VoxelVexillologist
Multidimensional Radical Centrist
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User ID: 64
VoxelVexillologist
Multidimensional Radical Centrist
11mo ago
I found myself asking if he used that card to cater those well-publicized meals at the White House.
VoxelVexillologist
Multidimensional Radical Centrist
11mo ago
why Israel is obligated to continue giving free food water and electricity to a population that enthusiastically showed their desire to rape and murder civilians
This is one thing that gives me pause when people advocate for UBI: I'm sure it could be done better, but our examples in the world of populations that are entirely supported by unconditioned aid seem to, by most objective metrics, fare really poorly (see also Haiti). At some point, it seems like having at least a bit of skin in the game incentivizes thinking on something other than how to destroy the hand that feeds. There is probably an interesting dystopian novel to be written there, somewhere.
Not that the existing systems are otherwise perfect, either.
VoxelVexillologist
Multidimensional Radical Centrist
11mo ago
Supporters of legal abortion are very clear that they think it is a woman's natural right to choose whether or not to have a child inside her, and that this right means women should be able to get an abortion.
In broad strokes, yes. But they aren't all as lockstep as you seem to be implying: Dobbs was handed down when the Blue Team held control of both houses of Congress and the Presidency, and even heard some Republicans offer to cross the aisle, yet no bill to codify these rights could be passed. Some point to cynicism trying to make an issue out of it for the election (possibly true in part), but there is also a lot of disagreement of what the terms to be codified would be: which trimesters, which exceptions, and so forth. Previous precedent didn't require elected representatives to take stances on these. Late term abortions are, IIRC pretty uncommon and very unpopular, but also sometimes medically indicated. And I say that as someone who generally accepts "safe, legal, and rare:" every abortion is tragic, but sometimes it's the least bad choice.
Quite a while ago, Google got in a bit of hot water for its auto complete suggestions. I wouldn't be surprised if there is a nontrivial human filter blocking all sorts of things. Many of those are probably not very political -- don't recommend adult topics at all, especially not around kids content; don't recommend anything suggesting committing a crime; don't recommend "torrent" searching for movie titles. Don't recommend anything that makes the company or it's search product look bad, generally.
I'm not convinced it isn't an intentional hand on the scales, but I think a higher burden of proof is probably necessary to declare it deliberate political bias, rather than the bias of their employees working on more general filters. Which also isn't to say it's unreasonable to ask them to improve the balance of the moderation there either.
ETA: I'm thinking of things like this list, which dates from 2010.
VoxelVexillologist
Multidimensional Radical Centrist
11mo ago
I'm definitely not an expert on this, but I follow some folks that are, and I think Iran seems to have decided that being imminently nuclear-capable maximizes its negotiating position. It likely prevents (or at least makes unreasonably costly) an American invasion to force regime change, and doesn't have the international reputation costs of actually being a nuclear state. And it's not like smuggling warheads to Hamas or Hezbollah would be a winning strategy anyway: breaking the near-octogenarian nuclear force taboo even to destroy Tel Aviv probably galvanizes the rest of the world against their religious causes for decades, and probably wouldn't tactically accomplish much. And that's assuming that it wasn't intercepted: evidence of a nuclear plot would probably push even the Biden administration to retaliate heavily on Iran.
VoxelVexillologist
Multidimensional Radical Centrist
11mo ago
I don't think you're completely wrong, especially in the mind of the average voter.
sneers at the "Southern Strategy" and the great flipping of the Solid South as if it were some kind of myth.
To the extent that "Southern Strategy" is frequently hung on Richard Nixon in the '72, election, I think it's relevant that he carried every state except Massachusetts and DC: it's not like he needed the South to win the election. Which is doubly ironic to me given the entire Watergate fiasco.
If it were not true that most of the people who voted Democrat before Reagan vote Republican now, then where did all those Democratic voters go and where did all the Republican voters come from?
If nothing else, I think any voters in '84 (the last opportunity to vote for Reagan) are at least very close to retirement now. The average Reagan voter is almost certainly dead.
VoxelVexillologist
Multidimensional Radical Centrist
11mo ago
that decided to target a politician instead.
