MaiqTheTrue's profile

MaiqTheTrue Zensunni Wanderer 2d ago

But if the alternative is “Israel no longer exists, Jews get exiled again to face pogroms and potentially genocide,” the nuclear option is much more on the table and the consequences of it seem much less important.

And honestly I expect Israel to get more brutal, not less, as the world turns against them. A lot of the reason that Israel was willing to tolerate Palestinians and the chanting of “death to Israel” followed by rocket attacks is that Americans had their backs and they had access to American weapons. Now, there’s a move to basically treat Israel like South Africa to recognize the state of Palestine (which is less of a state than many American Indian reservations), and to divest and potentially sanction them. This backs them into a scenario in which they can no longer tolerate things that they would have before, and cannot assume that if something happens to them that they’d be allowed to respond. I think that world opinion on Palestine has made the response much more brutal than it would have been otherwise. This is their last chance to destroy the threat, and anything and anyone left is going to be untouchable in the future because the world won’t allow another invasion of “Palestinian” territory. So bomb the shit out of everything and hope you’ve given yourself a long enough head start to get ahead of the blowback.

With proxy wars like Hezbollah or other terrorist organizations, again, they aren’t given the right to invade to root out those things with conventional means, and the sponsors have spent millions to create these groups and arm them and give them intelligence, etc.

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MaiqTheTrue Zensunni Wanderer 3d ago

It’s not a real expectation based on real data on the part of either party.

The student at least the ones I know are not looking at data, the expectations of employers in the field, the number of graduates per opening, or their own talents. Just for a trivial example, we graduate more BS in Psychology students every year than there are working psychologists in the USA. And it’s been that way in a number of fields for some time. Other fields have a very tiny demand for phd students, and no other real demand. Some teach skills that one can learn on their own by simple practice and peer review (mostly the arts). But I don’t see demand for poor bet degrees falling. People are still going to school and “expecting” to get a good job after graduation. Likewise, they’re not really being honest with themselves about what they can actually achieve. C students in high school and college simply are not going to stand out enough to get the internships they need to get the kind of jobs allow them to afford to repay that $40K a year in tuition loans. You aren’t going to do well in engineering if you’re not doing A to high B in physics and high level math. The thinking here isn’t based on reality but simply fantasy.

On the lender end, getting a student loan is much much easier than getting any other kind of loan. If you want a home loan, you need to have a good job, have had that job for a number of years, have excellent credit, and even then you’re limited in what you can get. You might only get approved for a small amount based on history. If you want a business loan, you need the steady income and good credit, but you also need a business plan, and one that makes sense to the bank. If you want a student loan, you just get one. No credit checks, no need for a strong work history, no grade requirement, no thought as to whether a major in X is worth the investment. Just sign here and take out the loans.

What I think the issue is coming from is the government backing of these loans. If the law were changed to allow defaults in limited cases, or after a given time frame, I think it would set both things to right. Kids would have to think, really think, about what they’re going to do after high school. If they want college they’d have to work to get in, work to keep grades high to keep their loans, and so on. They would be forced into getting useful skills in college rather than doing whatever sounded fun at the time.

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MaiqTheTrue Zensunni Wanderer 6d ago

I don’t think it was knowledge. We stopped supporting slavery once machines were capable of at least somewhat reducing human inputs. A slave thus became less necessary. We stopped thinking of genocide as a viable response to natives once we’d finished taking all the valuables land in the West. Genocide is still on their table because there’s still valuable land to be takin and the natives aren’t yet pacified enough to live next to.

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MaiqTheTrue Zensunni Wanderer 7d ago

I think her view is pretty much my view of most protests. Most of the protesters (on any topic, mind) don’t actually know much about the things they protest. Get them off their talking points (something Ben Shapiro is pretty good at), make them defend their position without going back to slogans and references to things seen on video, and they fall apart.

The ICC and the various other countries suddenly “recognizing Palestine”, in my view have mostly their own credibility in mind, especially the ICC. They’re not serious proposals. The states recognizing Palestine have no trade agreements with Palestine. They have no trade deals with Palestine, they’re not recognizing a Palestinian passport. There’s no state to recognize, with no serious government, no exports, it is not a state to any real degree. At best it’s two reservations shooting missiles over a border completely controlled by Israel.

On the ICC side, the gain is legitimacy. It’s a toothless organization issuing meaningless “rulings” that it can’t enforce. They can’t arrest the people they want to try. No state is going to March into Jerusalem and perp-walk Netanyahu. Or nab Putin in Moscow or Biden in DC (if he gets convicted of something). They can issue calls for arrest, they can try leaders in absentia and sentence them to anything they want to. It doesn’t matter, as they cannot enforce any of that. If they sentence someone to death, it doesn’t matter because the person can live as they please within their own country. Sure, maybe if Netanyahu gets drunk and flies to Europe, something might happen. But if he stays in Israel or other friendly states, he gets to remain free and even remain PM of Israel until his base kicks him out.

