Supah_Schmendrick
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User ID: 618
Supah_Schmendrick
11mo ago
Swinging wildly in the wind, catching the prevailing trends as best as they can. They're politicians - survival in office always comes before anything so piddly as principles or beliefs.
Supah_Schmendrick
11mo ago
or just paid the governor of Coahuila to protect the border from the other side
Sounds quite similar to RIM.
Supah_Schmendrick
10mo ago
Suppose Americans had been using "cis women" for the last 100 years and progressives started complaining that they should just say "woman" to refer to biological women so that transwomen aren't constantly reminded that they're not cis.
That is not the same sort of claim, and I can't think of a normal usage when a normative condition requires a special qualifier, rather than the qualifier being reserved for the abnormal minority.
Supah_Schmendrick
10mo ago
Those terms are meta-exclusionary. They only exclude people who try to exclude others.
No they don't. Someone can be a "racist" for having the wrong skin tone and singing along to the wrong song, or refusing to give up a rented CityBike. Moreover, as is increasingly popular on the left, there's a categorical denial that anyone who isn't white can be "racist" at all - thus "racist" itself is a term being used to exclude others.
Similarly with "sexist" and "homophobe." The most common use-case is attacking someone who holds disfavored object-level beliefs regarding, e.g., sexual morality or family formation.
Supah_Schmendrick
10mo ago
The culture war is as much a commentary on whose righteousness can be expressed as much as it is a contest over the definition of righteousness.
Maybe I'm dumb, but I don't see a large distinction between "a definition of righteousness which can be expressed without significant social pushback" and "a definition of righteousness which has triumphed and been accepted by society." Can you elaborate?
Supah_Schmendrick
10mo ago
The answer, in part, is idiosyncratic billionaire activism. This is not unusual; a significant portion of the major social changes over the past half century have coincided with major trends in institutional philanthropy and/or social trends among the upper classes (e.g., the role of the Ford Foundation in advancing feminist and black activism).
Supah_Schmendrick
10mo ago
I mean, I'd go further - I think it's completely normal for minorities to impose their righteousness on everyone else, who just basically goes along with it. What I'm mixed up about is the difference between "whose righteousness can be expressed" and "a contest over the definition of righteousness." Isn't "whose righteousness can be expressed" just the current winner of the "contest over the definition of righteousness?"
Supah_Schmendrick
10mo ago
Well, what now? Apparently the left has pushed too hard and too fast and it’s turning the GOP away. Being LGBT isn’t seen as some harmless thing anymore, especially when it seems being “tolerant” means accepting gay drag nuns on crucifixes. The parodies are no longer a parody, and grooming children to accept gender ideology seems rife in schools even in deep red states.
As another American politician said during another of the country's great culture wars: "We are now far into the [eighth] year, since a policy was initiated, with the avowed object, and confident promise, of putting an end to [queer] agitation. Under the operation of that policy, that agitation has not only, not ceased, but has constantly augmented. In my opinion, it will not cease, until a crisis shall have been reached, and passed - 'A house divided against itself cannot stand.' I believe this government cannot endure, permanently half-[queer] and half [traditional/heteronormative]. I do not expect the Union to be dissolved - I do not expect the house to fall - but I do expect it will cease to be divided. It will become all one thing, or all the other."
No polity can long retain serious moral divisions within itself for long.
Supah_Schmendrick
10mo ago
There was (allegedly) a similar joke about a Berliner Jew in 1930 who always read the Nazi papers "Volkische Beobachter," "Der Angriff," and "Die Sturmer" instead of the comparatively-mainstream "Berliner Tageblatt."
Supah_Schmendrick
10mo ago
The case has to GET to discovery. Which means the complainant must demonstrate a reasonable likelyhood to succeed on the merits
No, to get to discovery the plaintiff just has to allege sufficient specific facts to constitute a violation of law assuming they're proven to be true. You might be mixing the standard up with the one for a preliminary injunction, which requires (1) a showing of irreparable harm should the status quo not be maintained, and (2) a showing that the requesting party is likely to succeed on the merits.
Supah_Schmendrick
10mo ago
Given that California is significantly less black than the national average (5% vs. 12%), it's a similar amount of over-representation when compared to the catchment population.
Supah_Schmendrick
10mo ago
My understanding is that it takes a significant amount of time for exploration projects to go from approval, through construction, to production. To what extent are current production levels indicative of investments made 5-10 years ago, and approvals sought 3-4 years ago? (Honest question, I don't know the industry well enough to say off the top of my head or with only cursory googling).
