things.
- It's the most sacred institution to DC people.
- If anti-Trumpism has a Westpoint, it's Harvard Kennedy School
- Harvard administrators are unbelievably arrogant and will be unable to present a sympathetic defence in public
- The Trump base has zero sympathy for Harvard and love to see them get put in place
- Harvard isn't what it used to be at the administrative level. Claudine Gay isn't up to the standards of Harvard 30 years ago
- Harvard admin doesn't seem to grasp that a lot of their behaviour over the past few decades is explicitly illegal and they only got away with it because the feds were on side. There's no case law protecting them.
- As the most prestigious school they make an obvious target for all of Trumpism's issues with academia.
Part of the problem was that the left was too successful in casting things like HBD and culture being deep as unthinkably racist. They were extremely taboo on the mainstream right.
To put things in perspective, ousting the Soviets from Eastern Europe was largely successful. It was still highly taboo to talk about the problems in places like Zimbabwe and South Africa.
As a result it was impossible for anyone on the right to assemble an argument about how removing Saddam wouldn't result in a democratic revolution.
You'd sound too racist to be on TV.
Liberals from a more cosmopolitan background often have the attitude of "everybody knows X, it's just not polite to say it". But Republicans from small white towns frequently don't know it. They're going to go along with poor decisions if you don't let anyone tell them.
Edit:
I seem to be having some communications difficulties with this post. Back in 2009 or so HBD blogs were the only places having discussions about things like cousin marriage in Arab cultures leading to clannishness which caused problems when trying to impose individualist democracy on them.
I'm not even endorsing any particular theory. I'm just saying that the limits on public conversation made it difficult to fight a bad idea.
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
25d ago
Natalie looked hesitant. “Yes,” she said. “The conservative media shilling for Russia unnecessarily is sort of a symptom of the Covid backlash. Because we don’t trust the authority on that, we’re going to not take their words on anything. Do I think Putin’s a great guy? No.”
This stands out particularly as a straight up fantasy take.
The MAGA base doesn't see it a "shilling for Russia". They just stopped having a problem with Russia when communism ended and see the policies popular in DC as incredibly antagonistic for no reason.
DradisPing
15d ago
I see it more as a rejection of Cuomo than any great socialist uprising.
My takeaway is that it's just over for white boomer Democrats. They can keep their current jobs but won't be able to win nominations for any new office.
Ezra Klein had some good articles talking about the progressive theory of power and how it causes problems for city administration.
These are more for background than supporting my argument.
Basically the problem is that progressives are completely dedicated to the idea that billionaires and greedy corporations are the ones causing all of the problems.
However at the city level the problems tend to stem from:
-
Disorderly elements. eg low level criminals like shoplifters, people with sever substance abuse problems, or severe mental illness.
-
Left wing organizations trying to tack on fees to everything to get paid.
Progressives are completely unable to acknowledge that either of those groups cause problems. The idea that left wing groups are just being greedy rent seekers goes against their whole world view.
So you get ideas like government owned grocery stores. During a past attempt to tackle "food deserts", in I think Detroit, a grocery store complained that shoplifting was putting them out of business. A city councillor told them that lossage was just part of the price of doing business in Detroit. So the grocery store shut down the location.
I don't think the solution is really any fundamental social change. The issue is that people on the center left like to play defence for the farther left and hide the crazier elements of their philosophy from the general public. The progressives think that the media hides their beliefs out of some conspiracy against them instead of an attempt to protect them.
There needs to be a documentary series on a major streaming service that, as fairly and calmly as possible, shows what progressive populists believe and what the problems with it are. Right now it's being taught in colleges as the absolute truth with no analysis.
DradisPing
3mo ago
It's infamous for being full of Education PhDs who change up federal standards so that their side businesses selling education materials generate steady income.
The top Education PhD programs are famous for far left ideological gatekeeping because you need a degree from one of them to work at DoE.
People on the right just think that breaking it up into other departments would result in better people fulfilling it's requirements.
DradisPing
7mo ago
Mark Kern talked about this: https://www.geeksandgamers.com/video-game-producer-mark-kern-talks-sweet-baby-inc-and-esg-in-gaming/
Basically the issue is how games are funded. The studios get investors to front money for game development.
When companies like BlackRock were pushing ESG hard, ESG money was cheap money. Companies like EA saw the cheap money with the only condition being that they had to hire a bunch of DEI storyline consultants.
Now games are failing, but it's hard to fire the storyline consultants. They know how to work the system.
Also the various left wing activists they've hired over the years are trained to form a block and not back down, so it's a giant fight where just getting rid of the new hires isn't an option.
Of course you're right in that part of it is the devs. Trans women in particular tend to have issues with women's hips in games.
On a bit of a tangent, a surprising amount of game development is done in Canada as it's harder for devs to find other jobs: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Video_games_in_Canada#Studios
Assassin's Creed 4 has it's modern day sections set in Montreal. Mass Effect 3 has Shepard's trial take place in future Vancouver.
DradisPing
3mo ago
Submarines solved the first strike problem. During the cold war there were enough missiles in the water on both sides to guarantee severe retribution.
DradisPing
6mo ago
California passed a constitutional amendment decades ago where property taxes can only be increased on an home with the same owner by 1% a year. So some of those people bought their homes back in 1990 and only pay like $2000 a year. Made up numbers, but it's directionally true.
From what I've seen wealthy Californians spend their lives in a dreamy utopian state where the only evil is Republicans.
Their usual system of blame is to look at the various levels of government, City, State, Federal, and put the blame on the first Republican they find.
When they can't find one, they blame institutional racism or climate change.