Unironically, even though this incident was bungled pretty badly, national politicians are much harder targets than elementary schools, and I'd much prefer suicide-by-countersniper to a bunch of dead kids. This does assume that those counter snipers are willing and actually manage to shoot first, though. And maybe that's asking too much.
VoxelVexillologist
Multidimensional Radical Centrist
11mo ago
IMO the Reconquista (1492) also fits in quite interestingly here.
VoxelVexillologist
Multidimensional Radical Centrist
11mo ago
In some ways it's even more complicated than that: I learned relatively recently that the Black Hills famous for the Little Bighorn and Wounded Knee incidents weren't traditionally Lakota land, and had, at the time, been recently taken by the Lakota from the Cheyenne in 1776.
VoxelVexillologist
Multidimensional Radical Centrist
11mo ago
I had a bunch of unexpected time to read recently, and finally finished Hyperion. It's pretty long, but I thought the prose was really well-written. I found each of the tales to be pretty interesting. If I had to pick a favorite, the Scholar's tale was pretty poignant as a parent. I was expecting a bit more of a, well, conclusion to the primary story line, but I wasn't unsatisfied. Not sure if I'll pick up its sequel: my general experience has been that sequels (in both movies and books) tend to not be quite as great about world building, and I have a long list of classic books to read already.
Then I started and got about halfway through The Diamond Age, after reading Cryptonomicon and Snow Crash a while back. Interesting concepts in The Diamond Age, and I see why it's so frequently referenced.
VoxelVexillologist
Multidimensional Radical Centrist
11mo ago
Using alternate accounts to post things that might otherwise violate personal OPSEC rules requires moderator approval?
Not complaining, just asking for clarification.
VoxelVexillologist
Multidimensional Radical Centrist
11mo ago
My gut feel on this is that "generic democrat" polls really well generally, but no single answer polls better on hard issues like immigration, or Israel/Palestine, and such for which I haven't seen any concrete policy proposals from her camp.
There strikes me as an element of wish-casting generic candidates as "closer to my, obviously reasonable, position" than any real candidate can be. I guess we should expect real proposals from the convention at this point? Or maybe they plan to phone in the "pass the bill to know what's in it" strategy. I will admit I'm mostly avoiding watching politics closely so far.
VoxelVexillologist
Multidimensional Radical Centrist
11mo ago
The set of examples coming out of Canada has been sobering, especially as someone who was loosely in favor of allowing voluntary euthanasia previously.
VoxelVexillologist
Multidimensional Radical Centrist
11mo ago
I guess I haven't spent too much time in the Rust Belt specifically, but there has been a lot of migration around the country for at least the last century. It's easy to point to growing Sun Belt cities and stagnating-or-shrinking northern ones -- an older friend from Ohio noted that Cincinnati is about the same size it was in the 70s and still mostly fits inside the same interstate ring road, while Houston is in the process of building a third.
But it's also impacted smaller communities. My family history involves a couple tiny rural towns in the South that have since completely evaporated and left only road signs and a couple still-occupied houses. The historical marker points to where the one room schoolhouse and the general store had been. These places disappeared with better cars and roads in the middle of the last century: we can just bus the kids to the bigger school down the road, and drive into town for the store. Will this get rebuilt? I don't know: some developers nearby have been trying to sell swanky ranchettes, but even if that happened in the same place, it's a fundamentally different community -- this time around it has electricity and indoor plumbing, not to mention air conditioning and a major city within a few hours of driving, none of which were there a century ago.
VoxelVexillologist
Multidimensional Radical Centrist
11mo ago
One of the factors leading to the American Revolution was that the British leadership wasn't really interested in Westward expansion: it kept causing troubles with the natives and their allies requiring expensive interventions (see the French and Indian War) and the American colonies were, economically, afterthoughts compared to the sugar trade in the Caribbean. Not to mention the entire Louisiana Purchase thing.
I'm not sure the modern borders could have happened at all, much less been a likely outcome under Crown leadership.
VoxelVexillologist
Multidimensional Radical Centrist
10mo ago
than to consumers playing Hogwarts Legacy or dicking around with open source AI models.
Somewhere in here is an idea to prompt AAA game studios to develop games that require huge amounts of VRAM so that GPU manufacturers are elbowed into offering consumer cards that can do this. But that will take time, and for all I know looks like some sort of time-persistent AI shading model ("game rendered in the style of Van Gogh").
