MadMonzer
Temporarily embarrassed liberal elite
No bio...
User ID: 896
MadMonzer
Temporarily embarrassed liberal elite
11mo ago
Part of this is also the nature of democracy. It's hard to win a campaign being 'tough on crime.' Generally more feel-good solutions will appeal to a broader majority, as they're far easier to justify and seem less morally fraught. Even if these types of solutions have worse outcomes overall.
Is this some kind of joke? Apart from a few ultra-left-wing cities in a short period after the death of George Floyd, essentially every politician running for election with the intention of winning claims to be tough on crime (some of them are lying, of course). This is most notoriously the case in America, but it is true in every democracy where I have been paying attention. In the UK, the "soft" end of the Overton window is that we should build fewer prisons and spend the money hiring police. (The logic being that a higher chance of being caught more than makes up for a shorter sentence, so you get more deterrence with less punishment). The Chesa Boudin recall tells us that even in San Francisco, being openly soft on crime was a political non-starter by 2022.
MadMonzer
Temporarily embarrassed liberal elite
11mo ago
If we are looking for a US example of pro-tyranny armed citizens rebelling against the government, then the first Klan and the Redeemers (my history is not good enough to know to what extent these were meaningfully different groups) are a more clear-cut example than the Confederacy.
Go directly to statistics jail for comparing violent crime in the US when large parts of the country were under COVID restrictions to Australia after COVID restrictions had ceased. If you use the 2019 US figures, it doesn't change the story - the US assault number was 1.7% instead of 1.4% - still well below the Australian level.
IIRC last time I looked it up, UK stats looked similar (assuming US FBI and UK Home Office statistics are a reasonable comparison), but I don't feel like digging for it now.
The equivalent victim-survey based crime numbers are the Crime Survey for England and Wales (I didn't bother looking for Scottish or Northern Irish numbers, but they won't materially affect the UK-wide average). The latest (almost entirely post-COVID restrictions) overall victimisation rate for violent crime is 1.35% - i.e. somewhat below the US numbers. The CSEW does not break down individual types of violent crime because the sample size isn't big enough to produce reliable numbers.
The other thing I looked at, more as a sanity check that the data was comparable than for information, was whether the contribution of domestic violence was the same. Both the US and Australia have about a 20:40:40 ratio of domestic violence/acquaintance violence/stranger violence. The UK talks about "domestic abuse" which is clearly something completely different because the rate is higher than the overall violent crime rate.
Incidentally, can any Aussies on this board let me know how you can have that level of violent crime and not end up with the kind of national freakout about it that the US and the UK go in for?
MadMonzer
Temporarily embarrassed liberal elite
11mo ago
The rise in crime in the 1970's happened across the first world, and it didn't lead to a demand for liberalised handgun laws in any country except America.
MadMonzer
Temporarily embarrassed liberal elite
11mo ago
Warsaw is notoriously not in Germany. The Polish nation-in-arms had already been defeated on the battlefield long before Hitler thought about the Holocaust - the fact that the Germans would win a violent conflict was already settled, as was the fact that they were willing to use the necessary force (including much bigger weapons than the rifles armed civilians rely on) and brutality to do so.
The claim that "civilian-owned guns are a useful tool of resistance to a foreign invader" is a very different one to "civilian-owned guns are protective against the domestic government turning tyrannical". The first claim seems like it should be answerable as a matter of military history - FWIW my uneducated view is that since about 1900 civilian guns have not been a problem for an invader able and willing to use tanks and aircraft against troublesome civilians, and that effective resistance to foreign invaders has tended to rely on "bombs" (IRA car bombs, VC claymore traps in Vietnam, IEDs in Iraq) rather than guns. I think the second claim is never going to be settled for the reasons we are seeing on this thread.
MadMonzer
Temporarily embarrassed liberal elite
11mo ago
I was thinking about the national lockdown in Australia which ended in May 2020, but looking at this list of local lockdowns, it looks like Sydney and Canberra spent about 2 months of 2021 under lockdown and Melbourne about 3 months.
Looking at 2019 makes most sense until we have a full year of post-COVID data (which the UK just published, but the US and Australia don't seem to have yet)
MadMonzer
Temporarily embarrassed liberal elite
11mo ago
It does, although I've been meaning to add that the US saw so many "mostly peaceful" protests in 2020 that I'm not entirely sure the lockdowns are the bit that would be skewing 2020 violent crime statistics the most...
The US numbers are lower in 2020 than in 2019. The most common motive for violent crime is drunken idiots fighting each other, and occasionally going after an innocent bystander accidentally while doing so. Much less of that in 2020.
