Tarnstellung
No bio...
User ID: 553
Tarnstellung
1yr 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
1yr 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
1yr 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
1yr 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.
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
1yr 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.
Tarnstellung
1yr 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
1yr 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
1yr ago
I agree with you for the most part, I'm just curious: why is your hypothetical rich liberal douchebag Jewish?
Tarnstellung
1yr 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
1yr 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
1yr 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
1yr 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
1yr 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
1yr 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
1yr ago
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.
Tarnstellung
1yr ago
fundamentalist Christians or Catholics
Is this meant to be "fundamentalist (Christians or Catholics)" or "(fundamentalist Christians) or (Catholics)"?
Tarnstellung
1yr ago
Taxonomic names are regularly changed, often because species weren't related in the manner previously thought
They are regularly changed because the previous names were wrong: placing a species in the wrong genus, grouping two species into one, and so forth. They are never changed because someone doesn't like the name.
There is a firm principle that scientific names can't be changed unless it's justified by new discoveries. Changing even one name will open the floodgates. You know it won't stop at Hitler. There are many other species named after bad people, and still more named after people wokeists would consider bad. It will lead to all sorts of squabbles, with no benefit whatsoever.
The Hitler beetle's name wasn't even changed after World War II. I think everyone agreed at that point that Hitler was bad; many had experienced his badness first-hand. But they stood by their principles, because they knew changing it would just make everything much more complicated.
What is the difference? Most immigrants came to the US not knowing English at all, and they managed just fine. Surely learning to read is easier than learning an entire foreign language.
Many immigrants weren't even literate in their native languages. This PDF (found here) claims that a majority of Southern Italian immigrants in the 1900–1903 period were illiterate. Yet Italians successfully integrated into American society.
Edit: Another source on illiterate immigrants. Apparently, it was a big concern at the time, but today there are no traces of it left. No Italian- or Irish-American knows the education level of their great-etc.-grandparents who first immigrated. In fact, a few centuries ago the vast majority of people were peasants (or even serfs!) with no "need for literacy".
Tarnstellung
1yr ago
Fair enough. This is basically my take, too.
However, blaming Black American culture for the modern-day predicament of Black Americans is probably outside the Overton window at this point.
The original comment, in case someone hasn't seen it.
By the way, the original comment is a bit confusing to read with the update. It's not clear where the update ends and the original begins. Maybe move the update to the end, or add a note to the effect of "Original comment follows:" after the update?
Tarnstellung
1yr ago
Ukrainian nationalists themselves would love to claim a slice of Poland.
Would they? My understanding is that all the areas that were disputed between Poland and Ukraine were ultimately transferred to Ukraine after World War II, and Ukrainian nationalists are now satisfied in that regard.
Tarnstellung
1yr ago
+if/when NATO finally takes out Russia, I imagine Poland would be in the runner-up for the next 'disturbingly native-looking' country in what remains of Europe then.
Do you believe that a primary goal of the EU/NATO is to fill all European countries with non-White immigrants? Do you actually think the EU/NATO strongly object to the fact that the population of Russia is mostly ethnic Russians, and that the population of Poland is almost entirely ethnic Poles?
Tarnstellung
1yr ago
First of all, the ECHR is not related to the EU; it is part of the Council of Europe, which includes all European countries except Belarus and Russia, the latter having been expelled this year due to the invasion.
Quoting Wikipedia:
The court lacks enforcement powers. Some states have ignored ECtHR verdicts and continued practices judged to be human rights violations. (...)
The number of non-implemented judgements rose from 2,624 in 2001 to 9,944 at the end of 2016, 48% of which had gone without implementation five years or more. In 2016, all but one of the 47 member countries of the Council of Europe had not implemented at least one ECtHR verdict in a timely fashion, although most non-implemented verdicts concern a few countries: Italy (2,219), Russia (1,540), Turkey (1,342), and Ukraine (1,172).
The article has a few examples of non-implemented judgments.
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.
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