Supah_Schmendrick
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User ID: 618
Supah_Schmendrick
2yr ago
the invention of the (practical, iron) stirrup and (more advanced) saddle doesn't seem too significant to us because we don't care about horses, but it ushered in an era of political dominance by feudal lords and their knights.
The stirrup and saddle were important, yes, but the idea that the rich rode horses while the poor fought on foot is at least as old as Alexander's companion cavalry (who had neither stirrups nor advanced saddles). Similarly, political organization revolving around personal relationships between kings and subordinate networks of landholders who also owed military service doesn't arise with medieval "feudalism" (which itself isn't a unitary concept, because e.g. the French, English, and Polish models are so radically different) but was much, much older - the huscarl/fyrd system is similar, not reliant on mounted troops, and has antecedents back to classical Germanic tribes. Heck, even classical greco-roman hoplite/legionary systems are similar (though the Roman system diverged with the consolidation of agricultural land and then the marian reforms).
Developments in every day life did occur, and are interesting. But let's not lose the forest for the trees - it wasn't until first the Columbian exchange, and then the modern era, that there were true civilization-rocking material sea-changes.
Supah_Schmendrick
2yr ago
Politics is an art that Americans have never learned
With respect, this is profoundly ignorant of U.S. politics before about 1960.
Supah_Schmendrick
2yr ago
The course of political, social, and technological change is very hard to predict
And yet for much of human history it was very easy to predict - functionally zero for the vast majority of people. A Roman from 100 AD might be surprised that the brightest minds of 1600 were in misty Brittania or burned-over Germania, but he wouldn't be surprised at the way the vast majority of European people ate, lived, and farmed up 'til the Columbian exchange. The Mongols would have been instantly cognizable to anyone who saw the Hunnic incursions (or the Scythians, Pechenegs, Avars, Bolghars, Magyars or any other number of mounted steppe confederacies crashing into Europe from the east). Medieval black death? Meet the plague of Justinian. Most of the major political developments in pre-modern Europe had classical counterparts (if they weren't directly aping classical models - the Catholic church's parish system is a carryover from Roman secular organization), and the technology levels waffled around, with changes here and there but few true revolutions in material conditions.
Things have only really started going crazy in the last few hundred years, and yet even then people keep being eerily prescient about major technological and social developments (or maybe there was just something in the Star Trek writers' room's water).
Supah_Schmendrick
2yr ago
Unclear. Is it because the leadership are Marxists that they don't have the state capacity to prevent rampant pillaging of powerlines? There have been Marxist societies - Stalinist Russia, or Mao's China, or Kim's Korea - that were capable of protecting state infrastructure and harshly punishing those who, without approval from the relevant political authorities, harmed it.
Is it because the leadership of SA are Marxists that they have a turbo-charged affirmative action system (called "Black Economic Empowerment") which crippled many major businesses and state enterprises? It's more LBJ "Great Society" than "all power to the proletariat."
Is the SA leadership's Marxism the reason that they appear to be functionally innumerate?
I don't know, and I have a hard time believing it's not a larger issue, of which culture/ideology is one aspect.
Supah_Schmendrick
2yr ago
Yes! But my point was that it could become a hunting dog with less effort than you'd think (though it would take directed effort or a long-ass time and a lot of random luck) to get it there.
Supah_Schmendrick
2yr ago
Dachshunds are also tiny, and yet the name means "badger hound" and they were explicitly bred that way in order to get down in badger warrens and drag those ferocious pests out by the entrails.
Supah_Schmendrick
2yr ago
Will you also argue that culture can make a chihuahua into a hunting dog?
It takes culture to even determine that there should be "hunting dogs" at all, and to start the project of breeding them. We are the product of the cultures of yesterday - who they decided to reward, what traits they regarded as high-status, etc.
Supah_Schmendrick
2yr 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.
Supah_Schmendrick
2yr ago
Thank you for the insight!
Supah_Schmendrick
2yr 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
2yr 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
2yr 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
2yr 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
2yr 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
2yr 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
2yr 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
2yr 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
2yr 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
2yr 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
2yr 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
2yr 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
2yr 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
2yr 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
2yr 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.
I'm not sure what you mean by "an afterthought or a footnote" but 19th and early 20th century U.S. politics are all about brass-tacks, "jobs-for-the-boys" style patronage. As the high point, I'd point to maybe the various landgrant laws from the mid-1800's on, just because of the massive scale of the uplift caused thereby.
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