Esperanza
9mo ago
The US has many different ethnic groups in it, not many different nations.
I think that quite a few (572 federally recognized ones) Native American tribes consider themselves nations.
I like Bloom's definition of a nation - the same people living in the same place. The Native American tribes on reservations definitely have this character.
I do not know if any other groups in the US are sufficiently segregated to count as a nation. I think in Canada, the Quebecois would have obviously been a nation had they split in 1995, so presumably, they were close to being one at the time.
Esperanza
9mo ago
The US definition of navigable may not be that relevant as this is a treaty, not a US law. I don't know anything about how terms in treaties are interpreted, but I imagine that the treatment must be symmetric, so if US law matters, then so must Mexican law.
I also don't know enough to tell if the Rio Grande is navigable. Allegedly it is "too thick to drink and too thin to plow."
Esperanza
9mo ago
I agree that their purpose is to block people. It does seem strange that there is a treaty that says you can't try to impede people crossing the border. I wonder if navigable normally refers to crossing a river rather than traveling down it lengthways.
Esperanza
10mo ago
There had never been nationalist uprisings against foreign rule before the 19th century?
Ireland fought for freedom for 800 years, but according to this claim, only the last 150 were for nationalist reasons. I don't understand that claim at all. The big nations, like Italy and Germany were only created in the 19th century, but prior to that there were smaller nations, like Ulster or Saxony. Ancient Greece saw itself as a nation in comparison to the barbarians and came together to fight the Persians. Presumably there is a reason that people want to claim nationalism is a new idea, but it does seem to go back as far as 1066 and all that, if not further.
Esperanza
1yr ago
Aside from your complaint about immigration amnesty, how was Reagan not a right-winger?
Reagan's domestic policies were, courtesy of wikiepdia:
Reduce marginal tax rates on income from labor and capital.
Reduce regulation.
Tighten the money supply to reduce inflation.
Reduce the growth of government spending.
These need to be measured from where the US was in 1980. Marginal tax rates in 1980 were 43% on income over $40k. That could be about $120k now. I would guess that there are people who want to raise taxes that high, but they are no centrists. Income over $20k ($60k) in modern dollars was taxed at 24%.
I don't think tightening the money supply when inflation is at 13% is a right wing idea.
Federal spending under Reagan was about 22% of GDP. This is more then then pre-COVID rate under Trump, but 2.5% less than Biden. In contrast, Obama spent just over 20%.
It is hard to measure regulations.
On foreign policy, Reagan does not seem that right wing, compared to Biden, unless you count being against communism as "right wing."
In hindsight, Reagan looks very centrist. What about him makes you think him more right-wing than Obama? He might have been more right-wing than Nixon (SSI. affirmative action, EPA, clean water act), I suppose. Overall, Nixon looks to the left of Obama on that measure. Obama was very centrist.
Esperanza
10mo ago
Those terms are meta-exclusionary. They only exclude people who try to exclude others. This is reminiscent of Popper's intolerance of intolerance.
I expect you can come up with new examples that are not meta in this way, but of course, offhand, I cannot.
Esperanza
1yr ago
Google's board was heavily influenced by Bill Campbell, a Svengali-like figure in Silicon Valley. He like the cut of Sundar's jib and chose him as the bright young thing that should be promoted. Most of Google's board was in awe of Campbell, so gave the nod to Sundar when it came time to put a PM in charge of Chrome, replace Andy at Android, replace Alan as boss of all engineering, and then replace Larry as CEO. It is difficult to capture quite how much influence Campbell had on Google's promotion decisions. Even after his death, Google's board would ask "What would Bill say?" Why Campbell liked Sundar is another question entirely. Sundar is not technical at all - his undergraduate and masters is in materials science, which has nothing to do with IT (well, outside of chips). Bill liked non-technical, slightly unpolished people. It may be that Sundar was the one he met that day.
Esperanza
11mo ago
I have been to farmer's markets in the US and in Europe, and at precisely none have I seen live or dead wild animals for sale. No one breeds bats (I think, maybe in China) so the market was selling wild animals - dead I presume, which is pretty weird.
The eating of weird wild animals is as traditional as Chinese medicine. During the Great Leap Forward, Mao invented both:
it is said that the Chinese started ‘eating anything that moves’ after the great famine of 1958. The Chinese government allowed people to even poach wild animals and eat them.
