FlailingAce
No bio...
User ID: 1084
FlailingAce
3mo ago
the most intellectual church
Dude what the heck are you smoking? Or I guess what was the guy smoking who told you that?
Unitarians are self deluded cultists and generally not considered Christians at all. Their 'church' has for the most part been completely taken over by woke politics.
Anyway I won't belabor that point, but can I recommend you try attending an actual church? I personally attend and would recommend a Calvary Chapel, but some of the more traditional ones like Eastern Orthodoxy are also quite intellectual and will have plenty of people willing to engage you in discussion.
FlailingAce
3mo ago
Can I just say I think you're just factually wrong about all of this.
First, I'm not sure if this 'Charlie Kirk was apparently just a shock jockey' shtick is genuine ignorance or some kind of bit, but for instance here's the Vice President of the United States taking over his long-form podcast. I honestly can't understand people who comment 'who is this guy' or 'he doesn't seem important' without doing any basic research. He was probably the most important political operative on the right, supposedly one of maybe three people who had the President's ear, and likely also won the election for Trump by being the most significant organizer of Republican's ground game. But instead you watch a couple of TikToks and conclude he's "just Stephen Crowder but as a smug Christian". Don't you have any curiosity at all?
On the idea that there's no long-form content on Youtube anymore, I have to imagine you're just not looking. That's basically all I watch! In fairness, the main topics I follow are religion, various political channels, and some misc nerdy topics (All videos I've watched in the last week). So you may be correct that in the topics you're specifically interested in there's no long-form content anymore, but I kind of severely doubt it.
FlailingAce
3mo ago
As a business owner I reserve the right to fire someone for something I think makes them unsuitable for that position. It doesn't matter if it didn't occur at work. If I discovered, say, that a cashier at my shop had a second job where they were caught stealing, to me that would obviously be grounds for me to also fire them. It indicates their character.
Likewise, if someone publicly celebrates a political assassination, that to me demonstrates they lack moral character and cannot be trusted.
Maybe poking around on people's social media and reporting then is a little gauche, but once I'm aware that my employee has this moral flaw I'm going to act on that information. Maybe that's 'cancel culture'? I'm sure you could argue that firing someone for racism is the same thing, but I think there's a significant enough difference in severity that I'm not too worried about it. You have to draw a line at some point.
FlailingAce
3mo ago
I suspect most people talking about a return to traditionalism are, as @2rafa has (perhaps uncharitably) opined on before, simply LARPers.
It's not clear what you mean by traditionalism here. Do you mean the bells and whistles of e.g. traditional Christian religion? Tradcaths going to latin mass? Or do you mean eschewing modern ways of life, like the Amish? Because both those kinds of people exist.
More sensible to me would be the idea of traditionalism as a set of values, I can at least imagine you think it's not possible to really believe, say, that society should be paternalistic, because we're so inculcated with Western society's propaganda. But you haven't made this claim explicit, or provided any evidence for it. I would in fact argue the opposite, that paternalistic societies are on the rise - see most of the 'right-leaning' countries e.g. Hungary or Poland, as well as autocratic ones like Russia and China - and that far from LARPing, people including these retvrners are actively seeking and finding different ways of organizing society that are competing with the liberals/progressives.
I also disagree with your idea that we should argue people into traditional values. Most people don't respond to arguments like you apparently did. What they respond to is seeing a better way of living. "In the same way, let your light shine before others, so that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father who is in heaven."
FlailingAce
3mo ago
I'm with you that having kids can lead to responsibility, in the right circumstances (i.e. where the people involved have the right mentality about it). But I also know a young couple where the woman had a baby with the man (his second) in order to lock him down and maybe grow him up, but he has remained a deadbeat and has also convinced her to quit her own career. They now live in her grandmother's basement and don't pay rent. So I would caution about a blanket recommendation to have kids early - it should be applied to those who are already ideologically and mentally prepared, and those kinds of people will likely be okay with or without the kids.
FlailingAce
3mo ago
Our understanding of insurgency is pretty developed at this point, and applying more violence is not the answer.
The problem in Afghanistan was lack of clarity from the very top about America's goals, which is why the military couldn't build a coherent insurgency or counter-insurgency plan. Instead they just applied violence to whoever happened to be looking funny at the US at any given moment. More of that would have been disastrous.
FlailingAce
3mo ago
I didn't say anything of the sort. I said he most likely saw the girl brandishing those weapons and tried to document it. I think this is consistent with both his and her actions in the clip.
