EverythingIsFine
Well, is eventually fine
I know what you're here for. What's his bias? Politically I at least like to think of myself as a true moderate, maybe (in US context) slightly naturally right-leaning but currently politically left-leaning if I had to be more specific.
User ID: 1043
EverythingIsFine
Well, is eventually fine
3hr ago
Just today I took note of this article in n case people are still on the conspiracy train: WaPo: The lingering mystery of the Trump shooting: Why did this young man do it?
After Trump took office again in January, his new picks to lead the FBI — Director Kash Patel and Deputy Director Dan Bongino — asked to be briefed on the investigative steps that had been taken before they arrived, they said in a televised interview. They personally visited the FBI lab in Quantico, Virginia, to view the evidence, including laboratory and ballistics evidence, and examined Crooks’s rifle.
Bongino, who in August had complained on his podcast that he didn’t entirely trust the FBI’s claim that Crooks had no political ideology, had a professional reason to be obsessive as he poked and prodded his briefers with questions.
He had served as a Secret Service agent for 12 years, including on threat investigations and on the protective details for Presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama. Bongino had a deep knowledge of the Secret Service’s landmark Exceptional Case Study Project, which documented striking similarities among people who had tried to kill presidents and prominent political figures.
In studying and interviewing 83 people known to have attempted or plotted such an assassination from 1949 to 1996, the research found they were overwhelmingly White males who were relatively well educated. They were also deeply isolated, often friendless and suffering from a mental health disorder. Often, after a personal crisis or break, they began to fixate on assassinating a high-profile figure as a route to fame or affirmation.
After reviewing the evidence, Bongino firmly agreed with the conclusion of his FBI predecessors. Crooks was just “a lost soul” akin to the many would-be assassins interviewed for the Exceptional Case Study Project, he told colleagues. There was “no there there” to the conspiracy theories about an inside job or Iran.
In a Fox News interview on May 18, Maria Bartiromo asked Patel and Bongino why the public had almost no information about what led to the shooting in Butler as well as an apparent attempted assassination of Trump on a golf course in Florida. Bongino stressed that there was no “big explosive” evidence tying Crooks to an international conspiracy or any larger plot.
“I’m not going to tell people what they want to hear. I’m going to tell you the truth. And whether you like it or not is up to you,” Bongino told Bartiromo. “The there you are looking for is not there. … It’s not there. If it was there, we would have told you.”
Basically you have a total expert, Trump supporter, and skeptic get full access and found nothing. Can’t ask for much more than that. Shockingly, the article claims that a lot of people were working on it:
It consumed FBI agents and analysts from half of the bureau’s field offices, nearly every headquarters division and some international offices.
EverythingIsFine
Well, is eventually fine
6hr ago
My memory is that the Federalists were very pro-national banking (and pro centralization more loosely), which led to pro-international finance and trade links, which at the time in America was a big, big deal and created a lot of dissent, not only between the “rural” vs “urban” areas but led to some foreign policy disagreements. Some New Englanders almost became pro-British, not super popular between Revolutionary aftermath and the later war of 1812. But more of it was the original rural-urban split, and Federalists were seen a bit as elitist. Doubly so when some states started expanding suffrage to non land owners. Circling back to “money” of course - at this time there was no centralized currency, and attempts to do so were seen as promoting corruption and stiffing farmers. After all if you’re a farmer at the time, how can you tell you’re not getting ripped off by exchange rates and early financial instruments? So Federalists being hated doesn’t surprise me at all. These banking issues by the way would persist as very potent forces in elections for at least another 50 years. And understandably so! You needed a catalyst like the Civil War to fully get on the nationalized paper money train, and even then gold and silver standard stuff would persist as issues.
Fun fact: I read yesterday that from the start to the end of the civil war, the federal budget went from 60 million a year to 1.3 billion per year. Not to mention the debt load created by the war and pension plans. But before that, it’s a totally different era.
EverythingIsFine
Well, is eventually fine
2hr ago
I think maybe a good smell test would be: am I discussing the culture war, or waging it? No one is ever not guilty of breaking this from time to time but the ratio of “waging” posts to “discussing” posts is outta whack
EverythingIsFine
Well, is eventually fine
2hr ago
The fact this doesn’t strongly happen is more to with how social conservatism in the US picked up an emphasis on the nuclear family, which sort of intrinsically shuts out grandparents in a way other conservatives don’t.
