Tarnstellung
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User ID: 553
Tarnstellung
2yr ago
"Opposing Israel is antisemitic": episode 47239875.
Zionism is an integral aspect of the identity of many Jews.
Segregationism and secessionism is an integral aspect of the identity of many in the Southern US. That doesn't make it acceptable.
I oppose banning specific viewpoints on principle, but it is entirely possible to ban a viewpoint without this being secretly a way to ban some group whose members disproportionately hold that viewpoint. The Zionists here are trying to apply the "disparate impact" principle, which I think practically everyone on TheMotte rejects. They're not standing up for free speech, they're just standing up for their own specific belief. I'm sure they wouldn't mind banning Holocaust deniers.
(Edit: When I say that "I think practically everyone on TheMotte rejects" the principle, I'm not trying to build consensus, I'm just stating my impression that a consensus already exists.)
Tarnstellung
2yr ago
Somehow an avocado that travelled half way around the world on a fossil fueled transport is better for the climate than me eating a piece of meat that has grown less than a mile away.
It is entirely possible that the extra fossil fuels needed to grow the piece of meat relative to the avocado outweigh the fuel needed to transport the avocado.
And in reality, meat is often transported across large distances.
Tarnstellung
2yr ago
Well, I guess we have a different idea of what "numerous" means
The ground-floor walls are completely filled with graffiti. There literally couldn't be any more! There's even some underneath the greenery on the wall behind the kissing couple, implying it's been there, with no one cleaning it up, for enough time to let the plant cover the wall – a few years, at least. (After writing this paragraph, I realised it was just pointless nitpicking. Feel free to ignore it.)
if you infer "general dysfunction" from a scene in which there a bunch of children playing, people going to work or walking their dogs,etc, well, I think that is on you.
You can easily find photos of children playing football in Brazilian favelas. People go about their lives, even if they live in horrible slums. That doesn't mean it's incorrect to describe slums, and the social and political system that produced them, as dysfunctional.
Tarnstellung
2yr ago
Technically, you can be unhealthily overweight (BMI >25) without being obese (BMI >30). The two people making out are definitely at least overweight.
Medicine considers obesity a disease, one that is preventable. This supposed utopia has multiple visibly diseased people, suffering from a preventable condition.
Another minor point is the raccoon. It is an invasive species in Germany. A "Green" utopia should surely be free of invasive species. Or maybe they've been influenced by American media so much that they think it's normal to have raccoons living in cities. (Curiously, the squirrel depicted is the native red squirrel and not the invasive American grey squirrel. The Greens don't seem to have a coherent stance on invasive species.)
Tarnstellung
2yr ago
The numerous graffiti imply decay, a lack of maintenance, and general dysfunction. If the picture were less cartoony and more realistic, that street would probably be filled with rubbish and the buildings and roads would be in a state of disrepair. I don't like tattoos or piercings – I think they are invariably ugly – but that's just my subjective personal preference, whereas a city that is falling apart is objectively bad from any sane perspective.
Tarnstellung
2yr ago
Can you link to an example of your ideal city?
Singapore.
Is it working well there?
It's doing great! Its public transport is excellent and rates of car ownership are much lower than in America. By metrics like life expectancy and quality of health care, it's one of the best places in the world. It also has an ethnically and religiously diverse population (including a higher proportion of Muslims than any Western city), so objections that it wouldn't work in America because of a lack of cohesion are not valid.
Tarnstellung
2yr ago
I agree with you for the most part, I'm just curious: why is your hypothetical rich liberal douchebag Jewish?
Tarnstellung
2yr ago
literature, chess, ballet, figure skating
I would not describe those as "progressive cultural elements". They are traditional high culture, not something the left would probably be enthusiastic about. (The modern, Western left, that is. The Soviets believed in the value of high culture and wanted to make it available to the masses.)
Sans Putin, it's not that conservative of a country.
Putin is widely popular in Russia, or at least was before the current kerfuffle. Conservative, traditionalist views on society and culture are widespread. There may be a certain feminist streak, a holdover from the Soviet era, but LGBT stuff is a big no-no. (That is my understanding, at least. I'm not Russian, but as far as I know, neither are you.)
Tarnstellung
2yr ago
On what basis do you infer that Manning leaked the documents because she wanted to "[flee] from their identity as an American and as an army officer"? Her official statement in court says:
The more I read, the more I was fascinated with the way that we dealt with other nations and organizations. I also began to think the documented backdoor deals and seemingly criminal activity that didn't seem characteristic of the de facto leader of the free world.
