JarJarJedi
Streamlined derailments and counteridea reeducation
User ID: 1118
JarJarJedi
11d ago
You just knew the postman would come, rain or shine, and deliver the mail. You didn’t have to believe in him. He was just there.
Yeah, until the Postal Service goes on strike. There are a lot of things we believe in without critically analyzing them, just because our beliefs are never challenged. But that doesn't mean they can't be.
And if you didn’t believe in something, then it couldn’t help you.
I love Pratchett, but he is making an exact opposite of the correct point here (which is fine because guess what, he's writing fantasy). The sky works the same whether you believe in it or not. You can believe the sky is totally fake, but it won't change any practical result - you can still fly an airplane, enjoy sunbathing and get wetted by the rain. However, I am not sure the concept of "evolution" is the same way. If you're a biologist and you accept it, would your actions and results be different than if you did not? The sky is the territory. The evolution is a map. It may be argued it is a great map - so be it, but it's still a map. You can choose to reject a certain map and use another one - with better results or worse, but you can. You can't "reject" a territory - you can ignore it, but that'd be still just a change of a map (to a much worse one).
JarJarJedi
11d ago
Vibes? Papers? Essays?
Diversity, inclusion and equity, of course. That's what they were promised when they signed up, and they reasonably expected nothing more is going to be demanded from them.
JarJarJedi
11d ago
You can not reinforce all soft targets. You can reinforce a few military installations, but if your enemy is OK with terrorizing civilians, this is a perfect weapon of terror. Blowing up a truck can destroy a building, maybe a block if it's really big. But releasing a truckload of explosive drones can paralyze a whole multi-million city.
JarJarJedi
11d ago
Great job for Ukrainians pioneering a completely new war tactics - and actually putting it on the radar of people that are supposed to think about such things. I mean there was a talk about this for a long time, but we all know talking theory and having a practical example differs a lot. Now I hope the US starts addressing the scenario of "50 Chinese container ships loaded with drones" as a real thing not as Sci-Fi scenario like "what if Martians attack D.C.". And of course, the less weapons Russia has, the better the world is, though this particular thing is of more symbolic than strategic meaning - God still sides with large battalions on the battlefield.
JarJarJedi
11d ago
Nobody can "get" you a job as a doctor or a lawyer or a CEO (well, unless it's a CEO of a scam) without walking a long way there (I omit politicians because it's not a job like any others). You can't just "become" a doctor without studying hard for years, and if you're already capable of that, the wokes would just slow you down. The only thing the wokes can offer you is to pressure the system into devaluing your work by lowering the criteria. They still won't be able to make you a doctor overnight, but they will make people wonder whether your training had been as rigorous as the other folks'.
And I don't really see any way to get into the job market but beginner-level jobs (unless you win the birth lottery and your family is rich, at which cases again you don't need the wokes already). Maybe the message of "if you want to succeed, try working hard" is "pathetic" compared to "scream victimhood hard with me and get all the stuff for free" but the latter - unless you become a con artist and join the grifter class, which is not for everyone - is a lie.
JarJarJedi
12d ago
Tea (green/black or dozens of other varieties that exist), coffee, water (including flavored ones if you're into that), juices if you can find a good fresh one. If you want something more fun, beer. In a restaurant, I usually drink water or iced tea (unsweetened) unless it's a social event where I'd get some beer or wine if it's fancy. Sometimes carbonated water (in Europe they love it, I occasionally get some though not a huge fan).
JarJarJedi
16d ago
the world has demonstrably failed to end for a while now
Experience shows this doesn't work on cultists. They just move the world end date further in the future without updating anything else. Can be done unlimited number of times. Also the public has very limited memory - all the failed world end predictions over the last 50 or so years are available, and make absolutely zero impression and present zero problem for anybody predicting world to end again. Same btw about hundreds of thousands of Gazans starving - no matter how many times those things turn out to be lies, every next time it is claimed people believe it instantly and uncritically.
JarJarJedi
16d ago
two terrible optics choices of either force feeding them or letting them starve to death
This only works if the prison guards are the good guys or at least try very hard to pretend to be ones. Otherwise neither of those options are a big problem for them. Case in point: Putin murdered Navalny in prison (not by hunger but same point stands) and what happened? Absolutely nothing.
