both of them said Vance's address was the most shocking speech they'd seen in their respective diplomatic careers
They are illiberal in a way shaped perfectly to block people like Vance or more traditional American Republicans from winning elections. Very selectively applied laws used to round up critics of leftists using police raids. A political Overton window enforced through state action and without any input from voters. Vance rightfully points out that Europe's true threats are just this sort of action.
The response is predictably shock, outrage and literal weeping.
I think many Americans just don't realise how visceral and close and frightening the Ukraine war is for many people in Europe
Europe buys Russian gas and contributes only the most meager and hesitant support for Ukraine. I notice the revealed preference here. "Apparently not very important."
Progressives "long marched through institutions". They got it. Mission Accomplished.
Now having sowed, they get to reap. This important societal institution is being bogged down in partisan culture waring, but now also from the other direction. Who could have forseen this.
I've been to grad school. In some meager way I contributed to this important endeavor and lived in it for a bit. It is valuable and we need it. At least some of it. Too bad certain people made it partisan and now are shocked that there is a price for ideological capture.
TIRM
10mo ago
I have a low effort quip I've used for years. Something alone the lines of:
Build more? Afraid we can't do that. Best we can offer is subsidizing demand.
It keeps exactly characterizing a significant portion of politicians, so I'm going to keep using it.
There was a question asked during the 2021 New York City mayoral race: what is the median sale price for a home in Brooklyn?
A few candidates gave answers of varying comical inaccuracy. One candidate was Shaun Donovan who has many years of housing policy experience.
As Wikipedia summarizes Donovan:
served as the 15th United States secretary of housing and urban development from 2009 to 2014, and Director of the US Office of Management and Budget from 2014 to 2017. Prior to that, he was the Commissioner of the New York City Department of Housing Preservation and Development from 2004 to 2009
Many years of directly relevant experience including years working this at the highest level on this topic for New York City. His estimate for the median Brooklyn home sale price in 2021 was $100,000. Wrong order of magnitude. The cheapest listed unit on real estate websites for Brooklyn at that time was $100k for a parking spot. The very cheapest actual homes were many hundreds of thousands of dollars with the median sale price over $900k.
So yeah, somehow the head of multiple relevant agencies for years at the Federal and local level knows fuck all about the basics of his specialty.
I heard the audio from these interviews and interestingly Andrew Yang quickly reasoned that the median would not be significantly offset by the few super expensive homes in Brooklyn and guessed $900k which is within a few percent of the correct answer. Yang has of course never been appointed to be the head of any agency. Nerds may be right, but always be losing.
/r/somethingiswrong2024 posters keep wondering when the military and 3 letter agencies will take out Trump. Also more confusingly wondering how NATO can assist. Of course they use "saving democracy" type rhetoric.
They never use the word "coup" when describing this. And I don't think they get that democracy would not be restored post-coup. As though a cabal of CIA and military leaders would overthrow the elected government and then decide to appoint Kamala as President. They explicitly talk about Kamala being made President.
they leave as soon as they had a better opportunity
Such a common complaint. Usually with new junior hires. You train them for a year or two and then they bail for a much higher paying job. So you employ them when they aren't very productive and lose them when they are. Such a bad deal for the employer.
Which means these employers aren't paying market rates for well-trained employees. A large bump after they are well-trained would make them less want to leave. The fact that they leave for higher pay is indisputable proof that they were making below market rate at their previous job.
TIRM
11mo ago
I think Trump has always been a big outlier on gay issues. At least compared to mainstream Republicans.
He sold rainbow merchandise. He waived a rainbow flag. When asked about trans people using restrooms in Trump tower, he says he doesn't care where they go.
Trump is an irreligious life long New York Democrat with pre-NAFTA Democrat values.
TIRM
2mo ago
There is some discussion of cost disease around here. Scott wrote a bit about it. May I present its cousin: schedule disease.
There is a particularly silly recent example. The city of Pasadena in California has a project to bury some power lines. That's the sort of thing you expect a local government to do. There are various benefits to buried power lines. All good so far. Not obviously silly or indicative of a broad societal failure.
Guess what the estimated schedule will be? This is a town of 133k people. 23 square miles. The scope of this project is small. Take your best guess and check the spoiler below.
We used to be able to build things. Infrastructure. Nuclear power plants. Trains. The California high speed train project is a much more impactful example of cost and schedule disease. But this Pasadena buried power line project stands out for the combination of small scope and deranged schedule.
TIRM
10mo ago
As a modern sage once said: "If it moves, tax it. If it keeps moving, regulate it. And if it stops moving, subsidize it."
Again, a libertarian quip. But it keeps happening. This one is all too accurate.
bees suffer 7% as intensely as humans. The mean estimate was around 15% as intensely as people
Shocking. So shocking I'm calling BS. We should be arguing if one ten thousandth or one one hundred thousandth is a better order of magnitude estimate. Not 15%. Wrong order of magnitude is putting it lightly.
I'm aware of people very concerned about the very hypothetical suffering of tiny bugs including dust mites. Imagining that they have conscious awareness and suffer. Ex: https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/3hqXxzFRSZqRFPCTv/killing-the-ants
https://old.reddit.com/r/reclassified/comments/1kpl5ur/refilism_banned/mszshz5/
We need a term for this. Toxic empathy or something.
TIRM
5mo ago
Wokism is over.
Someone tell my workplace HR and their mandatory training. It includes warnings about microaggressions, etc.
