JulianRota
11mo ago
It's popularly used IME to refer to the overall campaign of extermination against the Jews in Nazi Germany. Some were killed in concentration camps and death camps by gassing, others by mass executions, and others by starvation or over-work. I haven't heard of it used to refer to the Roma who were killed as well, or to Slavic POWs who also died in large numbers, though were never sent to death camps.
JulianRota
2mo ago
I guess I'm somewhat lucky in not having many issues with serious or chronic pain. I did get my wisdom teeth removed, and I don't think I was prescribed or took anything particularly strong for that, but I don't recall very clearly. I had to get a root canal a few years ago, and I do remember that hurting pretty badly the next day. I had been prescribed Tylenol with Codeine, which I took and worked pretty well at dulling the pain, but left me pretty zonked out. Definitely not something I had any interest in taking if I wasn't in serious pain. I think I only took that for 1 or 2 days, and the pain was mild enough after that that I didn't bother.
JulianRota
4mo ago
Perhaps that was a bit over-stated. I think it has a little truth, but more qualified, like that something that vaguely resembles that may happen to like a single-digit number of people, not anywhere near even a whole number percentage of everyone who's ever possessed such content. And "coming to the attention" would look more like far-left activists being majorly annoyed at you for some reason and digging up things you've wrote or sold somewhere to make a case about how bad you are. It may not be super common, but such things occasionally do end up becoming prosecutions, often including an extra step passing through a "mainstream" activist group.
If you're looking for an actual case, the best example that comes to my mind is Paul Miller. His prosecution was on weapons charges, for laws that are pretty commonly flouted and rarely prosecuted on their own, reportedly at least partly thanks to the prompting of the ADL (though he wasn't exactly doing himself any favors either). None of the documentation mentions any particular radical literature, though it would be a little surprising if he didn't actually possess any.
JulianRota
5mo ago
Have you been prescribed facial corticosteroids by a dermatologist?
Yes I was, and I have kept using it and getting fresh prescriptions for I think like 15 years. They kept talking about "skin thinning", but nothing noticeable happened to me. They kept making me try other things, but nothing else worked (I don't remember most of the things they got me to try unfortunately). Personally, I'd rather take my chances with "skin thinning" than live with terrible itchy flaky skin on my face. I actually found that chart I linked when I was thinking about trying to order some prescription stuff from one of those sketchy overseas places that doesn't need prescriptions because I was getting seriously tired of them trying to push other things that didn't work on me. I didn't go through with that because all I could find was the ridiculously strong class 1 ones that might actually do something bad, but it did give me the idea to try the weaker OTC class 7 stuff since it's basically the same thing, just less potent. That seems to work, so I figure I both solved my problem of keeping my skin decent without dealing with annoying dermatologists and also somewhat went along with their fears by going with a weaker non-prescription version.
Obvious disclaimer, I'm not a doctor at all and haven't examined you, if you follow my example you're doing it at your own risk. I'd say try it for a week though with the OTC stuff. If it doesn't work, you're no worse off. If it works a little, consider trying to get some of the stronger versions by prescription. If it works great, then you get to decide if having something that actually works is worth possible long term risks of skin thinning. It sounds like mainstream medical advice hasn't exactly served you that well anyways.
JulianRota
6mo ago
In my opinion, the first "good" / exciting part is the stolen credit card deal, which on my Kindle shows as page 67. It's a bit of a slowish start, with the exciting bits gradually getting more common as the story goes on. I wouldn't be surprised if some people would rather skim his long-winded explanations of things. But I think there's plenty of crazy and exciting stuff going on by the final third or so of the book.
JulianRota
6mo ago
Haven't read Anathem, but I did really like Reamde, Seveneves, and Cryptonomicon.
JulianRota
6mo ago
Oh hey. I might have checked it out, but that was a little short notice, I'm just reading it now.
JulianRota
6mo ago
Maybe we're getting a little far off topic here, but this is touching on one of my bigger general concerns. Many of our problems do seem pretty big. To be specific, I'm talking about things like how much control near-monopoly tech companies and national mega-corps are coming to have over our lives, specifically retail and news and entertainment media, how much influence a united and stable Russia, China, etc are able to wield over world affairs, etc. I'm not so sure that a United States with the Federal gov effectively throttled and the many State governments ascendant would be better able to deal with these issues.
