JarJarJedi
Streamlined derailments and counteridea reeducation
User ID: 1118
JarJarJedi
9mo ago
Don't worry, I know the story of the Spanish flu. Still, it was named so because people thought it came from Spain, even though later it was found out not to be true. So, again the tradition was supported.
JarJarJedi
9mo ago
WTF is that? who came up with that?
Ah, diseases used to be named by places where they are first discovered (Ebola, Marburg, Spanish flu, West Nile virus, Zika, MERS, Lyme, etc.) But when the deplorables started using "Wuhan flu", the left declared it racist because naming anything bad after anything non-Western is clearly white suprematism, so they renamed it to COVID (which is an awful name since it means "coronavirus disease" and there are tons of coronaviruses which can cause all sorts of diseases, but anything not to be racist). They also renamed "monkeypox" to m-pox because mentioning monkeys is somehow racist too (don't ask, I have no idea).
BTW can confirm denial of medical services during the pandemic panic. Fortunately, in my wife's case we were able to find a less insane provider and also the services we needed didn't require a lot of personal attention, most of it could be managed by email, so it ended up well, but the state of utter panic and disarray which was everywhere among people who were supposed to know better and serve as guardians for the masses (I know, way too naive) is something I will never forget.
JarJarJedi
9mo ago
these borders were made up by the Soviets and didn’t matter
As opposed to other borders that were directly proclaimed by God in a holy revelation? Of course all borders are made up by humans who were in charge of making borders at that time, there's literally no other option. Concluding from that that they don't matter is just saying "I am the sole authority on declaring borders because I am the only person whose opinion matters".
Most charitably, people seem to infer this based on his starting a war and speaking of history
You're saying it as if deriving the intentions of the person from his convictions and his actions is somehow a dirty trick, while believing his words - a words of known and repeated liar - is the only way to know the truth. Of course the real situation is the opposite - it is very easy to lie when speaking directly about one's intentions. However, it's very hard to hide your true intentions consistently through all the pattern of your actions, your references, your interests, your convictions and your propaganda - even if you could do the job convincingly, that would just have the effect of hindering your true efforts, because you henchmen and your subjects would also think the opposite of your true intentions if you're so good. But usually the actual intention shines through well enough, and in Putin's case it definitely does. While literally recreating precisely the borders of the Russian Empire (which btw were never stable anyway) is not the goal, certainly recovering it's former glory is, and any territory that has been owned by it is considered as valid target (even if some currently inaccessible).
Less charitably it’s a deliberate distortion to make the bad man appear even more bad.
Or, on your side, to make the bad man less bad out of contrarianism. I understand it's tempting to think if the state propaganda says Putin is bad then it probably isn't that bad. The tragic fact is he's worse.
JarJarJedi
9mo ago
Yeah the kraut (sauerkraut) is seriously undervalued in America. It's super tasty if done right, goes with almost any savory food, can be self-made easily and cheaply (which is good because if you can even find it in store it's usually subpar), keeps very well and is a pretty healthy food.
JarJarJedi
9mo ago
Many religions already have done this. I'm not sure what could move me to think I could be any better at this than God.
JarJarJedi
9mo ago
Well, the common wisdom in the Dem party has been that Biden is the albatross around their neck, and they'd surely lose the election if he keeps running. That's why they booted him after all. So, after that happened, there was a certain bump of excitement, as befits the removal of albatross from one's neck. However, the problem is while Kamala is the "logical" successor by the internal logic of partisan mechanics, she still is a completely horrible candidate, with negative charisma, no original ideas (and her un-original ideas make AOC seem conservative) and an annoying habit of launching into an irritating cackle when she doesn't know what to say, which is very often. Objectively, she is a bad candidate and her performance in the past elections proved that. However, now that she has been anointed, the party machine has no choice but to line up behind her and power through, to whatever end there would be. And make no mistake, the Dems have a powerful machine which should not be underestimated. We know they can elect a candidate which has been formerly charismatic but now running on mere fumes of the old brainpower. Can they elect a candidate which is as anti-charismatic as Kamala? I don't know, but it's not about excitement, it's about power and execution of this power. This power will be applied in multiple routes, regardless of Kamala's personality which will be only sparsely shown. E.g. the Russian collusion is back, did you hear? Probably some sexual accusation of Vance will pop up too (too late for Trump I assume). It may swing some votes, in general I think very little of what's going to happen for the next two months would be about her and a lot would be about power.
