Supah_Schmendrick
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User ID: 618
vastly poorer, shittier, more corrupt, more violent countries don't have the problems that the above article notes exist in the Los Angeles metro.
Because they're not rich enough to (1) afford ubiquitous personal car transportation, (2) isolate themselves from the effects of luxury beliefs like "we should prioritize the feelings and welfare of criminals over having orderly public places"
Los Angeles is the second city of the richest country on earth. The median income in Los Angeles is $70,000 a year.
Right, rich enough to afford personal cars for most people, and luxury beliefs allying the guilty-feeling, effeminized elites and the underclasses.
Supah_Schmendrick
2yr ago
This is not a deep dive or an analysis - though I suspect in future this topic will generate many.
Instead it is a placemarker. I see that there is a brouhaha of some sort unfolding at the Oklahoma state capitol today. Right-wing media sources characterize it as an invasion of the capitol building to keep the state legislature from voting on legislation which would outlaw medical gender transition for minors.
Other sources, including Fox News, characterize it as a protest inside the capitol rotunda during the governor's state of the state address, opposing several bills which have been introduced during the legislative session, and which the governor supports.
There is obvious incentive, from the Trumpy/populist right, to draw as many parallels with the January 6th event as possible.
There has previously been discussion at the old stomping ground about whether liberal protester/rioters were prosecuted to the same degree as conservatives.
I will be trying to watch this as best I can (not being in or from Oklahoma), as it seems it may present another datapoint for discussion. It will also be a demonstration of the degree to which the institutional right is willing to push culture war topics, and authorize the exercise of political power over dissenting minorities to force through right-favored results.
Supah_Schmendrick
10mo ago
on paper the idea that individuals have free speech, not organizations, is perfectly coherent.
No it's not, it's completely bonkers. An organization - especially something like a think-tank - is just a group of people gathered for a common purpose. Anything that a member of the organization says can trivially be rebranded as the speech of one or more of the organization's component members.
Supah_Schmendrick
8mo ago
This all seems to hinge on whether you believe Trump genuinely thought there was outcome-determinative fraud or not.
So you're telling me all of the outrage over "democracy being under threat" is caused by people not being able to believe that Trump could genuinely believe things he says? This whole thing is just the biggest case of typical mind fallacy and projection?!?
I swear to god this country is going to give me an aneurysm.
Supah_Schmendrick
2yr ago
The difference between the Amish and the Jews is that the Amish don't control banking and media corporations, don't control people's livelihood, what they buy, are allowed to buy or what they are allowed to think, who they are allowed to vote for.
"The Jews" don't control banking and media corporations - specific Jews do - and they're not uniformly Jewish. As I keep banging on about, Jews come in all sorts of different groups, and increasingly they're not even all that Jewish at all.
Supah_Schmendrick
10mo ago
AA is gone.
The Harvard admission statistics for 2024-5 strongly suggest otherwise.
DEI is declining.
- The Democratic nominee for president brags about tripling federal government loans specifically to non-whites.
- Her Vice Presidential nominee, as Governor of Minnesota, signed into law mandatory racial quotas for bodies disbursing state health and community welfare grants. (e.g. MN Statutes secs. 145.9285, Subd. 3; 145.987, Subd. 1). Of course, this already builds on existing "Ethnic Councils" established in 2017, explicitly charged to "work for the implementation of economic, social, legal, and political equality for its constituency" by lobbying the governor and legislature for set-asides, exercising oversight over proposed legislative and administrative changes, promoting racially-affiliated interest groups, and disbursing contracts. (MN Statutes sec. 15.0145)
- Approximately one in five academic jobs requires an ideological litmus test of allegiance to DEI.
- The Department of Education (pdf warning) spends a significant amount of effort on collecting detailed statistics on the racial and gendered breakdown of suspensions, expulsions, and law-enforcement referrals in schools, heavily-hinting that this is racial discrimination...but then tucks the tables with student offenses at the very end, and doesn't provide any details on who's actually doing the offending. In that report, by the way, the Department cites a 2014 "Dear Colleague" letter that threatened loss of federal funding if schools didn't punish black and brown kids less, regardless of their actual behavior, which is apparently still active.
- The Department of Agriculture just doled out over a billion dollars in reparations-style payments to black farmers specifically.
Yeah, I'm going to say DEI is doing problematically fine.
