FiveHourMarathon
Wawa Nationalist
And every gimmick hungry yob
Digging gold from rock n roll
Grabs the mic to tell us
he'll die before he's sold
But I believe in this
And it's been tested by research
He who fucks nuns
Will later join the church
User ID: 195
FiveHourMarathon
Wawa Nationalist
5mo ago
Insufficient resolution in your maps. The rural Republican counties that are pointed to as examples of Republicans voting against their economic self interest don't consist of 100% Medicaid users, they consist of a class of Medicaid users and a class of non-Medicaid users.
The latter class votes Republican because they hate the former class and want them thrown off Medicaid. This isn't poor people voting to throw themselves off Medicaid, it's contractors voting to throw addicts off of welfare.
Empathy and charity are easier at a distance. Racial Diversity is correlated with racist attitudes in the general public; this is equally true of economic diversity.
FiveHourMarathon
Wawa Nationalist
5mo ago
Every life has intrinsic value.
Yet, Christianity honors the martyrs who refused to renounce God even in the face of death.
There is a value above life in this view. There are forms of continuing human civilization that would not be worth it.
FiveHourMarathon
Wawa Nationalist
5mo ago
The third is more general throughout the interminable arguments about US immigration, where a common conservative argument against open borders is that allowing anyone in who wants to come in would cause US society to worsen, including, at the limits, just destroying the country altogether. And one common sentiment, though rarely stated explicitly, among progressives who reject this argument, has been something along the lines of, "If open borders would destroy the USA, then so be it; at least we didn't discriminate against foreigners along the way." This happened to explicitly be my own position for a while, before I decided I was selfish enough to want to keep some of the benefits of USA society for myself in the future.
This is just as often reversed on immigration, though.
Lib: We need immigrants for economic growth, to bring in young productive people to support social security programs, to do jobs that are otherwise difficult to fill. Immigration makes America stronger!
Con: What does American economic growth matter if it doesn't benefit Americans? I'd rather see the American economy grow or collapse on the strength of Americans, than sell out my country to foreigners to get stronger.
Purity is typically a conservative basis for morality in Moral Foundations Theory. Refusal to compromise on one's beliefs is the essence of having beliefs, of having principles. Life for the sake of life is the philosophy of bacteria, the life has to mean something, be something.
FiveHourMarathon
Wawa Nationalist
5mo ago
Wherefore do you need a corpse to present publicly at all? You presumably have been telling everyone for years that he suffered from a disfiguring illness which lead to his reclusiveness, he sure as hell wouldn't want an open-casket. Unfortunately in his disfiguring illness he turned to a lot of weird woo-woo spirit healing, and there are no medical records for several years because he refused to see a doctor. We're talking about billionaire local feudal lords here, the death certificate comes from the [Family Name] Building at the local hospital, paying off a mortician is the least of the concerns.
Keep in mind that the only cheated party is the government. All members of the family are presumably on-side, the hospital suffers no harm (in fact, under the new will, they're getting a new surgery wing!), the mortician suffers no harm. Even the local government suffers no harm. Only the Federal Government is concerned, and there's not actually much nexus for them to check if someone is alive.
Bonus Question: A 3 year old corpse of a 40 year old man. This is obvious if you think about the corpse of a young woman from the perspective of a necrophiliac.
FiveHourMarathon
Wawa Nationalist
5mo ago
Something I feel has been under-discussed so far:
Estate planning, and assisted suicide as a tax avoidance tool.
Estate tax rates have been a classic political football for decades, with policy shifting radically between Republicans and Democrats. Republicans want higher exemptions, so that the tax starts at a bigger estate, and lower rates; Democrats want lower exemptions and higher rates. Republicans cry crocodile tears about family farms forced to sell; Democrats whinge about billionaire feudal dynasties. Each administration has made moves towards eliminating, or raising, the estate tax; often unsuccessfully but always attempted. It's reasonable for any wealthy American to be concerned about major changes in the estate tax system, they come around every decade or so, following party politics.
I've often joked that a particularly wealthy family I know would Weekend at Bernie's their patriarch if he died during a bad (Democrat) period for the estate tax, as one could reasonably hold out for another five to eight years and expect a better (Republican) estate tax law to pass. They could drive him around to various places where he could be "seen" in the window of the family Escalade with heavily tinted windows, and just keep it in the family until it was time to "declare" his death publicly and pay the taxes.
But with assisted suicide, new options open up.
It's November 2032. JD Vance has lost in a landslide to AOC, the Republican party having been crippled by a "True MAGA" independent run by Donald Trump Jr who claimed that Vance's administration had betrayed his father's legacy. AOC and her fillibuster-proof Democratic majority plan to increase the estate tax to a punitive 95% on all estates over $50mm. Does a 95 year old multi-billionaire decide to take a one-way vacation to Switzerland to avoid the tax? Do his children pressure him to take the trip? It's Succession supercharged. When death is a taxable event, you choose death at a convenient time for taxes.