JarJarJedi
9mo ago
Here's a fresh example of using funding power to coerce a red state to change their policy: https://townhall.com/tipsheet/saraharnold/2024/09/04/scotus-blocks-oklahoma-federal-family-planning-funds-amid-abortion-fight-n2644339
JarJarJedi
9mo ago
Why didn't Biden use this power against Abbott when Texas defied the federal government on the border?
First of all, Texas didn't really do anything substantial. The border is still largely non-existent and the migrants are still pouring in. Second, SCOTUS and Republican house are still there, for now. Third, Texas is a big state which may be harder to make to bend the knee. Smaller red states could be much easier. Texas would probably be the last to go, and likely will fall from the inside rather than the outside.
they do not actually seem to relish a fight that costs them casualties
Which fight would that be? They don't need to make army to invade Texas. They just need to restructure subsidies and pork spending and Republicans that are too feisty suddenly find themselves unelectable because they can no longer bring home the bacon. No casualties necessary.
Rittenhouse ended the Kenosha riots single-handedly, after all.
He didn't. 1000+ National Guard deployment did.
I doubt they will relish going door-to-door in Texas or Arkansas, and I doubt they can make the locals do it for them.
How many locals refused the lockdowns and the mask mandates? That was a trial run. Most complied. Seriously, I've seen people wearing masks on the street as late as 2023, and this is a deep red area. They will comply the next time too.
And btw, if anybody on the right gets some ideas about "shifting the probabilities toward collapse of centralized authority" - that would be the left's wettest dream of all. Now they need to wait for China to make a suitable virus or to invent some bullshit threats involving FBI entrapping a bunch of idiots, but if they get a real, genuine thing... They will use it to scare the population so shitless that they will agree to literally anything just for the nightmare to end. They are good at it, judging by the results. And terrified people are very easy to herd.
JarJarJedi
9mo ago
Could be. So they are much closer to early commie sci-fi - especially Soviet - which also often was very bravura and optimistic. Woke though naturally would tend to be much darker and depressing.
JarJarJedi
9mo ago
Right now there are mainly three venues, as I see, that Republicans can resist. First: SCOTUS, which is the most powerful, even if the slowest and least sure way, and its power means it's going to be destroyed first.
Second: electing Republicans that are capable of blocking Dems in Congress, in numbers that enable that. With filibuster pretty much gone, and Republicans still unable to figure out how to counter things like mail-in voting and ballot harvesting, and completely incapable of handling lawyer superpredators like Elias, this option's time seems to be running out quickly. Oh yes, and if Big Tech keeps its informational war against the Right - and I see no reason why they wouldn't - it means reaching the masses necessary to make cheating impossible, and delivering message consistent enough to entice them, is extremely hard. Not many normies read Gab and TruthSocial (and tbh things happening there aren't always good for convincing normies, either). Musk helps but it won't be enough - and with enough force deployed, Musk will fall too. If 2024 elections would resemble 2020 in any way, this option is out.
Third: red states conducting independent policies and blocking federal Dems. This is also a weak option and becomes weaker once SCOTUS falls, because this means state rights are gone, Constitution is a living document, and Feds can do anything they want. Plus, many states have been long dependent on massive federal funding grants, and threatening to pull those would politically kill any local Republican that becomes too uppity. So yes, these things are reinforcing each other, each of them makes resisting others harder. Please tell me which venues of resistance I am missing.
The problem with this is that a considerable portion of their opposition will not give up, that escalation can and will invalidate all advantages of the snowball,
What kind of escalation you are talking about? Strolling through Capitol again and getting 8 years in jail for that? I am not sure it's as scary for Dems as some may think.
JarJarJedi
9mo ago
All very liberal and woke, no?
Not really. Where's the eternal oppressor class, which must be forever blamed for every wrong? Where's selecting a specific group and declaring it forever tainted with past sins? Where's the identarian strife and the oppression hierarchy? Where's the guilt for past injustices, overwhelmingly driving any future decisions? Where's the affirmative action, land acknowledgements, deconstruction and destruction of every past achievement due to them all being oppressive, removal of monuments, rewriting of films and books? Where's the only cure for past discrimination being future discrimination? Where are the species quotas and quarterly reports about racial and species-al makeup of the command structure, the redshirt casualties and the promotion schedule from every captain? I mean, no starship even has a DEI officer! That's not even close to woke.