Interestingly, I think the difference between the Special Olympics and the Paralympics is a very good intuition pump for the trans and intersex in women's sports issue.
The purpose of the Paralympics is to increase the range of body types that can experience elite athletic competition - in particular to include disabled ones. So once you qualify, the competition is as intense as it is in the Olympics. So naturally you need rules which are hard to cheese - including about eligibility. Someone who does not have the type of body that the Paralympics are for entering the Paralympics defeats the purpose of the event. (The London 2012 Paralympic programme featured a Paralympian joking that "Paralympians spend as much time trying to get classified as more severely disabled than they actually are as Olympians spend trying to conceal their performance-enhancing drug use" - gaming eligibility is considered the same tier of filthy cheating as doping.)
The purpose of the Special Olympics is to showcase the achievements of an underrepresented group. Although it is still competitive, and people still try to win, the stakes are intentionally lower and the aim is to encourage an atmosphere of friendly competition, sportsmanship, and health and social benefits to non-winning participants. As a corollary, the Special Olympics can be less careful about eligibility. (They allow anyone with a relevant diagnosis from their own doctor to participate without them having to be formally "classified" by a Special Olympics doctor the way Paralympians are.)
Are women's sports more like the Paralympics or the Special Olympics? People involved in elite women's sports are 100% clear that they are like the Paralympics - the aim is to allow a wider range of bodies (i.e. female ones) to compete at an elite level. So allowing male-bodied people who count as women to enter defeats the purpose, because they don't have the right type of bodies. The only question about allowing trans women is whether taking cross-sex hormones that stabilize your testosterone in the female-typical range makes your body effectively female. (And the answer varies by sport) But a lot of advocates for women's sports think of them as more like the Special Olympics - the aim is to showcase the achievements of female athletes in a way which encourages women and girls to exercise more. And in that case, if you think that trans and intersex "women" are part of the underrepresented group you are trying to showcase, then of course they should be able to participate.
MadMonzer
Temporarily embarrassed liberal elite
11mo ago
England doesn't use plea bargaining - it is technically illegal, although pre-sentencing guidelines it was possible to do informal plea bargains of the "We will drop the grievous bodily harm charge if you plead guilty to actual bodily harm" type. These no longer work because the sentencing guidelines (like the US Federal ones) tell judges to sentence based on the offending behaviour, not the specific crime the defendant was convicted of.
The current guideline for guilty pleas is that you get a third off the sentence if you plead guilty at the first opportunity (equivalent to pleading guilty at the arraignment in the US system), and between a quarter and a tenth off if you plead guilty later than that but before the opening of the trial. No negotiation.
MadMonzer
Temporarily embarrassed liberal elite
11mo ago
the anti-British feeling was only virulent among northern nationalists, not especially any more among Irish themselves.
The two main political parties in Ireland are Fine Gael and Fianna Fail. They (or their predecessors) have been 1st and 2nd in every Irish Parliamentary election (Ireland uses PR) since independence, except for 2011 (when Labour pushed Fianna Fail into 3rd) and 2020 (when Sinn Fein, FF and FG all got about the same number of seats). A non-diaspora Irishman would be able to explain the true horror better than I, but their policies on social and economic issues are basically the same establishment centre-right slop. They are famously "as different as shit and shite". Why do two separate parties exist? Because FG historically favoured normalising relationships with the UK, whereas FF favoured developing an Irish national identity based on anti-Britishness - which hit peak cringe with De Valera's letter of condolence to Admiral Donitz after the death of Hitler.
Anti-Britishness is sufficiently controversial in Ireland that for most of the 20th century it was able to replace economic and social issues as the main driver of a two-party system - even though Duverger's Law says that Ireland shouldn't even have a two-party system at all because it uses PR.
MadMonzer
Temporarily embarrassed liberal elite
11mo ago
Are there any Gulenists left in Turkish politics? Last time I was paying attention (IIRC around 2012), it sounded like the key battle-lines were Erdogan vs. the Gulenists with the Kemalists basically out of contention, but it sounds like Kılıçdaroğlu is a Kemalist straight out of central casting.
Twelve. Don't try to use the British "fanbase" or UK broadcast as a language-friendly gateway to understanding Eurovision. Although we all watch it, there is some combination of the British not quite "getting" Eurovision and treating it as an opportunity to point and laugh at the wacky Continentals, and us being jaded because the politics of the voting means that we don't normally stand a chance. Part of the problem is that this causes us to not take the national contest to choose a song seriously (given the quality of our domestic pop music scene, we send shockingly poor acts), but the worst bit is that it makes the British broadcast and the culture of watching it with drunken Brits unfortunately cynical. The most obvious symptom was Terry Wogan's commentary from 1971-2008 - he started drinking when the curtain went up, got ruder and ruder about the songs as he got drunker, and then said the quiet part out loud at every opportunity when it came to complaining about biased voting.