EverythingIsFine
Well, is eventually fine
5hr ago
No, this is just the Rotten Tomatoes problem all over again. Up/down works fine but not stellar because a movie everyone universally finds to be on the good side of fine, gets near-100 ratings while movies with higher highs and lower lows, that are on the whole “better” movies, get lower ratings.
I rate movies about how far they are above or below replacement, reflecting the fact that that’s how most people actually decide what to watch. A 3.5 is fine: you can watch it, it will be a movie with average enjoyment. A 4 is better than its peers: prefer it in any head to head comparison. A 4.5 is one to go out of your way to watch. A 5 is a 4.5 but one that had an especially memorable impact on me personally. A 3 is worse than replacement - it’s a below average movie. And ratings from 2.5 and down are various degrees of how aggressively you should avoid them, with a 1 star creating a negative memory you’d rather have lived your life without, ie actively harmful.
EverythingIsFine
Well, is eventually fine
5hr ago
Starting to dip my toes into Eric Foner’s Reconstruction: America’s Unfinished Revolution, to be followed up in the case I don’t lose interest by another book that extends reconstruction through the Gilded Age. The most interesting part of American history I know the least about, in my eyes!
Though I also have this Ben Franklin autobiography hanging around that sounds interesting and of course my regular diet of fantasy stuff.
Speaking of, I’m going to throw out a recommendation for Guild Mage: Apprentice, which is free to read (serialized) for another month or so. Has that classic fantasy feel, with good writing and with an interesting world and magic. Very enjoyable read.
EverythingIsFine
Well, is eventually fine
1d ago
Off topic, but I kind of wonder how the racial estimate question might change if you gave people a slider that forces all the percentages to sum to 100
I personally also subscribe to something in my head I've termed the Total Media Hypothesis: as society progresses, but old media sticks around in easily accessible form, the best of the older media is still excellent quality capable of delivering enjoyment and increasingly competes with new offerings. Naturally, there will always be a place for newer media due to network effects and recency bias, but on the whole eventually new media will get squeezed asymptotically to almost exclusively fit into the maximum capacity of this recency segment in the long run, because the quality simply can't otherwise compete. As to what exactly this asymptotic number is, that's up for debate, and depends on media type, but I'd hazard a guess at about one quarter at most. Meaning, that in the next few decades, total new release movie and TV consumption will account for at most a quarter of all total media consumption in any given year.
We already see this happening with video games: the old games are, quite often, still pretty fun, and the graphics are decent enough in many cases. This limits opportunities for newcomers. It's also magnified by a segment of 'evergreen' games that have reached a critical community/fun/variety threshold such that they consume many hours and effectively never die, such as League of Legends and Counterstrike, and maybe even Minecraft. These suck up so many gamer hours that new (especially multiplayer) entrants struggle to get enough oxygen. Of course although many people like to rewatch movies, there isn't anything quite like the evergreen multiplayer games, but still, in terms of hours played current-year releases only account for like 10 to 15 percent ish of playtime (source). For books, it's more like one third of sales are new books, but that's sales; if we count reading library books which are mostly older books, and count only books not retail pricing value, that number surely drops significantly and I wouldn't be surprised if it ended up being a similar percentage. So maybe my asymptote guess is high and 15% is more realistic.
Historical precedent suggests that the same voters flip flop every four years.
This is a bit of a quibble, but actually it’s more like voters come in and out of participation, but the numbers usually balance out in such a way so as to appear that the same voters switch every time. Longitudinally, the number of individual voters who regularly change their mind is pretty low. But yes, elections are close, so they can still matter, but overall they aren’t the kingmaker. What IS true is that these movements in and out of participation are still downstream from persuasion, and tend to jive with mind-changers. So the general idea still holds.
In 2020 to 2024, for instance, although the chart doesn’t show candidate breakdowns, you can see Figure 43 from this report that about half of voters are consistent but the other half is made up of about 3 even-ish groups: new entrants, dropouts, and midterm-skippers.
When talking about Biden, this summarization basically says that 2024 Democrats had both a turnout and persuasion problem, but turnout alone wouldn’t have reversed the loss (so functionally it is still persuasion, which is exactly how you want the elections to work)
EDIT: will further point out that reading the second link provides compelling evidence that the pro-Trump shift, 2020 to 2024, was driven more by men than women, although both groups shifted that direction. We're talking 10% and 2% changes, going by Pew numbers.