FlailingAce
3mo ago
Having finally watched the video, I am so confused at people's takes on this. The guy filming is clearly trying to do one thing - get a video of the preteen open carrying a knife and an axe. She's not 'intimidating him', she's cracking under the pressure and revealing her illegal behavior. And he's not a 'creep' (the most plausible reason people might think that is because he has a foreign accent and doesn't clearly articulate what he's about) but it's absolutely obvious from the video that his concern is documenting the armed children hanging out in the park.
I'm generally opposed to the excessive levels of immigration in western countries, but this video makes me more sympathetic to the immigrants. Poor guy was probably just walking in the park when the psychotic natives started brandishing weapons at him.
I guess I don't have much else substantive to add, except to note that the whole story seemed much more interesting to me until I finally got around to watching the video myself. I wonder how many culture warriors out there also haven't even bothered to watch the video, or already had their minds made up by 2nd and 3rd hand commentaries so that they couldn't take in the primary source objectively.
FlailingAce
3mo ago
It seems to me that you're conflating pricing and insurance.
You can imagine a world where prices factor in the expected cost, but we're not in that world. If I have a complication in a routine procedure, they will charge extra to handle the complication. Then my insurance spreads that extra cost between a pool of policy holders. The pricing for the procedure doesn't spread the cost, and doesn't need to, because that's the purpose of the insurance. Instead, insurance will pay the minimum it can get away with for a specific procedure. They sure as hell aren't paying $2000 for a $1000 cost procedure because sometimes things go wrong - they pay $1000 and then upcharge when things go wrong.
FlailingAce
3mo ago
I mean in the sense that doesn't match the meaning of 'price'. Conceptually a price is a fixed value that you will pay, not a variable. If you come in my store and ask the price of a sandwich, and I tell you $10, and then when you check out you're expected to pay $15, you would rightfully tell me I lied about the price.
FlailingAce
3mo ago
Many don't like this but you can't really function in our system without having insurance
If you were to attempt to function in the system without insurance, how would you go about it? Asking for myself.
When I was younger I went uninsured for a few years, and a few more on a catastrophic plan, and happily didn't have any issues. Now I'm older and married and my wife has a lot of worries about not being insured (I currently have full health care coverage from my job but I'm about to leave that career). Conceptually I think 'health insurance' is a misnomer the way it's typically used, that only high cap catastrophic plans actually constitute insurance, and frankly that I'd much prefer saving and investing my money instead of giving it to an insurance company.
However, anecdotally I've heard it's a real pain to get medical care if you show up and say you don't have insurance, and that you'll just pay for everything yourself. So, do you have any advice on how to do that effectively?
FlailingAce
3mo ago
Major complications of surgery are 1%-10% depending what we are talking about, certainly orders of magnitude more (yes I know I'm missing some things about car insurance for the sake of simplicity)
As long as these are reasonably predictable, you can calculate a price.
I don't think that's true at all. You can calculate an expected value, but 90%+ of patients won't understand that. If you tell them the price of a procedure is $2000 dollars, but the typical/median price is $1000 and the max is a million, how are they supposed to use that information?
FlailingAce
4mo ago
Thank goodness the government is finally diversifying its investment holdings. Do you know that most of our money is in low yield Treasury bonds? It's no wonder USG is nearly bankrupt. As a stakeholder myself I'm a big fan of this move, though I would still prefer a more balanced portfolio.
FlailingAce
4mo ago
Suicidal, no. Willing to sacrifice for a higher good, potentially to the point of giving your own life? That's what every society has tried to inculcate, typically in the military but often in other areas too.
Anyway, the question to ask is - altruistic towards whom? Depending on how you want to define it, 'true altruism' might require equal altruism towards all humans, or even towards all animals/living things/etc. You can always be more even-handed and unbiased in your charity. Or, alternatively, maybe it's more altruistic to help those you hate or who are different from you. Either way you define it, though, the concept seems meaningless to me because you can always be more 'true', so asking whether 'true altruism' exists is just a game of drawing arbitrary lines.
In reality, charity begins at home - and this is psychologically sensible, generally beneficial to societies, corresponds to our conceptions of responsibility and duty, and therefore is what we actually teach people.
FlailingAce
4mo ago
Isn't it the case that as a society we want people to be altruistic, so we teach them to feel good/get a positive reinforcement from what they perceive as good acts? The ethical question of 'purity' is interesting if you're a philosopher but doesn't seem practically useful. Even martyrs hold to their faith because they have a belief in a higher/eternal good that outweighs the temporal loss. Indeed, anyone who trades good for bad is making an error - I don't think anyone does so deliberately.