JulianRota
7mo ago
Can we do the same for everyone in all those foreign nations that we allegedly don't know anything about who cries out for American intervention every time they pick a fight with their neighbors and get in over their heads? I'd be more than happy for us to pull out of NATO, the Pacific, etc, and best of luck to all of the nations there dealing with China and Russia without us.
JulianRota
7mo ago
The new top-level post has better in-depth discussion on the relative merits of TK vs Ellul and their ideas, so I'll leave further discussion of that point there.
I do think a necessary point here is that TK explicitly advocated for the violent overthrow of technological society worldwide. I'm not an expert on Ellul, I've only skimmed his Wikipedia article, but he doesn't seem to go that way. He makes some of the same arguments, but he seems to push for broader awareness and acceptance of his viewpoint and possibly setting up some independent communities that implement them as much as possible on a voluntary basis. I think that's a critical distinction, and a good reason why Ellul deserves tolerant consideration and discussion while TK deserves much harsher criticism.
I'm perfectly fine with the Amish and other such societies because 1. They walk the walk, actually setting up long-lasting communities to practice their lifestyle that are about as non-dependent on mainstream society as you can reasonably be while living in a first-world industrialized nation, and 2. They don't seek to impose anything on anyone - they just want to live their way, and don't care at all how anybody outside their community lives. Rumspringa is proof that even their own children are encouraged to get a real and fair view of the world outside so that they can make a legitimate, free, and fully-informed choice on whether to stay within the community or leave it. TK did the opposite - he advocated for and actively tried to force everyone else to live in the way he thought was best while not doing so himself.
JulianRota
7mo ago
I don't think I could use a ChromeOS device as my only PC either. But I've been surprised that the list of things I want to do on a primary PC that I can't do on it is pretty short. Web browsing is nice of course, but so is programming in any language I've used, messing with Docker images and K8s admin, most CLI and Linux tools work fine, etc.
The $300-range practical devices can be nice, but personally, I'm too turned off by the low quality screens and performance compromises. I got a somewhat pricier one with a nice screen and pretty decent performance. But at least there are plenty of options at all levels of performance and quality now.
The combo of first-party desktop environment with officially supported everything and best-in-class security, plus an officially supported full Linux environment where everything works, is pretty competitive in the current laptop market.
JulianRota
7mo ago
I think you have to start by deciding on the OS.
If you want Windows, you have a bazillion options. Windows 10 is pretty decent IMO, though I don't have much experience with 11.
If you want MacOS, then your options are obviously constrained to Apple hardware, where the choices are pretty easy. I don't think you really need to be a part of Apple's online ecosystem, even though they highly encourage it. The hardware is certainly nice, though it isn't cheap.
If you want Linux, then you probably should check carefully for good hardware compatibility before you spend money on anything, as near as I can tell, good-quality drivers are still extremely hit or miss, especially with regard to webcams, microphones, wifi, bluetooth, video cards, efficiency and battery life, etc.
I often speak up for ChromeOS on these things - I use it for my primary personal laptop. Not many people think of it as their first choice, but it can do everything you mentioned just fine, and runs quite well if you buy decent spec hardware. Local OS security is top-notch, and there's a built-in and officially supported Linux that runs command line and X Windows apps. Google is probably tracking you, but at least they're the only ones.
JulianRota
8mo ago
I don't know if there's a specific trigger (a towel seems like a pretty silly one), but there does seem to be a thing where you're willing to make significant effort to help people who you know personally or observe to be suffering from certain types of issues, while also completely ignoring the plight of anyone you don't know or who is suffering through other issues.
The unkempt bum lying on the street demanding money with a opiate-induced need in his eyes gets ignored. The lost but cleanly dressed stranger gets (correct) directions. You might cover an acquaintance's share of the check without a thought.
I dunno about housework. If somebody's house is messier than usual, I don't really care much. I guess they're a bit lazy about cleaning. If somebody's house is a little too clean, then it seems like they either hire cleaners, or spend much more time than usual cleaning, which is a little odd.