Thirteen. The host (who is normally the previous year's winner) is responsible for meeting all the costs of the event, and gets very little back from the broadcast. (the ESC is shown ad-free on state-owned broadcasters in most EBU-member countries). For small countries which do well, this leads to a different sort of jadedness where the national broadcaster is trying to ensure that their country loses deliberately for financial reasons (but is generally not able to say this to its viewers, who like winning). Ireland is the most famous example where eventually the cynicism got through to the viewers.
If you want an English-language introduction to Eurovision that captures what Eurovision-watching should be, I recommend the Australian broadcast. But the best way to watch it is as a noob to join an existing Eurovision-watching party hosted by someone who grew up in Continental Europe.
Fourteen. The culture of Eurvision-watching is gay in every possible sense of the world, including the old-fashioned one of being gratuitously, flamboyantly happy.
Fifteen. The final scores at the end of the voting are never read out (in English or French), so "nul points" as a metaphor for getting no votes at all is a "Beam me up Scotty"/"Play it again, Sam" misquote.
MadMonzer
Temporarily embarrassed liberal elite
11mo ago
Hey. Ireland always threw us a few pity points. Norway and Austria are the global leaders of nul points.
MadMonzer
Temporarily embarrassed liberal elite
11mo ago
Zero. Eurovision is BIG. Super Bowl live TV audiences are generally 110-115 million. Eurovision has an official audience (based on ratings data from EBU-member countries) of around 140 million and an estimated total live audience including streamers in non-participating countries of 180 million. The biggest annual sporting event for TV watching is the UEFA Champion's League final which runs 200-400 million depending on who is counting and how globally popular the competing teams are.
(For comparison, less-than-annual mega-events like the FIFA world cup final, the Olympic opening and closing ceremonies, and major British royal weddings and funerals probably run around a billion viewers, but it becomes increasingly hard to keep count).
no billionaire I'm aware is aligned with the Dissident Right
Peter Thiel appears to be. He has definitely thrown money at Moldbug, and he backed Trump until it became clear that the candidate on the ballot was Trump-the-reality-TV-star and not Trump-the-real-world-CEO.
But I don't think the Dissident Right is aligned with Peter Thiel for the obvious sexual morality reasons.
Robert Mercer was a key early investor in Breitbart, which I think counts as dissident right, though obviously of the populist rather than the elitist variety. He tends not to boast about his political spending, and I doubt his opponents know everything he is doing - I would not be remotely surprised if he was throwing a few million at high-IQ dissident right projects on the quiet.
Very few people had heard of Harlan Crow before he turned out to own a Supreme Court Justice, and most people don't buy a Supreme Court Justice as their first politician, so I suspect he has other things going on that we don't know about, and given his taste in landscape art I imagine some of them are dissident right aligned.
In general, anyone doing high-IQ dissident stuff seriously is going to be doing so secretly for the obvious reasons (Moldbug also strongly recommends this), so I don't think the absence of declared billionaire support means an absence of actual billionaire support.
MadMonzer
Temporarily embarrassed liberal elite
11mo ago
Is this parody?
I think this is out of date. The Great Awokening has changed a lot about the way Big Academia interacts with people who are inside the system but heterodox in their political views. In the period I was in academia (after the 1990's PC wave had peaked, but before the Great Awokening got going around 2011) the majority view among left-wing social scientists was that tolerating a few tame conservatives was a net-positive for the credibility of the left-wing majority in the discipline.
MadMonzer
Temporarily embarrassed liberal elite
11mo ago
A quick check on File770 suggests that this is old news (the GoHs were announced in November 2022, and the current Chengdu Worldcon website says that the GoH is "updating".
The main fan happenings around Chengdu WorldCon have been about the ability of the organisers to run a WorldCon at all - the con had to be rescheduled because the venue hadn't been built, and a number of key websites (registration, Hugo nominations) were only working at the last minute, and there has been next-to-no communication about all of this.
MadMonzer
Temporarily embarrassed liberal elite
11mo ago
Blue vs Red and pro vs anti establishment are almost orthogonal axes in political space (remember that the military, the police, small-town local elites, organised religion and Fox News are all objectively part of the establishment). Blue political activists are just as committed to the idea that they are the Voice of the People TM against the Corrupt Establishment TM as Red ones are.
"Crunchiness" including anti-vax is driven by opposition to big Pharma and big Agriculture, so you see it on the anti-establishment ends of both tribes.
