Tractatus
7d ago
This is just insane. "Recon" - a Company-level asset - is going to confirm the validity of strategic-level targets, and be capable of making decisions on target value versus potential drawbacks (legality, political blowback, unit morale, etc.)? Do the lot of you think this is Starcraft, and one general can, with just a scanner sweep, have perfect knowledge of what is in an area, what it's doing, its value to the enemy, and what, if any, issues may be caused by its destruction.
Targets is present in every 2 at the Division level and up, and they are the ones briefing decision-makers on potential targets, which includes not only verifying the validity of a given target, but also its value, what it might take to eliminate it, and what, if any, potential consequences might arise. They are not axiomatically the wokest part of the military, or even woke at all. Whether or not the particular unit Hegseth ostensibly "gutted" is bad or not, I cannot speak to, but the level of profound ignorance of military operations in this thread is truly something to behold.
Tractatus
17d ago
Out of all the potential Dem candidates, Newsom is easily the least likely to start pogroms against big business; I don't think any of them are likely, but him least of all. "Vengeance on all Trump allies" was always bluster that could not ever amount to anything more serious than mid-level government employees getting blackballed. Sure, anyone signing up for ICE on Trump's watch can kiss their future employment opportunities goodbye, but the leadership of Palantir and Anduril have nothing to worry about. SF Tech was all-in on fucking over Trump, and any Dem with influence knows that their current relationship with Trump is just bending the need, not indicative of a true change of heart, and can be ignored as water under the bridge if and when the party takes over the White House again.
Tractatus
18d ago
And yet, feminists all remain on the same page; you would be hard-pressed to find any self-described "feminist" who is as critical of fundamentalist Islam as of the West. For that matter, I stuggle to think of any willing to publicly criticize Islam at all, and would expect them to be summarily excommunicated from the broader movement, even if it has no "Moma" with the formal authority to do so. Yes, crushedoranges actually does have an accurate view of reality.
Tractatus
28d ago
If ever a comment warranted "extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence" it's this. "High Trust Societies" only exist at small scale; a tribe, maybe a smallish vilage, where everyone knows everyone, and has known everyone for generations, can do this, and even then, there have always been freeloaders (or suspected freeloaders). At scale, even at the city level, this has never happened, and I have no clue how you believe America as a country once had federal welfare programs that didn't have fraud, waste, and abuse; maybe in the brief moment after the ink was dry on the legislation that created a given program but before the first checks went sent, there hadn't yet been abuse of the program, but claiming we - or any other country, for that matter - once had welfare programs but not absurd abuse simply flies in the face of reality.
Tractatus
30d ago
There is no world in which 1/3 of random people asked "to wash your car, do you walk to the car wash, or drive to the car wash" with "walk" unless at least 1/3 of the people you pick have never even heard of the English language, let alone speak it. Even the mentally handicapped would get it right, assuming they were capable of saying the words "walk" and "wash"
Tractatus
1mo ago
The claim that Administrative Warrants are categorically invalid under the 4th because "the fox can't guard the henhouse" is fantastically stupid, and completely upends the entire apparatus of administrative enforcement. Administrative Warrants not signed by a judge have never been held so, only when attempting to enter private areas (such as a home) would the 4th Amendment be implicated. As the two were picked up in public, the reasoning is facile.
Tractatus
1mo ago
Has this been your experience with any other public cheater, that they espouse "variety is the spice of life?" Best I can tell, most everyone has a "type," and they stick to it. The most famous that comes to mind is Tiger Woods, who slept with a large number of women who all vaguely looked like his wife (I was a big fan of the article from a journalist who was not so much upset by the fact that Tiger Woods was a philanderer, but that he did not "sample all the varieties of the world")
Tractatus
1mo ago
It would be "very strange" for a group of people gassing each other up to murder ICE agents - to the point of exclaiming "the first video of an ICE agent getting shot is gonna be lit!" - might produce someone narcissistic enough to want to film it? People can't have multiple motives, some of which might be even be in conflict with each other? This is your honest assessment of the matter? If so, then no-one can argue with you, because you're not even willing to accept common human behavior, something you see literally every day, as an argument against your preferred narrative.
Tractatus
1mo ago
They call him a "Narcissist" because somehow they confused Megalomania with Narcissism, even though they aren't related. Narcissism isn't about how much you think your shit doesn't stink, it's about an inability (or, at least, a diminished capability) of relating to other people except as extentions of one's own ego. Which, to be blunt, is pretty much universal at this point.