EverythingIsFine
Well, is eventually fine
4d ago
Which sucks as one of the admittedly minority people who loves a juicy, well written, or unpredictable plot. Why I love for example in the book world the Scarlet Letter, otherwise a bit pedestrian. It has some great dramatic timing. Also, good characters play make plot easier, but good characters are harder to write and act than most people realize.
Sadly plot also requires you to pay attention and the dirty secret is that many viewers regardless of age range don’t want to sit through a whole movie and pay attention the whole time. Also most plot devices take a little time to get the first payoff. So if the other aspects of the film fall flat in the first half hour, you lose the chance, even if the plot is actually great.
And finally rewrites can destroy plot very easily via death by a thousand cuts. Great plot takes discipline! You have to know when too much is too much, and when the subtle things matter, and need the power to keep a good script good. Honestly I think most original scripts if performed as written would do great! But more than 1 significant “filter” and it gets made bland or hollowed out quite easily.
EverythingIsFine
Well, is eventually fine
1d ago
Huh, that’s interesting, I totally would have thought that the Marines would be the way more natural fallback but apparently not.
EverythingIsFine
Well, is eventually fine
3d ago
My recommended formatting solution that IS possible is to mix depths and unordered bullets:
-
First point
- Use a - and also add four spaces to the front to nest it
-
Now you can continue
- With more sub-bullets here that don't interfere
- but I recommend not getting too fancy as this line only had four spaces and it gets visually confusing
EverythingIsFine
Well, is eventually fine
3d ago
I kind of think that "successful" forums basically need to commit to one of three styles: Strict on Tone, Anything Goes, and Bare Minimum Social Standards. Trying to toe the line between these types leads to nothing but suffering. Strict on Tone, which is kind of The Motte's attempt insofar as I understand it, at least has some kind of consistency even if there are tradeoffs. Bare Minimum has the appeal of being commonly understandable if not technically consistent. And as the OP mentioned there's a certain charm to Anything Goes. I don't think Strict on Opinions works long-term. I don't think Slightly Elevated Standards works because it's too subjective too quickly. The one caveat is that "topic bans" actually work far, far better than you might imagine, despite being annoying and worsening the forum in some way. For example, for all of its many (many) problems, reddit's AITA low-key benefitted from banning all wedding topics, even if it made the subreddit far less enjoyable by their absence.
To be more specific, markdown is NOT a single unitary standard: there are different parsers that interpret and render the typed ASCII text in different ways, although in most practical use these differences are minor, it can come up. For example reddit uses its own version that almost no one else does. Although particularly with lists, you're correct here this is mostly an HTML problem at the end of the day, not a flavor difference. Actually because of that basically all pure markdown gets rendered this way. I think the notable exception is if you allow in-line CSS or something but I don't think that's the case here, since you can type some stuff direct in HTML but only a subset of stuff (I assume for security/QA reasons)
Pandoc markdown for example will auto-number the lists for you if you put #. before each, which is neat, but they are the only ones. There are other differences in list rendering between more common markdown renderers, though, and enough that advice has to be pretty specific to the forum (I dunno what TheMotte uses)
EverythingIsFine
Well, is eventually fine
3d ago
This comment and that of @Clementine is basically exactly the Parable of the Polygons IRL, where you can mathematically model how self-segregation happens naturally to some extent under certain conditions. Of course it's natural to expect someone who is a super-minority to not like it there! So no individual is even necessarily at fault. What the math says is one potential "fix" for companies and other organizations with this challenge is simply to insist on some minimum diversity level as a requirement. Well, okay, more specifically it says that individuals should refuse to accept jobs in low-diversity organizations, but I think you can still offer some organizational help for that. I actually quite like that framing personally. Maybe rather than aggressive DEI targeting perfect equity in all things, it's a 'good enough' lower goal for DEI to both penalize over-uniformity as well as reward under-representation, and only to a point. That's not DEI as we currently understand it, but I think it reaches some level of social good as well as maintaining some level of fairness.
I also like it because it's empowering in a certain sense, and applicable to majority-members. It says we should seek out diversity, which I think is as a general rule correct and economically validated to be successful and net-positive return even if a lot of the implementation and rhetoric around it went "too far" and lost sight of some things. It's empowering to the individual who can help prevent segregation in a pretty direct way, even if you're a majority class (locally or globally, it cuts both ways).