JulianRota
8mo ago
Here's a few good articles with some more details:
https://newrepublic.com/article/60919/enlightened-despot
This is a 2007 essay by American judge Richard A. Posner describing how unusual the way the Israeli courts have expanded their own authority is, though it's a bit vague on specific cases and exactly how they worked.
https://hashiloach.org.il/%D7%9E%D7%90%D7%A7%D7%98%D7%99%D7%91%D7%99%D7%96%D7%9D-%D7%A9%D7%99%D7%A4%D7%95%D7%98%D7%99-%D7%9C%D7%9E%D7%94%D7%A4%D7%9B%D7%94/
This is a (long) article in Hebrew (Google Translate seems to work pretty well for it) by Daniel Friedman, a professor at the Faculty of Law, Tel Aviv University, that goes over the concepts and types of judicial activism and cites a bunch of specific cases to document the rise of "radical" activism, which he defines as directly contradicting legislation rather than interpreting how it is to be applied in situations that it doesn't specifically cover. Strangely, I can't tell the exact date of publication - it seems to be pretty recent but predating the latest reform controversy, I'm guessing around 2020-2021 by the dates of the cites and the single comment.
https://he.wikipedia.org/wiki/%D7%91%D7%92%22%D7%A5_%D7%95%D7%95%D7%A1%D7%A8_%D7%A0%D7%92%D7%93_%D7%A9%D7%A8_%D7%94%D7%91%D7%99%D7%98%D7%97%D7%95%D7%9F
This is a Wikipedia article about a specific ruling in 2007 where the court basically tells the military what tactics to use to protect a school from incoming rockets. The "Judgements of the High Court" section linked appears to have articles on the details of a number of the other significant cases as well.
JulianRota
9mo ago
Well I'm not in charge here or anything, but I don't think the mods/admins would mind as long as such threads abided by the same rules as the rest of the board. I might follow along myself - I'm a urban dweller right now, about the opposite, but I do find myself interested in such lifestyles.
There does seem to me to be some meat to the idea that we're meant to thrive in more connected communities. That's probably a good topic for discussion in the main thread, or one of the alternates, or something. I do sometimes find the main thread a bit fast-paced for my tastes for actually participating.
JulianRota
9mo ago
I have also found it surprisingly difficult to find details about the cases that people who have issues with court overreach are complaining the most about. Presumably the actual rulings and legal documents are in Hebrew. I've put requests for details out to a few of the people who have talked about this, I'll follow up if I hear anything good back.
JulianRota
10mo ago
Every programming language has a "standard library" of helper classes/functions/etc that are included with it, a library of loadable third-party modules that provide more stuff, and a way to specify and load those.
Python is a pretty good general-purpose language, and usually my first suggestion for what to learn for programming newbies. You can find the docs for the standard lib here - Python standard libs are known for being pretty comprehensive. Personally, I have trouble reading large volumes of docs that aren't relevant to anything I'm working on, so I recommend to anyone seeking to learn to just go ahead and install Python locally and start building things. Usually your 2 for local automation tasks and sometimes modding games are a good source of tasks that are simple enough to not overwhelm a newbie but still feel like you're accomplishing something useful.
I would suggest building some stuff using just the standard lib to get used to how to do things. Later on you can learn about how to find third-party packages, install them, and use their functionality.
JulianRota
11mo ago
I'm not sure it's that much work on top of what sub mods already do, but you do need at least a few trusted users with strong technical skills and a strong enough community for a critical mass of posters to be willing to continue their activity on a new site. We are indeed fortunate enough to have both.
JulianRota
11mo ago
I guess I would mostly code as one of those Reds that's modestly adverse to HBD. I don't quite agree with any of my siblings here. If I had to characterize my actual beliefs briefly, I'd say:
I think that color-blindness is the right way to run a society of fixed population size (immigration being a separate discussion). Even if HBD is strongly true, what of it? Capitalism and individualism has already proven to be mostly adequate at slotting people of varying skill levels into appropriate jobs, and giving appropriate punishments to individuals who commit crimes. I don't think we should discriminate by race at the society level at all - either to give an artificial boost to people who some may feel have been unfairly discriminated against in the past, or to artificially suppress people who, based on their race and HBD research, may be more likely to be less intelligent than average or more inclined to short-term thinking, i.e. more likely to steal, assault, murder, etc. If one race appears to be less likely to be CEOs and more likely to be murderers, and HBD suggests that this is likely to be a perfectly legitimate outcome given genetic tendencies, then I'd say society is working correctly and no intervention is needed.
I don't necessarily think HBD is wrong, but shouting it from the rooftops too loudly IMO tends to encourage policies I don't agree with, and increase racial tensions. In case you haven't noticed, racial tensions are already kind of high. Some have already called for a race war, which doesn't seem like a great idea to me. Perhaps I am a fool and it's already too late. But I'd like to say we at least tried to find a way to live together before anything like that kicks off.
