Lykurg
We're all living in Amerika
Hello back frens
User ID: 2022
Lykurg
We're all living in Amerika
5mo ago
It simply cannot have been, because I was of that generation and I was mostly put off by how much people cared about the whole thing on either side.
I dont care how much people care about things in the appropriate internet forums, or how petty they get. The "radicalising" part is how ouside society reacted to it. Like when one of those people got a hearing at the UN - what does that say about "our institutions"? In googling for this article, I found one from Austrias major center-left newspaper on the topic - from 2021. I think gamergate was mostly not causal - plenty of other things happened that could have done its work, but in the actual history it did play a major role. It was the first example of "blob enforcement" outside the traditional political arenas.
Lykurg
We're all living in Amerika
2yr ago
Isnt it weird how you never hear about the gypsies? They sure look like they count as a capital-M Minority: Very poor, very uneducated, very bad relations to the police, they even were in the Nazi camps. But in political discourse they might as well not exist. Im vaguely aware that our eastern neighbors have more of them and its more of a topic there, but this doesnt make it to me either. I just searched for it and best I found is this, from 2020. Theres sightly more in german, but compared to the media volume dedicated to telling me that Orban is mean to the gays, it might as well not exist. While I was at it I also looked for the "list of gypsies that made important contributions to science", and that actually doesnt exist. The only thing that remotely looks like a hit is this, which has three people on it: one with a possible nth-generation ancestor, and two that google isnt even sure exist.
I find this interesting as a point of comparison. Theres lots of people out there of even opposing ideologies giving mechanistic explanations of how the shared characteristics of Minorities lead to the political discourse around them, and then heres a case where it just didnt.
Lykurg
We're all living in Amerika
1mo ago
‘This is the moment of testing. The moment your hearts are weighed against the Phoenix’s feather. Are you not curious at the outcome?’
‘Not remotely. I know my worth, and I know my crimes. This court holds no jurisdiction over me.’ Fabius straightened, trying to slow his heart rate. His muscles strained against unknown pressures. It was as if he stood at the bottom of a vast ocean, and the weight of thousands of fathoms pressed down on him.
‘Its jurisdiction extends far beyond your ability to conceive, alchemist. You have committed crimes of such monstrous elegance that even the gods themselves grow uneasy. Look – see – they sit in judgement of you.’ A too-long finger drifted upwards, and Fabius followed the gesture. He looked up, and something looked down.
It was not a face, for a face was a thing of limits and angles, and what he saw had neither. It stretched as far as his eyes could see, as if it were one with the whole of the sky and the firmament above. Things that might have been eyes, or distant moons or vast constellations of stars, looked down at him, and a gash in the atmosphere twisted like a lover’s smile. It studied him from an impossible distance, and he felt the sharp edge of its gaze cut through him, layer by layer. There was pain, in that gaze, and pleasure as well. Agony and ecstasy, inextricable and inseparable.
With great effort, he tore his gaze away. ‘There is nothing there,’ he snarled, his teeth cracking against each other. His hearts stuttered, suddenly losing their rhythm. He pounded at his chest, as internal defibrillators sent a charge of electricity shrieking through him. The chirurgeon flooded his system with tranquillisers, and he tapped shakily at his vambrace. A secondary solution of mild stimulants joined the tranquillisers, stabilising him. He ignored the urge to look up. There was nothing there. Nothing at all. ‘There is nothing there,’ he said again, tasting blood. ‘There are no gods. Only cold stars and the void.’
The pressure increased. Something whispered, deep within him. It scratched at the walls of his mind, trying to catch his attention. He ignored it. ‘No gods,’ he repeated. ‘Random confluence of celestial phenomena. Interdimensional disasters, echoing outwards through our perceptions. I think, therefore I am. They do not, so they are not.’ He met the Quaestor’s bland gaze unflinchingly. ‘Gods are for the weak. I am not weak.’
The Quaestor nodded expectantly. ‘No.’
/u/Amadan is entirely correct and in fact doesnt go far enough. The controversy is part of the game, and so is you thinking about how You Can Save Her. There is no form of attention you can pay to this that makes things better, except possibly in minecraft.