EverythingIsFine
Well, is eventually fine
1d ago
I think it really just turns on what you consider "diversity". Obviously and famously past Americans considered Germans and Irish and such as contextually diverse in all four of those senses, while today we would probably not say the same of their descendants. I'm sure you could take a stab at some rough numbers about what it might have been over time if you used diversity "in context" for contemporaries, but that would probably be pretty difficult and subjective. Still, I like the instinct here, because it does always annoy me when we hear the similar idea about "division" being the worst it's ever been when the country literally fought a civil war before.
Linguistic and religious diversity might be exceptions, though. This article has a few stats for language that implies it was higher even (or especially) at the Founding, although also worth a side-note that the voting percentages would have been different to some extent. In terms of religious diversity that's also tricky - how do you count "religiously unaffiliated" and its various flavors? I don't really think a fair historical comparison is possible, and I guess you could try, but I won't.
EverythingIsFine
Well, is eventually fine
19d ago
Per Politico, Zohran Mamdani set to topple Andrew Cuomo in NYC mayoral race, at least the Democratic primary. Live results here if that changes. The general election is in November -- Cuomo left the door open as he conceded tonight already to run as an independent; current mayor Eric Adams already is intending to run as an independent. This is nothing short of a massive political earthquake. Here's what I see as the most important questions raised:
Did ranked choice (and associated strategy) make a major difference?
We don't know yet quite how much. In percents, Mamdani leads 43.5 - 36.4 with 91% reporting as of writing, this means on Tuesday ranked-choice results will be released as he didn't clear 50% alone, since Brad Lander who cross-endorsed Mamdani has 11.4, Adrienne Adams who did not for anyone has 4.1. But it seems a foregone conclusion he will win. I'm not certain how detailed a ranked-choice result we get. Do we get full ranked choice results/anonymized data, or do we only see the final result, or do we get stage by stage? The voter-facing guide is here which I might have to peruse. I think the RCV flavor here is IRV (fewest first-place votes eliminated progressively between virtual "rounds" until one has a majority)
In terms of counterfactuals, I believe the previous Democratic primary system was 40%+ wins, under 40% led to a runoff between top two, so Mamdani would have won that anyways. But the general election is, near as I can tell, not ranked choice, it is instead simply plurality, no runoff. This creates some interesting dynamics. Of course, it's also possible the pre-voting dynamics and candidate strategies of this race were affected.
My thoughts? It seems Cuomo was ganged up on, and I think ranked choice accelerated this. It will be very interesting to see how this did or did not pay off for Lander specifically -- was he close-ish to a situation where people hate Cuomo most, but are still uncomfortable enough with Mamdani to hand Lander a surprise victory from behind? Statistically this seems unlikely in this particular case, but it could still happen, and how close he comes could offer some interesting insights about how popular a strategy like this might be in the future.
Will Democratic support and the primary victory make a difference in the general election?
The literal million-dollar question. Cuomo might very well run again as an independent -- otherwise his career is kind of extra-finished, no? I suppose he could always try and run for Congress later, but this is a black eye no matter how you spin it. Eric Adams, the former Democratic candidate, has also had his share of scandals, so potentially there is some similarity with Cuomo on that level. But he does have an incumbency advantage, and has expected some kind of fight for a while. Republicans might back him more, however, depending on how much they dislike Mamdani. It's hard to say. Also, Mamdani would have the Democratic party machinery and resources behind him. How much will they pitch in? That's an open question for sure. It will certainly help to some extent, for legitimacy if nothing else.
Will these results generalize nationally? And if so, what part of the results?
First of all, you must see this as an absolute W for grassroots. Cuomo is a political super-insider, despite being a major bully who is widely disliked. Yet many former enemies have backed him anyways, especially more "moderate" ones. Interesting article link. Bloomberg for example backed him. He formed a super PAC "Fix the City" and it spent a ton of time on negative attacks against Mamdani, especially on his pro-Palestinian comments framing them as anti-Israel. There's that angle of course. I'd rather not get into it personally, but I'm sure there will be some observations about if the Israel-Palestinian issue was big or not, whether it was fair, etc.
