Mewis
10mo ago
As far as the specific function of keeping out Haitians goes, they seem to be doing a much better job than the Americans.
Mewis
11mo ago
It's interesting to note that despite their huge majority, Labour this time didn't win many votes - less, in fact, than five years ago under the controversial Jeremy Corbyn. There's a big hole in the electorate, in other words, waiting to be filled.
Mewis
11mo ago
It depends on the specific circumstances. Born overseas to US diplomats? Probably not a big deal. But I found myself quite uncomfortable with Rishi Sunak, for example, who went through the green card process in the US and was married to an Indian.
Mewis
11mo ago
I suspect otherwise. Kamala is not a very popular or effective politician. Her only election win was in deep blue California and it was very narrow. She did terribly in the primaries, where being Black And A Woman counts for much more than in the country as a whole. Though she does have a certain charm, she can also come off as off-putting. She neither has strong credibility as a progressive champion or as a moderate. Her record of executive experience or of campaign experience is also thin.
Kamala does have upside, she could surprise us all. But it would be a surprise if she turns out to be another Obama or Clinton (the first).
Mewis
9mo ago
I really didn't miss hot food and certainly didn't miss the hassle of cooking and washing up. Maybe I will try some overnight oats or something more substantial.
The big issue with inflatable mats is that they're very prone to leaks.
Mewis
9mo ago
There is a small coterie of fat acceptance activists that is occasionally wheeled out like the Washington Generals or the Libertarian Party to be laughed at, but for the most part, no. That's why 600lbs Life even exists in the first place, it's a show that as we have just discussed in this thread, make fat people look even worse. Why does such a show exist? So people can watch it and feel justified in hating fat people. Which is to say, it makes them feel better about something they were already doing. It's not by accident that you are, yet again here, casually mentioning how easy* it is for you to gain fifty pounds of muscle or lose fifty pounds of fat on a dime. It's not because you're embarrassed.
- It comes and goes, but it was once the fashion for people to brag about how hard they trained or how strictly they didn't. In the year 2024 it seems the opposite - fitness models take pictures of themselves eating donuts, and now people seem to brag about how little they need to train.
Mewis
9mo ago
You might benefit from reading what I said. I said I'm not interested in judging others, not that I didn't - I of course, pass judgment on others, naturally and uncontrollably, and according to values I did not generate. But that judgment is rarely useful - if someone irritates me, or displeases me, what can I do about it other than seethe? Isn't that the real poison in whale watching on reality TV? Why not watch Sam Sulek instead?
Oh, come on now. You literally have reality TV shows devoted to displaying fatties like circus freaks for the people in this thread to hate on. If you needed to be told by your television set that it's okay to hate fat people, then you're not being brave. If you're watching it, it's for you - people watch shows like this to be told they're right, not to be challenged.
Mewis
10mo ago
For the purpose of a hypothetical, it's useful - and if you start with less, you can just choose a later point in this hypothetical to start from. So if you start with 60%, it's like starting in Year 3, in which case you only have two years of majority ownership.
Mewis
11mo ago
It doesn't, but Ukraine needs to do something to keep Western attention and support. In addition, letting Russia operate airfields close to the border is probably not a good idea.
Mewis
11mo ago
Shucking and jiving outside your campaign bus or calling Repubs weird gets you somewhere with the faithful but it won't win over anyone who isn't. Kamala is going to be in fundraising mode for two months and only then will switch into targeting votes instead of donations.
Mewis
11mo ago
I don't know the first thing about boxing, but yes, I thought it was very very BM and bad faith for this lady to give up like that, whether the fight is fair or unfair. Leaving aside the question of whether Khelif should compete as a woman, boxing is not supposed to be fair, there is lots of physical variance between competitors. The safety issue is a joke, male boxers take punches way way harder all the time, and if you give a shit about safety , boxing shouldn't even exist as a sport.
As for CAIS women, I think the case for not letting them compete as women is pretty good but not airtight. But Khelif isn't trans and shouldn't be described as trans.
Mewis
10mo ago
I think this is highly unlikely. Ukraine currently has sovereignty and still about 80% of it's claimed territory. There's no reason for them to give that up for nothing, not while they can still fight and launch effective offensives. If Russia wants all Ukraine, it's going to have to get it the hard way.
Mewis
10mo ago
It's an interesting take but I think it's a combination of a particular Japanese insistence on quality, and also doing a novel take on something familiar - for all that Castlevania is obviously derivative of western tropes, it's really very different in practice to any existing version of the Dracula story.
Mewis
10mo ago
One principle or rule that I try to stick by is that though I am free to dislike or avoid other people, I never try to persuade anyone else to do so.
Mewis
9mo ago
Yeah, I think every person needs to iterate to find what they can and can't live without. To me food has never been a real treat, just a chore. If anything, it's quite liberating to have an excuse not to cook hot food and just eat like a degenerate student again.
Mewis
9mo ago
Well, I'm not really interested in judging others (beyond ways that are immediately useful). Fundamentally, people base their judgment not on their own, spontaneously generated values, but on the values they were taught by society. I don't think it's possible or even worth trying to truly escape from those values, though of course you can react against them superficially or engage in dialogue with them.
Mewis
10mo ago
Not engaging with the system is not an endorsement of the current system. Suppose in the next election, there was only 10% turnout. Would you consider that to be a ringing endorsement of the process? Do you think politicians would stay the course, or would they attempt to win the votes of that nonvoting 90%? Do you apply this same logic to markets? Does dismal sales actually mean that the product is fine, and that nothing should change?
Plus one vote never changed anything.
Mewis
11mo ago
I'd say it's more of a coin toss, maybe slightly leaning Trump. That's what prediction markets indicate too.
Mewis
11mo ago
A point could be made that the enormous, vast level of wealth that Americans possess hasn't made them happier (though I feel like Americans are happier and less neurotic than Europeans), but I don't think Trump is making that point or really has solid ideas to change that.
Mewis
11mo ago
Because it doesn't work in Europe, which is just as well because yes man culture is a terrible basis for effective organisations. "Most of the world" got steamrolled by northern Europeans!
Mewis
11mo ago
I dunno,I follow some spicy people on twitter and the most risable things I've heard is that she's an Affirmative Action VP or that she slept her way into politics neither of which are new.
Mewis
11mo ago
It's certainly a bad situation to be in. If a Veep speaks up, they can be accused of being disloyal, ambitious, two faced, a snake. And they have nearly no official authority in the WH. The show Veep got it right - it's a terrible position to have.
Mewis
9mo ago
Fine, I have deleted the word stoic from my post. I would not have added it if I knew this would mislead you so badly.
Mewis
9mo ago
The thesis of CICO is that it's not just a useful guide, but literally an iron law of the universe. Ever heard of something called thermodynamics? So it's not obvious to me how a "metabolism" (whatever that is) can conjure up, or delete, energy or mass.
Personally I found CICO useful for losing weight and not useful for gaining weight. But, based on my own direct observation, you'll probably just call me a liar or say that I was tracking wrong. That is of course, what every CICO advocate does immediately. After all, CICO is (apparently) totally perfect and based on thermodynamics.
This just seems like typical American bias to me. Room for dozens of baseball, football and basketball stars - no room for Ronnie O'Sullivan, Magnus Carlssen, or literally any rugby player. Federer and Williams over Nadal and Djokovic. Simone Biles in the top five and Kohei Uchimura in the 80s.
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