Trump is openly calling for a blood-soaked deportation campaign
As opposed to the blood-soaked results of the fetishization of open immigration?
Even leftists like Matt Yglesias are calling for more immigration restrictions.
Ah yes, Matt "I think fighting dishonesty with dishonesty is sometimes the right thing to do" Yglesias. Clearly he is being fully open and honest about his views, which have changed based on evidence which has convinced him to foreswear his most recent book, "One Billion Americans." (I am being sarcastic; I do not believe for a second that Matt is being honest).
Harris is sprinting away from woke as fast as she can. Ctrl+f for "trans" on her campaign platform brings up only 2 results, both of which deal with "transnational criminal organizations".
Ahhh, but remember - "her values have not changed."
Supah_Schmendrick
2yr ago
What does it take to achieve "friendly interactions between blacks and whites as the norm rather than exception"
Maybe take a look at the military? I'm given to understand that the military has been very good at suppressing or eliminating race as a social divisor.
Supah_Schmendrick
6mo ago
Yugi-oh appears to significantly over-index for black folks, at least when compared to MtG.
Supah_Schmendrick
7mo ago
Delinquents need to be beaten, murderers and rapists need to be hanged, and it all needs to happen as swiftly as possible so as to impress the right connection in the mind of the criminal between the illegal act and the punishment.
Hence the right to a SPEEDY trial.
Supah_Schmendrick
10mo ago
Why just one case?
At least I provided a case, unlike the original, completely unsupported assertion.
You should use a statistic when making an argument like this.
Respectfully, no. Societal cohesion and solidarity is a fragile, fickle thing that we barely understand and do not know how to sustain across lengthy periods. Slapping a number on something doesn't necessarily mean that you're using the right statistic, or that the thing you're trying to measure is even actually legible with the methods and information at hand.
Statistics around illegal immigrants are notoriously unreliable, because many jurisdictions do not cooperate with federal immigration efforts, and illegal immigrants (for completely understandable reasons) are disproportionately likely to use falsified identity documents and avoid getting involved with state agencies, including law enforcement. We don't even actually know how many there are in the country - the media has been using the same number for appx. thirty years, across high and low migration periods alike.
Reasoning from examples has flaws, but at least we can draw direct lines from immigration to particular incidents, like that one.
Supah_Schmendrick
1yr ago
It's not a terribly deep or positive thought, but I kinda yawned my way through this.
It's not that it's badly written, but more that it's formulaic. Ah yep - conservative religious upbringing that fails to actually describe recognizable relations between the sexes and settles for formulaic denunciations. Escapist fantasies of liberation that inevitably shatter on the weird, cold, and uncomfortable reefs of confusing interpersonal relations? Check. And next we'll have...yup, there it is...sublimation of the disappointment from those broken dreams into uncharitable takes on the opposite sex, complete with meme-tier statistics. Finally, we wrap up with white-knuckled clinging to any available validation for the hole the author's dug herself, a wistful call-back to liberatory fantasies, and a circle back to those conservative parents, who still remain fuddy-duddies.
And as a parthian shot, I have a hard time taking the author's complaints about the sexual marketplace seriously when she's literally an OnlyFans model. Bemoaning the lack of human connection in romantic matters and the reduction of women to "defective cumrags" rings mighty hollow from that position.
On the other hand, make that bag I guess.
Supah_Schmendrick
1yr ago
But Jim Crow wasn't exterminationist. The sum total of all lynchings of blacks in the U.S. between 1882 and 1968 was 3,446, according to the Tuskeegee Institute (who I don't think are incentivized to be conservative with the number).
Supah_Schmendrick
2yr ago
Do you have absolutely no empathy for someone in west Africa dying of malaria?
I do have empathy for them. But empathy enough isn't a good enough reason to do something, not when I'm already groaning under the unmet weight of already-extant duty:
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I have a duty to my ancestors who made my life possible, and to carry on that line into the future.
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I have a duty to my family who worked and sweated and sacrificed to raise me, and must pay that forward by working and sweating and sacrificing for my future children.
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I have a duty to the people who I work with, who have invested in and rely upon me.
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I have a duty to the people who live near me, who I share streets and parks and utilities and schools and commerce with, and who have to share those things with me.
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I have a duty to my countrymen, who in times of danger are sworn to lay down their lives for me, and for whom I may be called to lay down my life in turn.