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MaiqTheTrue Zensunni Wanderer 8d ago

I’m really drawing the line at handsome. I think this is hyperbolic. Trump has money, but he also had to declare bankruptcy on a casino and had several failed business including Trump University and Trump Steaks. He’s mostly a showman, PT Barnam shilling real estate and later red hats.

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MaiqTheTrue Zensunni Wanderer 8d ago

I think it actually creates the problems it’s intended to solve simply by causing people to hyper focus on the issues of unchanging traits like race gender and sexuality and gender rather than looking to solving the problems. The problem of police brutality in general is much more solvable if it’s not seen through the lens of which race is being targeted. Economic growth in the ghettos and focusing on education will do more to fix the problems in that community than all the rest of the efforts of trying to fix things by focusing on race.

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MaiqTheTrue Zensunni Wanderer 8d ago

I think this is largely correct. I don’t see true statehood as an option because of the things you mentioned. Giving Palestine a state just means they use the state as a launching pad for war. Social trust on both sides is gone, so there’s no chance of negotiations of any sort.

But even if the states want to exist side by side, I don’t think there’s enough land there for two states. It’s the size of New Hampshire, and has mountains and one coast to the Mediterranean. Every resource is going to be fought over because they’re all important.

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MaiqTheTrue Zensunni Wanderer 9d ago

Gaza and West Bank to my mind are not states in any greater sense than native reservations in the USA are. And for me the three things I think would work definitively to define a state are things like a security force of some sort for defense purposes (which Israel will never allow) a border that it controls, and it’s own diplomatic and trade policies. By my estimate it has none of this and is thus really a Palestinian reservation with no more nationhood than the Lakota reservations that are making a big show of banning Noem from their lands. If it came down to it, a few Lakota police could not hope to actually keep her from entering, walking around anywhere she pleases and piss on the chief’s house.

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MaiqTheTrue Zensunni Wanderer 9d ago

The alternative is Russian Roulette. Maybe you’ll get lucky and the other guys won’t actually go through with it. But the thing is, you can’t ever misjudge in that game because if you do, the consequences, not just for your country and her allies, but for the entire world are absolutely catastrophic. Billions dead, mass extinction event, famine, radiation. And so the consequences should at least be weighed against the benefits with those consequences in mind. Is Ukraine worth it? I’m not sure. But what has always worried me about the NATO approach is that they’re playing chicken under the assumption that Putin never actually means it. And we honestly have no way to actually know this. We might guess, or assume, but we don’t know for sure that the next line we cross won’t be the one that Putin was serious about. The west in my view absolutely doesn’t take the nuclear threat seriously. They aren’t asking whether Putin would, and in fact they seem to be deluded into thinking that Putin is less likely to use them if he feels cornered. This simply defies common sense. If he loses in Ukraine his life is in danger because Russian coups tend to happen after Russia loses a war, and quite often the leader who lost gets executed. And so you have a cornered man whose only way out is the nukes, but that’s somehow something he’s going to care about. It’s nonsense, and dangerous nonsense.

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MaiqTheTrue Zensunni Wanderer 10d ago

I just don’t see either war actually stopping just because we said so. Most especially with Israel. Israel is much more likely to ramp up attacks on Palestinians if a state is announced because they understand that this is their last chance to do something about the issue before the rest of the world decides whether or not to defend Palestine. They know a state means weapons pointing at them and they won’t have it. TBH if think the bombings if Rafa are about European states recognizing Palestine as a show of resolve— if Palestine is recognized then we have to neutralize it.

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MaiqTheTrue Zensunni Wanderer 10d ago

The advantage of the software industry over hardware is that hardware is bounded by the laws of physics and the costs of making things and moving them around. This brings on a lot more recurring costs— replacing worn out equipment, transportation costs, and the costs to continue to produce more product. Starlink cannot be a money maker without finding ways around entropy and the costs of putting satellites in orbit. Microsoft was and still is doing software. Sure software has development costs, and needs a few plugs and patches, but it doesn’t really cost anything to ship software (and it’s mostly downloaded from a server these days anyway). Software doesn’t wear out except totally on purpose via the company no longer supporting it. This makes growing and making money as a software company a bit easier. If you can keep market share as the default option for most office software, you basically print money by not doing anything to fuck that up. If you’re selling a product, you have to keep the costs down while not losing either quality or market share. It’s not impossible, but harder.

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MaiqTheTrue Zensunni Wanderer 11d ago

It holds every value of the current zeitgeist in contempt, and values things that the current zeitgeist hates. The CZ wants a libertine society and the youth are off insisting on traditional values and culture and religion. The youth are so trad at thins point that not only are they religious but in the case of catholic youth, they’re going for Latin Mass and fighting popes and bishops to get it.

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MaiqTheTrue Zensunni Wanderer 11d ago

Social media tends to amplify things that are trendy locally. And extremism tends to get trendy because the people who like it watch it, and those who don’t like it tend to hate-watch it. Since it’s getting lots of views it goes to the top. But since what people get excited about varies by community, you can easily find the same SM platform promoting opposing views to different people.

