I would have thought that trying to "trans" a Central or South American country would be net negative in this regard. It would make them more want to bail and side with Chinese who don't give a damn about their local culture and social norms.
TIRM
8d ago
Adam Friedland is neither charismatic nor funny. He won't be the next generation's John Stewart or Bill Maher or the left's Joe Rogan or whatever he is trying. He can get around a guest per month on his show and he's not a good interviewer. This is going nowhere.
I heard the first few minutes of the Hasan Piker interview. He says he invested his life savings in this failing show. He will have to give up eventually. I suppose when he can't pay his help or make rent. So sad he squandered his Cum Town millions on this. He won't get a second chance since he is so unfunny.
TIRM
9d ago
somehow convincing politicians to make their crimes legal or at least unpunishable
Kinda sorta happening a bit. Some prominent West coast prosecutors selectively decline to prosecute some classes of crimes. Not prosecuting property crimes of course. But also more serious issues of selectively not prosecuting gun crime depending on the demographics of the perpetrator.
TIRM
9d ago
It is broadly true, even controlling for age, etc.
I once saw a way of framing this that there is not a men vs women wage gap; there is instead a married men vs everyone else wage gap. That may be overstating it a bit.
TIRM
9d ago
the natural consequence of one's decision
"But actually there's a simple technological solution or medical treatment that negates the negative consequences."
And then people are mad as though this person is dodging the correct cosmic punishment for their sins rather than suffering as they deserve. As thought a universal justice with built in punishments for the wicked is being subverted by technological and medication advances.
Your very best and most charitable framing of your opponents is that they are crying in a womanlike manner?
TIRM
9d ago
Social media brainrot hits some women very hard and this is the result? People living in an online echo chamber amplifying their vague progressive leanings into extremism and cutting off all the evil conservatives, MAGAs, etc from their lives. People living the rhetoric of the lowest grade of Reddit political discourse.
TIRM
10d ago
send the landlord’s bailiff around to collect taxes with a bullwhip to handle the delinquent serfs
That or a pack of dogs bred to ensure complaince from reluctant taxpayers.
TIRM
10d ago
Actual leftists are not liberals. I've seen LIBERALS GET THE BULLET TOO plenty on edgy online leftist spaces. By which I mean self-identified socialists and communists.
They historically went even further and denounced social democrats as "social fascists". SocDems, socialists, anarcho-communists and Soviet-backed revolutionaries battling each other by rhetoric or sometimes literally with bullets while actual for-real fascists took over Europe.
grown up steeped in [whatever] rhetoric but that isn’t “in on the joke”
I've been thinking this more and more. What if someone took common hyperbolic political rhetoric literally and then acted on it?
Like Bush and early Obama era American evangelicals in Africa recite their anti-gay talking points to Africans. The Africans listen and take the only sensible response to people corroding society and ruining important institutions in such an insidious manner: Kill them all and mandate reporting such people with stiff penalties for failing to report a secret homosexual. Then the Americans break kayfabe and go "Oh no, we meant they are ruining society but don't take any action against them other than vague campaign rhetoric."
Or some reddit-style "healthcare CEOs are killing us". Or literally "globalizing the intifada". If many people literally believed this sort of rhetoric, some portion would be happily digging the mass graves to put our wicked enemies into. Or pouring burning fuel on old people and children in the streets.
critique of a nebulous “elite”, the only point of which is to spread a general mistrust in whoever happens to be in power
But enough about their wise and desirable traits.
My main complaint about the other side is their unthinking reflexive trust and support for their favorite elites. Seemingly changing their opinions and values on a dime when "the science" or some cabal of would-be technocrats sends out new positions for right-thinking people to hold.
There's a level of distrustful contrarianism that is maladaptive. The opposite of stupidity is not necessarily wisdom. But conservatives are onto something vaguely distrusting our self-appointed elites. Correctly recognizing that taking orders from the vanguard of the opposition is not a good idea.
TIRM
12d ago
essentially nobody in the West has a stake in Gaza that makes it worth protesting about.
American Jews with family in Israel or even family killed on Oct 7. The last American hostage held in Gaza was released a couple weeks ago. A "let our people go" walk is relevant to some Americans.
mid-density inner suburbs
Yes, pre-car America had dense walkable 'streetcar suburbs'. Not a modern lower density SFH car-based suburb, but a proper extension of the city. Some small houses mixed in with big apartment buildings. Just hop on the trolley to go to work.
Anyone with financial means fled them like they were radioactive as soon as it was feasible to do so. They transformed into crime-ridden slums with horrible public schools. Exactly the sorts of places I pay to not live in. We were in the New Urbanist Garden of Eden and voluntarily left with great haste.
Google tells me Europe was 5-10% urban circa 1700. And that's really straining the definition of 'urban' to include towns of a few thousand people. I don't think that special Chinese-only DNA makes Singapore function. But they have a certain set of social norms and types of people we don't much have in the US. Their ways aren't and won't be ours. Given the wildly different situations (ethnically Chinese ruled modern city-state vs much more pluralistic continent-spanning world power), I'd even say shouldn't.
TIRM
12d ago
Yes, and their lifestyles are inferior to mine. Yet another indication of their enormous poverty relative to a professional American.
TIRM
12d ago
bullets instead of dollars
I always liked the pithy Spanish "plata o plomo". Finally an equivalent English bon mot.
TIRM
12d ago
When in doubt, copy Singapore
They are 100% urban and 76% ethnic Chinese.
69% of Americans choose to live in suburbs. Ultra-urban state planning (even if competent!) won't work on us. It isn't relevant to our wants and inclinations.
This is like people who say America should be more like Japan because of their great health outcomes. On one hand, yes. On the other hand, we just aren't Japanese and a bunch of fat white people severely underperform them on health outcomes. There's no path from us to them.
TIRM
12d ago
No expensive consultants who charge by the hour running rings around bureaucrats who have no idea what they're doing
If California made such a state-owned housing corporation, this is just what would happen. They'd make housing as quickly and as cheaply as they are making that bullet train. Endless quantities of taxpayer money would be set aflame in the furnace of consultant payments.
They'd in-house the cost disease.
TIRM
12d ago
The assertion in that senate hearing was that the toxin entry hole would be tiny like a mosquito bite and easily overlooked in an autopsy. These are ultra-potent shellfish toxins that kill from minute quantities.
TIRM
13d ago
CIA's heart attack gun, hard at work.
In case anything thinks I'm joking: that's supposedly a real thing. Air pressure handgun that shoots frozen toxin shards. There were senate hearings about it.
TIRM
14d ago
Enjoy your free time and hobbies now. You won't have nearly as much with kids.
TIRM
14d ago
I'm an American. Starting age 9 I had my own key. I biked from school to home. Sometimes took the bus. Got home a lot earlier than my parents.
TIRM
15d ago
Chinese government could deny exit visas to family members of academics in the US. They have to apply for permission to leave
TIRM
15d ago
He was convicted in 2021 of lying about his ties to China in connection with federally funded research.
Process crimes.
Yes. And this is perhaps the one kind of process crime I want enforced. You can work for a foreign government. You just have to truthfully report that. Some people refuse to do this, outing themselves as bad actors.
But the true alternative is you borrowing from your children's future followed by them additionally borrowing even more from your children's future. Not a hypothetical, but instead a decent description of presidencies. A D blows up the debt more than ever before. Followed by an R. Followed again by a D. Followed again....
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