Lykurg
We're all living in Amerika
2yr ago
I think youre missing an important part. The whole conversation the idea describes goes more like this:
A: "We shouldnt do Y, that would imply we should also do X, which is bad"
B: "X will never happen, it would be totally safe to do Y"
Y is done, X happens
A: *angry*
B: "Obviously its good that X happened, its good for the same reason Y is good, are you really such a backward bigot that you think even Y is bad, or are you too dumb to understand consistent principles?"
Your third scenario is not a case of the pattern at all, because the "X will never happen" isnt used to assuage. Your second scenario might be, but I think youll find very few examples of conservatives using it that way. They just dont get enough wins for that.
As for the first example... well somewhere in between those two totally different people saying these things, the X did in fact happen. That would be very unlikely if noones mind changed. So propably there is a significant faction who made the switch in-one-person.
But thats not particularly relevant. The point is that you shouldnt believe the "X will never happen", and waxing about how totally sincere the liberals are and how mean and unsportsmanlike it is to say theyre not doesnt change that.
Lykurg
We're all living in Amerika
1mo ago
Are you sure youre not exaggerating the risks? I dont know about most of them, but one that sticks out is:
I'm grateful I still have urinary continence, something that's not common for women who've had kids.
Most women have kids, and even reading the plural strictly many do. If urinary incontinence were the default outcome, at least a third or so of middle-aged women would have incontinence, and I feel like I would know that. If women have more children in your circles, then the risk will be higher, but Id still expect the genpop prevalence to be at least half of those circles, which again doesnt seem to be there. I havent heard about it being the standard in past times with higher fertility either.
The point about fear as an obstacle is relevant, but fear often isnt related to real danger, in either direction; my mother is quite afraid of heights and has a motorcycle. I mean:
Like even as I start breathing faster with elevated heartbeat every time I think about going off birth control
youre pretty much describing panic attacks here. If you want to "get over it", try this: Instead of fearing that it will suck, imagine it would for sure be like your last time again. It would for sure suck. A few years later, youre sitting at a large table full of children. Will you be ok?
Lykurg
We're all living in Amerika
3mo ago
Given the how much the form theyve taken will lower the odds of sticking, and poison the well going forward, I think they are flat out a mistake.
Lykurg
We're all living in Amerika
4mo ago
The "ideal" outcome would probably be a return to pre-war Ukrainian borders or similar, and a somewhat neutral Ukraine.
How do you intend to achieve a neutral Ukraine? The ukrainians can decide to be pro-western without our consent, and as things stand it seems that they would.
Lykurg
We're all living in Amerika
4mo ago
that monogamy is not most men's ideal relationship arrangement.
Just because you have urges doesnt mean following them is your ideal relationship arrangement. Look at various gay subcultures as an example of what happens when this urge faces no resistance. I wouldnt want to end up like that. You can attribute this to some psychoanalysis of me, but ~everyone thinks something like this with food and obesity and you propably accept its straightforward there.
Lykurg
We're all living in Amerika
5mo ago
when the left-leaning home depot employee lost her job
You mean the one that spoke in favour of the Trump assassination?
Lykurg
We're all living in Amerika
5mo ago
I agree with this, but I also had the impression lately that these rules have become much more relaxed when its not about the Special People.
Lykurg
We're all living in Amerika
2yr ago
I think the barberpole theory is pretty lame.
First of all, it doesnt actually tell you what new thing the upper classes will adopt. Before modernism, public art and architecture was neoclassical. If I had asked you at that time what style one could adopt to best differentiate from neoclassical, would you have come up with modernism or postmodernism from first principles? I think the best answer there would have been imitating rural peasants, but its hard to say. In practice a "style" has lots of attributes, and giving an exact inverse is difficult and also unnecessary, because anything thats different enough cam be used as a repudiation.
And "obvious inversion" is only one way this could go. Another example that certainly seems to be true often is that only the people youre signaling to can read the signals. If this is "elites compete for adulation of their peers", that doesnt explain the uglyness. It only needs to be obvious if you want to show the proles that youre different from them.