China banned bushmeat in 2020, so obviously, they agree with me, and you are the only one left defending the indefensible. Don't buy roadkill from a roadside stall.
In early 2020, soon after the breakout of COVID-19 in Wuhan, China, the Chinese government swiftly outlawed the consumption and trade of bushmeat on 24th February. The decision was hailed as "the symbol of an era without bushmeat" by the Chinese media.
Esperanza
11mo ago
it is not necessarily in the interests of the producers of the film.
This is why producers are the ones who run the casting couch, presumably. It is their money on the line, so they make the decision.
As Wikipedia says:
Predominantly male casting directors and film producers use the casting couch to extract sex from aspiring actors in Hollywood, Bollywood,[3][4] Broadway, and other segments of the industry.
Neither [3] nor [4] give any evidence for the claim "Predominantly". If there is a female producer or casting director using the couch, she is flying under the radar.
Esperanza
11mo ago
There are other relevant factors in life success, of course.
What would you say are the genetic factors that are relevant? I can think of a bunch of social factors, like being wise enough to choose parents who are rich and live in a free society. The ones that come to my mind are being good-looking, being musical, and being tall. For women, being blonde is a huge win, as are the other obvious things, so long as you don't approximate the Willendorf Venus (and even then?).
There have been great efforts to find other factors that are independent of g, but it seems quite hard to isolate any. Even being good-looking is correlated with having less genetic mutations, and this also weakly correlates with g. In the US:
It shows that physical attractiveness is significantly correlated with general intelligence (r = .126),
Musicality correlates as well.
A remarkable direct correlation between IQ and musical scores in both the control (r≥0.38) and experimental (r≥0.37) groups was observed.
Alas, among non-Hispanic whites, even being blonde correlates with IQ. Brown haired men (104.4) and blonde women (103.2) are on the top of the heap, though blonde women have the smallest standard deviation (12.2) and black haired men (mean IQ 100.1) the largest (15.2).
The conclusions come from a survey of 10,878 white Americans asked about their natural hair colour (Hispanics and African Americans were excluded to eliminate bias). The results showed the average IQ of blonde-haired women was 103.2, 102.7 for brown hair, 101.2 for red hair and 100.5 for black hair.
Esperanza
9mo ago
You mention speed reaction can't be trained for, but I'm assuming elite black athletes have superior scores on these,
Why do you assume this? I will look up the results. Lynn claims that black children have slower choice time but faster movement times. IQ is related to choice time (I am told, but I have not seen anyone doubt this.).
Lynn concludes:
The result suggests that around one-third of the white advantage on intelligence tests may lie in faster information processing capacity.
Populations at the level of black v white v mixed are mixed of genetic lineages. This means tail genetics doesn't have to relate to median genetics.
I don't understand what you mean. Sorry.
Your genetic pot analogy seems a bit naive scientifically.
The idea that there would be a linear relationship comes from the assumption (or observation?) that intelligence is influenced by many genes. This is fairly well accepted in other areas. I don't know any arguments why it would not apply to intelligence, but that might be my failure.
the complexity is not engaged with
If you were around a few years ago, there was a lot of complexity, but I did not pay that much attention, and the major proponents don't post anymore.
For an example of engaging with the question, have a look at this paper. I have not checked the data, the analysis, or even if the study they are using ever happened, but it shows the kind of reasoning that HBDers do. They take seriously the kind of questions you ask.
Esperanza
9mo ago
I would add the Welsh and Scots to your list as obvious nations without states. Would you consider the Gullah people in Carolinas to be close to a nation, if a little too small at 200k?
Esperanza
9mo ago
There is a difference between the Waters Of The United States and the navigable waters. The navigable ones are the ones that can be used for interstate commerce, and the ones connected are the WOTUS. "a relatively permanent body of water connected to traditional interstate navigable waters);"
The court did not claim that wetlands were navigable, just that the clean water act applied to them.
Esperanza
10mo ago
If you meet these kids, it is immediately obvious, in the first minute or so, whether the child has it or not. The difference between the top kids (say, the top 20% of the class at a top university) and the rest is palpable. The top 5% are different yet again, and the smartest ten kids in the grade are obvious to all the faculty who mee them, as well as all their peers.