I'll copy my unrelated comment from yesterday:
I listened to Pod Save America after the election and they were saying this election shows us that we need to get money out of politics. I immediately thought they were talking nonsense since they are the side that spends the most by far. These are smart, informed, experienced Democratic operatives mindlessly parroting "money in politics" talking points when the exact opposite is clearly true.
They're reflective, thoughtful, capable of decoupling and also blind partisans shutting off their brains and reciting approved party phrases when they need to. Which is much better than the norm. If you want to hear the smuggest Obama staffers cheerlead for Democrats, this is the peak experience. They are really quite full of themselves. Some partisan brainrot comes with the package.
TIRM
8mo ago
I don't want bureaucrats spitefully revoking contracts because Musk tweets too much.
I also don't want my tax dollars given to StarLink. They are a large private for-profit venture and are not a fledgling industry that needs a financial boost. If they don't meet the criteria for this award, then don't give them this award. Similarly don't give hundreds of millions of my tax dollars to Iridium, Kuiper, Blue Ring or the other satellite companies. Make government contracts with them of course. Pay for services provided. But don't just 'award' only one of them with a money spigot regardless of their ability to deliver promised services.
TIRM
10mo ago
I thought this was a solved problem with the Simpons-style cartoonish yellow skin color that is not within the range of typical human skin tones. Late stage jaundice patients not included.
TIRM
1mo ago
But also: there is an obvious problem with some bicyclists thinking that stop signs, red lights and all other forms of traffic control don't apply to them. I'm glad to hear their terrible behavior is not killing many pedestrians. Which makes sense since I would not expect getting hit with a bike to be commonly lethal. This is unrelated to concern about food delivery scooter people.
This morning I saw a bicyclist veer into the street even though there was a dedicated empty bike lane and an empty sidewalk. He was in one of those bicyclists suits. He was going really fast, but not as fast as cars approaching him from behind. No idea what was going throughout this guy's brain. One of the many bicyclists who seem to think their bike has an integrated forcefield generator. See that kind of baffling behavior with some regularity. I rode my bike to school from 3rd grade to college. I never did stuff like that.
TIRM
9mo ago
Housing unaffordability remains near all time highs.
unemployment has begun to rise (now 6.6%) but for 15-24 year olds its nearly 20%
Canada's total fertility rate data for 2023 came out last week and shows a big drop to 1.26
I'd say the cause and effect is clear here. If young people can't get homes or jobs, then they won't be in a position to start a family.
The responsible middle class couple has a high floor of material attainment before starting a family. Price these people out of it and they'll not start families.
TIRM
10mo ago
"Transgender operations on illegal aliens in prison".
I believe that one is real. Harris at some point supported government paid transition surgery for illegals in prison. It sounds crazy because the outer surface of culture warring is typically lunacy.
TIRM
2mo ago
Gender Queer is, among other things, a book of gay cartoon sex. Targeted at 8 year olds and stocked in public school libraries at my expense.
I support sex ed and some Motte interpretation of the positive things you mention. But the current popular Bailey of sexual cartoon books for young children supplied at taxpayer expense has nothing to do with those positive vibes.
I read your posts and just hope your children against the odds manage to become well-adjusted adults despite your efforts
Sneering contempt against most parents.
TIRM
5mo ago
There is nothing so permanent as a temporary tax or government program.
Libertarians have lots of little quips like that. I'm not going to say they are always correct, but they generally seem to have a point.
TIRM
5mo ago
"Yes, I know they keep firing on our position. But that doesn't make it right to shoot people. I'm taking a principled stance against using weapons on people."
TIRM
8mo ago
Some schools secretly socially transition children. Some locales will take children out of parents' custody if they fail to support transition. This is not all right wing paranoia.
TIRM
2mo ago
it appears they made a mistake
"Oops. Looks like I, a career bureaucrat, accidentally foiled the Republican executive I derive all my authority from yet again. I sure hope these accidents don't keep happening every time a Republican is elected president."
TIRM
5mo ago
As a notable Yale law grad recently explained:
If a judge tried to tell a general how to conduct a military operation, that would be illegal.
If a judge tried to command the attorney general in how to use her discretion as a prosecutor, that's also illegal.
Judges aren't allowed to control the executive's legitimate power.
Maybe the real Constitutional crisis is some random judge deciding that the President's powers as described in Article 2 are actually reserved for that particular judge and they personally shall decide how and if the President may exercise them.
TIRM
5mo ago
Between the demographics and all, it's quite likely at least half of cutting edge research is going to happen there.
I went to American grad school. I have reviewed Chinese research papers. I can't exaggerate the sneering contempt American researchers have for them. In every way trivial and not worth publishing. People around here keep calling things "slop". This is the real slop we need not concern ourselves with.
I've worked in China a bit. I married a Chinese woman. I understand that they are smart and hardworking. If this were a computer game then their high stats would make them win. But they just don't. The factory workers can't follow instructions without a taskmaster standing over them. The researchers publish large numbers of papers worth nothing at all. Something is missing. I blame culture. Chinese people in America working as engineers are productive. Participating in our work culture cures them.
I listened to the whole thing. They pretended that Kamala could not go on Rogan at any point in the campaign because it would consume too much time and she was too busy on the road campaigning. They really tried hard to make it seem like a sensible logistical issue.
They are of course lying their asses off. Harris took multiple multi-day breaks in the campaign. She really wasn't that busy, judging by presidential campaign standards.
As for the illegal trans prisoners' taxpayer-paid gender reassignment surgery issue: they said any direct response to that polled worse than generic talk about the economy. I believe that. Trying to justify or qualify that position is a losing proposal. So politicians should make sure not to state on video that they support such positions.
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