Mewis
5mo ago
It's fine to have a prior, but when presented evidence otherwise, you should be willing to change your mind. That's what it means to have a prior, it doesn't mean planting your feet by a particular number.
Mewis
5mo ago
Would you deny your 14 year old daughter a life free from financial concern?
But of course, it's not your daughter - the premise is that the parents also consent. Would you let someone else's daughter have sex with an old man?
Mewis
8mo ago
That's exactly what the person I'm responding to is saying. He said that if America ever credibly adopts America First as a doctrine, Taiwan will fall that every moment!
Mewis
10mo ago
By meddling in the sphere of influence of another country, you are risking instability and conflict - whether that's Cuba or Ukraine. This is particularly true when it comes to a imperialist nation prone to belligerency, like the United States. China should not unnecessarily antagonize the US like this, and if this leads to war, I think they could be partly responsible.
Mewis
11mo ago
Sure, it's understandable why the Austrians demanded those concessions - they anticipated that the Serbians would be unwilling to comply or unable to within the very small timeframe offered, which would justify a military invasion. As you say, it's very understandable realpolitik - which is to say, lies and disregard for the weak.
(I don't think this is really that similar to Afghanistan. The AH interest in Serbia and the Balkans was long-running, part of a grander expansionist policy. But Afghanistan did not fit all that well into American foreign policy. If anything, it has interfered with and muddled long-term State Department strategy.)
The Russians had just as much stake in the Balkans as the Austro-Hungarians did - it was there, and they wanted it for themselves.
I don't see how Germany having Austria's back is defensible and France having Russia's back is not. Fact is it's just moronic not to help your allies. Was France supposed to just twiddle their thumbs while the Germans defeated their ally, knowing that they would soon be next? This is always a problem with alliances and commitments - those that you commit yourself to alliance with might take advantage of your reliance on them to do what they wish. Of course, this was not a problem for Germany and Austria.
Germany wanted a general war in 1914. Germany's guarantee to Austria was intended to increase the likelihood of war. They were ready for war and confident of victory. France and Russia were not. In addition, many in Germany feared that Russia would become an unbeatable foe if their army was successfully modernized. German strategy sought to knock the French out of the war quickly in a repeat of 1870, and then settle in for a longer and more grueling conflict against the Russians.
The result of the war will be a communist dictatorship in Russia, a fascist one in Germany, another world war, and a seventy-year cold war between the victors.
All of which can be laid at the feet of the German militarists who sought in 1914 to dominate Europe through force of arms. The fact is that it was they who loosed Lenin on Russia. The fascists who arose in Germany were no aberration, for they were cut from the same cloth as the Prussian militarists who were the driving force in 1914. Had the Germans simply accepted the status quo in 1914, all these things and more could have been averted. Instead, they chose escalation. They chose to believe that war was inevitable, and made it thus. All they that take the sword shall perish with the sword.
Mewis
1yr ago
But current ChatGPT is a biting, accurate caricature of a very-online liberal, with not enough guile to hide the center of its moral universe behind prosocial System 2 reasoning, an intelligence that is taught to not have thoughts that make liberals emotionally upset; so it admits that it hates political incorrectness more than genocide.
Well, firstly it should be noted that the intense safeguards built into ChatGPT about the n-word but not about nuclear bombs is because ChatGPT has n-word capability but not nuclear capability. You don't need to teach your toddler not to set off nuclear weapons, but you might need to teach it to not say the n-word - because it can actually do the latter.
Secondly, ChatGPT doesn't have direct experience of the world. It's been told enough about 'nuclear bombs' and 'cities' and 'bad' to put it together that nuclear bombs in cities is a bad combination, in the same way that it probably knows that 'pancakes' and 'honey' are a good combination, not knowing what pancakes and honey actually are. And it's also been told that the 'n-word' is 'bad'. And likely it also has been taught not to fall for simplistic moral dilemmas to stop trolls from manipulating it into endorsing anything by positing a worse alternative. But that doesn't make it an accurate caricature of a liberal who would probably agree that the feelings of black people are less important than their lives.
Mewis
1yr ago
I am VERY (VERY!) sympathetic to being against woke shit - so much so that I mostly keep my thoughts private while touching grass - but there's a large difference between what you wrote being offensive and what you wrote making you offensive (not to me, perse).
I don't really understand, or what could be offensive about my entirely objective description of the elements of the movie, which I did not render any judgment on.
this small little gay dude we knew from HS who eventually got mega fucking ripped
Wish I could say I wasn't envious.
Mewis
1yr ago
But Brinton could dress in respectable women's clothing for the court appearance, so that does make all the "Whee look at me wearing stilettos!" stuff seem to have been self-aggrandisement for publicity or even a fetish.
I don't know. Maybe sometimes he genuinely wakes up and feels like throwing a frock on. I like wearing a tanktop, and if I could wear one to work I would, but I wouldn't wear one in court. Or maybe he does like the attention. Who cares?
I suppose how I feel about this is that it makes it hard for me to take the whole 'non-binary genderfluid' thing seriously, when it's presented as being so very vital a part of their identity that dressing in male attire for the job would be oppression, but somehow it's an identity they can put on and take off when they need to take it off.