Then there's the socialism angle. Do Democrats want more extreme left candidates? Are socialists ready for the big time? Was this Cuomo's unique weaknesses? Was is just crazy turnout among young people? Did AOC and friends help a lot? All things we will be thinking about for a number of months to come. Personally, I see this as Mamdani doing much, much better among kitchen-table issues for the median voter. All about affordability. Of course, the merit of his attempt is a separate question. He's pro rent control (economically sketchy but not unheard of), wants to create public supermarkets (horrible idea all around, supermarket margins are very small), taxing the rich (will they flee or not?), and is obviously young and not super experienced.
EverythingIsFine
Well, is eventually fine
3d ago
Out of pure curiosity, would you consider yourself an id-pol type socialist (in that you think most ideological warfare stuff diverts attention from the true more important class and economics issues, whether on purpose or not), more of a regular political person with a sufficient number of specifically socialist views, a Democratic Socialist type who is mostly a 'liberal' and/or 'capitalist' but likes bigger social safety nets, or a more communist-socialist type? If I'm even capturing the variety right. <Edit: oops you mentioned command-economy below. I have questions: does that imply anything about desirable state political structure? But maybe that would be better for a different post. Maybe stick your neck out and do a top level 'perspective' post sometime :)>
At least in terms of the Motte breakdown I dunno about the exact proportions but I will say that people in general have a wider range of sometimes grab-bag opinions than the classic models might predict. I don't think it necessarily follows that 'everyone is a hypocrite on something' but it's certainly not correct that most people have some kind of rigid political philosophy (even if the ones who do often have the most interesting posts!)
Mini-rant of the day (am I repeating myself or do I have deja vu? must be getting old): While I appreciate the intention behind occasionally using "they" as a gender-neutral pronoun in cases where the gender is unspecified, the amount of reading fatigue it generates is underrated. First let me say that my actual preference might be a somewhat stupid-sounding but actually refreshing/mildly helpful habit of simply using the opposite pronoun as a habit. For instance, in the financial column "Money Stuff" (great reading BTW) the author when talking about an imagined or generic CEO will use "she" as the pronoun. I'm not really a believer in the whole micro-aggression literature, but I can still see that subtle and low-key (non-mandatory) attempts at gently pushing back against stereotypes can be nice. Handy little reminder not to jump to assumptions. For fairness, this should be more generalized: teachers are mostly women, so use "he" as the general form. Doctors are mostly men, so use "she". College grads are mostly women, so use "he". "They" can still work in a pinch, or perhaps in official documents, but I feel like the tradeoffs involve are favorable on the whole.
But nonbinary people in fiction? That's a whole different story. Consider the following sentence ripped from a story I am reading:
Mirian and Gaius took turns instructing Jherica on soul magic. They would be the weakest of the time travelers, so it seemed best to give them some means of self-defense against the one they couldn't simply die and recover from.
This sentence is a total mess, and a nontrivial cognitive load, for no good reason. Well, not zero good reason, but here the tradeoffs fall very strongly against a generic pronoun: the loss in clarity, the mental burden, the flow disruption, the forced "backtracking" through the sentence to clarify meaning are absolutely terrible. The first "they" isn't immediately clear on the subject - is it the two people, or the nonbinary person? Okay, contextually, we figure out it's Jherica. But then we have an implied subject (who is doing the giving?), the next "them" needs context that takes a moment to process (Jherica again), and then another "they" also referring to Jherica, but needs double-checking. The wonderful thing about this sentence if Jherica were given a normal gender is that "they" clearly refers to the pair of people and not the individual. It's a useful tool in sentence mechanics that is completely ruined. "She" or "he" might induce a small amount of confusion (did the author accidentally chop up the pair and is referring to just one of them?) but partly that would be the author's fault for substandard sentence construction, and I still don't think it is quite as bad. It's far from uncommon to be referring to a group of people alongside an individual, and super useful to be able to casually and implicitly differentiate the two via pronouns.
To be clear, the story is wonderful, and there isn't any big deal or mention made about gender here at all (at least if there was I have no memory of it), and authors can make mistakes especially when self-edited (as is likely the case here). Or, in fact, I'm not even positive the author did make said character non-binary in the first place, since the author occasionally uses "he" in the next chapter, but not always. So it's not some massive culture war thing in this particular case. I think the point remains however that some progressives have tried to gaslight people (including myself) that gender-neutral pronouns are a minor inconvenience at best, and leverage already-existing rules of English. It's true that "they" already can serve this purpose (e.g. "Who's at the door and what do they want?" when it is fully unknown) but there are still some significant burdens if it becomes popularized.