The SAT does not work, especially know that all the heavily g loaded parts have been removed.
Esperanza
10mo ago
IQ is gender normed, but that does not mean there are no differences between men and women on specific subtasks. I know it is illegal to have certain tests for jobs unless they are needed for the role, as otherwise, it is too easy to discriminate against women.
Esperanza
10mo ago
Do you know many Italian Americans? The ones I know are very aware that their name ends in a vowel and that they are distinct from regular Americans. I would have expected them to be more integrated, but Italian Americans are still quite distinct. German Americans barely know that they were originally German, in contrast. I think Poles fall into the same bucket as Italians, where they feel quite separate from mainstream America.
Esperanza
1yr ago
When I think of Pichai's character and reputation, I think of my mother, who ascended to a relatively senior position (after taking several years out to have children) in a very large business by being relatively quiet and speaking softly and authoritatively at the end of meetings while the men around her would shout and argue and fight.
I don't know your mother, who may well speak softly and authoritatively, but I don't think Sundar is like that at all. He always managed up, and once he achieved positions of power, completely ignored his reports. No-one claims that Android was more successful under Sundar than it was under Google. Then, when Sundar ran all of engineering, I don't think anyone can point to something achieved during that time, other than the huge success of AI research. It is hard to give Sundar credit for that, since he completely mismanaged bringing that work to product, and let Google, who did most of the research, be eclipsed by OpenAI. Since he became CEO in 2015, it is hard to point to a successful new Google endeavor or product. This contrasts with Satya, who meets with perhaps too many people. If Sundar is known for anything, it is being indecisive and failing to make decisions. On the other hand, not making any decisions turned out quite well for Google for at least the first five years of his tenure. We will see if Sundar's unwillingness to act resolutely is Google's undoing.
Esperanza
11mo ago
I'm sure next time you're looking for a job and your interviewer plays games with you "to test for proper attitude, flexibility etc." you won't buy that kind of shit.
I was in a restaurant, where at the next table a group of lawyers were having lunch with a prospective candidate. All was going well until the senior lawyer said to the hire, "Everything looks good, but we like to be on a first-name basis in our firm, and we already have a Lisa. Would you consider changing your name?" The guy was playing games and as I am not a lawyer, I do not know what the right answer was. Interviewers play games. That is the entire point of interviews, as far as I can see. They exist to test the candidate.
Actors are regularly tested on their ability to plausibly act in sports movies. Sir John Gielgud could act, but all his thespian skills could not avail him when a tight spiral was required.
Esperanza
11mo ago
you can't conclude much about unwillingness to do other things based on unwillingness to sleep her way into the job.
Much of the difficult things that actresses are asked to do involve simulating sex. Hence Ms. Depp in the above post. Game of Thrones pushes the line a little beyond simulating at times. If actors were made fight other people with swords, joust (incidentally, the only jousting school is in LA. Can you guess why?), jump out of planes (with and without parachutes), and scale high buildings, cliffs, etc. then this might be analogous. Some actors actually do these things, and allegedly their movies are the better for it. You test actresses with sex as that is the thing they are most likely to balk at on the actual job.
For example, just today Joanna Lumley complained about nudity in movies.
Esperanza
11mo ago
Since the casting couch is by its nature implicit rather than explicit, there's never any guarantee that satisfying the guy's demands will get the desired outcome.
It is common to pay people for attempts rather than for successes, as the former is more under their control. I can't see why it is wrong to pay an agent money to promote your book, even if the agent might not get you a book deal. I don't think you can claim book agents and Harvey Weinstein are wrong for the same reason. The same applies to most agents, sports included.
"Must perform sex acts on producer"
The requirement is that the actress must be able to plausibly fake being interested in having sex with Weinstein et al. That requires real talent and is an actual test of acting. Allegedly, most Hollywood actresses meet this bar.
Even when it does happen, there's rarely any explicit demand for sex;
Do you know this? My sources claim that people are very explicit about expectations. Actresses have agents who set these meetings up, and they explain in great detail, what is expected. For every John, there is a pimp.
Luckily all this will be made moot by AI. No-one, and I mean no-one, is going to ask the AI developer for sex, (except the sexbot that AI developer him(or her)self made).