JarJarJedi
16d ago
Out of all suicidal actions in furtherance of Hamas cause, this is one of the least harmful I think. Should be encouraged.
JarJarJedi
16d ago
Yep, why bother with creating complex tastes if you could just hammer the basic receptors and sell 100x? The problem is once it starts, all other manufacturers have to do the same or die (or survive on meager earnings from rare freaks like myself, while their competitors are making billions).
JarJarJedi
16d ago
This is so real. When I got off added sugar drinks, after a while I discovered there are more tastes than "MOAR SUGAR!". And in fact, a lot of things have their own tastes which don't benefit from MOAR SUGAR. Which also unfortunately made about 90% of US sweets completely un-consumable for me because it's a gustatory equivalent of being tied up to a biggest meanest loudspeaker at a heavy metal concert. You can't do subtle tastes if people are addicted to MOAR SUGAR.
JarJarJedi
16d ago
It tastes like alien cat piss, it has a bunch of spooky chemicals and there's absolutely no reason to drink it when there are many better alternatives.
JarJarJedi
18d ago
Trump can yell at GOP congressmen, but that's pretty much all he can do. He can't rain fire and brimstone on them or flood them out. And the congressmen, while being very pious in appearance, are right now very reluctant to actually follow Trump's commandments (where have I seen this kind of thing before?) and actually do things. All Trump can threaten them with is to primary them (sometime in the future) and even that may be not that much of a threat for those who has a strong local base, and given there's 220 of them, nobody gets more than 1/220 of the fault if nothing happens, which isn't a lot of fault. He can't implement the legislation alone, and there's not a lot he can do beyond yelling if GOP congressmen are dragging their feet. He can't executive order them into action.
JarJarJedi
18d ago
Yeah being "white" and openly supporting terrorists puts one in a very convenient spot to serve as a token prosecution target. "You see, we're not ignoring it, we're doing something!". Given the same guys also called for British MPs to be assassinated, it makes them even easier target to make an example of. Now when next 1000 people are arrested for tweeting about immigration policies, the police can say they are completely even-handed and fight extremism on both sides.
JarJarJedi
18d ago
Trump could absolutely make the job of anyone seeking to explode immigration harder by changing the law
No he absolutely can't, that's what the Congress is supposed to do.
JarJarJedi
18d ago
Trump has temporarily gotten it back to the levels that Obama had.
You're saying it like it's a bad thing?
He's done almost nothing in regards to helping ensure that will continue long-term.
In American democracy, how would you propose to achieve ensuring some policy continues forever, regardless of what future voters or executives want, and how such a situation is different from a dictatorship?
JarJarJedi
18d ago
Enmity between the Capitalist USA and the USSR started with the latter's birth, or preceded it.
This is true, but that initial enmity has officially ended in 1930s by FDR, and turned into an alliance in the 1940s and had highs and lows since then. You seem to be making some kind of a point that there was one constant policy over seven decades of USSR existence, but it was a multitude of different policies. Sometimes US chose to fight, sometimes they chose to sit aside, sometimes they chose to ally with USSR against common enemy.
I'm not sure what you mean by "credibility" here. My point is very simple - if US chose to never fight, it would not lose any specific wars to USSR, but it would lose everything, and in that hypothetical world, we'd still have USSR right now, probably owning most of Europe, Africa, Latin America and China owning Asia. Fortunately, we live in a better world - the one when US sometimes chose to fight, and ultimately won, even despite losing some wars. I don't see any possibility of avoiding any lost wars in advance, except giving up from start and not fighting at all.
JarJarJedi
18d ago
You seem to be confusing different historical periods. When USSR took over Poland, there wasn't even the Cold War - in fact, most of it happened while US and USSR had been allies and fought together against Hitler. Opening that question back then would hardly be possible. However, things were much different years later, when the Cold War was in full swing.