VoxelVexillologist
Multidimensional Radical Centrist
10mo ago
recreated the magic of 2
As far as I know, neither of the first two games seems to be available on Steam. Are they (legitimately, I guess) available anywhere these days?
VoxelVexillologist
Multidimensional Radical Centrist
10mo ago
Even if she can somehow double the supply of housing, this will destroy housing as an investment.
I am slowly becoming convinced that this is eventually necessary, but will be incredibly painful for many. There still are places we can build -- home prices in Texas are mostly down from two years ago, and California is trying statewide zoning changes that might work somewhat.
But we seem stuck with the choice of following other Anglosphere countries in making housing cost a lifetime or more of wages, or burning a whole lot of folks who thought it would be a nest egg. IMO the best course is probably to spread the hurt over a generation or so rather than rip off the bandaid into a culture where housing isn't expected to appreciate (Japan, somewhat?), even though that will probably hit my net worth too.
VoxelVexillologist
Multidimensional Radical Centrist
10mo ago
There are still states holding out on the Obamacare Medicaid expansion funds, which the states are only on the hook for 10-ish percent. And IIRC SCOTUS loosely capped the amount of allowed funding coercion. So it does happen, but nobody seems to be turning down highway funding these days.
VoxelVexillologist
Multidimensional Radical Centrist
10mo ago
Wait, is wearing ties unhealthy? I've never heard that before, and to be honest I'm a bit skeptical of the claim. Do you have a source?
VoxelVexillologist
Multidimensional Radical Centrist
10mo ago
I have never found a serious source for this in aggregate (probably publication bias), but I have a suspicion that outcomes correlate negatively with funding. It's not hard to look and see that the districts that spend the most per student tend to also be the worst performing overall.
Some of this is higher costs in urban areas, and frequently bad districts can have some really good magnet schools. And I'm also not really of the opinion that this means cutting funding would improve outcomes.
VoxelVexillologist
Multidimensional Radical Centrist
10mo ago
tough way to pull off an assassination
My first thought for obvious-but-probably-wrong conspiracy theory is that your missing billionaire disappeared himself intentionally to spend the rest of his days at large. Something like the Carlos Ghosn escape from Japan story.
Small arms alone don't help against tyrants these days unless the tyrants have the gloves firmly on;
I think the Waco and Ruby Ridge stories show that while the state can defeat partisans in battle with small arms, this isn't always a win for the state. There's a convincing case in my opinion that the state lost the wars there: even decades later they're still treating groups like the Malheur Wildlife Refuge standoff and the Bundy conflicts with kid gloves. And even despite that, the government lost most of the resulting court cases even when you'd think there was clear evidence of their case.
Absent a huge swell in public opinion away from small-armed partisans (most obviously: poor trigger control and injuries to uninvolved parties), I think actually rolling out the jackboots might well burn public support faster than it can put down rebellion. And I don't think that's purely right-coded either: I doubt squashing riots in 2020 would have brought a more peaceful resolution there, either. There's a fine, if observably fuzzy, line dividing public support for state violence from denouncement: even the Ma'Khia Bryant shooting was controversial.
VoxelVexillologist
Multidimensional Radical Centrist
10mo ago
I have wondered if replacing income tax with a tax on expenditures would fix some of these questions. Sure, the rich might accrue huge bank accounts, but money isn't actually useful until it's spent. Something like a flat percentage (or maybe progressive) on anything over the computed cost of living for your family. Sure, this has its own questions: does buying investment assets count? Does it have a negative version of the EITC? Can you pro-rate multi-year expenses? I think you might be able to balance timing expenses pretty reasonably with cumulative lifetime values (math: a conservative vector field, although we could do this with income tax already). How do you deal with cash tips?
Maybe it's more bookkeeping to track expenses, but those are starting to be almost entirely automated systems that could make this feasible. But I'm also not really sure it's a better system, just a different answer to a problem with no ideal solutions.
The West isn't falling completely behind there: the Army opened a new artillery shell plant in May, and within the last month the US announced operational deployment of long-range air-launched SM-6 missiles and Lockheed announced a hypersonic missile (I haven't seen any claims of deployments, though).
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