JulianRota
1mo ago
What does "fix" mean - what do you consider to be broken about it? What's the end-goal?
Of all of the things that people have ever said were bad about social media, I don't think the idea that a few people have tons of followers while most have few to none is on anyone's to 10 list.
Incidentally, I'm not sure the idea of specifically redistributing follows is meaningful, considering that basically every social media site pushes hard for you to use algorithmic feeds that show you a selection of things that an algorithm thinks you'll like or engage with rather than strictly people you follow. They can just as easily stick the random small-timers posts in more timelines and rate-limit the big accounts that you actually do follow, and probably nobody will really notice, aside from occasionally liking or following somebody they weren't already following.
JulianRota
2mo ago
Ah, I see. Thinking about it a bit more, I'm not sure whether it's a culture thing or a raw intelligence thing, but I think you could say that some people aren't capable of understanding the idea that some things are physical systems that are not governed by the whims of individuals but instead by their own sets of rules. So in their minds, the outcome of any interaction with such a system is actually solely determined by the feelings and inclinations of whatever expert they are interacting with.
We could say things like, the outcome of your legal case doesn't really depend all that strongly on what your lawyer or the prosecutor thinks of you. Your medical outcome doesn't really change much based on how much the doctors and nurses like you. Your car or other such thing getting fixed doesn't depend on the mechanic liking you. And so on. But I think this class of people doesn't consider these ideas and then reject them, they seriously aren't capable of thinking them at all. So maybe it makes sense to them to lie to look better to them, even though, to us, it's stupidly obvious and will clearly have no impact on the outcome besides making it slightly harder for us to do our jobs.
Which in turn makes it sound more callous and cruel to use sarcasm and mockery to try to show such people the error of their ways. Might as well knock a guy with no legs for not being able to walk. But then on the other hand, if somebody is fundamentally incapable of dealing with the real world and can't be fixed, doesn't that suggest they should be locked up in a mental institution somewhere, or at least not allowed outside the house without "adult supervision". Maybe this is all a little exaggerated and most people do figure this out eventually, it's just that the worst cases of this tend to be much more likely to commit and be caught for serious crimes and end up talking to a public defender.
JulianRota
2mo ago
Looks like an interesting article, thanks! I will read later. But that, and TheDag's point would imply that any "chronic pain epidemic" is just a broader symptom of, I guess I don't really know what to call it, the broad cultural sickness we have in the West and America right now, and treating with opiates is clumsy duct-tape over the real problem that mostly won't help much.
JulianRota
5mo ago
I'm thinking the IRS probably operates more like a business than most parts of the Federal Government. For any possible enforcement action, they're going to be looking at how much money they put into it versus how much they'd recover, and they'll stick with the things that bring in the most money for the least effort.
Are they going to send a SWAT team to raid your house and drag you off to jail for 20 years? Probably not. All of that is super expensive (dozens of agents tied up all day, plus vehicles and gear etc) and not likely to lead to recovering much money.
If you're living a normal upper-middle-class lifestyle, they're going to write a letter to your payroll processor telling them to fix your withholding and garnish your wages, and they will. Then they'll write a letter to your bank telling them to hand over $x from your account, and they will. That takes 10 minutes of work for one guy at a desk and will probably recover whatever they want. If you think they took too much, well sucks to be you, you can spend your own $$$ and hire a lawyer to sue them, and good luck winning anything back. Maybe they'd let it slide for a few years until the amount owed goes over $100k, but no reason to think they'd forget about it entirely when they can still collect easily.
If you're a weird hippie who went to the trouble to have hard to track income and savings, maybe they'll just ignore it because it's too much work to track down and probably not all that much money anyways. Why bother, when writing letters to compliant corporations regarding normal upper-middle-class people is much faster and easier and yields much more money.
For a Donald Trump level figure (let's say pre-Presidency, so kind of a stand-in for any super-rich cantankerous person with weird complex finances), they can assume it'll take tons of their resources to really audit what's going on with him, and he's going to throw a dozen of his own high-priced lawyers and accountants at you, so maybe they'll just leave it alone unless they think they have a rock-solid case that you owe big bucks that they can actually collect.
I actually read some of the "War Tax Resistance" people's website. They don't seem to have much better advice for avoiding enforcement action. Basically, don't work for people who will report to the IRS and obey their garnishment letters, and don't hold money in banks they can track easily.