JarJarJedi
19d ago
I described it a number of times already, but basically the worldview that the war with and ultimate destruction of Israel is not the primary priority of Arab population and government in Gaza and PA, and skillfully combining mutually beneficial economic projects and very limited single-point military interventions, to suppress a small hard core of warmongers, it is possible to achieve security for Israel and long term peace, with Arab population living independently besides Israel as maybe not friends at first but not engaging in active hostilities. Moreover, most of the Israel elites were under impression that not only this strategy is possible in principle, it has been successfully implemented in Gaza and Hamas is largely pacified and contained, and its capabilities are confined to small-scale terror acts which can be easily kept at a minimum by routine intelligence/police work. This is why a lot of peace activists lived close to the borders of Gaza and why the music festival has been organized right there on the border - because, following this worldview, single one-off terror acts could strike anywhere and the danger is the same in Tel Aviv or Haifa (maybe even more, since terrorists tend to attack population centers) as on the Gaza border, and living close to the actual population helps bringing people together and strengthens the peace.
This is not a stupid concept per se - Israel has achieved similar position with Egypt, Jordan, Syria and even in PA you could argue it is moving in that direction. So in theory, without empirical adjustment, this was possible, and certainly very attractive, humanistic and optimistic. The problem is, that's not at all what Hamas and Gaza population were. Unfortunately, this things do not work by analogy or statistically - if most snakes aren't venomous, it doesn't mean that particular one about to bite you isn't. You can't rely on statistics in such cases, and you can't make hope your main strategy, ignoring empiric data that point otherwise. Unfortunately, that's what Israel had been doing for at least 18 years (in fact, even longer, pretty much since Oslo agreements). They wanted this nice peace picture so much, they ignored the reality that did not match it.
JarJarJedi
20d ago
I agree that thinking academia admins fold to wokes because they are just pussies is wrong. They fold because they sympathize to them, but want plausible deniability. They don't want chant "kill the Jews" by themselves, but they are OK with shielding people who are willing to, from any negative consequences (and may throw in a couple of positive ones). It's not only about the Jews of course. Now Harvard seems to have abandoned the fig leaf completely, while Colombia is still pretending. It's certainly be interesting to see which strategy works for them and whether their remaining cultural status would allow them to openly defy Federal law.
JarJarJedi
20d ago
If they don't believe those things, they should shut their mouths about them.
Oh but they never would. Just as "socialist" and "oligarchy fighter" Bernie Sanders would never give up his third house and be left with only two, to help the poor. Just as various rich "eco warriors" would never give up their personal jets. And they wouldn't need to - their followers, as it is evident, are fine with that.
JarJarJedi
20d ago
The US DID give up Poland without trying! That's a thing that really happened!
Nope. Solidarnosc had a lot of support from the US, though it was not all in the open. Reagan lead a lot of it.
With Hungary and Czechia it was different - those were already considered owned by USSR, so it was USSR atrocities in their own space rather than the US losing to them.
From this we can deduce that US global prestige suffered less from scenarios in which they didn't try than scenarios in which they tried and lost.
If it didn't try, what "prestige" you are talking about? Prestige of doing what? Sitting in their corner of the world and silently watching as USSR eats the rest of it?
JarJarJedi
22d ago
They have separate drinking fountains and lecture halls "for whites only"? I kinda find it hard to believe, any documentation to that?
JarJarJedi
22d ago
Why would the US have suddenly given in because Vietnam went Red?
No, you approaching it with the wrong end. The US that would willingly give up Vietnam to the reds, without trying to do anything, would also give up without trying Poland, Afghanistan, and many other things that together brought the Cold War to victory. By itself, the loss of Vietnam obviously weren't fatal - obviously! - but becoming a type of country that doesn't even try to fight may be fatal for the chances to ultimate victory.
We can tell because US prestige declined after the defeat in Vietnam!
You are comparing it to the situation where US won in Vietnam. Compare to situation where it didn't even try.
There's no "if-then". The responsibility for corruption doesn't come from other guys being perfect, and a presence of other corrupt guys, true or imagined, can not excuse your own corruption. Dems lied voluminously about just every aspect of Biden's presidency, bar none, and they are responsible for this, and will be responsible forever and ever, and for all harm that it has done to the country, absolutely regardless of what Republicans ever did or will do.
P.S. And yes, Joe was totally and undoubtedly pocketing bribes from (or through, however you want to present it) Hunter. Stop living in denial, it happened. And there's really no reason to pretend otherwise anymore, Joe Biden is spent goods for the party. Relieve you conscience and accept the facts, at least in this small matter. Believing the truth is always easier than compounding lies. No lie can survive forever anyway, especially not in our age.
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