Supah_Schmendrick
No bio...
User ID: 618
Supah_Schmendrick
29d ago
Meanwhile college students do hours of boring, grinding work and studying in the hope that in 4 years they can get a solid entry level job
Do they, though? What with AI and grade inflation, they increasingly can't really read or do basic math. I don't think this stereotype is as universally applicable as it was before.
Supah_Schmendrick
3mo ago
It's easier to undermine a policy when the whole point of the policy is to favor some companies/sectors more than others, vs. just setting-and-forgetting a tariff rate. I admit that tariffs are also vulnerable to manipulation, but subsidies are in another universe.
Supah_Schmendrick
4mo ago
The US until recently occupied Afghanistan flooding Russia with heroin
China does this with fentanyl and precursor chemicals in Mexico. Does this give us a casus belli against the Chinese?
Supah_Schmendrick
4mo ago
And yet that was at the height of print culture, when every town and village worthy of the name had at least one circular paper and most cities had four. I notice that your explanation isn't accurately predicting the historical results.
Supah_Schmendrick
5mo ago
Ashkenazi Jews - the stereotypically neurotic ones - are also white. Especially so in the Larry David/Woody Allen-esque liberal NYC progressive-assimilated jew type. Those sorts of jews overwhelmingly are in or the product of mixed marriages.
Supah_Schmendrick
9mo ago
There are no gangs . . . associated with drugs.
I thought the Yakuza were pretty involved in the drugs trade.
Supah_Schmendrick
10mo ago
The US has a policy of ensuring that Israel has a qualitative military advantage over any plausible combination of Middle East powers.
Since 2008. Extremely GWoT-pilled. What harm, exactly, is this doing to our policy in the region other than generating more $120,000/yr. paperwork compliance jobs for folks living in Falls Church? Were we on the cusp of selling F-35s to the Iranians? Is Egypt making a better case to advance our interests in the region?
This includes billions annually in military aid to Israel and refusing to export advanced weapons to other regional powers.
The sum-total of all U.S. aid to Israel since its founding 75 years ago is about 0.5% [Edit: /u/Randomranger is correct, this should be 5%; I make sloppy math mistakes] of the 2023 US budget spend. Also, that includes money for highly-productive joint research and development projects, and billions upon billions in laundered subsidies for U.S. military-industrial conglomerates (i.e. grants which can only be used to purchase equipment/services from U.S. firms), both of which we would want done anyway even if Israel wasn't the one doing it.
The US even gives aid to Israel's neighbours for maintaining good relations with Israel.
You're right, there couldn't possibly be any other rationale for paying regimes on top of major trade and international supply routes to not blow each other's major infrastructure up. Has to be the nefarious influence of da Joos.
Supah_Schmendrick
10mo ago
Funny how the ADL and AIPAC have been pushing hard for the polar opposite of nationalism for us. Mass migration and open borders to Europe, an ethnostate for Israel.
Why, it's almost like diaspora populations have strange relationships with the host nation and the metropole. Of course, if you actually look at the people who are doing the on-the-ground work of the mass-migration you get a lot of Catholic groups, not Jews.
Yes, we need to get rid of the AIPAC and ADL influence
Ah yes, the gentiles who actually hold office are just helpless little mice before the terrifying might of...completely ordinary lobbying groups. And it just so happens to aaaaaaallllll be the Jews...couldn't be the Turkish lobby, or the UAE, or the Saudis, or the Iranians.
Supah_Schmendrick
2mo ago
I refuse to debate you further about the exact technical definition of "purpose" and whether it exists objectively or just subjectively, no matter how much you want to have that debate.
Okay, I don't particularly care about technical definitions; I was asking because I didn't understand what you were trying to get at with "not just a sense of purpose but an actual purpose," which seem to me to round to the same thing.
Supah_Schmendrick
2mo ago
I don't think so, because I don't know what an "objective" purpose would even be, hence my original question. An omniscient being would be aware of an infinite number of perceived purposes for a person, but that doesn't make any of the purposes non-subjective.
Supah_Schmendrick
2mo ago
I don't care to litigate the proper definition of the word "purpose". So long as you agree that the concept exists, I think we can agree that it's a different thing from the perception of it, which is my point.
I'm not sure I do agree that the concept exists independently of an observer/interpreter, either external (as in the case of someone reading code), or internal (as in a person asking "what is my purpose").
Supah_Schmendrick
2mo ago
It's the same as the difference between a perception of anything and the thing itself. The map is not the territory.
There's a difference between applying that statement to a physical object, vs. to an intangible trait or quality.
When I write code, the code has no sense of purpose at all, yet still has a purpose.
Wasn't the community just arguing over this with Scott's piece on "the purpose of a system is what it does"? This doesn't clear things up any. There is your intention as the author; there is the result of the code as it functions; there are various interpretations of the code by outside observers/users...none of which necessarily overlap or align. Which is the objective "purpose" and what is the reliable method for determining it?
Supah_Schmendrick
2mo ago
"Merit" is not defined as "the person with the largest pile of money at death."
Supah_Schmendrick
4mo ago
Are you sure? Which side is antifa on? Which side were Sacco & Vanzetti on? What side are the IWW and the student movements of the 60's and 70's on?
