JulianRota
9mo ago
Okay that sounds like a reasonable take, I missed getting an update on that event sufficiently long after it happened for the truth to actually come out.
Though I might quibble a little about whether it was a "dirty lie", or wild speculation very soon after the event before any actual facts came out, which there tends to be an ample amount of after any high-profile event, including the Kirk assassination.
JulianRota
9mo ago
Disagree, look at the 60s and 70s.
By "this era" I did mean after the 60s and 70s era of political unrest. Not sure of an exact date actually, I guess after the relatively domestically peaceful 80s and 90s. Though I suppose you'd then have to overlook the OKC bombing, which is maybe reasonable, since it was more anti-government than anti either political party or tribal side.
That wasn't anymore fabricated than a typical sting operation. Maybe you're against police stings in general, but it's common. Happen with drugs, prostitution, money laundering, child pornography honeypots, fake assassination hiring sites etc.
I'm not against police stings in general, but there's most definitely a line they have crossed at times where it seems more like they're enabling or encouraging crime that wouldn't otherwise happen instead of thwarting people with serious intent to commit major crimes. I don't know about the case you cited in particular, but they have definitely done this with so-called Islamic terrorists too. In this case they "befriended" some developmentally disabled teenager and eventually cajoled him into sending pitifully small amounts of money to somebody he believed was associated with ISIS, then busted him and patted themselves on the back for "stopping ISIS". Do you think that's an appropriate use of police resources?
Exactly where the line is for this is a bit fuzzy. But I think a good indicator that you're way off on the wrong side of the line is when multiple defendants get acquitted after a successful entrapment defense.
JulianRota
9mo ago
I don't know all of these for sure, but:
Pelosi's husband being attacked.
I don't think there was any indication the attacker was a conservative who hated them for being liberal. As I recall, it was more like some sort of dispute between friends or possibly lovers.
The kidnapping plot against Whitmer.
You mean the one that was entirely fabricated by FBI informants?
And Luigi Mangione is the only one that deserves an asterisk?
I think this might qualify as the most explicitly political violence yet to happen in this era of political division. Depending on who they turn up as the shooter, presuming that they do eventually.
JulianRota
9mo ago
I finished reading Kurt Schlichter's American Apocalypse, about a second American Civil War, written pretty recently, so it doesn't feel ridiculously out of touch with current events. He's a red-team author, so naturally the book has the red team side be the good guys and win the war. It repeats the style from his previous book The Attack of being written from the perspective of a post-event author doing interviews with a series of participants in the event in a variety of different positions, so it's effectively a series of moderately connected short stories. I found it an engaging and enjoyable read, and much more fleshed-out with regard to how things actually progress and escalate than most other new civil war stories.
The way things escalate towards a hot war seems to paint the Blue side as maximally bad and the Red side as only as bad as they are forced to be. I enjoy reading that, but it does feel a bit improbable I suppose. It doesn't soft-petal how nasty such a war would be likely to be too much - it includes such things a double-digit millions of innocent Americans dying due to starvation and disease from collapse of food and healthcare logistics and both blue and red militias and guerillas treating civilians who oppose them poorly. It ends with a red "Special Security Force" department which confiscates all of the possessions of blue-teamers who were too influential, sometimes locks them into "reeducation camps" and forbids them from ever having an important job again until they earn a "rehabilitation certificate". It seems to take the position that, yeah, there isn't traditional American free expression anymore, but what else are you going to do when the Blues take advantage of that to weaponize every institution, seize power, and horribly abuse ordinary Americans. Not exactly something I'd care to endorse now, but maybe in a world where the events portrayed in the book actually did happen.
I do notice that it doesn't pay attention to a number of aspects of what I think would actually happen if there was ever actually a new Civil War. Not much detail about what actual Mexican Cartels and other large organized gangs would do in such a situation, besides a one-liner about how Mexican Cartels took over Arizona in that world. Or Islamic militants or other religious issues for that matter. Not much about race either - I don't think there's anywhere near as much racism in Red ideology as the Blues would have you believe, but there isn't none, and wars tend to enable the craziest people to really let their crazy flag fly. I suppose it's a bit much to expect to cover that stuff in a book that's supposed to be red meat to the actual Red Team.