(...)
I thought these cables were a prime example of a need for a more open diplomacy. Given all of the Department of State cables that I read, the fact that most of the cables were unclassified, and that all the cables have a SIPDIS caption.
I believe that the public release of these cables would not damage the United States; however, I did believe that the cables might be embarrassing, since they represented very honest opinions and statements behind the backs of other nations and organizations.
Which to me does not seem at all anti-American. My conclusion would be that she loves her homeland and wants it to be better, to live up to its ideals.
Tarnstellung
2yr ago
The TV licence system is used – and hated – in many other countries (Wikipedia has a detailed list). Japan even has a single-issue party dedicated to abolishing the licence fee.
The licence fee is effectively a regressive tax (which is bad) with its own enforcement bureaucracy (which is inefficient (though speculation about the existence of the alleged detection vans is amusing)). IMO, it should just be scrapped and replaced with a grant funded from general taxation.
We could really use someone with access to the latest OED.
In the meantime, this is the entry from OED1, which is out of copyright. I believe this is the work from 1846 to which they are referring. It seems to be about Greek mythology, just like the one quoted by @iro84657, who may have missed it because of the hyphen.
Edit: In any case, Lukács is definitely not the one who coined the term.
Tarnstellung
2yr ago
Pre-WWII Poland similarly suppressed the culture and language of their large Ukrainian and Belarusian minorities, so the situations are in fact very similar. The Soviet Union justified its conquest of the eastern half of Poland by claiming that they're liberating these oppressed minorities.
Tarnstellung
2yr ago
What is objectionable about that book? A boy dressing up as a princess doesn't seem any worse than other make-believe that children engage in.
Tarnstellung
2yr ago
Nice to see that we're already getting new people. Welcome! Many users, me included, were concerned that migrating from Reddit would make us impossible to find.
If you haven't figured it out yet, the culture war sticky is where most of the discussion happens. The one here seems to be a bit slow at the moment, so you can check out last week's thread on Reddit if you want to get a feel for it. There's also a monthly thread highlighting high-quality contributions – the one for August was posted recently.
As for the members' political views, I don't think "dirtbag left" is very accurate. Many people are more traditionally right-wing, though there are all sorts of viewpoints, including stupidpol-type people and even a few more orthodox leftists – some would probably classify them as "woke", but they're able to participate respectfully and are respected in turn.
There's a lot more to say here. (Maybe we should have an intro section for newcomers?) If you have any questions, ask away!
Tarnstellung
2yr ago
I'm glad I chose to sit out the first day or so. I was expecting a hug-of-death, though as I understand, server capacity wasn't the problem; it was everything else. Thank you for your hard work.
I'm not seeing a meta thread anywhere. If one exists, I'd appreciate if someone could point me to it. For now, this seems like as good a place as any to report issues. It is my understanding that you want to purge all the rdrama.net styling, so:
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The mobile site turns the URL bar pink.
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The lines next to comments are pink on mobile.
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I'm not sure if the colourful flairs were left in intentionally, but to me they don't really fit the website.
Tarnstellung
2yr ago
I find topical threads very annoying to browse. You have to scroll past entire comments, instead of just the title, and you have to open the thread to see if there are new top-level comments. It's hard to keep track of what people are talking about.
I'd prefer having only one active topical thread at any one time, alongside the CW thread, as was the practice back on Reddit. The thread would be reserved for small posts with relatively simple answers, to avoid clogging up the site. (Recall the Pareto principle.) Anything likely to generate a substantial amount of discussion should be posted either in the CW thread or as a separate post.
Actually, I think Malay–Chinese relations in Singapore are an excellent analogy for Black–White relations in America.
Singapore is roughly 15% Malay and 80% Chinese, with the rest being smaller ethnic groups that don't really matter for Malay–Chinese relations. This is very similar to the US a few decades ago: 15% Black, 80% White, with the rest being Asians etc. Malays and Blacks consistently underperform economically relative to the Chinese and to Whites, respectively. Both the US and Singapore had race riots in the 1960s. Since then, the US has had race riots regularly, while Singapore hasn't had any.* Singapore also has extremely low crime rates. I think this demonstrates that improving race relations in America is possible.
What do you think makes Black Americans so much more problematic than Malays?
* Singapore had one relatively small riot in 2013, but this is unrelated to the Malay–Chinese conflict.
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