But, for that matter, if suicide vacations become routine, then that makes for quite an opportunity for fraud, right? Ok, I don't want to get hit with the AOC taxes when I die, but I'm only 80 I've got years left to live, what to do? Well, Switzerland might be out, but Columbia allows MAID. ((I'll note I'm probably engaging in gross American racist stereotyping here)) I travel to Columbia, pay to obtain a death certificate from a MAID clinic to send back to the USA with the kids, and then I start a new life in Costa Rica, where my kids will send me cash to support my Jimmy Buffet lifestyle.
I lived there, I'm aware. But a very large municipality still isn't a state, and a very large mayor isn't a governor.
And more to the point, the election is weird, you have a corrupt incumbent, a joke goofball Republican, and a weirdo carpetbagger independent all running. Mamdani's primary win, and ultimate general election win, aren't indicators of anything in a place with a normal field of candidates. It's relevant that it's a municipal election in that you rarely see state level elections that odd and shambolic.
FiveHourMarathon
Wawa Nationalist
5mo ago
I don't understand how a totally shambolic municipal election has become so nationally prominent.
FiveHourMarathon
Wawa Nationalist
5mo ago
Ukraine is a little different: I can instead choose to leave the occupied areas and walk to unoccupied Ukraine.
FiveHourMarathon
Wawa Nationalist
5mo ago
Yeah I'm totally lost when people talk about inner cities as anarchic wastelands... They're mostly just poor and dirty at worst.
FiveHourMarathon
Wawa Nationalist
5mo ago
Anyone up for a motte fantasy football league? I know we have some NFL fans, and we all love making bets and predictions.
FiveHourMarathon
Wawa Nationalist
5mo ago
My wackiest theory is that when a drug like semaglutide comes out that essentially everyone wants, the government should be able to nationalize the patent for licensing, and in exchange the drug developer gets a one-time Get Out of Liability Free Card, where if they have a drug go wrong they can just get out of Liability for it.
This would lower drug prices, improve drug availability, and encourage labs that are producing good products to take risks; all things we want to do.
FiveHourMarathon
Wawa Nationalist
5mo ago
I'm more interested in the raw numbers of dead Russians, plus the severe life-ruining casualties on top of that. Maybe it's been a very bad year so far, but I haven't gotten that impression, across the course of the war that's gonna be something like half a million dead so far out of about 30 million Russian men between 14-45?
Ukraine is probably in even worse shape, though it says something if Trump is repeating pro Ukraine fake news these days.
FiveHourMarathon
Wawa Nationalist
5mo ago
Is it inexcusably awful that I think we should be utilizing the "wants to and is approved to die" demographic for experiments like that?
Fuck it, harness them up and toss them off a bridge. Let them drive dangerous car races, or play airsoft with live ammunition. See if it alters their feelings about death.
FiveHourMarathon
Wawa Nationalist
5mo ago
I would say that in my own life, 5% of deaths "could have been timed better" sounds about right. Not necessarily a case of some exotic terminal illness, but cascading old age concerns. There's a clear point of no return, I could see someone pulling the trigger on it.
FiveHourMarathon
Wawa Nationalist
5mo ago
I'm not necessarily pro suicide, but I think the idea that pursuing bureaucratic rather than kinetic means to suicide indicates a lack of seriousness is backwards.
One can jump off a bridge instantly on a whim, and of the people who have done it and survived many said they regretted it instantly.
Where euthanasia has a 100% success rate, and requires serious intent over an extended period of time.
Interesting idea for an RCT: Some portion of euthanasia subjects are head faked, put under anesthesia, then when they wake up you ask them if they regretted their decision. If they still want to die you kill them on the second try.
FiveHourMarathon
Wawa Nationalist
5mo ago
Wait forget everything else: do those casualty numbers in Ukraine have any credibility or is this a map sharpie moment?
FiveHourMarathon
Wawa Nationalist
5mo ago
More broadly, I think that the idea to use guns to keep the government in check was fine in 1800 but today is just laughable. Since world war one, the wartime capabilities of states and what US citizens are allowed to own have greatly diverged. How is your semi AR15 with a ten rounds mag going to fare against a predator drone or a tank? In the very best case, you would be fighting a protracted war against the federal government. If you win, it looks like Mao winning his civil war, if you lose, it looks like Hamas in Gaza.
I really never understand this argument, particularly not the way it is made with smug certainty.
-
Many people did not think this argument was fine in 1776. The patriot militias were very much understood to be out-gunned and under-equipped. Pragmatic loyalists argued in the continental congress that the colonists lacked artillery, a navy, a cavalry, etc. To say nothing of the divergent quality of firearms: many observers noted that the rusty muskets pulled down from over minutemen's fireplaces were no match for the cleaned and oiled Land Pattern Muskets of the redcoats. This argument has been made against every guerilla army, and while guerilla warfare isn't a win-now button, it has been proven effective.