JarJarJedi
9mo ago
For all their macho posturing, the reality is that today's right-wing is soft, easily bullied, and unstrategic.
Hear, hear. The main question for me in the American politics for the last decade or so was not why Dems do what they do - they are a leftist party moving increasingly to the left, and they do exactly what is expected of them. It's how inept, weak, inconsequential and dumb most Republicans are. They fall in every trap the Left puts behind them, and when there's none, they manufacture their own and fall into those too. They are absolutely incapable of using any of the left's blunders, but are vicious to their own. Despite the common "Republicans pounce", they are really shitty at pouncing, outside couple of internet places. Their treatment on Jan 6 people, for example, is horrendously shameful - pretty much nobody (including, from what I understand, Trump himself) did anything to protect them. While the Left is absolutely openly and shamelessly shields violent Antifa from justice, the establishment Right is largely still afraid to even mumble something in the general direction of Jan 6 not being worse than 9/11. Not that it helps them in any way of course. And there are many other examples. And people notice, you know. The Left knows if they fight for The Party, The Party will take care of them. The Right knows if they do anything even slightly controversial for their cause, or even slightly questionable in the eyes of the New York Times, the establishment Right will make sure to proclaim on every corner that they want nothing to do with those violent extremists, never knew any of them and completely fine with throwing all the books available at them. And also whatever cause it was, they'll betray it anyway at the next budget vote. So who would want to do anything even minimally risky for such people anyway?
JarJarJedi
9mo ago
Next decade, sure, there is enough structure left yet. It'd be a gradual process anyway. If the Dems win, the Left will devour SCOTUS first. That'll take time. Then they'll do immigration amnesty. That'll take time too. Next elections will be likely full mail-in with pretty much zero security, so guess who suddenly gets permanent majority. Then there will be Green New Deal, whatever it will be then, and killing the First Amendment, at least online. Electoral college probably will be done somewhere on the way too. Then the Second Amendment - it's not as big impediment as many think, but it must be done, and it'll take time to do it properly. Then there are no limits, anything goes. May take way longer that a decade overall. If Republicans somehow manage to pull an upset anywhere on the way (though I am not sure how it'd be possible after the amnesty) it may slow it down further. But in two decades, I'm not sure it'll be the same republic - or any republic at all.
JarJarJedi
9mo ago
But you still are free to take other drugs, including other opiates? For an alcoholic, there's no easy substitute I presume.
Not that I noticed any. Of course, I have my own bubble so I can only answer within what I tried to search for. Also, you can tune the rankings - e.g. say this site is more trustworthy and this is less, so it would rank according to your preferences. E.g. if you don't want to see a lot of reddit, you could downrank it, or vice versa. But I haven't noticed any helpfulness of the sort you mention there.
They have a free trial plan so I definitely would suggest to try it out before committing with payment. I upgraded to paid when I tried it out and saw that when trial was over I was upset I can't use it anymore.
JarJarJedi
9mo ago
So, summarily I get this:
1. Hoecke doesn't apologize for the Nazis enough (or maybe at all?)
2. Hoecke mentions 'thousand years of glorious history' of Germany
3. He said "Alles fuer Deutschland" which turns out has been used by SA
4. Is tolerating swastika-tattooed mobs
5. Some (who?) in some conference called for deporting German citizens if they had the wrong ethnicity
Did I forget anything important?
I don't have much of a stake in German politics, but it would be important for me to understand whether or not AfD are Nazis or Nazis-in-building. I have a very low tolerance for Nazis, but also American politics taught me that about 99% of times when somebody calls somebody else a Nazi it's a lie. There's still 1% where it's true, about the Nazis which do exist, and some of them even wear swastikas (many others wear other outfits and signage) - but one has to be careful there.
So far, from the list 3 is a little worrying - did he know and used it on purpose, or is it like saying Trump is a Nazi because "Make America Great again" was once used 80+ years ago by some Nazi sympathizers? Hard to make a conclusion here. Is there a pattern of using such slogans and symbols, or is it one time thing? By itself, the slogan does not sound that heinous, but of course if he was attracted to it as a way to say "sieg hail" without saying "sieg hail" it'd be a problem.
