JarJarJedi
Streamlined derailments and counteridea reeducation
User ID: 1118
JarJarJedi
1yr ago
I don't think even in the most feverish dreams Putin does imagine himself the Emperor of Earth, having won the planetary war and conquered all countries. That's too much even for him. And sure, I realize "some people also did some predictions and those came out wrong" is the ultimate answer to every prediction, but I'm still pretty confident in this one. The plan here is not to conquer the West, at least not for now - the plan is to scare away the West and let Putin continue building his Empire - at least until he feels ready to take on the West directly, which is not yet.
JarJarJedi
1yr ago
Given he's underway on throwing Russian economy back to the 19th century, and decimating productive Russian population, sending them unprepared, unclothed, unfed and unorganized to the meat grinder in Ukraine - I'd say not very likely. But human capacity for delusion is bottomless, maybe one day he decides he's now ready to conquer Europe, or maybe even the USA.
JarJarJedi
1yr ago
This makes me think, while the bien-pensants proclaim that the state literally perpetrated genocide (regardless of whether it is true or not, they seem to believe it), they usually do not support restricting the abilities of the state to do such things again in any way. Moreover, the same category of people (generally speaking of course, there might be individual exceptions but I suspect if they exist, they are rare) they support things like forced vaccinations, lockdowns, school closures, blocking bank accounts of people who protest the government, widespread speech censorship and punishment for speaking against the government-approved narratives, equating dissent or doubt about the dogma with violence, etc. - all look like the things which while do not compare to a genocide, could be easily deployed to enable one if the government decides to do something like that again. A person with systemic thinking would use the opportunity of the dedicated day - shirt or no shirt - to discuss these things and maybe make the students start thinking about such matters, and may be how it is possible to make a society which would make things like that less like, and how to evaluate government actions with the lens of "can this also be used to oppress people?".
As for the shirt itself, wearing a non-orange shirt saying "this shirt is not orange, ask me why" would be heroic, in my opinion, but I understand not making a scene part. Taking a stand is usually very costly and only rare people can handle it. If you feel it'd be too much for you, just wear the shirt and try to do what you can to make it mean something you'd want to mean instead of meaningless guilt-absolution gesture. I think as a teacher you have a good opportunity to do so.
JarJarJedi
1yr ago
While cooks and bussers aren't threatened by automation just yet, waiters very much are. Not to the point of full elimination, but electronic ordering certainly would reduce the numbers of required waitstaff, and it's certainly catching up lately.
TBH I am not sure that the problem of "cut-to-the-bone wages" has a good solution - nobody is going to pay $100 for a medium-quality hamburger, and most of those "need two human hands" don't need much beyond - which means the pool of potential applicants is unlimited, and if you disrupt the market by coercion ("living wage", etc.) you'd either get law-free zones (e.g. hiring illegals or just ignoring the law), or shortages (yes, you'd get your minimum wage, you'd just be doing alone the work three people did before - hello "abusive bosses"), or elimination of low-and-medium scale food industry, due to the economy of it not being sustainable. The only stable resolution here would be to eliminate the contradiction - e.g. by automation.
JarJarJedi
1yr ago
There's a big difference though. Allowing a person to kill oneself (by whatever means they chose) is not the same as murdering them. I know some people do not believe free will exist (and I understand - they just can't help it) but in the Western culture the whole system of law has this concept as one of its cornerstones. Whether allowing a person that we think is mentally unwell to kill oneself is moral is a tough question, I think, but equating it to murder makes no sense however you end up resolving it.
JarJarJedi
1yr ago
what do you think the odds are that they're anything anyone actually cares about beyond getting Trump?
Very close to zero. It is absolutely clear ploy to attach something to Trump to a) hurt Rs chances in midterms (Trump is not in the run, but anything that smears him also reflects on any Trump-supporting R) and b) if possible, kneecap him for 2024 and c) grab some papers in which something facilitating a) and b) could be found. Well, I guess there's intimidation value too - if we could do this to former President, do you really want to talk about reforming the FBI this much?
Now, can they make anything stick or not is anybody's guess (my guess is no because they couldn't do it previous 9000 times they tried). There are rumors that Trump may have some documents that he could use against people who performed the whole "collusion" thing if he ever comes back (or maybe even if he doesn't) and they were looking for those. But I think it's not the case as Trump already proven his inability to take on the FBI when he was a President, and he's certainly haven't become more capable since then. So no documents could help him with that.