FlailingAce
4mo ago
I actually really like that theory. It's so obscure as to be pretty clearly false but would be a hoot to advocates for at dinner parties.
FlailingAce
4mo ago
Yeah I've shot the M9 before as well. The Sig is definitely better but it's still not great.
The Sig safety has several problems: it is not particularly easy to hit (especially to put it on fire from safe), its action is in a non-intuitive direction relative to the safeties on most other Army weapons, and it's not actually marked which direction is safe, so guys who don't use it a lot will accidentally have it on safe/fire when they meant the opposite.
You can mock my experience if you like but I sure as hell don't know any direct action guys who use the Sig, most have a personal sidearm they use instead, and some units will have a few random Glocks or other pistols in the arms room that they use on the range to qualify.
FlailingAce
4mo ago
Yes it does, it's one of few handguns that I know of with an on/off safety switch, and it's quite annoying. One of a reasons why military people I know who are issued the M17/M18 don't actually use it, and prefer a Glock.
FlailingAce
4mo ago
Can I ask, what do you think is so bad about prison? If you're a homeless guy who goes to prison, you get a roof over your head, a bed to sleep in, three meals a day, and a certain amount of access to a gym, a library, and healthcare. If you're thinking 'freedom', well, there's negative and positive freedom, and a homeless, mentally ill person isn't positively free because they lack the resources and probably the wherewithall to actually do almost all activities, and are forced to spend much of their time scrounging for the basic necessities of life - in my opinion they may be more free in prison because their basic needs are met.
Can I also ask, on a totally different tack, in what sense is it unjust to send a law-breaker to prison? Why would you be morally 'bad' to do so?
FlailingAce
5mo ago
Congrats! I got interested in the financial independence/retire early (FIRE) movement after I left college (because I really didn't enjoy my job). I'm much less strict about it these days since I'm married and have a new career I love - for instance, we just purchased an unnecessarily large dream house - but I'm still looking to retire in the next ten years or so.
the last several years my investments have appreciated more than my yearly income
tantalizing close
My man you have already arrived. A while ago in fact! Relevant post from my favorite FIRE blogger.
FlailingAce
5mo ago
The solution is to do a modified hokey pokey. You're signaling to your ingroup your resistance while refusing to let the outgroup dictate your actions. One perhaps silly example is that I will still draw a rainbow, despite opposing gender ideology, but will draw it in the classical style using just red, yellow, and blue.
I think this puts me on the side of using 'Fentanyl Floyd' at least directionally. I think I just disagree with that phrase in particular. It seems uncouth and disrespectful. You don't modify the hokey pokey by twerking in the middle of it because you make an even bigger fool of yourself.
FlailingAce
5mo ago
The 'urban poor' is a pretty broad stroke. Plenty of cultures have a solid foundation in frugal cooking (e.g. 'rice and beans'). I lived near a fairly poor urban neighborhood for my first job after college, and the supermercado was bustling.
Also, anecdotally, meat theft can be a big problem. I know a junkie who used to shoplift steaks by the stack. It's relatively high value for resale, and cooking a steak is not that hard vs the payoff in deliciousness.
FlailingAce
5mo ago
This has always been the reason for 'food deserts' - not that grocery stores maliciously avoid urban zones, but that they are forced out by crime. The margins on produce are razor thin and cannot handle a significant burden from shoplifting. This is not a symptom of urban areas in general - there are major cities in the US and around the world with perfectly healthy and reasonably priced groceries, I used to live in one - this is caused by bad policy from soft-hearted politicians who don't take crime seriously. Mamdani is a case in point here, not because he wants government-run grocery stores to fix the food desert problem (which in my opinion isn't a totally crazy idea, I've got no problem in theory with government subsidizing or managing a business even though it will likely suffer from red tape and overhead) - he's a case in point because he's openly soft on crime and yet doesn't see the connection to the other problems in his city.
My goodness even on the Motte Catholics are insufferable. I don't mean that mainly as a personal attack, that's my observation of every Catholic I encounter - an absolute arrogance and a tendency to twist things to support the required dogmas of the Roman church. I don't entirely blame you, since the church requires you to believe these things it's only natural to reason backwards from the dogmas to the evidence, but it's so frustrating to see here. Anyway:
Of the three main Christian branches, in my opinion Roman Catholicism is by far the least convincing, and its apologists by far the most annoying. Still love you guys though! I earnestly hope you will find comfort knowing that Christ's sacrifice has already justified you, and you don't need to do anything to earn his grace.
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