Maybe I'm missing something but I don't see any claim that occasionally having to dress in men's clothes is oppressive, or a claim that wearing women's clothes is a fundamental part of his identity, as opposed to a thing he does for fun (though the things you do for fun, I would argue, are a part of your identity).
But it makes it hard to know what is the mask they are just dressing up in, and what really is their core identity.
Much ink has been spilled over the distinction between one's persona and personality. I don't really have anything to add - it's not of any interest to me to know what lurks in anyone's heart. Sam Brinton seems to be a fabulist, a serial attention whore, and a pervert - that he occupied a position of significance in the government is nothing new.
Mewis
1mo ago
Expensive and politically unfeasible make it sound hard, not easy. Perhaps it would be better to say that it's simple - depositing a hundred thousand dollars in the bank account of every pregnant woman would be very simple, but also very hard.
Mewis
1mo ago
That seems like poor policy. Even a pretty aggressive procreator is going to struggle to reach 4 21+ GC at 65, and it would in turn strongly penalise the family if the 21 year old grand daughters are forced into work and taxpaying instead of procreating.
Mewis
1mo ago
Some degree of sovereignty is needed, in which case you are no longer Mr Money, Private Citizen.
Mewis
1mo ago
Or he could just raise his leg and turn slightly, causing your underpowered hit to glance off the meatiest part of his body.
Mewis
1mo ago
I've always been reluctant to take an antidepressant. My mother took them once and she says they made her almost suicidal.
Exercise has never helped, personally. I'm pretty rigorous about exercise but even when I did physical labour job + regular lifting I still hated myself.
I think it's less about what I'm doing wrong and more about what don't have that's right. I don't have a relationship or a career or any real accomplishments.
Mewis
1mo ago
The knife cuts both ways, however. Logically, there will be happy days in the future. But even on the happiest days, I think - none of this will help, or change me - I will be depressed and ashamed and worthless again. And then I feel further ashamed - for not appreciating my own fortune, for not being sufficiently grateful, for not being as positive and upbeat as I should be.
All this is well and good, but besides the point. As your Bible says, man does not live on bread alone. I am capable, sometimes, of enjoying myself. I can masturbate or drink alcohol or play a video game or watch an entertaining video. I can take a walk through nature or something more traditionally considered to be pleasurable. I can engage others in pleasant, polite conversation. None of these things make me feel less cold or inhuman on the inside, though they might distract me.
I have been depressed on and off for about 2.5 years. I don't think there's some biological mechanism. My moods don't seem to be correlated with sunshine days, diet, or supplementation. My testosterone is quite low but that's about it.
For for a moral inventory, I honestly don't feel that anyone has ever had a negative impact on my life (except myself).
The question, I think, is about desire and happiness. Is the route to happiness followed by putting aside or ignoring your idiosyncratic desires. And if so how do you separate your own desire from that of society.
Mewis
1mo ago
I don't know about famine. I knew the autarky years were very rough for Spain, especially coming after years of civil war.
Mewis
1mo ago
The US looks fine to me. Obviously not perfect, but then China is hardly building utopia either. I couldn't say who would win in a war.
As for Jack Barsky, it's not clear what, if anything, his case proves. This very ideologically committed spy did not manage a decade before he became a bigamist, and just ten years in America, he refused his order to return to the USSR. So I don't expect that second generation Chinese born and raised in the US will possess any loyalty to China. The spy's contradiction is that he must maintain total loyalty to a faraway entity while not also cultivating any loyalty to the people he actually lives with.
And as well, it's not obvious that it's that easy to just walk into the corridors of power. Barsky ended up as a programmer, not in the State Department.
Mewis
1mo ago
Why not? People get guidance by taking LSD, consulting horoscopes and talking to God.
Mewis
2mo ago
Well, we've come around from 'seeking external help is always bad' to 'sometimes seeking external help is good and sometimes it's not'. I guess I can't argue with that.
Mewis
3mo ago
If Trump is still running for President in 2040... I mean, I don't really want to think about that.
Mewis
3mo ago
I agree that it remains to be seen whether this can be sustained. And the US also still has a lot of visionaries like Elon Musk. But it seems like the tide is going out for them.
Mewis
4mo ago
My understanding is that DEXA scans aren't really that reliable and that headline bf levels are not very useful. Personally I just go by how tight my lifting belt is. Unless you're very obese fluctuations in your body fat should be apparent.
And it seems like fixating on the scan right now is hurting more than it helps. You're unable to start cutting now because if you lost weight now, it would go unmeasured.
Mewis
4mo ago
Well, I don't understand how if the consequence of any peace deal is that Putin will attack, that doesn't imply that war is inevitable. It's true that's not the exact words what you said, but it seems like a pretty direct implication. Unless I'm misunderstanding, in which case I invite you to clarify.
If there was actually a credible plan to treat this baby, it would be produced. But so far all I've heard is to keep the baby alive in the hope for a miraculous recovery.
Such a bureaucrat would have no power to issue an injunction. Injunctions like this are handed down by judges, not NICE, which doesn't have power to do anything of the sort or even intervene in individual cases.
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