Out and out in concentric, relational circles. That's a LOT of duty in the modern world, and I'm not at all certain even all my effort and resources and will is doing a good enough job. Thought and resources I devote to things outside those concentric rings of responsibility is, in a real sense, a defection against those important things. Moreover, because those outside things are far from me and I'm not enmeshed in iterated responsibility with them, I'm not likely to understand what any intervention would do, outside of the most superficially-obvious results.
Better to focus positive efforts on the things close by, to which I am already bound. As for those things far away, the most effective thing I can contribute is a general promise to treat fairly and virtuously with strangers when they come into my life.
Supah_Schmendrick
1yr ago
The mistake is thinking that there is any systematic "solution" that will avoid people sometimes being callow, manipulative, unempathetic, or simply mistaken in ways that result in broken hearts and worse.
I agree with the author that actually interacting with, and making informed decisions about, the individual people in front of you, is the most important thing - you can't rely on any ideology or heuristic to do the thinking for you. But I disagree because there is also a value to "purity" - having sex is a really major step in a relationship, and can really skew people's attitudes towards each other, and towards relationships in general.
Whether to have sex, and who to have sex with, really is an important decision with outsize importance - particularly for heterosexual women - and should be approached really, really carefully, given the young and immature ages at which young women become sexually attractive to men, and the drastically-different attitudes most men and most women have towards sex (see, e.g., the sexual habits of gay men vs. lesbian women).
Supah_Schmendrick
8mo ago
But then again, parents have gladly, like good conservatives, sat back and had their rights stripped from them over the past 50 years, and that was pretty negligent on its own…
I strongly suspect this is downstream from increasing individual wealth, which makes the family unit less and less necessary as a locus of economic production and coordination.
Supah_Schmendrick
2yr ago
We should've been producing more gas from the get-go, approving projects for export and domestic consumption.
Is this feasible within a relevant time-window? Production today is not based on yesterday's decisions, but instead those decisions made 3, 5, and 10 years ago regarding regulatory, investment, and infrastructural resource allocation. Thus, decisions being made today about production infrastructure and investment shouldn't be based on today's needs for more/less gas, but on estimations of the need for gas in 3, 5, and 10 years. The price, on the other hand, reflects demand today, irrespective of future or past projections or investments. Thus, the two are far less related than one might ordinarily suppose. Insofar as they reflect a broad-based general trend in demand, yes, prices are a good spur to investment and future build-out. However, when there is a lag in build-out's ability to ramp up production in the short term, and the price spike is caused by a short-term or otherwise exceptionally unpredictable event like a natural disaster or war, then the price is likely not a good guide to what the future may require.
This is why it's reasonable to discuss price caps for this kind of black swan event; it's not the kind of thing that could reasonably have been anticipated within the timescales necessary to ramp production, and no action taken today is able to reduce the price through increasing supply within a reasonable timeframe (or even one that reasonably guarantees the black swan effect's will still be applicable at the end of the preparatory period). Thus, it's proper to take into account the societal effects of a sudden and unearned windfall profit vs the costs to the citizenry who see prices spike uncontrollably.
Supah_Schmendrick
2yr ago
"Firearm ownership is literally written into the founding document of this country as a fundamental right . . . "
That's just a set-up for the Cersei Lannister response: "This is your shield, Lord Stark? A piece of paper? tears paper to shreds"
Supah_Schmendrick
9mo ago
Yeah, but DeSantis appears to have the FL state disaster relief organizations running well, so while the destruction may be significant, I'd bet on the response being significantly faster/more effective than normal as well.
Supah_Schmendrick
1yr ago
If we're positing the level of complete totalitarian control such that the military - a good chunk of which will have voted for or otherwise sympathized with the other party - to assassinate political rivals and expect to be obeyed, why would you expect the Justice Department, a much smaller and more politicized branch than the military which also serves at the pleasure of the President, to be able or willing to do anything to stop it?
Supah_Schmendrick
2yr ago
You may at times despise a member of your family, think their ideas or values are terrible, have had awful experiences with them... but a bridge remains despite the gaps.
And yet, there's nothing quite so terrible as the hatreds caused by family splits. The heathen is combatted less fiercely than the heretic or apostate.
This is without mentioning the massive religious elephant in the room
What, the elephant that most Americans are blindingly philosemitic? Or is the elephant that religion is less and less important in most people's lives, particularly the young?