Tractatus
2mo ago
Sadly, I've seen nothing but doubling and tripling down that this video just proves all "rightoids" are completely delusional, replete with "boot licker" and "psychopath" thrown around liberally, with ruminations on how "there's no living with these people;" in other words, "something" will have to be done about "the fascists" (which, to no-one's surprise, just happens to coincide with power fantasies of eliminating people they don't agree with).
Tractatus
2mo ago
TFR went from .721 in 2023 to .75 in 2024, but this is generally linked to a boom in marriages that were put on hold during Covid (Koreans just do not have kids out of wedlock). This is most likely just a statistical anomoly that will revert to the previous trend in the next couple of years.
Tractatus
2mo ago
defamation per se still requires that there be an "accusation," which means in this case, you'd have to prove that the kids were claiming these AI generated images were real pictures, not fakes. It's no different than if they had drawn lewd pictures of her.
Tractatus
2mo ago
No, the "1st Amendment" means the government can't put you in jail for what you say, but your employer can fire you. "Freedom of Speech" very much does mean that it's wrong for your employer to fire you for what you say, except in very narrow circumstances where it's clear you're attempting to speak on behalf of the company as a whole and your employer would rather you not.
Tractatus
3mo ago
Can you blame them though? That's just the power of mass-media in action: the media told them something was true, therefore it was. People do not believe an idea is true because they've done a calm, rational analysis of the facts of the matter; they believe something is true because it has to be true according to their world-view, which is given to them by their "community."* After-school specials and sitcoms about how racism is bad (and that white people are responsible for it all), while holding up only the most contemptible examples of contrary belief as representatives of the whole, completely conquered the Western mind. They have no choice but to support DEI, how could they not?
It was ever thus; it took DeBeers less than 20 years to convince virtually every American that a proposal was not legitimate if you did not buy a diamond ring (that they would be the supplier for). Think about this; people of all walks of life:
- Saw an advertisement that told them something completely at odds with what they knew
- Knew consciously that this was an advertisement
- That, as an advertisement, its sole purpose was sell them something they did not need
And yet, believed the advertisement was gospel truth! This included people that had lived their entire lives without this "rule," not merely those who had grown up with the campaign. This belief is so internalized that even bringing up "Hey, did you know diamond engagement rings was all a marketing ploy by DeBeers" will get you attacked as an incel or mysogynist; even when the nature of marketting is acknowledged, "the message" will still be defended as it is unassailable.
Tangential, but while browsing this thread, I opened Twitter, and in what I'm sure is just coincidence, and not pernicious data surveilance, my For You is literally this post, commenting on this article. I remember this event, and laughing at the frumpy Asian girl's insistence that White men simply surrender to their own genocide. That's crazy, right? Your whole strategy is demanding your enemy not fighting back, and them just complying? Wait, that's literally what happened!?
*Of all the Great Lies of modern society, possibly the most pernicious is the insistance that children, upon reaching adulthood, must leave their familial community behind and find out "who they are." Your identity will always be given to you, and if it is not by a community you have roots in, and is invested in your success, it will be by mass culture, which is not; in fact, it wants to exploit you.
Tractatus
3mo ago
Morgan is British, and no, "everyone in the world born between the years X and Y, so Piers Morgan is GenX by virtue of being born in 1965" is not a meaningful criteria for a cohort. Morgan would only recognize Gen X culture in an academic sense (and probably not much even in that sense). Meanwhile, Fuentes, by virtue of being chronically online, almost certainly is more familiar with Red Pill discourse than Morgan.
Tractatus
3mo ago
Dude, this is where I live. I see the house listings, I know what I can be approved for in a home loan, and I know i can never even save up enough for a down payment on 100k a year. Why do people insist on telling me to stop believing my lying eyes?
Tractatus
3mo ago
Indeed. There's something grimly funny in the guy who wrote "Getting Eulered" willingly getting Eulered.