It seems that it really shouldn't be a big loss to perform some nonbinary erasure here. Many forms of fiction already do things to make it easier on the reader (and I always notice when they do) such as giving main characters names that begin with different letters, or in anime they will color the hair differently not just for aesthetics but to make characters more differentiable. Sure, these semantic and visual 'collisions' happen IRL quite a lot (e.g. two Joshes on your team at work), but it seems to me the loss in realism is more than offset by the practical benefits. Note that this isn't purely an anti-woke position, in my book: I think giving characters some identifiable traits can make them more memorable. So there might be good reasons to throw in an unrealistic number of non-straight or mixed-race people into your TV show beyond deliberate representation! I don't think I'm advocating for anything too extreme.
On the Decline of Democratic Patriotism
Some of you probably saw the patriotism poll floating around recently, and though I won't specifically talk about the decline of the "extreme" and "very" categories among both Democrats and Independents as a general trend, I do want to talk a little bit about one example from, well, today, that illustrates one source of anti-patriotic feeling. But first:
Local action is more patriotic than fireworks
Let me preface this by saying my own piece on what the most truly patriotic display would be tomorrow: Google, right now, what kind of local elections are happening in November (emphasis on LOCAL) and volunteer for the person you find to be most worthy of support. Email them now. Politics is over-nationalized, and people are forgetting that they can make a difference. Laws are more powerful than people give them credit! There's almost literally nothing we can't actually change. Hell, we can change the freaking Constitution itself if we want to! The entire House gets re-elected fresh every two years! More locally, is there a parking ordinance you hate? A requirement or tax you dislike? Want to enable some houses to be built, or the roads to be changed? You can change those. It starts with electing someone trustworthy and receptive.
People are forgetting, too, that participation in democracy isn't actually so much a matter of a contract or trade (you give X, receive Y) but rather a duty innate to all. Put another way, even if your national vote makes no mathematical difference, you have a moral duty to vote. Furthermore, your attitude towards the vote (and civic participation more generally) rubs off on the people around you to an extent that's underappreciated. In that light, if you don't bother to do any self-reflection of any kind tomorrow, what a missed opportunity, but also, how unfortunate. Yes, the biggest difference would probably be volunteering, but introspection surely is a close second (in terms of opportunity).
Medicare cuts as anti-patriotism?
On a more culture war note, as July 4th approaches, recently I've seen a number of expressions like this tweet, emphasis mine:
Anyone who voted for this should be voted out. 17M lose health care. Kids lose lunch. Vets lose help. All so billionaires get tax breaks and ICE gets a raise.
You gutted Medicaid and blew a $3.5T hole in the debt, and want a medal?
This ain’t patriotism. It’s cruelty. Shame on you.
Thoughts like this are common, and are often accompanied by a declaration that they themselves don't want to celebrate. Or, that waving flags and being a loud USA-chanter is massive hypocrisy. We've all heard some variant of this from parts of the left or disaffected neutrals as well.
Increasingly a lot of people seem to feel that healthcare is a human right. I'm... almost there, but not quite? But even proponents can admit it's not traditionally something seen as something fundamental Americans should be entitled to, so to me it seems a little strange to bring a policy and values dispute over modern healthcare into the conversation about if it's good to wave a flag, or if it's patriotic. Healthcare isn't something so quintessentially American as all that. Maybe it's cruel, morally, but I fail to see the connection with patriotism at all.
Celebrating and promoting patriotism in general is, to me, focusing on, being grateful for, and continuing to promote a specific set of values and traits unique and special to America. I think that's a serviceable definition. Specific values and traits means especially some of the freedoms originally emphasized in the constitution and declaration of independence. Life, liberty, property, pursuit of happiness, freedom from government oppression, voting rights, power proceeding from the people themselves, that people are created equal, things like that are the values patriotism celebrates.
"How many people do we cover with national healthcare subsidies" and if we raise or lower that number compared to what it recently happened to be is ultimately a policy dispute. A serious one! Don't get me wrong! Even so, the fact that it results in some harm to people doesn't change the scope of the dispute - it's something where reasonable people can disagree within the same democratic framework. Deciding what level of taxes are appropriate is likewise a policy dispute. Obviously "taking care of our citizens" is a more universal thing, but it's not like that's never in tension with other priorities. It's not, like, an existential threat to America. (Trump possibly being a threat like that, which I think he partially is, is a reason to be more vigorous and loud about promoting the freedom he threatens, not a reason to be quieter and give up at any rate).