Esperanza
11mo ago
I always think of that series when I see people refer to non-men.
John Hopkins University was slammed by critics including “Harry Potter” author J.K. Rowling for switching up its definition of “lesbian” to instead refer to the group as “non-man attracted to non-men” in order to include non-binary people.
Esperanza
11mo ago
Charles C. Tansill
is a revisionist historian, for what it is worth.
In the 1930s, Tansill was a staunch isolationist, arguing that the United States should not participate in World War II.[1] At the same time, he was an advisor to the United States Senate Committee on Foreign Relations.[2] In 1952, Tansill published Back Door to War, a book about the war.[1][6] According to A. S. Winston, Tansill, "blamed Franklin Roosevelt for forcing a peace-minded Hitler into war and used the standard Rudolph Hess line that Hitler wanted only a free hand to deal with Bolshevism in the East."[1] Tansill went on to argue that it was Roosevelt who persuaded Neville Chamberlain to assure Poland that it would be defended by Britain if it was attacked by Germany, which happened in 1939 during the German invasion of Poland.[2] Winston goes on to suggest, "The book became a foundation for revisionist history of World War II."[1]
Barnes is similar, if a little kookier.
In his 1947 pamphlet, "The Struggle Against The Historical Blackout", Barnes claimed that "court historians" suppressed that Hitler was the most "reasonable" leader in the world in 1939, and that France's Premier Édouard Daladier wanted to commit aggression against Germany, aided and abetted by British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain and the U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt.
Edward Raczyński
was later President of Poland in exile and is a reputable figure. "he provided the Allies with one of the earliest and most accurate accounts of the ongoing Holocaust". A statement by him should be believed in this matter.
Łukasiewicz
was a marginal figure who committed suicide in 1951. I find him credible, but much less so than Raczyński. However, Wacław Jędrzejewicz is a completely solid figure, awarded many honors and was a professor at Wellesley.
Tyler Kent, a fascist (in the sense he was a member of a fascist organization, the Right Club), was convicted of spying as he leaked documents to the Germans.
At his trial, Kent also admitted he had taken documents from the US Embassy in Moscow, with the vague notion of someday showing them to US senators who shared his isolationist, antisemitic views.
Wikipedia says:
Isolationist groups in the United States claimed he had been framed and that the trial was an attempted cover-up of an attempt to get the US to join the war. The documents, finally released in 1972, did not support this claim. The papers that Kent had purloined indicated British-American naval co-operation, but they also showed that Roosevelt was not prepared to go further without support from the US Congress or the public.
but this ends with "citation needed" so it is unsourced.
Overall, if the source that says Raczyński vouched for them is accurate, then I believe the documents are accurate. I find the claims of Kent, Tansill, and Barnes unconvincing, as I would expect them to make those claims. I would also place significant weight on Jędrzejewicz, but he was reporting on someone else's beliefs as I read it.
I hate when people mix reliable figures with others that are completely partisan.
Esperanza
9mo ago
The recent huge increase in the percentage of people who are LGBT suggests that at least bisexuality is a choice for 1 in 5 women. The number of gays is up 4x, and lesbians 11x since the silent generation.
The new narrative is that orientation is a spectrum. Perhaps this is true. Male homosexual acts were commonplace in Ancient Greece and Rome and I think this suggests that at least 50% of men would engage in homosexual acts if it were fully normalized. This seems very high bit I can't explain the ancient world without people being quite flexible.
Esperanza
1yr ago
I am guessing you are quite tall and like bicycling and ice skating on canals. In many parts of the world, the expectation is that one party pays for entertainment. Only in the Netherlands, and among horrible people elsewhere, is there an expectation that a bill will be split. This seems weird, but it possibly dates back to gift culture. I know that staying for dinner is a horrible faux pas in the Netherlands while it is utterly expected in other places. Many cultures make a huge effort to be hospitable to others, with crazy gift cultures, always bringing food to an event, always buying rounds of drinks, and other patterns like this. The Dutch really are out of step with most places, especially outside Hajnal line North Western Europe.
If there was any infrastructure then I am sure a dump would count. I do not know of any old dump with appreciable infrastructure. Even a rail line, a station, etc. would be enough.
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