There could also be some documents for which Trump failed to check some required boxes before taking them, likely because same happened to previous presidents, but nobody gave a hoot then (see the whole FARA story or the Logan Act story) but this comes to "who has lawyers with better knowledge of obscure never-before-used regulations and comes down again to politics more than anything. Ultimately, the President has authority to declassify anything he wants, and there's no constitutional limit to that, but who knows what supplementary regulations may be lurking around. Likely all ends in a ton of "walls are closing in" reports after which it quietly dies with D being sure Trump almost sold nuclear codes to Putin but FBI stopped them and Rs being sure it's another in the long list of abuses they suffered at the hands of the corrupt DOJ, and nothing else comes out of it.
JarJarJedi
1yr ago
You're confusing "the press is always calling everybody who's not socialist 'far right'" and "if the press is calling somebody 'far right', their actual political affiliation could be anywhere rightwards from socialists". Do I need to draw a Venn diagram to explain the difference?
The "99%" figure is clearly a rhetorical device (I can't believe I have to explain that) - I readily admit I did not make a compendium of all mentions of "far right" ever in the press and calculated how far from socialists they actually are. What I meant (I can't believe I have to explain that, again) by it that the accuracy of this label is overwhelmingly very low and most of the mentions of "far right" is nothing but the label, and can be attached to anybody on the right. And has been attached to Boris Johnson, Liz Truss, etc. I don't watch French and German politics that closely so I'm not sure how that label is being used there.
hysterical tribal right wing persecution complexes
You sure know how to demonstrate that famous "balanced, empiricial rationalism" thing. Or maybe you do think that's what "balanced, empiricial rationalism" actually is? Oh my.
JarJarJedi
1yr ago
If you deny somebody their free will entirely, and then give back a tiny bit of it, only enough to kill themselves and thus escape further torture - it's not an exercise of a free will. There's torture involved. Just as "your wallet or your life" is not exercise of free choice. If Alice tortured Bob, until he begged for death, then Bob got hold of a gun, shot Alice, escaped the torture chamber, and lived happily ever after - that would be a restoration of the free will.
torture for suicidal depression.
Torture is a willfull act. Depression isn't. If you have means to stop somebody's suicidal depression, by exercise of your own free will, then you should do it. But somebody getting sick is not a willful act of anybody. When it is a willful act (driving somebody to suicide by means of physical or psychological torture, or other means) then it is commonly regarded akin to murder. The difference is in the presence or absence of the willfull act, you can't just "substitute" it away, it changes the whole picture.
JarJarJedi
1yr ago
doing the kinds of things Credibility-mongers argue the US ought to have done in Afghanistan/Iraq/Syria: institute a draft
Wait, when the mongers, whoever they are, argued for the draft in relation to Afghanistan/Iraq/Syria? I thought the argument was we should support local allies on the ground and given them weapons, etc. instead of dumping everything and running like we're competing in 400m sprint? What this has to do with the draft?
loosen rules of engagement
Not sure what this means in regards to Putin - what rules have been changed lately and how?
knock out infrastructure of neutral parties that support the enemy
What are you talking about? I've never heard of Putin knocking out any third-party infrastructure, and as most of the aid to Ukraine comes through Poland, I'm sure Poland would be screaming Article 5 very loudly if Putin tried to knock out anything there.
Putin keeps pushing farther with each reputation-shattering defeat to get all the credibility he has lost back and more
I'm not sure what "credibility" you are talking about - Putin and his surrogates repeatedly claimed there's no war, there's just a little special military operation which would end very soon with total victory, and no draft is going to be necessary, not now, not ever. And there's no need for draft anyway because there are almost no losses. Now there's a draft (and it's called "limited" but on the ground it's "grab everybody who remotely looks like capable of holding a rifle"), and with numbers from 300 thousands to potentially a million - which is a humongous number. This is completely contrary to every claim that has been made about the war by Putin and his surrogates for months. What "credibility"?
In Russia, there's not even much of such thing as "credibility" - everybody knows the government lies all the time. I mean: All. The. Time. They're actually ok with it - as long as there's at least some benefit from it - e.g. if the lie served the cause of the Greatness of Russia, then they live in the Great Russia of which everybody is afraid, and thus they're ok with the government lying.
He is behaving as though he is doubling down on a lost cause to prove a point to the international community.
He's not "proving a point". And "international community" is not his main target audience, either. He started a war, with the promise of easy win. There's no win. Now he can either admit he lost - and in Russian culture, there's no way of honorably losing a fight, there's no such concept. Or throw more and more resources into it to hope maybe somewhere there would be some situation that somehow may be presented as a win. Except it's kinda hard when Ukrainians are kicking their asses day to day. The only thing he needs from the "international community" is to falter in their support for Ukraine, so that such "win" situation may present itself - e.g. pressure Zelensky to negotiate without conclusive military victory and surrender the occupied territories. It's not a question of "credibility" as in some gentleman's debate - it's a question of survival for his power structure (and his own person, of course, but it's not only about him personally). If he's not getting a win - he's a loser, and a loser can't be a Tzar. It's not a question of any "credibility", it's a question of claiming the power but not actually having the power - that's something you can't do in Russia.