So the Jewish ethny remains separate
72% of non-Orthodox Jews who married since 2010 married a gentile.
as such it's members pursue their ideological goals
Which ideological goals? The goals of insular hasidic sects in NY? The goals of deracinated "cultural jews" scattered all over? The goals of Reform Jews (basically the same as Unitarian Universalists at this point, including the whole "god" thing being pretty much metaphorical)? The Jews that support Israel or the Jews that oppose it? There is no uniform "Jewish" ideology.
without any concern for the damage these impose on the host society.
Nope. Jews are more charitable, on average, than gentiles, and jewish charitable fund money goes overwhelmingly to non-sectarian causes.
Supah_Schmendrick
2yr ago
I mean, not to tell on myself or anything, but...haven't you ever come across excerpts from japanese AVs? Lots of high-pitched nasal squealing that, through a wall, could plausibly be confused with an infant. Or at least enough for comedic purposes.
Supah_Schmendrick
8mo ago
Gee, it's almost like the Israelis were angry or something after over a thousand of their countrymen were killed or abducted. Next you're going to tell us U.S. Marines landing on Okinawa had some off-color things to say about Japanese people.
Supah_Schmendrick
10mo ago
Israel is a state fundamentally opposed to western values that causes constant headache for the west.
I mean, yeah; a state organized around blood-and-soil nationalism premised on a mythic past and present-day military conquest is pretty opposed to the modern deracinated, pacifistic, cosmopolitan western ideal. A bit surprised that you're in favor of the latter over the former, but wonders never cease!
What about European women's right not to be raped by the migrants IsraAID is bringing into Europe?
Clearly the gentile governments of European nations don't care about protecting that right. Sounds like a problem with the Gentiles.
What about the christians in the middle east that are being destroyed by the hostile nation of Israel?
Sounds like another failing of world christendom. You should probably get on that.
Supah_Schmendrick
2yr ago
a few years ago when I was giving more to Against Malaria, it was certainly nice to be able to think about how this small amount of money would help to save real people's lives.
Wouldn't you get the same feeling volunteering in or contributing to a local soup kitchen? Or mentoring through Big Brothers/Sisters? Coaching Little League/Pop Warner/AYSO (team activities cut suicide risk!)? Filling in potholes in the road to cut traffic accidents? Are local people any less "real?"
there are complex social politics that will go on in situations of you and the people you personally know. they may be offended that you think they're a charity case, they may not want to accept money cause it'd get weird, etc.
Why wouldn't you think that far-away cases would have their own complex social politics? Why would you think that "aid" parachuted in from strangers would be any less likely to fall afoul of these problems than you, working in an area you're presumably at least a little familiar with, among people you presumably share at least a few things in common with?
I don't mean this as a reflection on you personally - I don't know you, of course - but these two quotes seems related. A person far away actually might be more "real" than a person nearby, at least insofar as their "realness" is as a pure, innocent victim who can be redeemed through charity. The person nearby, after all, is probably smelly and dirty and unsightly and low status. He might be crazy, or addicted to something, or violent and destructive. He might be resistant to help, or prone to relapses, or have other human foibles which so frequently are both the cause and result of being down-and-out. Even if he's none of those things, he might disagree about politics, or listen to the wrong music, or otherwise bear cultural marks that one might cringe from being associated with. And so it's hard and often unpleasant to help those nearby! Meanwhile, you don't see any of those things about the person far away, or if you do it's likely covered up by cultural unfamiliarity. Feels a lot better to help that person, I'd bet.
EA wasn't always like this - insofar as it's an attempt to cut through grift and bloat in charity efforts, it's still quite useful! But your comment seems to encapsulate a version of EA that flattens the world into fungible QALYs and tries to Moneyball-optimize QALYs-per-dollar, with an affective bias against giving and working where one is. And that I seems like a moral superstimulus to me, which substitutes the sugar-water of depersonalized "effectiveness" for the hard, hard work of improving ourselves and the uncomfortable things close to us.
TBH if it were as simple as just cutting a check I think the Feds would be quite effective. But as discussed last week, it's not that simple; they actually have to go into a chaotic and desperate situation in very rough terrain and try to coordinate between thousands of local folks, out-of-state good samaritans, etc., and they have to do it with unionized and over-bureaucratized government workers who suffer very little personal blowback for failure.
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