TK-421
4d ago
Thanks, I appreciate the explanation.
Combined, this was broadly seen as a two-part betrayal by the Bernie-left. It was a broader DNC betrayal of the Obama wing picking favorites to maintain its primacy in the party rather than letting voters pick via the nominal primary purpose, but it was also a betrayal by the more party-institutionalist Warren-left, who sabotaged a bigger left momentum in favor of selling out for postings and influence.
I think I can understand a feeling of betrayal from the process on an emotional level but I'm not sure I really get it. For instance, I didn't just donate to Amy Klobuchar, I made her tater tot hotdish recipe. It was pretty good. But I didn't feel like her dropping out of the race well before my state's primary represented the DNC betraying me or nefariously preventing me from picking my preferred candidate. Weaker candidates dropping out and consolidating behind a more popular candidate with similar views is just an actual part of the primary process as it exists. It would be interesting to see the effects of switching to some kind of one day primary-palooza where every state votes simultaneously but that is not, and never has been, how the primaries work.
Warren staying in the race through Super Tuesday probably did hurt Bernie. Presumably Sanders was the second choice of some fraction of her voters. But as you note, she represents a more institutional strain of the left and (although we'll never know) it's unlikely that enough of her voters would have gone with him to change the outcome. It's just as likely that the majority of her voters would have gone to Biden.
If primary voters wanted Sanders they could have had him. They did not. The fact that voters picked the more centrist candidate - and that there were other more centrist politicians in the race with non-negligible support in the first place - shows where the actual center of gravity was in the party. Bernie would not have won regardless of what the DNC did.
TK-421
5d ago
...and that is AFTER stacking the previous primary and fucked Bernie up the ass.
Can you please explain how Bernie received an ass fucking? The impression I got from the 2016 and 2020 primaries was that he lost because he wasn't popular enough with Democratic primary voters to win a national race, not that he was the victim of forced sodomy. I am very curious to know if that was not the case.
TK-421
13d ago
Why not buy units in private equity funds then? Much better returns than Intel lmao
Not to speak for The_Nybbler, but I think the intent is to both exercise control and make money. You could conceive of a similar bailout not concerned with making money off the deal that's solely about protecting jobs / paying off unions / encouraging local investment even if it turns out net negative.
Buying into private equity funds would simply result in the government getting better returns while the investment goes to foreign countries / companies if that's the most efficient way to get returns. Buying directly into a company like this with these restrictions is certainly a market distortion but the idea is that it should still be financially net positive, just less so than in the most economically efficient world possible, and help support (their idea of) national interests.
TK-421
17d ago
Because the metaphorical imagery employed by science is fundamentally arbitrary, Irigaray's contention is that the fundamental choice of which parts of physics to label as "solid" mechanics and "fluid" mechanics in the first place reveals something sociologically and psychologically about the people doing the labeling (obviously, she would say that it reveals a fundamental aversion to or discomfort with fluid imagery and feminine imagery in general).
Whether it's true that the scientific metaphorical imagery is fundamentally arbitrary and/or the degree to which it is/isn't is an interesting question. It's somewhat analogous to phonemes / morphemes. In most (maybe all?) structuralist linguistic models, phonemes are defined as lacking information individually. They're the sub-components of higher level objects that do convey information but they're interchangeable building blocks. Studying natural languages as used, though, seems to show that phonemes can have information: round sounds are associated with words involving the concept of roundness or fullness, sharp sounds are associated with spiky objects or violent concepts.
The associations seem somewhat universal and somewhat arbitrary and are not absolutes, every language has counter-examples. They also aren't necessary for a language's expressiveness so they are optional and to some degree interchangeable.
If the metaphors that tend to be used in scientific imagery are / are not potentially tied to some lower level structure in how humans form concepts, we could maybe learn more about the process of cognition. The degree to which they're socially mediated would still be interesting.
Dying is concerning. Like other panicked easy marks, I'm signed up for cryonics. Although I think it's very unlikely to work - call it a 1% chance - it still beats the baseline.
I engage in moderately risky activities and if my death occurs in the next 5-ish years it will almost certainly be due to an accident. Most scenarios kill or incapacitate me from meaningful decision making outright. Some don't, however, and it's possible that I could be mortally injured while retaining my basic decision making abilities.
Assuming that I find myself in one of these's rare scenarios, let's say I'm offered a choice. Without emergency treatment I will die. This treatment has an around 20% chance of causing significant additional damage to my brain. Damage that could not be undone even under best sci-fi medical advancements should the cryonics process work. Even with the treatment I have suffered irrevocable damage and it's unknown if it may be progressive.
My instinct is to request that doctors treat me as if I had died in the accident and begin the cryonics process in as controlled and ideal fashion as possible. I know that in practice that's a request that's unlikely to be granted, I'm just not sure if it would be the right choice.
Would you make the same decision? Should anyone be allowed to make that kind of trade-off with the assistance of medical staff?
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