Similarly, should we expect the number of permits granted by the Biden administration to have an immediate impact on production numbers?
And are all permits created equal - e.g. if current production increases are centered in shale fields, are those permits more or less impactful than the permits being granted now?
Supah_Schmendrick
10mo ago
"Critique of STEM supremacism" is useless because the alternatives tend to be woo
It's not a question of "alternatives," its a recognition that STEM disciplines are still full of people, with the same conflicts of interest, corruptions, status-games, cliquishness, and all the rest. STEM doesn't get you an "objective" view of society because the map is still not the territory, and to the degree that it gets you an objective view of the physical universe you still have to convince all the other non-STEM people that you're right or else they'll just coordinate meanness against you using the same old dark arts as always while you're demonstrating the perfection of your equations alone at a blackboard.
Supah_Schmendrick
10mo ago
except the ones that admit anyone with a pulse
This is actually most schools. Most colleges in the U.S. have an acceptance rate of over 2/3rds.
Supah_Schmendrick
10mo ago
So long as "diversity" just means non-white-male, it is useless and counterproductive.
To some. It's very useful to others, including the people who receive preferential treatment in hiring/placement because of it, and to the white people who can deploy it as a costly signal of virtue to other white people (who are the only ones who don't have strong pro-ingroup preferences). So actually, it's extremely useful and productive to most of the population, hence its meteoric rise and widespread adoption.
Supah_Schmendrick
10mo ago
No, it makes it a "momento mori"-type reminder of fallibility. But I suspect we'll have to agree to disagree here.
Supah_Schmendrick
10mo ago
I've heard from Peter Zeihan that fracking wells are easier and quicker to get up and running than other types of operations, but I can't remember whether it's on the order of months or years.
Supah_Schmendrick
10mo ago
You are taking insufficient account of interpersonal variance. I am unconvinced that the differences between the life-experiences of American-Men-As-A-Class ("AMAAC") and American-Women-As-A-Class ("AWAAC") are significant compared to the differences between the rich and poor, beautiful and ugly, normal and disabled/crippled, smart and dumb, low-time-preference and high-time-preference, etc.
Supah_Schmendrick
10mo ago
I'm not saying that the differences between AMAAC and AWAAC are not significant. I'm saying that if you're asking me about my life-chances from behind a veil of ignorance, the differences imposed on me by being AMAAC or AWAAC would be swamped by (and in many ways significantly dependent on) other traits about me - inherited wealth, inherent intelligence, inherent beauty, sketchy family, etc.
Supah_Schmendrick
10mo ago
Was that supposed to be a summary of what I commented? If so, I'm confused - I didn't say that at all. What I said was:
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STEM disciplines' truth-seeking functions are often undermined by human nonsense. E.g., "The Vaccine Prevents The Spread of COVID, and anything else is misinformation."
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STEM methods are currently ill-suited to describing and analyzing the human nonsense undermining their truth-seeking functions. E.g. the Replication Crisis.
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Even where STEM disciplines do produce truth, that is no guarantee that power will not suppress those truths. E.g., "Comrade Lysenko is correct; the so-called 'genetics' are reactionary bourgeois fallacies!"
Supah_Schmendrick
10mo ago
"when professors speak and write as citizens of the campus community and officers of an educational institution."
Hoist them on their own petards. Pass laws banning advocating for race-segregated graduations, student groups, "affinity" groups, or programs. When faculty complain, whoops, that's intramural speech seeking to racially-discriminate in violation of the Civil Rights Act and 14th Amendment; no "free speech" protection there.
Supah_Schmendrick
10mo ago
Some schools of thought are more assiduous about trying to construct a seemingly-consistent jurisprudential and/or historical framework. Others either lack the skill or patience to do this, or prefer just to exercise naked power through judicial ipse dixit.
Supah_Schmendrick
10mo ago
Thank you for the insight!
Supah_Schmendrick
10mo ago
I mean, two of the largest producers of grain in the world went to war with each other. That seems like it ought to have an effect on bread prices. Not sure about dairy/vegetables, though.
At least in CA, few liquor-licensed businesses sell only alcohol - there's just not enough clientele. The vast majority are restaurants, convenience stores, or groceries. Particularly with regard to off-sale-only licenses, there's no distinction between "bottle shop that only sells wine" and "Safeway that has a wine aisle in addition to 30k sq. ft. of groceries. It would have been legally difficult to make distinctions on the basis of "if business sells alcohol, then not essential" without also impinging food-sellers (particularly given the lazy & wooden ways that alcohol law is enforce in the state to begin with).
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