FruitfulLemonyLemons
No bio...
User ID: 370
FruitfulLemonyLemons
1yr ago
Ok I swear I don't just get up every morning and ask, "How can I be schizo today?"
But in one day I saw the following two things:
https://twitter.com/libsoftiktok/status/1731747916568727610
Among the masses of migrants flowing across the southern border each day, a whole line of Chinese nationals, military aged men, automatically standing at "parade rest" as one reply pointed out.
And this:
https://twitter.com/EndWokeness/status/1731808064108372245
Senator Dick Durbin making a speech in favor of allowing illegal immigrants into the military.
My schizo sense is tingling and saying that Nefarious Forces are Intentionally using the Power of Money to plan Bad Things for America.
Or, since this space has norms in favor of speaking plainly and against Darkly Hinting, let me put it more directly:
Is China bribing American politicians to allow Chinese soldiers to become American soldiers to conquer the USA via military coup?
FruitfulLemonyLemons
1yr ago
What do you guys think are the chances this becomes WW3? ngl I'm starting to get a little worried
The alt-right, with its emphasis on race and replacement, is fringe and represents a small fraction of Republicans.
The anti-Trump "moderate" Republicans poll poorly in primaries, and Trump's approval rating remains sky high among Republicans.
What do the above two assertions say?
They say two things.
-
Trump is not alt-right, never was.
-
There is a massive swath of Trump-loving voters who are off the radar of the media by being neither fashy-racist nor anti-Trump "moderates".
[Jerry Seinfeld voice] Who are these people?
I'll tell you who they are. They are the Rush Limbaugh crowd. Or wherever they are now. I grew up with them, they are my people. I listened to Rush in his final year, and listened to his callers, and the vibe of his following (which was massive) was the same as I remember it. On median: They are hardcore Trump supporters. Yet they find the emphasis on race of both the left and the fringe right distasteful. In fact they itch for national unity and an end to civil strife and they saw in Trump the best hope for unity. The whole idea of Trump being divisive they saw as media propaganda, e.g. to them Trump's stance against illegal immigration is in fact about illegal immigration and not secretly about "brown people". In their eyes Trump had the back of anybody with a Social Security card. They think Hitler was, in fact, evil af and love to relate their parents' or grandparents' stories about kicking his ass.
They have an essentially Reaganite attitude toward American politics. They see taxation as fundamentally a seizure of the productive elements of society and while they see it necessary they think it should always be done with great solemnity and respect for the taxed, whose sweat fuels all government projects. They saw Trump as the obvious candidate for anybody into Reaganite politics and are beyond infuriated that the left's propaganda painted them as Hitlerian for wanting the obvious best candidate for policy positions that had nothing to do with race.
Etc etc.
I don't know where this crowd is at now. But if anybody deserves to be called "silent majority" (if only among Republicans) it's them. Not that they were silent on Rush's show, "ignored" may be a better term for them, ignored by media and its focus on the battle between crazy fascist racists and the nice wholesome Cheney family.
I really think there's a massive, massive amount of these people and yet I don't hear these particular opinions being expressed basically anywhere.
FruitfulLemonyLemons
11mo ago
Not to sound like a silly fence sitter but to me this is obviously one of those "it takes both types" things.
Obviously language evolves or we'd all be speaking Proto-Indo-European or whatever came before that.
Obviously people need to be taught the right and wrong way to use the present language or it would be impossible to communicate.
Some people are inclined to push the boundaries of meaning and those people will never give a fuck when you tell them they used a word wrong.
Other people are inclined to feel indignant about every improper usage and those people will be teachers creating smart, sharp, well-spoken citizens.
The language will drift regardless.
- Excitatory and inhibitory neurons
- Liberals and conservatives
- The thrust from the bowstring and the drag from the fletching
- Descriptivists and prescriptivists
idk it all seems necessary
FruitfulLemonyLemons
10mo ago
If it's any consolation, I'm sure right-leaning students handle this the way we always have: go through the motions, then make fun of it all behind their backs when we're hanging out on our own time.
But it is worrying. What separated us from the Soviets during the Cold War was you didn't have to be an activist to do things like medicine.
FruitfulLemonyLemons
11mo ago
LoTT has been going absolutely scorched earth, and in the heat of the moment it pleased me in the spirit of "the left is getting a taste of their cancel culture medicine". Then had a moment of shame that I've been cheering collective punishment: I have zero evidence that any given person who locker-room-talks "too bad he missed" has had any involvement whatsoever in destroying people's lives over the past 8 years.
So it's back to being liberal about speech. Back to Voltaire/Hall for me.