I've also been trying to read Scott Horton's Provoked: How Washington Started the New Cold War with Russia and the Catastrophe in Ukraine. It's basically okay, but rather long and repetitive so far in my opinion. I'd like to read like like 50-100 pages or so of a steelman of how American diplomacy backed Russia into a corner, in their opinion at least, but I'm not sure I care to slog through ::checks listing:: 2,316 pages of it. Wow, didn't realize it was quite that long. Maybe I probably won't actually finish that one after all.
JulianRota
9mo ago
I do live in New York, but just saw this. Wouldn't have been able to make it anyways, I just flew back in from Europe last night at like 10:30pm.
JulianRota
10mo ago
Along the lines of what Amadan said, I think you need to first think about what the long-term future looks like with all of the options you are considering.
Say the woman at least intends to be genuine and the baby is real and actually yours, and you actually move there and attempt to raise a family. Do you really know this woman well enough to know what a long-term relationship with her would look like, across such a huge gap in culture and wealth? I don't know what you did with her over those weeks, but did you really see her in enough situations to get a feel for who she really is? Do you speak any of the local language at all? And what of your friends and family and any career you may have here in the US (assuming you were born and raised in the US, or wherever else you're from), what will they think of you when you tell them you're moving to the Philippines to marry and raise a family with a local stripper? What if it ends up not working out and you have to move back?
Or say you go along with the idea that the kid is real and yours and you want to support it. This will be an obligation for decades, and it will almost certainly come out eventually. What if, 8 years from now, you get into a serious relationship with a regular woman in your actual home city? She will eventually find out that you're sending money to and communicating with someone in the Philippines. What will you tell her and what will she think of you as a result of that?
Or option 3, you just block and ignore her from now on and completely forget about her, possibly sending money for an alleged abortion before doing so. This option closes the door on this unfortunate situation for good. Nothing in your current life or future will be affected by it, nobody will know except your own conscience and the people of the Motte here.
When you think about it like that, I think it's clear that Option 3 is the only real choice. Does it feel a little bad? Yeah maybe. But you acted like a total douchebag travelling to the Philippines and having unprotected sex with a third-world sex worker in the first place. There's nothing to do now but complete the act and ditch her. There's no magic pill to get out of this cleanly for you. If you feel bad about it, congratulations, you've discovered that you are not actually a total douchebag. Therefore, cease doing douchebag things. It's not really that bad in the grand scheme of things - you screwed up, but you've learned some about who you are and why you should not do certain things. And yeah, 95% chance she's scamming you and the kid is fake or not actually yours, and if it's the other 5%, well she's in the business and not a little kid, she should damn well know this is a possibility by now, and if not, it's about time she learned. Either way, she already has a big family and 2 kids, she'll be okay in the long run whatever the actual deal is here.
JulianRota
11mo ago
I don't know if you're particularly interested in the "foreign resistance fighter memoir" thing, but I did actually read that book. In my opinion, it was a moderately interesting memoir with very little in the way of actual political opinions at all, aside from an opposition to Russian expansionism. I don't see any reason at all to "cancel" it besides ridiculous hysteria about "nazis".
Which of course completely reversed overnight when Russia did actually invade Ukraine full-scale, at which point Azov battalion suddenly becomes glorious heroes, regardless of how much Nazi imagery and terminology they use, and the Canadian Parliament gives an award to an actual Ukrainian Waffen SS member for fighting against Russia in WWII.
JulianRota
11mo ago
I've considered writing something similar in the more general department of how fiction affects peoples' worldviews. I see it a lot in terms of discussions on criminal justice in particular.
