OracleOutlook
Fiat justitia ruat caelum
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User ID: 359
OracleOutlook
Fiat justitia ruat caelum
1hr ago
I thought it was very specific - if we give forigners unsecured loans for education they will just go back home without repaying them unless we actually indenture them and force them to stay to pay off the debt.
OracleOutlook
Fiat justitia ruat caelum
6hr ago
Let's think this through.
First, it seems like some people are kind of not-friends with the United States. How many Chinese spies are here on Student Visa? How many future ISIS agents are we educating right now? Even without deliberate malice, different norms might lead to people smuggling dangerous fungi and genetically modified roundworms without safeguards, for instance.
Ok, but even if everything is sunshine and rainbows, how does this work out in practice? The majority of students in the US are only able to attend due to generous student loans available. There are people around the world who are able to afford the sticker price on an American education, and they send their brightest to us. But with the demographic collapse we're talking about, eventually we'll run out of rich kids and start needing poor kids. Are they going to be receiving unbacked loans to go to American schools? When they can just fuck off back to some jungle and laugh in the face of debt collectors?
Either we need a more explicit Indentured Servitude pact for college or this isn't starting to look like a solution either.
There is probably a minimum number of kids a college needs to maintain the facilities they have already built. If a college with dorms and lecture halls to support 10,000 students over the course of a few years suddenly only has 5,000 students apply, they are going to have to try to give away property to avoid going bankrupt. And that's ignoring administrative bloat, post docs, etc.
The top 20% of schools would see the same number of students apply and they are selective enough there wont be much change. The next 20% of schools might need to start accepting people they wouldn't normally. The bottom 20% of schools will start to see fewer kids apply, because all the kids they used to get are applying and getting into the second quintile of schools. And so on as demographics collapse.
The alternative is to admit foreigners. But even foreign demographics will collapse eventually.
OracleOutlook
Fiat justitia ruat caelum
1d ago
One angle that isn't discussed here (because I'm not sure it's relevant yet) is that there will soon be fewer college age kids. As the number of young adults decreases, colleges will either realign to enroll less qualified individuals or they will close. For now, that outcome has been staved off with immigration. But the good times will not last forever.
Is there a large population of people who would go to college but were rejected from every college? People in Community College are basically this demographic, right?
In 2022, the Current Population Survey estimated there were 3.5M college students enrolled in two-year institutions, down 2.2M from 5.7M in 2011.
So that number seems to be going down. Is it going down because institutions have lowered their requirements? I don't know. I think this is what we'd see if it was, though.
OracleOutlook
Fiat justitia ruat caelum
2d ago
Everyone's saying that it's the feminine thing to deepen a relationship, but there is one masculine thing available - propose to her. Suddenly, unexpectedly, grand gesture-ly.
I suspect that this 10 years of stringing you along will fall to pieces soon after.
Either continue as you are if that is truly what makes you happy for the rest of your life or end it one way or another. The best stories only end in a marriage or a death.
OracleOutlook
Fiat justitia ruat caelum
5d ago
The game play is fun. It is another medium for telling the story. The level of urgency, planning ahead, thinking about and picking the right options, is just right. It feels very smooth. That said, I haven't noticed that the performance in the game-play impacts the story. The reward for doing a good job in the gameplay is to be told at the end of the episode that you're in the top 20% of players or whatever. The plot goes on regardless.
OracleOutlook
Fiat justitia ruat caelum
5d ago
I think I'm leaning towards this myself. I have family members that are police and others that are military, and I have seen first hand situations where an uncle was shot and severely injured, his partner killed, and the local media and minorities up in arms about police brutality and racism because they managed to off the villain themselves before passing out/dying. I am heavily biased to trust the police until proven guilty.
But I don't trust FBI/CIA. On a scale of CIA to local Police officer, DHS is kinda hovering around FBI territory. But it seems to have dramatically shifted towards the trustworthy side in the past few months.