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MaiqTheTrue Zensunni Wanderer 13d ago

The general theme of the blog was that essentially everyone is a narcissist basically incapable of forming strong natural bonds with other people because they lack a “core self” to connect to other people.

The blog itself was titled The Last Psychiatrist and it was a stand alone website of the same name. It hasn’t been updated to my knowledge in over a decade. There might be an archive of it somewhere, and I think that some fans of the blog wanted to gather it for a pdf.

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MaiqTheTrue Zensunni Wanderer 13d ago

But why does the signaling competition devolve into Progressive shibboleths? Why not something else? I think the boring answer is that it started that way. If this alt scene were originally Confucian, then all new members would have adopted Confucianism. But it started progressive because no one with a strong traditional morality would dedicate their whole life to hosting licentious music. They cared more about school, they prioritized health, they had reservations about playing music bad for the soul. Meanwhile those without morality have no such concerns, and also use drugs as a lure for their power. There’s probably also an element of progressive shibboleths being boosted because the primitive wisdom that kids learn in early education is “everyone is the same, be nice”. So naturally, any devolution would go back to the shared morality which encites even the dumbest person. If everyone in school learned that the ultimate evil was being racist and mean, then that becomes the criteria for ostracisation. If you’re in a group of not very intelligent or moral art people, you can imagine the difference between accusing someone of being racist versus accusing someone of “a sophisticated ruse in which they themselves accuse others of being racist in order to elevate their standing”. The second one makes less sense when you are drunk or high, and it’s way too many words for me to read on Twitter at 2am. The first one contains the word “racist”, which I have been trained to bark at like a dog.

I don’t think it started that way. I think a big problem with shibboleths is exactly what you mentioned in contrast to Confucian societies. The signal is super cheap to use, and it’s almost never called out as either going too far or for being insincere. I think that signals like this would be greatly reduced if the person were required to put either sweat equity or cash into all the causes they’re concerned about. If all the people screaming at anyone who isn’t denouncing Israel had to give $100 or raise money for the Palestinian relief efforts, the cries of denunciation would probably decrease by a lot, probably the protests as well.

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MaiqTheTrue Zensunni Wanderer 13d ago

I’m with the ban for the same reason that GreenPeace is. Not only are we burdening these small farmers with patent law (and I’m not sure if Golden Rice has terminator genes that prevent replanting saved seed) but because of the potential for cross pollination, you can’t really make it optional. If my rice is pollinated by Golden rice, I now have the patented genes in my rice, and unless there are strong laws to the contrary (which I doubt) Monsanto can easily collect royalties from people who never chose to grow Golden Rice in the first place, and worse are not allowed to save seed (as the permits to grow that rice requires you to buy the seed every year). In a lawful democracy like America or various European countries, it’s difficult but at least possible to build in protection for small farmers. I doubt it would be so in a developing country with a much higher corruption index.

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MaiqTheTrue Zensunni Wanderer 13d ago

It’s not actually free though. If you factor in the costs of feeding, housing and clothing it’s probably comparable to the median wage of the era. True, you aren’t paying the slave, but you are providing all his material needs and possibly health care as well (granted health care in that era was pretty basic). And this doesn’t account for the business costs of having a manager making sure your slaves work, security so they can’t leave.

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MaiqTheTrue Zensunni Wanderer 14d ago

That’s also why nobody really wants to have to be tied down to you. To hand your money to another person and be tied to their rules if they want the money back. China doesn’t want dollars after seeing what we attempted to do to Russia over Ukraine. Disconnected from the banking system, assets frozen, and a massive divestment campaign were attempts to hamstring the economy of Russia once it broke the Western world’s rules. China wants Taiwan. China also known it will get similar treatment if it invades. Hence they don’t want dollars.

Gold I think is less of a Ponzi scheme than government fiat currency. Gold is an established global market, it has uses in industrial manufacturing, and in making jewelry. It’s therefore not dependent on the fiscal system of any single country the way a fiat currency would be. Not only can the country in question take your money back, but it can inflate their currency to the point of worthlessness (see Zimbabwe). They could also end up becoming a failed state if there’s a prolonged political crisis of some sort. If we end up in Boogaloo Civil War, the value of the dollar will fall by quite a lot because the USA will lose credibility as a stable country. The dollars right now is propped up by being backed as the currency that oil is traded in, but this could change and in fact both Russia and China want to change it. If that happens, you lose a major reason that people ever wanted the dollar. To cut this short, to be tied to the dollar means being tied to the fortunes of the USA, which, while it used to be a sure thing, may not continue to be as steady. Gold isn’t tied to the fortunes of any country therefore, no matter what happens, it’s not going to be devalued by the failure of that state.

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MaiqTheTrue Zensunni Wanderer 14d ago

I kinda hope he’s not being that literal as I think a life with no feelings would be one with little joy or connection or compassion. If I can kill without feeling anything, I’m capable of being a moral monster.

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