Pongalh
6mo ago
Okay. I've seem quite a few blue checks who don't seem to get any more engagement than if they had never shelled out for that. You can't get lower than zero likes or replies.
But maybe they're just really terrible at getting attention, or agreeing enough with any subculture of Twitter users. Premium gives them no boost.
Pongalh
6mo ago
I actually don't mind the login requirement. Employers snoop. Of course you can still see someone's most popular tweets of all time, without logging in. So if you wrote something controversial but also massive hit, you may be in trouble.
Pongalh
6mo ago
Premium Twitter seems to be paying off. It was almost embarrassing or shameful at first to actually shell out for the blue check but more and more people are clearly doing that.
Grey Enlightenment has talked about this alot.
Pongalh
6mo ago
The curious thing about Maine is that its most popular language after English is French. It makes sense being adjacent to Quebec but it's not a popular fact. (I remember reading this factoid about 10 years ago so maybe Spanish has now edged it out.)
That Walking Dead spin-off Daryl Dixon depicts this actually.
This comes across like anti-wisdom. As I've gotten older I think I've gone the opposite direction. Realizing beauty is only skin deep.
To the degree attractive women are more fun, it's because it's fun to be attracted to someone. Are they more pleasant on average? No I'd say not. To say nothing of moral character, more substantive.
Pongalh
6mo ago
Seeing everything that's been going on, precisely where they are located, my whole life, "stable" is not the word I'd use.
Pongalh
6mo ago
Exactly how I feel about the Ukrainians. They're not going to win against Russia. Their stubborn refusal is going to get them killed. It's irrational.
Pongalh
6mo ago
I believe it's because Marxism better comports with Christian egalitarianism.
Pongalh
6mo ago
Well hasn't Hanania said he doesn't value free speech for its own sake, and that he's surprised that conservatives get away with as much speech as they do, because if he were in charge he wouldn't let progressives get away with anything?
Pongalh
7mo ago
Being for a strong military as an expression of national virility but also being isolationist seems like a strange combination to me. What should the military do then? Lots of drills and restricting yourself to monitoring the coasts certainly doesn't seem particularly glorious as a display of male capacity.
I think the part of the New Right that is big on the former realizes there's tension here, and so they've actually gone in for interventionism to square the circle, and want to separate themselves from the loser-y defeatist vibes of the libertarian non-interventionists.
Not liking libertarianism is really big with the new right, and being anti-war there is a trope. So that ends up being implicated in their disdain for free market liberals. But of course if you go too far this direction you end up right back in NeoConland.
Pongalh
7mo ago
A sex addict. So addicts are sleeping with addicts. Sounds like compromised ability to consent all around.
Pongalh
7mo ago
Yes. In the US there's a sense that you don't have the freedom to escape the pressure to try to be rich. It's up or out, striver for everyone. (Unless you want to join the ranks of the homeless, dropping out of any semblance of a normal middle class existence.)
I've been doing contracting jobs for years in tech and anyone not already looking over their shoulder at the next job when they're only a week in to their current one is kind of a sucker. An endless hustle.
Pongalh
7mo ago
Unions are as much market forces as the entire edifice of corporations and business, which are also protected by government.
This idea that all the weird and specific permutations of business ownership is natural oh but unions are artificial and imposed by government is wrong.
Pongalh
7mo ago
I'd add it from an employer rights or business rights angle - as opposed to worker rights - it also feels intuitively absolutely insane that you would be stopped from putting to use your own materials because of intellectual property, or unable to repair something on your own (ala Louis Rossman on YT).
There are a lot of insane things in this world. What one chooses to highlight gives away a bias.
Pongalh
7mo ago
You make a good point. Strictly speaking an economic analysis of this stuff should be culture-free, with no implicit notion that the employers are conscientious, bright and noble and their employees are parasitic drag-em-downs. They are just two groups of actors engaged in contractual dispute/process. Whatever emerges from that just is the market. There's no reason why a victorious union should not be thought of as the clever, superior stock of human capital.
But the US-style Daniel Plainview conservativism always leaks its way in.
Pongalh
7mo ago
A curious premise.
The prevalence of climate change is impervious to anyone's opinion about climate change. But people's opinion about anti-semitism does seem more "dynamic," in relation to the actions of anti-semitism orgs.
Pongalh
7mo ago
I'm jealous of New York City and LA. Various "based" events are taking place there that have no chance of occurring in the Bay Area.
e.g. a Yarvin and Peachy Keenan thing in LA in May, now some Katherine Brodsky and Anna K thing there too...
Pongalh
7mo ago
More than half of all smartphones are Apple, in the US. Interesting that the affluent set uses the most popular phone. You'd think there'd be a "rich people phone" that stands out among the plebs.
(Maybe it does, and it's the fanciness of said iPhone, i.e. new and not used, or more memory, that makes the difference.)
Pongalh
7mo ago
Wow. Nice. I stand to inherit a Ford hybrid. And that's about it.
"Better than a stick in the eye!" my dad likes to say.
Pongalh
7mo ago
How determinative is age really, on covid policy opinion? The youthful Briahna Joy Gray e.g. appears to agree with the oldies on this subject.
Pongalh
7mo ago
I'd love if we could get their health coverage in exchange for our military coverage.
Armstrong and Getty are somethin else. They are so incredibly unknown among any of the right people, but they've been doing their thing for 25 years or so.
I used to listen to them while delivering flowers in Sacramento in the mid-2000s. The effect of aging has not yet affected their voice/delivery. They haven't skipped a beat.
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