FruitfulLemonyLemons
7mo ago
The incoming administration has promised to punt the issue of abortion to the States and I hope they go one step further and enshrine this punt with a Constitutional amendment that would keep the federal government out of the business altogether, including encouraging or discouraging States or individuals via funding, services, etc. And probably also prohibiting States from punishing abortion tourists in any way.
There are so many important issues of geopolitics and energy and trade and I'm so fucking tired of this issue being at the top of mind every single national election (for literally my entire life and I'm over 40!!!), and half the electorate being one-issue voters about it so you can't even have a real conversation with them about anything else.
It might also help heal relations between the sexes but I won't bet on that, let's not get too greedy now.
FruitfulLemonyLemons
4mo ago
Is it worth it to buy health insurance in the USA if you make a decent middle class income and have decent savings but don't have insurance through your employer?
It's so expensive and I've seen contrarian takes to the effect that you can get a better deal on basically everything by not being insured and in the event of something truly catastrophic you're probably going to be declaring bankruptcy either way.
But that's just Internet anons so I wanna hear from some other Internet anons to get a more balanced opinion.
FruitfulLemonyLemons
2yr ago
Weird question. When I was in 4th grade, in the early 90s, we did a multi-day segment on AIDS, where they just went and scared the shit out of us.
So in my 20s any time I did something remotely risky, I'd freak out and go to the doctor. And they'd always ask if I was gay. And when I said no they seemed like they stopped taking seriously the possibility that I contracted it.
And looking back on it it finally just hit me. Was the whole program I went through in 4th grade a massive psyop aimed to stop gays from being stigmatized?
If so I feel honestly betrayed. It feels extremely wrong to use children in that way, even if the end seems like a good one.
FruitfulLemonyLemons
6mo ago
Should I be worried about bird flu?
FruitfulLemonyLemons
6mo ago
I just wanna know the chances of another Covid Era
FruitfulLemonyLemons
5mo ago
Like 10 years ago I used to frequently spend hours in a Starbucks, reading books or writing and getting wildly overcaffeinated.
I stopped in part because they seemed to be deliberately enshittifying the experience by replacing comfortable furniture with bare wood, and kinda making the overall vibe less inviting. Just felt like they were discouraging spending time there.
Reading this, I'm beginning to suspect why. My theory is instead of making a ballsy policy like they're doing here, they decided to just sort of passive-aggressively make the place less inviting in hopes the riffraff would stay out, of their own accord. Of course, that did not happen, but the good people stopped coming, so now it's all riffraff and no good people and the whole vibe of Starbucks is way off from what it used to be.
Somebody tell Brian Niccol to bring back the comfy chairs, maybe we can turn things back around.
FruitfulLemonyLemons
1yr ago
In a weird way this really is about communism vs capitalism, radical vs liberal, left vs center.
My understanding is the recent ancestors of the present Israelis bought the land from willing sellers fair and square, whose tenants were evicted when the new buyers wanted to move in. From a liberal standpoint, we see one new consensual transaction being conducted and one formerly consensual transaction being canceled when no longer consensual. Completely legit and just.
That this happened to result in a large enough number of people in a short enough time getting evicted and not knowing what to do with themselves and becoming ghettoized in shantytowns (prior to the initial civil wars in that region), is exactly the sort of thing that leftists say is wrong with liberalism.
The fundamental leftist argument is that purely voluntary transactions can force some people into conditions sufficiently intolerable that it constitutes a real injustice, even if all contracts are upheld and everything is consensual.
So you have on one hand: "we purchased the land in Mandatory Palestine fair and square, we toiled and saved and spent hard earned money on it, and moved in, and now people want to kill us"
And on the other hand: "100 years ago we were spread out over this whole land, we had a system going, we had our own society. Now we are impoverished, crammed into this little ghetto while you rub your possession of our land in our face."
In the first case: voluntary, uncoerced transactions between consenting parties, aka liberalism
In the second case: those purely voluntary transactions result in injustice, aka leftism
That's why the left is pro-Palestinian. Pointing out how Muslims are anti-LGBTQ or whatever falls on deaf ears because it's not really about that with them.
Being in charge of a health insurance company is like being a world leader: you are going to be making decisions that result in some people living and other people dying. There's no way around it. Your whole job is allocating scarce healthcare resources.
The scarcity is the real problem. But we'd rather murder a scapegoat, in cold blood, than face reality.
And scarcity is not going away. Not when it's possible to pour a near-infinite amount of money into eking out another year or two at end of life. Stop and think about what that means. I honestly question whether health is "insurable" even in principle.
Healthcare in America has problems but we cannot even begin as a society to discuss those problems with anything resembling sanity until we as a society learn to memento mori.
So if you're gonna murder a guy you might wanna have a better reason than some people get their claims denied.