"Inflation is actually fairly low" is a good example of this; the official measure of inflation is year over year rate of change; i.e. we're using the 1st derivative as the true measure of what's happening. The rate at which things are getting more or less expensive can be a useful thing to know, but it's not the whole story, especially in times of dramatic shocks to the market, like Covid. During Covid, particularly the lockdowns, we saw a massive spike in the costs of goods due to supply chain issues. Once these issues were resolved, the prices should have come down, but they did not! But because the official inflation rate went back down to normal levels, we are told that our worries over inflation are unfounded, never mind that I can look at what I am able to put in my shopping cart now, and what I was able to put in the cart just 5 years ago (usually, for even less money), and see there's a problem.
Tractatus
3mo ago
"Even housing is not really THAT expensive, and you can own a house on less than $100k combined income in a decent area if you don't blow your money and spend wisely."
Absolutely not, not even close. I don't even live in a particularly expensive area - Hampton Roads - and 100k combined would be far beyond my ability to afford. Where are you people pulling these numbers from? No, Scott did not "tear the economic arguments to shreds;" he, like you, are just naively accepting blatantly fraudulent employment and inflation numbers as gospel truth, and demanding I believe you and not my empty bank account.
Tractatus
3mo ago
It's not that they're "missing it," it's that they psychologically cannot allow it to be true. The villain, convinced of the righteousness of his cause, only to wail "Oh God, what have I done!?" when forced to confront that what he has done is truly evil, is a creature that only exists in fiction. In the real world, to actually admit that one's core identity is a lie would be a narcissistic inury so great that any cost must be paid to avoid it.
Tractatus
4mo ago
When a kid injures himself anywhere near the now-operational slide, the parents will be demanding to find "who's responsible," at which point, the city will notify everyone that they did no such repairs, there would be paperwork if there were, and all would "know" who made the fix. NL would be sued; maybe the civil court is committed enough to rule of law that "everyone knows NL did it" wouldn't work, but you'd be suprised to know just how flimsy a successfull lawsuit can be.
Tractatus
4mo ago
The 90's/early 2000's were might be better compared to now, at least when restricting ourselves to social factors like "social cohesion" or "expectation of the typical person that they'll get married and start a family," but that doesn't make it peak. You're still dealing with sky-high divorce rates (that only "recover" due to declining marriage rates - the early 2000s are debatably the beginning of "inceldom" as an actual trend, and not just a one-off thing you might experience only once or twice in your life). You have to go way back, arguably pre-Industrial Revolution, for that
I see no indication that nostalgia for the time - either by younger Gen X or older Millenials reminiscing on their youth, or by younger Gen Z/early Alpha exposed to 90's/00's pop culture by their parents - is driven by regret that being an International Man of Mystery is harder now. Everything I see points to (a misguided) belief that things were more optimistic then.
Tractatus
4mo ago
It's never been easier to move to another town...
All too often, and increasingly so in recent months, I find myself browsing the Motte and having to ask "is this guy posting from an alternate reality, or just straight-up trolling?"
No, this is just absurd, completely contrary to reality. We live in a world of instantaneous communication, having had high quality cellphones capturing crystal clear recordings for years, easily accessible databases, and tens of millions of netizens who derive no greater joy than when they can "identify" a wrong-thinker, track them down, and have their lives ruined. It has never been easier to locate a "ne'er do well" and track them down, and conversly it has never been harder to lay low and trust that your neighbors will never hear about your supposed "misdeads" a continent away. 50 years ago, people could watch Bill Bixby play a scientist who bombards himself with gamma radiation, turn into a muscle-bound monster, and end every episode hitching a ride to stay one step ahead of Mr. McGhee, confident that the random people he meet will never even have heard of the Hulk, and would certainly never recognize him. Today, the "skip town to avoid consequences" is the most ridiculous part of that premise.
Tractatus
4mo ago
This is just "Worst Arugment in the World;" that authors pull from their experiences doesn't mean that a wink-nudge "this is a work of fiction, that just happens to defame a clearly identifiable real-world person, totally by coincidence released during a period when social media was alight with "believe all women" and "yes, all men!" Why are you so upset? Hmmm, perhaps truly the guilty flee where none pursue..." is fine. "in Minecraft" isn't a magical talisman that makes sincere threats not so; "allegedly" doesn't automagically prevent any accusation of defamation either.
Nobody; they're people who, for whatever reason, couldn't get ballots in (working on fishing boats, working in a labor camp, etc.). Elections aren't contensted; you are presented with the candidate for each particular seat (as applicable), and your vote is either affirmation or dissent. To dissent, you must use a red pen at the ballot box to cross the candidate's name off; this is done in full view of Party observers.
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