4 is worrying if he's really leaning on these mobs and welcoming them and integrating them into his infrastructure on the ground. But is not worrying is it's just some jerks that happen to agree with him on something - I'm sure plenty of jerks agree with me on some things, not all jerks are obligated to be wrong about everything all the time. How important are those mobs for him?
5 would be very bad if it were his party position but the vagueness of the claim is kind of suspicious. Who said that? What exactly did they say? How important this person is in defining AfD policy? Do other AfD policymakers confirm this? Did they endorse or promote such actions? "Somebody maybe said something on a conference" is a great start of a cancel campaign, but poor evidence if you want to figure out what's actually going on. Is there more to it?
1 and 2 don't particularly bother me. Politicians can performatively apologize for anything, and 100% of those apologies mean absolutely nothing - they can apologize for a thing today and do the same thing tomorrow. And Germany does have a long and glorious history - at least no less glorious than any other place, and no less bloody and disgusting at the same time too. Nothing wrong in remembering that, it's what conclusions you make out if it and how it moves you to act is important. The moniker "far right" imply that it moves AfD to act like a Nazis or at least as far towards the Nazis as political limitations will allow. But is this true? So far I haven't seen a proper substantiation of that.
P.S. Oh, and the last point. Plenty of people said Putin would start a war. In fact, Russia has been conducting several wars pretty much since it's establishment in early 1990s - they occupied parts of Georgia, part of Moldova, intervened in Central Asian states and Armenia-Azerbaijan conflict, there was pretty much no period where Russia was peaceful and isolationist, and Putin with his "tough guy" image never indicated he's going to be any different. And they actively meddled in Ukraine for all that time, too. Full-scale intervention was by no means an obvious outcome, but a lot of people raised it as a possibility - and get laughed at by a lot of other people. Many of the latter still among the decision makers in Europe and Germany, so not sure if their predictive capacities can be used to indicate anything.
JarJarJedi
9mo ago
What's the deal with RFK Jr.? I haven't paid too much attention to him, and considered him kinda minor player whose appeal probably entirely lies in his last name, and even then it's not that much of it. But I read a lot of commentary that treat his endorsement of Trump as some kind of a big deal. Is it actually a big deal? Why? What is his significance?
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Cops know pretty much everything about the drug trade, but don't shut it down because farming is easier than hunting
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Most vegetables in the US taste horrible because fitting tasty veggies into the industrial process is too expensive and people wouldn't buy them
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Everybody in education gave up on educating anybody decades ago (I mean if you want to learn, or you parents want you to, they won't stop you, but if you don't, they are 100% fine with it and really have no preference either way) and schools are basically warehouses to keep kids relatively unharmed while parents are at work and make them socialized enough they won't resort to cannibalism and serial killing if left unsupervised once graduating.
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A lot of people in tech are getting tons of money for furiously doing nothing important or necessary because big tech can afford it, and one of the reasons Musk is hated is because his actions threaten to reveal that fact. The correlation between income and quality of work pretty much doesn't exist.
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About 99% of stock analytics explaining daily stock movements by certain events are either vacuously trivial ("stock drops on bad news") or complete bullshit, any nontrivial movements are truly random and nobody can consistently predict it or meaningfully explain it.
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Gell-Mann amnesia is the sole reason why "journalist" and "unfunny clown" aren't largely synonymous.
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Nobody knows how to do hiring properly. All the interview techniques and trainings are groping in the dark and hoping it'll work out (which it usually does because the ultimate interests are aligned) but it pretty much doesn't matter what happens outside of the extremes (no filtering at all and excessive filtering which just filters out people who aren't desperate enough). Most value hiring agencies and consultants provide is CYA and allowing to blame somebody else if things go wrong.
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The entire field of nutrition and dietology is fake. Outside of treating some well-defined deficiency or intolerance diseases (like, if you allergic to X, avoid foods containing X) they can give no useful advice to an average person that would have higher than random chance of succeeding. Once medications like semaglutide become common, the whole field would occupy the niche between tarot reading and feng-shui furniture arrangement.