Thus, I predict they will all blame it on climate change and nothing will happen.
Now this one is going to be particularly bad because California passed laws a few years ago restricting fire insurance premiums and most insurers left the state. So a lot of these homes are uninsured.
California has had problems with electricity for the past 20 years and has been dealing with it with things like rolling brownouts. Their wildfires are worse than they should be because environment groups sue to stop brush management to reduce fire spread. They have continual water problems because they refuse to build additional reservoirs to keep up with their growing populations.
There is not much hope of things changing. Their elections have major problems, ballots from ballot harvesters keep coming in for weeks after election day.
DradisPing
6mo ago
Harper faced significant legal battles over his attempts to reform immigration an asylum claims.
One major case was "Canadian Doctors for Refugee Care v. Canada" where the Government tried to cancel extended prescription drug coverages rejected refugee claimants received while appealing their rulings. Keep in mind that Canadian citizens didn't get drug coverage.
The judge ruled that cutting the program was "cruel and unusual treatment" and thus a charter violation. The Supreme Court of Canada upheld that.
Things are a little more interesting if you look at immigration by year by country,
https://x.com/AmazingZoltan/status/1875985574429184020
There were prior trends, but Trudeau vastly increased immigration from India and Pakistan.
Instead of total number of immigrants, the key fight is really "how many poor Muslims?".
The left sees bringing in poor Muslims as key to their political success. They end up dependent on government programs and are loyal voters, or at least were before the split over October 7 in the US.
Harper did various things to tilt the balance towards economically viable immigrants. He upset a lot of Liberals by resetting the immigration backlog queue. I could go on but it was really mostly minor things that he could do with out the left going to the courts.
Trudeau tried to flip that around. Early on he brought in large numbers of refugees from Syria and Afghanistan without giving any thought about how to house them. He ended up paying for hotels and upper-middle class homes in some cases. Per head spending was enormous.
Ultimately Trudeau's problem was that he's one of those people who believes leftist academics have everything figured out and we just need to what they say. Mass immigration is always good. New housing construction is bad. So Canada has an incredible housing crisis. Also infrastructure wasn't expanded to support the additional population, so there are problems everywhere.
At least previous Prime Ministers could muster up a better response to "we need more housing for this immigration" than "shut up you racist".
DradisPing
6mo ago
The current culture in cities is to just push and see what you get away with. Right now stores have trained their employees not to push back on the general public in most cases.
So if a dog owner needs to go for a quick walk to grab something from a store then bringing the dog is convenient for them. Tying up the dog outside is seen ask risky. So they will try to bring the dog in the store.
The store doesn't see much value in using their employees to get their customers to follow norms and by laws.
The city will be on their side if it's something like smoking. A lot of blue cities will not be on their side if it's something like shoplifting. Where do dogs fall? Why should the stores risk it?
DradisPing
8mo ago
My suspicion is that Harris did work ad McDs, but it was in high school in Montreal. Her campaign doesn't really want to draw attention to her childhood outside the US, so they are being evasive.
DradisPing
11mo ago
It's basically an erotic rape fantasy. Mocked by this meme: https://imgur.com/a/EGjKmW8
It was most likely inspired by Margaret Atwood hearing about how in the 70s places like Beirut and Damascus went from being popular gay vacation spots to having all women covered.
Of course the blue tribe women watching it couldn't admit either of those things. So they claimed it was a profound warning about Trump.
DradisPing
3mo ago
It looks like USIP is structured to get government money and spend it without oversight. It'd be very surprising if it weren't up to anything shady.
DradisPing
3mo ago
The family values voters were mostly Silent Generation and are mostly dead.
Musk is a Trump ally. But I think everyone on the right is aware that he only got there because the more authoritarian elements in the Democratic Party felt he wasn't toeing the line and decided to go after him.
But I do think there is less of a split than you think. The traditionalist right has always been pretty accepting of wealthy men being bad parents so long as their children were all well provided for. Musk is more shameless and extreme than is typical, but it's really less offensive to conservative sensibilities than a DINK couple.
I can give a broad overview.
Post Vietnam war there was basically a domestic truce declared between the pro-war and anti-war sides. People who served in the war were patriots who loyally served their country. War protesters were patriots who wouldn't let their countrymen die in a misguided war.
When Kerry got back from Vietnam he became a major figure in the protest movement. There's some dispute about what he actually said personally, but he at least associated and sat on panels with people who were saying horrible things about US soldiers. People from his old unit got at least the impression that he was saying he saw them commit horrific war crimes.
Since this was back in the 70s there aren't many recordings showing exactly what he said when.
Once things quieted down it wasn't heavily criticized due the de facto truce and he went about his political career.
Then in 2004 when he was running for President he wanted to play up his war record. Bush only served in the air national guard while Kerry was deployed and won a silver star. Bush is a little younger than Kerry and got a deferral to help on one of his father's campaigns. By the time he would have been deployed things were winding down in Vietnam and the NG didn't really need him for anything.
In the Presidential campaign Kerry cast himself as a proud veteran. Meanwhile other swift boat veterans were still pissed off at him. They had been quietly shit talking him for 30 years.
Some of them got in contact with Republican organizers and we got a bunch of "Swift Boat Veterans for Truth" ads.
Basically a bunch of people who had reason to dislike him came forward and badmouthed his claims about his military service. I have no idea what the truth is or the specifics of the claims.
The Dems organizers didn't really understand that just because other veterans weren't talking about him publicly didn't mean they didn't still carry a grudge. They don't run in the same social circles.
So from the Dem point of view it was a manufactured conspiracy that came out of nowhere.
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