OracleOutlook
Fiat justitia ruat caelum
6d ago
Yes, Steelheart was pretty enjoyable, though Dispatch plays the Superhero things much straighter.
OracleOutlook
Fiat justitia ruat caelum
6d ago
The Biden Laptop story was hushed up during Trump 1.
OracleOutlook
Fiat justitia ruat caelum
6d ago
Playing Dispatch. It's by the Critical Role people, has nice animation, music, writing, etc. The bulk of the time playing is selecting dialogue options and watching your character make it sound snappier than you ever could pull off. There are real time events you can turn off, and otherwise two different games - resource management/hero leveling and a "hacking" puzzle game.
Unspoilerly Plot - It's a superhero setting. You are someone without powers but who has extensive experience around heroes and villains. You get a gig as a Superhero Dispatcher (think 911 dispatcher for subscribers to a corporate super-hero service.) You basically become the life coach for this universe's version of the Suicide Squad. Shenanigans ensue.
It's fun. My one complaint is that I wish there was an option to just do the Resource Management game without watching all the unskippable cut scenes. You can make different choices which makes replaying the game less tedious, but it's still tedious.
OracleOutlook
Fiat justitia ruat caelum
6d ago
Except we recently had a government that literally lied on the facts - the Hunter Biden Laptop story is one such situation.
I suppose it's a "Government can only lie on the facts when they have a favorable media environment?"
I'm honestly trying to figure out for myself why I trust the DHS accounts when I would typically try to verify the information in other ways.
OracleOutlook
Fiat justitia ruat caelum
6d ago
ICE is deporting lots of people. Other people are recording it, opposing it, even offering bounties on ICE officers.
I have noticed a pattern where there is a horrible story that comes out. Blue tribe passes around the horrible story. There was the "black babies zip tied" story. The "deported US citizen with cancer" story. So on and so forth.
The Red Tribe waits for the Department of Homeland Security X account to post a rebuttal, and then that becomes the Red Tribe story. See for example:
https://x.com/DHSgov/status/1986198635466358989
https://x.com/DHSgov/status/1986438229373944199
https://x.com/DHSgov/status/1986086507271106982
My question is mostly, is it normal for the Red Tribe to believe the "official story" over their "lying eyes?" In the past I had seen the reverse. Official government accounts were scrutinized, eye witness accounts and video evidence were taken in higher regard.
For example, the Rittenhouse affair had Red Tribe internet sleuths piecing together video evidence of Rittenhouse's activities and movements for the hours leading up to the shootings. Within 48 hours they knew more than the prosecution's attorneys knew over a year later.
I'm not casting doubt on the DHS Official X Intern's ability to give it to us straight. I'm just trying to understand the epistemology that makes this all work. Is it Red Tribe to actually trust the government now? Just certain parts of the government?
OracleOutlook
Fiat justitia ruat caelum
7d ago
When you say "worship" do you mean "offer sacrifice to God" or do you mean "say ritual prayers?"
OracleOutlook
Fiat justitia ruat caelum
7d ago
But if a Jewish person (or a person of Irish or Italian descent) has made a choice in their life to refuse to apply for Israeli (or Irish or Italian) citizenship, then they do not have dual citizenship. They are American, full stop. It is consistent to believe that someone who has a foreign citizenship they have not renounced should not hold US office and still allow Americans with the mere ability to apply for citizenship in another country to hold office.
OracleOutlook
Fiat justitia ruat caelum
8d ago
Lots of people in the US can apply for citizenship elsewhere and be let in. By a quirk of genetics, I could apply for Irish citizenship and be accepted. My mom did it, my blue tribe siblings are doing it. I refused, because I'm American, married to an American, with American kids.
But because the offer is open, should I be forbidden from ever holding office? I reject allowing another country's absurd citizenship policies to effect what Americans can do in America to that degree.