Also, theres a lot of low-class coded things that lower-class people themselves dont consider beautiful. Consider for example these very loose-cut shirts littered with branding: The people who wear these like them, and they think theyre cool, but they dont think theyre beautiful. You have to really scrape the bottom of the barrel to find people who e.g. wear them to a wedding. Returning to the topic of public art, I have yet to see anyone argue we should have e.g. a statue of Mickey Mouse in public square. Why not? Mickey Mouse figures are certainly more popular home decoration than classical statuettes.
So, its not given that the lower classes will even dislike it, if public buildings and art are distinctly higher-class. I dont think postmodern art is an obvious consequence of post-scarcity. Theres plenty of people floating around telling us that things shouldnt be beautiful because thats fascist: consider taking them seriously.
Lykurg
We're all living in Amerika
2yr ago
Martha Nussbaum writes about wild animal suffering in the New York Review of Books.
Sort of. That exact wording is not used, and the utilitarian discourse on the subject not referenced, but it clearly is the same general thought. And it is very cathedralised. We have:
The "everything is political":
In the US, “wild horses” and other “wild” creatures live under the jurisdiction of our nation and its states. To the extent that they have limited rights of nonintervention, free movement, and even a type of property rights, that is because human law has seen fit to give them these rights. Humans are in control everywhere. Humans decide what habitats to protect for animals, and leave the animals only what they decide not to use.
One might grant that the current status quo is that humans dominate everywhere, while still recommending that humans simply back off and leave all the “wild” animals in all of these spaces to do the best they can for themselves. Even that proposal would require active human intervention to stop human practices that interfere with animal lives: poaching, hunting, whaling. And it would be, it seems, a gross abnegation of responsibility: we have caused all these problems, and we turn our backs on them, saying, “Well, you are wild animals, so live with it as best you can.” It is not clear what would be accomplished by this pretense of a hands-off policy.
The critical theorising:
There are also some very bad reasons for not moving against predation. Part of the Romantic idea of “the wild” is a yearning for violence. Blake’s Tyger and Shelley’s West Wind are emblems of what some humans feel they have lost by becoming hypercivilized. A longing for (putatively) lost aggression lies behind a lot of people’s fascination with large predatory animals and indeed with the spectacle of predation itself.
(And much more in this direction. That is most of the article.)
And just enough mention of the exterminationist angle to stay deniable:
Moreover, the animal reservation is geared as a whole to this exercise: the wild dogs are highly endangered, and much effort is made to preserve them. I am agnostic about the desirability of preserving that species, but I think here the central concern prompting preservation is a bad one: money from sado-tourism.
I find this interesting in light of an ongoing debate about cthulhu theory: Whether new leftist causes are relatively obvious consequences of general principles that have already been driving the movement for a long time, or have more short-term cynical explanations. I lean towards the former and think this example supports that:
I think that today, its easy to see the Singer&Co rationale in an article like this. But if the Motte-equivalent of 2100 is arguing about that, and everyone has heard stuff like the link in public school, and then someone tries explain how this was anticipated by the obscure philosoper Singer, I can imagine that going quite a lot worse.
Lykurg
We're all living in Amerika
1mo ago
Because I think the Aella brand reasonably analogous to a demonette. Chaos creatures are created and strengthened by human thoughts and feelings in their domain, and try to induce more of those through their actions. They are analogously weakened by refusing to notice or believe in them, which is how Fabiuss superhuman boneheadedness allowed him to survive a direct encounter with Slaanesh here.
Lykurg
We're all living in Amerika
1mo ago
anarcho tyranny
What do you mean by that? As I know it, anarcho tyranny is when you use punishments that only respectable people care about, which combined combined with certain doctrines about self defense or legal uncertainty forces them to endure crime that you do nothing against. That doesnt really make sense in your sentence.
Lykurg
We're all living in Amerika
4mo ago
The same way that you might look at a guy with a broken hispanic accent who just attained citizenship saying "shut down the border" is how I look at most people saying "shut down the border". Or the same way you might look at a person, still dripping wet after pulling themself onto the lifeboat and saying "we can't let anyone else on".