MadMonzer
Temporarily embarrassed liberal elite
11mo ago
Interesting. That would imply that Thiel is a fully paid up member, and “no billionaires on the dissident right” is a No True Scotsman of the word “dissident”
MadMonzer
Temporarily embarrassed liberal elite
11mo ago
Yes - I was pointing out the sorts of places where pro-establishment Reds hang out. The Red/Blue model is exclusively American - the urban/rural political divide exists everywhere, but there is no equivalent of the suburban White South in most countries.
MadMonzer
Temporarily embarrassed liberal elite
11mo ago
The host of each WorldCon is voted on by the members of the WorldCon two years previously who also commit to buying a membership to the WorldCon they are voting on. A supporting membership (which gets souvenir programmes etc. plus voting rights but not admission to the con) costs about 50 USD, so you can buy a vote in site selection for about 100 USD. The Chengdu WorldCon bought 2000 votes and outvoted the core WorldCon fanbase. The conspiracy theory is that Chengdu WorldCon is controlled by a for-profit Chinese real estate developer who are using WorldCon to promote their development, and the 200,000 USD is cheap publicity.
This is of course the second ganking of WorldCon by a bunch of outsiders buying supporting memberships and outvoting the ingroup, after the puppy kerfuffle where two groups of less-woke fans bought memberships and block-voted in the Hugos ballot (which used FPTP at the time, meaning they could control the nominations). Or the third if you count the unsuccessful attempt by the Church of $cientology to buy a Hugo for L. Ron Hubbard (which was disqualified by WorldCon staff on the grounds that all the paperwork for hundreds of members arrived in the same posting and written in the same handwriting).
Core WorldCon fandom does not want WorldCon to be in China, as far as I can see.
MadMonzer
Temporarily embarrassed liberal elite
11mo ago
Historically China has been able to trump pretty much all other woke cards
China dictates to Hollywood and academia using raw power, not wokeness. If you want to be in China, you need to conform your worldwide activities to the tastes of Winnie-the-Panda. This is how you get American basketball players in America being expected to mind their language so the NBA can stay on Chinese TV.
MadMonzer
Temporarily embarrassed liberal elite
11mo ago
The Scopes Monkey Trial was kayfabe, with both sides of the case being backed by a local newspaper in order to generate publicity for a small town in Tennessee. (See Wikipedia)
I think there are two very different Christian lines of criticism of evolution. The position of the conservative faction of Anglicanism in Darwin's day, and of the Catholic Church until JPII's 1996 address to the Pontifical Academy, is roughly-speaking that evolution is unfortunate if true (because it makes eugenics possible, and because it makes atheism more intellectually respectable and therefore more dangerous) but nevertheless a proper matter of scientific enquiry, not theological debate. In England, the conservative bishops left the attacks on Darwin to scientifically-trained clerics like Sedgwick, who tried (mostly unsuccessfully) to attack him on scientific grounds.
The position that evolution should be rejected based on theological arguments is unique to the tradition of non-denominational American Protestantism that we loosely categorise as "evangelical". That is the position that was being pushed by the prosecution in Scopes, because that is what made the kayfabe show appealing to American culture warriors on both sides. (The culture war in question was mainline vs evangelical, which maps onto the modern blue vs red surprisingly well).
MadMonzer
Temporarily embarrassed liberal elite
11mo ago
And when they were gainfully employed petroleum geologists, they did petroleum geology based on the assumption that earth is 4.6 billion years old and the geological column (including fossils) was laid down the way the heathen textbooks say it was. Otherwise they wouldn't have been very good petroleum geologists. Their commitment to creation science is entirely performative.
The fact that the oil and gas industry is politically aligned with people who claim to reject modern geology for biblical reasons is hilariously funny, but significantly less shocking than, say, Churchill ending up politically aligned with Stalin.
This also goes to the point that Brett Devereaux of acoup.blog is repeatedly making - people in the past generally believed their own religion. In the early 21st century, when you don't need to believe in the supernatural in order to make sense of the world, most intelligent people do not actually believe in religion, and the occasional person who appears to is widely assumed to be lying or crazy.
Nazi Germany would be the most obvious answer - Weimar-era gun laws were repeatedly relaxed by the Nazi regime (with an initially de facto but later de jure exception for Jews) as part of their remilitarization of Germany and ownership of long guns by non-Jews was entirely deregulated in 1938. A lot of the friends and relations of the Gypsies, homosexuals, socialists etc. who the Nazis persecuted would have been armed. Didn't make any difference - the Nazi regime was a paradigmatic case where the answer to "You can have my gun when you prize it from my cold dead hands" would be "Very well, let's do it your way"
More options
Context Copy link