To use an analogy: some parents have different opinions on how strict to be with their kids, or how interventionist to be with them. Obviously extremes are bad (being a helicopter parent inhibits agency or is even toxic, while being too hands-off is callous or even abuse) but I don't look at a parent who favors a hands-off approach and say "oh you must not WANT your kid to be healthy and educated and fed, or else you would do X Y Z things". That's unfair. And is somewhat cultural/historical/circumstantial too, rather than purely a matter of eternal unchanging principle (e.g. whether parents should be required to pay part or all of their kids' college tuition or not is a good example of being both cultural, and something that's changed over time).
Republicans, charitably and writ large, aren't evil boogeymen. Most all of them also want people to be healthy and educated and fed and sheltered. But they have differing ideas of how to do it, and how much of a burden to take upon themselves. Remember that taxation levels, famously, apply to everyone, so everyone should get a say in how we set them. That's like... literally and famously the MOST American thing ever?
So, what you do if you're a Democrat is you go: "all right, I think being a [hands-on parent/Democrat] is the better choice, and I will push fellow [parents/voters] to also be [hands-on/Democrat], but at the end of the day I recognize that this is just a different of opinion and/or values, and that's fine". The fact that some [parents/Republicans] are also [abusive/even evil] doesn't change the core paradigm!
I don't accuse parents who don't want to pay for their kids' college of hating their kids, because I realize they are likely coming from a place of highly valuing financial independence, or simply don't have the budget for it, etc. I can still disagree, and think withholding tuition harms their kids, but that's a different level of disagreement.
Similarly, I don't accuse voters who don't want to pay for massive Medicare programs as hating poor people and being unpatriotic, because I realize that they are likely coming from a place of highly valuing individual choice, or feeling we don't have the budget for it, etc. I can still disagree, and think more Medicare saves cost, is a moral duty, etc. but that's still a different level of disagreement.
Is anti-celebration really anti-patriotism?
Like all things in life, there are times for celebration and times for mourning and times for action. It's nonsensical to forbid or look down on all expressions of joy or pride just because some negative event happened, especially on a holiday, the literal definition of a time where you have an excuse to be joyful even if times are tough?
To make another analogy, it seems to me the proper approach to patriotism is similar to that of self-worth. Psychologically speaking, you need some degree of self-respect, acknowledging your talents, and gratitude to be a good and functional human. Obviously there's a such thing as too much pride, which can be caustic, but that doesn't mean being a total humble doormat is the ideal alternative. When viewing your own mistakes and errors, you can own them and move forward with desire to do better. That's healthy. Patriotism is the same. You look at the good, you take some pride in your individuality/uniqueness, you re-affirm your desire to be even better.
By strongly demonstrating patriotism - it could be waving a flag or loud chants but let's not trivialize it, there are other ways too - we are emphasizing the importance of those more fundamental traits and values in a civic ritual. These are not purely performative, but have actual power, much in the same way that taking time to display deliberate gratitude in your personal life is also healthy and empowering. If you yourself for example choose to display patriotism even in a time when things feel like they aren't going your way, you also empower yourself and encourage positive change. It's not that complicated, there's no need to Scrooge it up. We don't cancel Christmas because X bad event happens, whether self-inflicted or not, because the values of Christmas (secular or religious) are still positive and the celebration is often valuable. You know, 'true meaning of Christmas' basics.
Moreover on a practical level, shaming a Republican by telling them they have a moral duty to provide healthcare to poor people might be a great point (that I agree with personally at least in a broad sense, not the specifics), but even so the shame is not only ineffective (misunderstands why the disagreement exists) but counterproductive. As evidenced by the whole patriotism thing: a Republican is quite literally less likely to listen to you, because they will get the impression that you hate the country and hate their values. Maybe a liberal might even think that, but they'd be foolish to say it. Thus, even disillusioned people should be demonstrating patriotism, if for no other reason than naked self-interest (though as I write, it's empowering too). Not to encourage lying or bad faith, I guess, which I do usually hate, but maybe this is one case where I wouldn't mind so much?
Some people think being patriotic is some kind of duty, but I'm not one of those people. Your truest and highest duty as a citizen is to make a thoughtful vote at every given election opportunity. For patriotism, I merely think it's a great idea that everyone should adopt, and I think that opinion is factually supported. It also, I should add, has the nice side-effect of aligning the values of the population over time; failing to be patriotic weakens that alignment, and even the values within.