You know, unless I had some independent reason to think theyre crazy, I would take that as strong evidence that its in my interest what theyre saying.
And since were doing credentials: My family has lived within an hour of here longer than europeans have been to america.
Canadian Man Dies of Aneurysm After Giving Up on Hospital Wait
So this is making the rounds on the internet today. Comparisons to the accute discussion in America obviously suggest themselves and are even briefly mentioned in the article. Now a lot of this seems to be more typically discussion of the merits of prublic vs private healthcare, but my initial thought was, "Who could you shoot for this?".
Obviously, murder is bad. But assuming you accepted the idea that killing people for delivering insufficient healthcare is ok, and you thought Canada was bad enough to count, who would it even be? From what I understand healthcare is done on a provincial level there, so maybe theres some kind of health commissioner in the local executive? But then again, budget limitations are propably more to blame on the local parliament. And they implement what they ran for election on. Etc. I mean if youre lucky theres someone somewhere who lost metric fucktons of money and thats all there is to it, but propably not.
A few weeks ago, Trump signed an executive order attempting to end birthright citizenship; it is currently working its way through the courts. Some users here claimed that the 14th amendment "obviously" implies birthright citizenship. I disagree, but wanted to take the time for a long from explanation. First, the relevant text:
All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside.
The question, now, is who is subject to jurisdiction. It cant just be everyone, because then why would they write it, and besides there are known exceptions made on this basis, notably foreign diplomats, invading armies, and (formerly) indians. Of these, I want to look at invading armies in particular. Why are they not subject to jurisdiction?
The common answer seems to be that, since they control the territory, they have the jurisdiction rather than the US. But does the US accept that it doesnt have jurisdiction? No. After the invader is expelled, they likely have the right collect the outstanding tax from the time they were unable to collect. Crimes under US law that occured during that time can also be prosecuted (though it may be an extenuating circumstance where relevant).
Now, you might try to solve this by requiring defacto jurisdiction. The problem is that you then have to explain how the defacto failure to immediately reoccupy territory is different from the defacto failure to immediately apprehend any criminal whatsoever. This sounds quite weird and not like something they would have meant, and also every illegal immigrant is a fugitive criminal, because he violates immigration law. And it also seems that the invasion exception applies to the invaders, rather than every non-citizen in the territory.
A more promising approach might be to notice that the way the government treats illegal immigrants is a lot like how it treats enemy soldiers: Where safely possible, they are caught alive. They can then be prosecuted for any crimes committed in the US (unless responsibility goes up the command chain), and are eventually sent back home (when there is no danger that this will help the enemy anymore). This suggests that jurisdiction applies to them in a similar way, and reasoning for an exemption is likely to transfer. Indeed, one of the simplest descriptions of an invasion is "People coming into the country that the government doesnt want to". Subjecting people to jurisdiction requires activity of the government, and it seems quite sensible that someone refused entry is also refused jurisdiction. I think thats more plausible than such a refusal requiring jurisdiction, but even if you disagree, its at least a binary choice rather than having to find some complicated new distinction.
Is this a motivated reading? While it has some complexity to it, I dont see a way to accommodate the invasion exception without that. I think this is the most plausible way to resolve that. A reading which doesnt make the invasion exception may also be reasonable, depending on judicial philosophy, but if thats what the people calling it "obvious" meant, they should indicate that theyre defending something other than the status quo. In conclusion, I think children of illegal immigrants do not necessarily have citizenship, those of temporary residents (also targeted in the EO) do.
...is what I would have written, if I didnt remember that the US actually claims universal jurisdiction for some of its laws. This doesnt make everyone a US citizen, because there is the territory requirement in the text, but it potentially outflanks the exceptions, and under my above reading all of them would be invalid. Admittedly I dont think SCOTUS will take this line seriously - theyre too practical for that, and if they just really want to keep children of illegals theres plenty of bad arguments to use that sound more normal. And actually, theres a wrinkle in the wrinkle, because one of the laws with universal jurisdiction was passed before the 14th ammendment, and so actually maybe you should make the traditional exceptions work even under universal jurisdiction (depending on judicial philosophy). I think the universal reading of that law is bullshit, but it has precedent.