My impression from the sources I've read that seem to accurately reflect the "average" case rather than cases or regions cherry-picked for some particular reason is that around 90% of all people charged with crimes in the United States are guilty as sin and busted dead to rights. Meanwhile, huge numbers of people seem to believe things like that most people are innocent or crazy serial killers are everywhere or something like that, because all their knowledge comes from fictional media optimized for drama, and documentaries that cherry-pick outrageous cases and exaggerate how outrageous they are.
JulianRota
11mo ago
On your 1, I have had some related thoughts that I posted on at greater length here. What mean is I think saying basically "the South should have industrialized more in the 1850s" is a hindsight thing that wouldn't and couldn't have occurred to anyone at the time.
"Couldn't" because at the time of the leadup to the ACW, warfare was, I don't know if this is the best term exactly, but stuck in the pre-industrial ways of war. Winning the day was much more dependent on individual courage, daring, and clever maneuvering of units. The South was actually pretty well-equipped to fight this sort of war against the North already. Industrialized warfare basically hadn't been invented yet at all. The Union stumbled through making it up as they went, eventually figured it out, and proceeded to crush the Confederacy under a mountain of manufactured goods, as all future wars would entail up to the Nuclear age. I don't think anybody had sufficient foresight, or confidence in any such person's foresight, to attempt to optimize for industrial war in advance before it had ever been tried.
"Wouldn't" because, even if we granted the proto-Confederates perfect foresight, to admit a need to optimize for industrial war leads to an inevitable conclusion that plantation slavery is already obsolete and will go onto the old ash-heap of history one way or another before long. In which case, why bother fighting a war for it at all?
JulianRota
11mo ago
What I haven't seen much commentary on yet is, will Adams and/or Cuomo run against him as an independent? I figure, winning the Democrat nomination makes Mamdani a shoo-in by default in the general. To have a shot at defeating him would probably require a temporary alliance between a very substantial number of more centrist Democrats and pretty much all of the Republicans to all vote for one particular alternate Democrat running as independent. Having a shot at that actually working seems much less likely if both Adams and Cuomo run, especially if they start openly attacking each other.
In my opinion, if you're mostly on the road, not doing serious distance yet, and not entirely sure what kind of riding you want to do, then a Hybrid is probably what you want. Usually they're mostly mountain bike frame and parts, but smoother tires, possibly road wheels, and at least slightly relaxed handlebars. They're usually okay-ish at pretty much everything and not terrible at anything. Maybe not quite enough tire grip and wheel strength for semi-serious trail riding, and not quite comfortable enough for long rides at high effort level compared to a road bike, but you probably won't notice until you actually try to do those things.
You probably want brand names on everything, but not top-end stuff. Usually means Shimano parts and pretty much any brand advertised and sold in actual bicycle stores. 2012ish Trek hybrid sounds decent as long as it comes reasonably close to fitting you. I don't honestly know what that runs these days, but used is probably a good deal. Bikes like this will usually go thousands of miles without breaking stuff, and are easy to fix or replace parts on if needed. The Walmart specials tend to start falling apart after a few hundred miles and be difficult to fix or find replacement parts for.
It may take some experience to understand how road bikes are really supposed to fit and work. You should be leaning forward enough to put significant weight on your hands. The drop bars provide several places to put your hands to help with this strain. Between putting significant force on the pedals most of the time and keeping some weight on your hands, there shouldn't be that much weight on the seat most of the time, so it's not meant to be that comfortable for just tooling around.
The only bike I actually have right now is a fixed-gear on a road bike frame I built many years ago. It's decently fun and comfortable for most things for me, and ugly enough to not be an attractive theft target. The lack of gears make it not that great for climbing hills/bridges, but it's okay for me on the ones near me. Also not great for carrying cargo, but I don't have much need for that now. I used to have a nice hybrid like the one I'm suggesting, which had decent saddlebags for cargo, but it got stolen a while ago. I do miss it a bit, but I wouldn't have storage room for it now anyways. I sold my nicer road bike a while ago too, since I don't ride long-distance much anymore.
It might also be worth getting a setup for changing out tire tubes that you can ride with if you are interested in riding at least moderately far away from home and civilization.
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