JarJarJedi
1yr ago
is constantly embarrassing themselves with ludicrous overblown rhetoric and saber-rattling
Why do you think they are "embarrassing themselves"? I mean, it's not what is considered respectable in the West, but would it be embarrassing for a Chinese person to behave this way?
JarJarJedi
1yr ago
Afghanistan was NOT a hit to American credibility
Depends on what you mean by "Afghanistan". You describe the whole 20 years - and true, the 20 years weren't the hit. The panic run from it was. Even if we recognized we've reached the end of what we could do there, it should have been an ordered dignified exit, not a disorganized run. And the worst thing is, it was completely unforced - there was no reason it had to be that bad, it's just were executed very badly. And that's what hurts credibility - any army can have an unlucky battle and suffer losses, but if it is not able to perform in the conditions where everything is on their side - then it's rotten.
There’s no credibility question here.
On the Putin side, I do agree.
JarJarJedi
1yr ago
The good thing there ageism is likely not going to be the thing in the industry for very long, even if it still exists (got mixed data on that). I mean, with the declining quality of the new cadre, people still would need somebody who is actually able to make the code work. So if someone wants to be employed in their advanced age, and still remembers how to do that, there will always be some demand.
JarJarJedi
1yr ago
From what I understand, the guy is a billionaire. And I don't mean a puny $1.00001 billion, he has multiple of them. I don't think whether he sells more clothes is what primarily bothers him now. I mean yeah, some of these billions are linked to successfully selling clothes, but I don't think he raises and goes to bed with the thought about how today's sales were. I think he's in it for the cultural/political impact.
JarJarJedi
1yr ago
Well of course the offer hasn't been made - because Russian needs Donetsk and Luhansk like they need a hole in the head. These regions never been that great, but now they're thoroughly ruined and would require billions to bring to even semblance of normal life. And there's not much anything useful to Russia there. The whole point of holding them has been to gain a beachhead for the ultimate move - subjugating and "reuniting" Ukraine with Russia. That was always a part of the plan. Crimea may be different as there's certain mythical status in the culture to owning Crimea, but nobody really wants the NRs that bad. It's just part of the ongoing conquest. There's no point of offering security guarantees for keeping the NRs because neither Russia ever intended to stop at them nor Ukraine ever will believe they intended so. If Ukrainians were desperate and on their last leg, they could accept a temporary piece to gain a respite - but that's what we had since 2014 essentially. There's no reason for Ukraine to end up in that situation again, especially now that they have the initiative and are liberating their territories, and there's no reason to assume Russia is capable of giving any "security guarantees" or is willing to do so. And how such guarantees would be enforced anyway - if Russia reneges, then what?
JarJarJedi
1yr ago
If Ukrainians would believe any "offer" from Russia of that nature, they'd be idiots. I don't think they are.
JarJarJedi
1yr ago
If "far right" were used to mean "not socialist" by the media, then the media would call non-socialist parties "far right".
That would only be true if the media had to use only one single term to describe the whole spectrum of parties. Then this term would either be "far right" or not, and your claim would be correct. However, in reality it uses a variety of terms, and some of them are used without any accuracy, as general pejorative labels. That doesn't mean the media always wants to use general perjoratives when talking about every party, of course.
what's (in my personal perspective) happened to The Motte
I am flattered to be elected (by a single vote, but apparently it's enough) a representative of the whole forum, but I think your lament is rather misguided and driven by misunderstanding more than anything. You may consider that if somebody tells you they didn't mean what you say they mean, then maybe they didn't mean what you say they mean.
JarJarJedi
1yr ago
Ukraine is getting it now, why do they need to give anything to Russia for that?
JarJarJedi
1yr ago
Does Russia just limp along after with less energy revenue as a client state of China until their population implodes
Most likely. Or until Putin dies and they get lucky to have somebody more sane next to the throne, which will give them another couple of decades of partial recovery, after which we're likely back to sq. 1
Does Russia disintegrate into 20 countries
Not very likely, for now - the only areas with strong nationalist movements are in Caucasus, and I get distinct impression they are getting enough money and freedom from Moscow to not really want to do it on their own, on the condition that those who do think of doing it on their own are promptly murdered. As long as Moscow has any money, it'd work. And the priority of this deal is pretty high - from what I heard, on prisoners' exchanges any members of Kadyrov's forces get the highest priority, for example. The other regions just don't have any basis to separate. Maybe they'd grow it eventually, but that takes decades.