EDIT: Since noone seems to take into account the last paragraph: My final conclusion is that all the exceptions are gone.
Lykurg
We're all living in Amerika
5mo ago
I dont think you should react a lot to that tweet. Trump has always taked big and not done as much. I mean, clearly things are happening now, but itll still be a lot less happening than he says. Its reasonable to update on the executive orders and DOGE activity- but if that tweet is what finally convinced you, then I think youre still somewhat hysteric in that moment.
Lykurg
We're all living in Amerika
1mo ago
Keep seeing same link. Keep making same response
If "is a fish" really were just semantic, then by the same mechanism "has tiny hairs" would be just semantic. So there would be no facts based on which you can classify things... The only thing that makes this theory remotely workable is that you already know which things you want to apply it too. Its pure Humpty-Dumpty-ism in practice.
Lykurg
We're all living in Amerika
4mo ago
You say youre not a troll, but this is a very wordy version of "Conservatism is bad because I hate my family.".
Lykurg
We're all living in Amerika
6mo ago
This is just misunderstanding how and why these advocacy groups work. WN talk as if minorities are "stronger" than whites collectively due to this advocacy, and that current racial politics are caused by their "winning". This is not how things work outside Zimbabwe et al. Its pretty clear Blacks cant actually threaten the US government if you think about it for a bit. These organisations exist because liberalism thinks they should, and they are given concessions because it thinks they should """win""". A white organisation mirroring them is pointless, because its not the internal structure that makes them work. If you could convice mainstream whites that it would be ok to have one, you have already convinced them on the way there to stop this theater, and then it wouldnt be necessary anymore to have one.
Lykurg
We're all living in Amerika
3mo ago
China’s PPP GDP is only 25% larger than that of the US? Come on people… who are we kidding?
Its not hard to pick out a few industries youre strong in. The only number there thats worth taking seriously for macro measures is electricity. And that still seems consistent with the 25% number - manufacturing generally needs more electricity than services, e.g. Icelands GDP is not actually underestimated. Theres an argument that services are BS and therefore Chinas economy really is better - but at that point, youre far enough from conventional economics that GDP is a questionable measure anyway.
Lykurg
We're all living in Amerika
4mo ago
I think a lot of our international politics was controlled by the US establishment, and now that Trump is winding that down theres some weird reactions.
Lykurg
We're all living in Amerika
5mo ago
Take it from the old liberal JS Mill:
Free institutions are next to impossible in a country made up of different nationalities. Among a people without fellow-feeling, especially if they read and speak different languages, the united public opinion necessary to the working of representative government can not exist. The influences which form opinions and decide political acts are different in the different sections of the country. An altogether different set of leaders have the confidence of one part of the country and of another. The same books, newspapers, pamphlets, speeches, do not reach them. One section does not know what opinions or what instigations are circulating in another. The same incidents, the same acts, the same system of government, affect them in different ways, and each fears more injury to itself from the other nationalities than from the common arbiter, the state. Their mutual antipathies are generally much stronger than jealousy of the government. That any one of them feels aggrieved by the policy of the common ruler is sufficient to determine another to support that policy.
Now, hes explaining this in terms of nationality, but I think its clear that this is far from the only reason why people may fail to form a united public opinion - and indeed, the modern US version is mostly not based on it. But the point is that this idea of liberalism and democracy as a dispute resolution mechanism is an extremely novel idea that even liberals and democrats would have told you wont work almost universally until 1900, and mostly until WW2. It was clear that such a government must express a common national spirit. Political competition that is not grounded in such is not campaigning, it is Realist pseudo-international relations, because you have indeed nothing to lose but your chains in going there.
We have started to claim it is unnecessary, and then slowly the rules-lawyers have nudged us to stop maintaining it, and the US is now beginning to see the effects of this.
I think thats the second or third time were seeing this specific kind of leak in the new Trump administration.
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