FruitfulLemonyLemons
1yr ago
Ground invasion -> Hezbollah -> USA -> Iran -> more shit idk until it's Armageddon
I admit not being exactly rational here (part of what I meant by "worried") that's why I'm asking this space
FruitfulLemonyLemons
29d ago
Riots during Trump admins have been politically genius. If the admin Does What It Takes to restore order, he confirms the image the left has painted of him of being a dictator. If he just lets them run their course (which he has done every time thus far) his presidency looks chaotic and people yearn for normalcy.
Puts him in a double bind.
(If you ask me, if you're in a double bind anyway you should do the right thing.)
FruitfulLemonyLemons
1yr ago
Suppose you are a 40 year old software engineer making 120k/year, and you somehow magically get banned for life from practicing the profession. You have decent savings to live off of for a bit and to supplement a smaller income for a while. What would you do? If you're so inclined, be specific and like narrate out a life plan.
FruitfulLemonyLemons
2yr ago
A couple guys on Twitter have entered into a million dollar bet on whether the dollar will hyperinflate within 90 days.
FruitfulLemonyLemons
2yr ago
Trumpists of The Motte, what do you think of Harmeet Dhillon and her challenge for the RNC chair?
I find it strange that this isn't talked about much in Trump circles. I don't know much about Dhillon but she defends Trump and worked on Kari Lake's election challenge, so it sounds like she's on the team. Trumpists complain all the time about the uselessness of the Republican party, seems like winning the top spot would be massive. Long-term, maybe even better than getting Trump in office or Lake in office. Transforming the two party system so that one of the parties is an America First party.
But I don't know much about her beyond this so maybe Trump circles are right to not be talking about or seeming much to care about this, for reasons I don't understand.
What do you think?
FruitfulLemonyLemons
5mo ago
What's a piece of media made recently that you genuinely, uncontrollably laughed at?
Feel like I've been in a comedy desert for years and wondering if I'm just not looking in the right places.
FruitfulLemonyLemons
2yr ago
If chicken is pink does that always mean it's dangerously undercooked? That's what I was taught as a kid, wondering if that was a hypersafetyism
FruitfulLemonyLemons
11mo ago
I wonder if DEI is sometimes a scapegoat for a general slackening of standards and lessening of giving a F.
But then you have to ask what caused that slackening.
You could bring DEI back into the conversation and say that the need to deny that there is anything wrong with preferring "DEI hires" requires everyone to lower their standards so as not to make it too obvious what's going on.
This feels like there might be something to it but I could caution against taking up such a narrative too quickly. There are other options, such as mass affluence leading to a general slackening.
It's worth asking oneself, "How have I been part of the problem?" Did I prefer professors who "curved" my grades? Etc.
DEI is pernicious but it need not be the explanation for all observed incompetence.
FruitfulLemonyLemons
2yr ago
Is there a straightforward path for a humble 40yo frontend web dev to learn machine learning and gain a massive career upgrade? Like can I just brush up on my linear algebra, learn some machine learning concepts, and get hired somewhere? Or is it gonna be a bit harder than that?
FruitfulLemonyLemons
2yr ago
Yea the pretense of the incitement principle is what offends me here, he should lean into arbitrary caprice and just say "Okay fine, no direct incitements to violence OR posting swastikas."
Suppose communism is bad (if you think it's good this isn't addressed to you but sure feel free to chime in). How do you teach normies this?
I mean the kind of normie who lives in a world where powers far beyond them do incomprehensible things like set the prices of stuff in the store, so that some of the stuff they really want is too expensive for them, but look, the store is full of that stuff, so somebody has all this stuff but they're not letting them have it except for way too high a price, those greedy assholes.
And then you try to explain to them how markets work and how prices come to be and it all just comes across to them as some weird bootlicking apologism because they're simply not on that level.
Is there a more "down to earth" approach that is needed? Normies who have deeply internalized rules of decency and ideas of "thou shalt not steal" (often normies with religious backgrounds) seem to naturally be anti-communist.
Now I'm sure some of y'all here (you know who you are) will say these people basically just need to be oppressed because if they have their way civilization is destroyed and everything is shitty for everybody, but if you oppress them then they complain but otherwise you have a civilization that hums along. But I hate this, I feel like there has to be a way to make society work that doesn't require telling a huge segment of the population "stfu and get in line or we're putting you in a cage". And I mean obviously violent (as needed) enforcement of civilized norms is necessary, but I notice there are a lot more people who are sympathetic to communist ideas than are actual active criminals. My point is more about these people, not the active criminals (who I support putting in cages)
Is there really no way to get through to people other than to just tell them shut up and take it because we're trying to run a civilization here
More options
Context Copy link