Or turn into a repeat of the 1990’s but much weaker now.
That's essentially the "lucky" branch of the first option.
There’s an ideal world where Putin is replaced by a new west friendly guy but do we get that world?
I don't think there are any "west friendly" guys left anywhere near power in Russia, Putin made sure of it. And even if this guy existed, he's somehow has to take power and deal with the opposition. Even if they somehow magically had the means and the forces to do it (from where?) it'd be basically a civil war, but I don't think there are any movement to pull it off at all. Pro-western liberals in Russia are largely either in jail or in exile now, and their support on the ground is minuscule. Nobody likes to be drafted and sent to die in Ukraine, but from that to a strong capable movement is a huge distance, and pro-western forces were quite impotent at their best times, now they are virtually non-existent as a political movement outside twitter.
JarJarJedi
1yr ago
Seeing happy couples where the man is at least by some definition "conservative" I doubt the assertion that "young women hate conservative men". It may be that the women who would otherwise look for their romantic match online might hate "conservative men" - but even that is not true, I know for a fact there are conservative men who met their spouse online (even though not on Thiel's app). So there might be some segment of women that "hate conservative men" but I am pretty sure it's significantly narrower than "all women".
Also, "no women" is a pretty common problem for online dating platforms, as I heard (not sure if true as I got married before most of currently popular platforms even existed, but I read many times such a problem exists). Also I am pretty sure the author of Jan 6 review is lying, and I suspect all of them may be lying - it's not uncommon for people to post fake reviews for resources whose owners they hate.
JarJarJedi
1yr ago
It seems like the medical establishment can't be trusted to restrict it to only the most extreme cases
I'm generally very supportive of a person's right to do what they want with themselves, including ending their own life. But when I see state-run medical establishment nonchalantly offering it left and right, or according to other reports even strongly suggesting it, it just doesn't feel right. It definitely doesn't feel like "only the most extreme cases".
JarJarJedi
1yr ago
I would be. I mean, some illnesses can be intolerable, and gender has nothing to do with it, but I still feel very hard to believe nothing could be done to fix it, given the circumstances as described (no physical injury, youth, etc.) and can't shake the feeling that somehow this outcome is too normalized for comfort. Maybe it wasn't fixable, and maybe there was really nothing to be done, but somehow the tone of all messages feels like it's some normal, maybe even good outcome and not a terrible failure. I don't think it should feel normal.
JarJarJedi
1yr ago
If we know how to treat it - surely. If the treatment is "put them on hard drugs to make them a functional vegetable" - maybe not. Some old fashioned solutions are out of fashion for a reason. I agree that we should try hard, but there should be a limit of how hard. I have a feeling in this case the limit hasn't been reached, but it should exist. There should be an exit, just not to be used outside of most dire circumstances.
JarJarJedi
1yr ago
know better than the woman herself, a panel of doctors and a public prosecutor,
The woman has been, factually, mentally unwell, so it's not hard to understand why one may think they "know better". If we allow the idea that psychiatric illnesses exist, and some of them may move persons to an action which is not to their best interests, and it is possible to fix these conditions and they should be fixed - which is, admittedly, not an obvious proposition and is fraught with edge cases, but if we still allow it - then the reason for such thinking becomes clear. As for "a panel of doctors and a public prosecutor", unfortunately, many of us observed, some more recently than others, as public figures and medical professionals acted out of considerations other than the best of their patients and the pure factual truth, and there is no reason to assume it could not happen again. Of course, it's not easy to conclusively prove that's what happened in each particular case, but there's nothing outrageous in assuming it might have happened, and "the doctor knows best" not always works, and "government employee knows best" works even less frequently.
JarJarJedi
1yr ago
it can't be positive to grow up watching superhero movies and none of them look like you.
This is assuming Arnold Schwarzenegger "looks like me" because his skin has a hue close to mine (if you really squint) and thus I can imagine myself being him, despite having nothing else at all in common, but if my skin were a couple of hues different, now I can't. That doesn't make a lot of sense. I mean for a racist, where everything you need to know about a person is their race and it defines everything - sure does, but for someone who didn't grow up in a race-obsessed culture, it just sounds extremely bizarre.
Also, billions and billions of people grew up without watching any "superhero movies" at all, and they came up just fine - or at least not worse that those that did see the magic pictures.
https://youtube.com/watch?v=B9MShtCg4fk
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