JarJarJedi
9mo ago
Yet even if we assume that Slavs are uniquely, among whites, good at basketball:
IIRC USSR had good basketball teams, many great player were from Baltics. Example: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arvydas_Sabonis
I don't think basketball correlates with race in any meaningful way, it's more a social phenomenon in the US. Without racism, in the US you'd still expect more black top players than white because sports as venue for prosperity for black players is culturally supported now and also because other venues are less accessible, but you certainly don't expect homogeneity like there is now. And of course among 300+ million people there would be great white basketball players. Just right now they probably would rather do something else then get into the whole racial issue.
JarJarJedi
9mo ago
I assume there is no direct link (or at least perceived direct link) between writing quality and game revenue. Thus, no effort is made to seek out good writers and filter out bad writers, and even if they accidentally get somebody that could do good writing, they would not be doing their best work because why bother if it doesn't matter anyway? And they probably take the cheapest ones and overwork them severely, because "I saved 20% of the budget" looks good in a promotion package.
JarJarJedi
9mo ago
I am reading a lot of reporting now about "fentanyl vaccine". I am not sure what's going on there, can anybody explain it to me? Specific questions:
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I understand that vaccines work by training the immune system to recognize certain proteins associated with pathogens and have other immune cells to bind to them and destroy them (not quite sure how but maybe not important). But fentanyl is a relatively basic compound, wouldn't training immune system to grab on something this simple also have a danger for it to react on many other simple compounds and disrupt the normal function of the body chemistry? What happens to fentanyl once the immune system recognizes it - is it broken into basic hydrocarbons? Somehow captured and expelled? How does that work exactly?
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I assume it is supposed to somehow fight fentanyl addiction. However, assuming it's effective all it would do is make the addict not to be able to get high from fentanyl. They however still will stay addicted, both physiologically and physiologically, not? Wouldn't they immediately seek to get high on some other drug, of which there are dozens? Wouldn't they still suffer withdrawal since their body still craves fentanyl but now is not getting any effect from it - wouldn't that make them take higher and higher dose? Also, would any drug addict voluntarily undergo treatment that would leave them as addicted as before but without any ability to get a fix? How is it supposed to work to solve the problem?
JarJarJedi
9mo ago
Vertical tabs are nice, btw, recommend to try it out. Takes a bit of time to adjust but surprisingly more convenient for a tab hoarder as myself.
Brave + Kagi
There's no point in going on the internet now without an ad block - that's like going naked for a run over a landfill full of medical waste. Thus Brave + Privacy Badger.
Google as the search engine has been going down in quality lately. I've used duckduckgo and brave search, but Kagi seems to be cleaner and results for me are better, and I like the search engine when I'm the customer, not the raw material to be processed and sold.
JarJarJedi
9mo ago
is that Israel passed back-channel threats to retaliate with tactical nuclear strikes
That sounds like conspiratorial BS. Israel does not need nukes to kick Iran in the nuts (they have demonstrated excellent far strike capabilities before) and nuke usage would annihilate pretty much any relationships they had with EU and dems in the US. That would be a massive stupid and useless move, a well aimed rocket strike against an oil refinery or a port would hurt much more and cause much less civilian casualties. Also, Iran has massive number of proxies capable of striking Israel (such as Hezbollah, for example) - so you assume they told Iran they'd nuke Lebanon too? And Gaza (now that's an idea...jk) This doesn't sound even remotely plausible. I don't believe any such thing ever happened.
The children angle is always, always, always BS. Any child old enough to have interest in b00bz and unfiltered access to the internet will find it. Especially in a Western country where internet access is everywhere. Ones with filtered access will likely find it too (they have friends, etc.) Shit I grew up before internet and I had access to porn as a teen too (pretty shitty quality, but still). Nobody will be hurt by it. Parents who are more honest just say they support this shit because they are lazy and want the government to do it so they won't have to educate their children and deal with it (yes, I have had multiple real people tell me that). But again, that's not why it's being done from the top. It's to establish a foothold for censoring any information on the internet. If we already have a setup for censoring porn, why not use it for censoring "vaccine misinformation" or "election misinformation" or "untrustworthy sites spreading foreign propaganda that threatens our democracy"? It's always has been, is and will be about control over information. Children is just a convenient excuse to get the foot in the door.
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