-
Hamas in Gaza did not allow private firearm ownership. Gaza, under Hamas, probably had around 20,000 civilian firearms across about 2,000,000 people, a 1% ratio. The US has an estimated 30 million "modern sporting rifles" (the NRA's preferred designation for things like AR variants) for a population of 330 million. If 10% of Gazas preward population had owned an AR, Israel never would have invaded. Which is the real function: it prevents government tyranny by making it impractical to enforce through violence. Once the shooting starts, the people in the military aren't vidya game pawns that go to the directed square and do what the commander said. They're going to reconsider their options, rapidly.
-
What are you talking about with 10 round magazines? In most states, you can currently purchase any size you like. Just 16 restrict it.
FiveHourMarathon
Wawa Nationalist
5mo ago
You have no idea how happy it makes me that someone got the joke.
FiveHourMarathon
Wawa Nationalist
5mo ago
Probably not. I would probably, though not strongly, feel worse about hearing that a nepalese kid died than that a species of fly in the Amazon died out. Though, at this point, we're talking about very very very very minor degrees of caring to begin with.
On the other hand, I'm clearly going to feel more upset at the news that 1,000 rhinos were poached than at the news that 1,000 Bangladeshis died somehow or other.
I'm not sure what the equation looks like exactly. I could probably be persuaded by an ecologist that some species I don't care about now is actually really interesting/necessary/unique/whatever such that I value it above the dead foreigner.
I'm just rejecting the idea that every single human life is more valuable than every single animal life. I don't think that is the case, either intrinsically or by intuitive feeling or by revealed preferences of people. Even an ethos argument built around the depravity of individuals, I'm not sure I get there: I'd probably think someone who poached bald eagles was a worse person than the median murderer.
Now I'd probably sign on for the idea that every single human being is allowed to value their own or their loved ones lives above every single animal life as a general rule. But globally, I don't value them that way, and no one else does either.
FiveHourMarathon
Wawa Nationalist
5mo ago
Are there school-shooting-nutjobs and CEO-assassinating-nutjobs, or else are there mass-shooting-on-any-target-nutjobs?
I think there are murder-suicide oriented nutjobs, across all cultures and all time periods, and the particular expression their death-urge takes is socially mediated.
A man with the overactive murder-suicide gene born in the Arab world has an obvious path for it: he joins a jihadist group. In medieval Norway, he would go a-viking, while in Russia he would go off and become a Cossack, in the old west he would go off and fight injuns. In virtually every European country for virtually every male before 1945, at some point in his youth he'd have the opportunity to join an army and fight in a war, and if he went off to war with much desire to kill and little desire to return, he probably wouldn't make it back.
The school shooter is one of Tyler Durden's "middle children of history," with no great war or great depression he lashes out at random. He is offered no socially acceptable way to get himself killed and noticed, and picks the worst one possible. I'm a big believer that the best way to prevent school shootings is to give them another way to get themselves killed.
FiveHourMarathon
Wawa Nationalist
5mo ago
Furries remain something that I can't, quite, accept that they exist.
FiveHourMarathon
Wawa Nationalist
5mo ago
He said he stopped liking it in 2016, he stopped using it when he got banned "a few" years back, which I'd normally read as 2-3, giving at minimum double the amount of time of using Reddit as having left Reddit.
Given that it takes five years of residency to be ready to apply to become a US citizen, I'd say leaving for 2 or 3 years isn't enough to shed it. Certainly if one lived in the United States for 20 years, leaving for ten isn't enough to stop being American, you probably never quite stop being American at that point.
I'm curious what the linguistic or philosophical category is for a statement where I would say that someone can't claim something as a positive status, but can't argue against it as a negative status. Like if a teen boy has only received a handjob, one is probably precluded from claiming to be a virgin in the positive sense of being chaste, but probably can't brag to his buddies about having lost his virginity. Or a corporate lawyer who does some pro-bono work for woke causes; he can't claim the positive status of being in public interest because he's a corporate sellout, but neither can he avoid the negative accusation of working for the woke blob.
So the question is, is being a redditor (or an American) more like building a bridge, or fucking a goat?
FiveHourMarathon
Wawa Nationalist
5mo ago
Huh, interesting. I mostly hear weebs made fun of by Asian girls who want to complain about fetishes.
FiveHourMarathon
Wawa Nationalist
5mo ago
...What were the furry wars?
I'm not addressing every single person who holds a position. People think things for many reasons!
Surely you can recognize that there exist some anti-immigration individuals who would not care if the GDP went up if it meant the Great Replacement occurred.
More options
Context Copy link