Supah_Schmendrick
7mo ago
I said the lion's share goes to higher salaries and higher admin costs. The abstract of the study I linked in my comment:
The United States far outspends Canada on health care, but the sources of additional spending are unclear. We evaluated the importance of incomes, administration, and medical interventions in this difference. Pooling various sources, we calculated medical personnel incomes, administrative expenses, and procedure volume and intensity for the United States and Canada. We found that Canada spent $1,589 per capita less on physicians and hospitals in 2002. Administration accounted for the largest share of this difference (39%), followed by incomes (31%), and more intensive provision of medical services (14%). Whether this additional spending is wasteful or warranted is unknown.
31% + 39% = 70% - over two thirds of the U.S.'s increased per capita physician and hospital spend over Canada's is down to those two things. That's "the lion's share" by any measure.
Supah_Schmendrick
9mo ago
Randomly, I actually know a guy (who happens to be black) who was in the Arkansas All-State Honor Band with Bill in high school.
Supah_Schmendrick
10mo ago
I have to admit that I'm disappointed the microphones will be muted except during designated response times, because it denies us the (admittedly small) chance that, when Kamala tried to talk over a moderator, Trump could butt in with "Excuse Me, ECKS-CYUSE ME, SHE'S SPEAKING!! COMMIE-LA IS SPEAKING!! VERY RUDE!!"
Supah_Schmendrick
10mo ago
I disagree; the diplomatic and political maneuvering in the weeks and months leading up to the initial declarations of war - let alone the actual first acts of armed hostility - are much more complex. I recommend Christopher Clark's The Sleepwalkers and Sean McMeekin's July 1914: Countdown to War. They reach different conclusions, but are both magisterial overviews of the subject.
Supah_Schmendrick
1mo ago
Yeah my comment was more along the lines of a neutral point of information. Any excuse to tell the weird story of Ian Samuel (RIP First Mondays; you were a good podcast while you lasted) and plug ALAB, which is wrong about most things but funny.
Supah_Schmendrick
1mo ago
The rationing systems during WWII I think were a success.
Yes, but the objectives of the market change between war and peacetime in highly relevant ways.
Supah_Schmendrick
5mo ago
Yeah, I couldn't quickly find all that many contract murder cases, and so generalized out to provide examples.
Supah_Schmendrick
7mo ago
Yeah, that kind of grasping behavior is not virtuous of the acquaintances. Asking a friend of means if they are able to help is not wrong; implying that you are owed it is bad manners.
Supah_Schmendrick
7mo ago
People do not universally experience the same relations in the same valence.
The following winter (this was the year in which Cn. Pompey and M. Crassus were consuls [55 B.C.]), those Germans [called] the Usipetes, and likewise the Tenchtheri, with a great number of men, crossed the Rhine , not far from the place at which that river discharges itself into the sea. The motive for crossing [that river] was, that having been for several years harassed by the Suevi, they were constantly engaged in war, and hindered from the pursuits of agriculture. The nation of the Suevi is by far the largest and the most warlike nation of all the Germans. They are said to possess a hundred cantons, from each of which they yearly send from their territories for the purpose of war a thousand armed men: the others who remain at home, maintain [both] themselves and those-engaged in the expedition. The latter again, in their turn, are in arms the year after: the former remain at home. Thus neither husbandry, nor the art and practice of war are neglected. But among them there exists no private and separate land; nor are they permitted to remain more than one year in one place for the purpose of residence. They do not live much on corn, but subsist for the most part on milk and flesh, and are much [engaged] in hunting; which circumstance must, by the nature of their food, and by their daily exercise and the freedom of their life (for having from boyhood been accustomed to no employment, or discipline, they do nothing at all contrary to their inclination), both promote their strength and render them men of vast stature of body. And to such a habit have they brought themselves, that even in the coldest parts they wear no clothing whatever except skins, by reason of the scantiness of which, a great portion of their body is bare, and besides they bathe in open rivers.
Merchants have access to them rather that they may have persons to whom they may sell those things which they have taken in war, than because they need any commodity to be imported to them. Moreover, even as to laboring cattle, in which the Gauls take the greatest pleasure, and which they procure at a great price, the Germans do not employ such as are imported, but those poor and ill-shaped animals, which belong to their country; these, however, they render capable of the greatest labor by daily exercise. In cavalry actions they frequently leap from their horses and fight on foot; and train their horses to stand still in the very spot on which they leave them, to which they retreat with great activity when there is occasion; nor, according to their practice, is any thing regarded as more unseemly, or more unmanly, than to use housings. Accordingly, they have the courage, though they be themselves but few, to advance against any number whatever of horse mounted with housings. They on no account permit wine to be imported to them, because they consider that men degenerate in their powers of enduring fatigue, and are rendered effeminate by that commodity.
C. Julius Caesar. Caesar's Gallic War. Translator. W. A. McDevitte. Translator. W. S. Bohn. 1st Edition. New York. Harper & Brothers. 1869. Harper's New Classical Library. Hirt-Gal 4.1-2.
The Gauls are exceedingly addicted to the use of wine and fill themselves with the wine which is brought into their country by merchants, drinking it unmixed, and since they partake of this drink without moderation by reason of their craving for it, when they are drunken they fall into a stupor or a state of madness. Consequently many of the Italian traders, induced by the love of money which characterizes them, believe that the love of wine of these Gauls is their own godsend. For these transport the wine on the navigable rivers by means of boats and through the level plain on wagons, and receive for it an incredible price; for in exchange for a jar of wine they receive a slave, getting a servant in return for the drink.
Diodorus Siculus, The Library of History. Book V, Part 25.
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