OracleOutlook
Fiat justitia ruat caelum
9d ago
Did you watch his interview with Fuentes? Carlson sounds a very... supportive. Not coming at it from an impartial, "I'm trying to capture this philosophy for the historical record." Lots of "Wow, that's amazing," "Oh, yeah," and "yes, absolutely." I didn't hear a single "gotcha" question, pulling up an older statement and asking him to clarify how that jives with what he's saying now, anything like that.
I know that if I were interviewing Fuentes, I'd ask him to explain more why he thought it was appropriate to say, "Raise your right hand. Repeat after me. I will kill, rape, and die for Nicholas J Fuentes," on a stream Is he trying to become a cult leader? And kind of go with that angle. Not questions to try to direct him to tell me his life's story in a way that is acceptable to normies. I don't think Carlson's tactic on this interview really sought to portray Fuentes in full, complicated multi-dimensional detail.
OracleOutlook
Fiat justitia ruat caelum
9d ago
Close Reads covered A Tale of Two Cities recently. They were similarly not super into it, but I find it easier to get through a book with a group of people, especially people who are able to give good context, background, and additional insights I miss.
For A Tale of Two Cities, they recommend reading the book like a series of vignettes. Dickens layers each scene in imagery and significance. Some scenes are better than others. Ultimately I found it worth it to finish the book, though I have no desire to reread it.
OracleOutlook
Fiat justitia ruat caelum
9d ago
The X1 has a bigger problem that I noticed. When watching a video of it, it looks like the center of balance is somewhere completely different than where a human's center of balance is. This made simple things like bending down to close a dishwasher door take forever to figure out.
I can see some kind of justification of an initial "orientation" period that has a human expert on the other side, helping a robot learn where everything is and how to care for the specific appliances in the customer's house. But the problems of the X1 goes beyond that.
OracleOutlook
Fiat justitia ruat caelum
9d ago
Also Israel's goal is to create a massive refugee crisis on Europe's doorstep.
Can you back up this claim? Not just that this is an effect of Israel's action's, but an actual goal that the State of Israel is seeking to enact?
OracleOutlook
Fiat justitia ruat caelum
12d ago
When Carlson talked with Fuentes, did he take the attitude of, "you need to justify all these things you say and back it up?" or did he take the attitude of, "Everything you're saying is reasonable and sounds true to me?"
Carlson can be harsh with the people he interviews, like he was with Ted Cruz. That he isn't asking probing questions with Fuentes indicates that he agrees with him. If you have a show like this and you interview someone, you're either sponsoring them with publicity, trying to elucidate what someone really believes, or trying to force them to appear foolish. Which is Carlson doing here?
OracleOutlook
Fiat justitia ruat caelum
12d ago
The Heritage Foundation unequivocally denounces Fuentes.
How that squares with refusing to denounce Carlson is left as an exercise to the student.
OracleOutlook
Fiat justitia ruat caelum
13d ago
OracleOutlook
Fiat justitia ruat caelum
13d ago
I discussed going into the rabbit hole here: https://www.themotte.org/post/2273/wellness-wednesday-for-july-23-2025/350068?context=8#context
She is currently seeing a psychiatrist who's a bit more into that sort of cutting edge between the future and woo. I'm cautious but going to keep with it for a year unless she recommends something that seems obviously dangerous.
OracleOutlook
Fiat justitia ruat caelum
14d ago
I think the diagnosis will help some. Every time I commented here about A, I would always receive some well-meaning, "What punishments are you using when A acts out?" like I've never considered trying the normal parental levers of behavioral adjustment. It's also been challenging to get a babysitter but now we can use the magic words and hire someone twice as expensive but who knows what they're in for.
It's funny though how some people are. My mother called me and the first words were, "Are you sure it was a doctor who diagnosed her? Did they test her for at least 8 hours?" She kept grilling me about what happened before she was satisfied that it was a genuine diagnosis and then she didn't seem to have much to say.
The chart in the link showed it started going down before COVID, around the time we hit peak 18 year old
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