EverythingIsFine
Well, is eventually fine
7d ago
I don’t think this is the case? It’s very, very, very hard to disentangle beauty from wealth.
You can see a bit of dynamics on smaller scales with skin tone ranges as defined by tans in-community: historically traditionally whiter skin implied you were rich enough to stay indoors, but in more modern times tanner skin implies you’re rich enough to spend free time outside, but these are fairly weak and obviously context dependent. But that’s clearly not what you’re talking about.
The fact of the matter is that by the time a post-puberty person can “fairly” judge attractiveness, they have a ton of stereotypes and social influence floating around. Plus, wealth often leads to fitness and attractiveness even semi directly, both in things like bone structure, teeth, weight, muscle tone, and more (some of which also have socioeconomic connotations). Also, worth noting as an aside, measures you’d assume to be universal indicators of appeal are not perfectly universal - if I remember correctly there are differences in eg hip ratio preferences that differ between groups. All this to say that it’s a fool’s errand to make a claim like that.
Anecdotally it’s whatever. I don’t think it’s wrong to have preferences even if they aren’t perfectly fair. I think it’s wrong to discriminate, but I’m not gonna bat an eye if someone says Ukrainians are the best or something, but don’t pretend it’s some universal truth
EverythingIsFine
Well, is eventually fine
7d ago
Here’s my theory. Confluence of at least three things:
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It seems to be the case (a few studies + anecdata) that women prefer if not a full beard than at least some stubble to being clean shaven. It helps that the new wave of beards are generally speaking a little more cared for than previously. So “looksmaxxing” does slightly trend this direction (the historical norm?) and I think some evolutionary people would say that’s because it’s a loose indication of maturity and high T (?)
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It has lost its strongest political coded connotation. I don’t know if I’m actually capable of fully accounting for their trajectory, but you had liberals with their fancy oiled mustaches and beards at a similar time as the “manosphere” right wing comeback, at the same time as millennials started flexing their social media dominance (and millennials are older and at the age where beards are nice and full and age appropriate), plus some lower or working class people who never stopped wearing them so much, and so now you have a situation where a beard isn’t necessarily a strong signal in any direction. This helps mass adoption.
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Most importantly, prominent people have done it. Beards are one of the few ways men have to significantly “rebrand” their looks. Hair can do a bit, but only so much. Dress can do a bit, but is a little more subtle. But no matter if you are a celebrity, Twitter famous, a politician, or a regular dude, growing a beard is a very obvious change that gives you a different “vibe”. It’s very handy for a politician to be able to do a rebrand, and many have jumped on it. But this trend started IMO with other generalized influential people outside the political area - how many traditionally cowardly politicians have done it is a sign the movement is coming to a head
EverythingIsFine
Well, is eventually fine
3d ago
I think it's emotionally healthy for people of any gender or political orientation to occasionally demonstrate and discuss an eminently human reaction. It's only an "irritant to mixed spaces" if done repeatedly in my opinion. I wouldn't call it some kind of nuclear bomb to the discussion or playing with online debate-board PTSD or 'something that can't be unsaid' or anything, if I'm understanding the thrust of your comment right.
EverythingIsFine
Well, is eventually fine
4d ago
You asked if Western Europeans are the most attractive. The answer is pretty clearly that there’s not only no data to suggest this, but some major methodological issues on top if you wanted to investigate this, so practically there’s no way to know. Beauty standards are like, pretty famously in the realm of culturally subjective. So it’s functionally an intractable problem. I would thus further opine that it is therefore not worth thinking about.
Now whether you were genuinely promoting the idea, or using a Socratic method to pick apart the assumptions of the OP, that I failed to figure out. I figured it would serve both purposes here, I guess.
I said at the time and look to have been validated, that people have this idea of the USSS as a super competent organization. But at the end of the day they are still an organization, and are thus not immune to the common failure modes of organizations. As I understand the facts that we have, the communication failures (separate radio networks for the main detail and local support), the “good enough” problem (they had someone in the building, just not covering the roof), and “someone else’s problem” (bad or incomplete assignments during the planning phase) are absolutely classic organizational problems that crop up just as easily and pervasively in the USSS as they do in a large for-profit corporation. If anything, there’s less will to shake things up like a CEO might.
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