JulianRota
5mo ago
I think I'll take a pass on discussing the morality of it. I'd question the practicality though. Let's think here.
So it seems the primary mechanisms of enforcement against most people are through other institutions - they tell W2 employers to knock it off on bad withholding filings, and they do, they tell banks and investment institutions to hand over owed money, and they will. They know about all your bank accounts because the banks report to the IRS too. I am willing to believe that the IRS's most-feared punitive measures are actually pretty rare to come into contact with as the LW OP describes, but what is the plan for dealing with such institutional enforcement? You can choose to not actually write a check to the IRS when they come knocking, but your payroll processor and bank won't.
So then plans for refusing to pay taxes are mostly about living a lifestyle that avoids all such institutions. The low-end one is a pretty obvious option - take a job that pays cash under the table, seek living arrangement that accept cash, never use a bank. Certainly possible to do, but that's pretty low-end living, you'd have to be really determined to do that.
Maybe there's a Bitcoin variety of this? If you can take a job that pays in Bitcoin and doesn't pay attention to taxes, it might be possible to make pretty good money like that. Maybe you could convert that directly to cash by various means, buy prepaid cards and such, and consume luxury goods at a normal rate. Not sure about living space though, I don't think you can buy with crypto or any landlords would accept it, but maybe a roommate will, or would accept converted cash? Or maybe in a super-techy space like SV you could infact rent or buy with crypto. Though if you buy, you'll owe property taxes, which I'm not sure if we're also objecting to here. So maybe this is a practical way to avoid paying income taxes entirely while not living a minimum-wage lifestyle?
But then, the crypto world is not exactly a bastion of honest dealing and fiscal responsibility. What are the odds your crypto employer will pay the correct amount on time every time? How about the people trading crypto for physical goods? The failure rate for bank-like institutions working with crypto is not great either. I'm not even saying the scam and fraud rate is super-high, but if you're relying on it for your primary financial dealings, just one serious mishap could be a huge deal, even if it only happens once every few years. And where's the recourse on any of that? Think the police or courts will give a crap? I doubt it. Hey, organizations that are built around avoiding all taxes and regulation are rather less honest than the "legit" world, who would have guessed? If they're willing to screw over the Feds for more cash, why wouldn't they screw you over too - you're much easier and less dangerous to screw than the Federal Government. Maybe living and working in the normal regulated world isn't so bad after all, even if the Federal Government is not exactly great. Also, it seems kinda lame to be like, I hate the government so much that I refuse to pay any taxes ever, but then go crying to them for help when some third-party scams you.
Along the lines of there being other risks and dangers than the Government, if you live the all-cash or all-crypto no-taxes lifestyle, and you are anything but dirt poor, then you will probably have substantial cash/crypto lying around somewhere. This makes you an attractive robbery target. If you have any social life at all, people will figure this out eventually. You will be targeted. I've known people this has happened to, despite not being as obvious as guy who pays cash for everything because he wants to pay no taxes ever. Organized multi-person burglary schemes can very much happen to you if word gets around that you have 5-figures of cash lying around. Think the cops are gonna help? Unlikely. If you go crying to them that you got ripped off for $50k cash, they're probably going to be a lot more interested in why you had that much cash around than busting whoever did it. Also falls under the theme of, how you gonna refuse to pay taxes because you hate the government so much, then cry to them for help when somebody else screws you over.
I guess the independent community life might be an option. Can be called a "commune" or a "compound" depending on your politics. It can be a viable way to pay little to no taxes without living a completely shitty life. But it's definitely a very different lifestyle. If you dig that, well more power to you I guess, but I don't think it's worth going to that much trouble just for the specific reason of avoiding paying taxes.
So yeah, I don't have a strong moral objection to it, but show me a way to live a no-tax life that's not completely shitty and doesn't expose me to much more likely dangers than whatever the Federal Government is doing, and maybe I'd be into it. If it exists.
That's the question indeed. Should we take anything from the fact that we aren't getting the names and career histories of any of the people responsible for these events? If there were WASPs behind any of them, do you think they would be immediately named and publicly fired to demonstrate the organization's commitment to "reversing structural racism" instead of obscuring the details, brushing the events under the rug, while insisting that we have no idea what's going on but it's definitely not a competency crisis due to diversity-based hiring practices?
More options
Context Copy link