VoxelVexillologist
Multidimensional Radical Centrist
No bio...
User ID: 64
VoxelVexillologist
Multidimensional Radical Centrist
23d ago
In some ways the precedent for the administration was set long ago. The only real question is whether the executive can deem Harvard, of all institutions, of similar legal stature to Bob Jones University. They may have the text of the law on their side: Congress not infrequently writes "If the Attorney General decides...", presumably giving her a lot of discretion in this case, subject to its other rules about capriciousness.
Alea iacta est, but I know not which way the legal cards will fall in this case.
VoxelVexillologist
Multidimensional Radical Centrist
24d ago
or establish some sort of Egyptian civil control of 'just' Gaza, which renders the war premise of war moot.
IIRC Israel has tried to offload Gaza to Egypt at least a few times before, and Egypt isn't interested (nor is Jordan in the West Bank, despite both having held those territories in the last century). My read on this is that nobody likes the Palestinians, even those trying to use them as moral bargaining chips. That said, the three-state solution with those annexations is one of the few outcomes I can imagine achieving long-term stability on the region.
VoxelVexillologist
Multidimensional Radical Centrist
24d ago
"Substack is just OnlyFans for intellectuals"?
VoxelVexillologist
Multidimensional Radical Centrist
24d ago
The US Civil War would have been "a larger state breaking up" if the South had won.
VoxelVexillologist
Multidimensional Radical Centrist
25d ago
The problems is that Israeli propagandist in the west always try to make every attack on them some major moral and civilizational issue.
I feel like this argument burned out for me during the first Trump term when the "Muslim bans" were castigated for clear racial/religious animus and disparate impact on a subset (even a fairly limited one) of (mostly-)Muslim nations. I thought the arguments were somewhat reasonable and compelling that the combination of a history of disparaging remarks and policies (which may perhaps have been defensible in isolation) was at least arguably a bridge too far (see a near-divided SCOTUS in Trump v. Hawaii).
But in the case of Israel, self-styled "anti-Zionists" (many of whom were clearly against Trump's travel bans on the above basis) manage to make no shortage of religious/ethnic animus comments, and propose policies that disparately impact the (unitary) set of Jewish-majority states: Your rules, applied fairly.
VoxelVexillologist
Multidimensional Radical Centrist
25d ago
They stopped naming COVID variants after Greek letters right when they got to 'Xi'.
VoxelVexillologist
Multidimensional Radical Centrist
25d ago
There are a ton of confounding variables here, but IIRC we're finally seeing a significant decrease in opioid deaths (a surprisingly high count) in ways that might be significant but were rising well before COVID. The reasons are a bit unclear (dark prospect: populations particularly vulnerable to addiction have largely died already).
But surprisingly few care substantially about overdoses (or traffic accidents) because, I suppose, that's something that happens to "other people". Nobody really cares about addicts in practice, judging by the relative alarm compared with COVID. I try to care, at least abstractly, about causes of death (and non-death harm) but I'm not sure the loud "harm reduction" advocates have actually been helpful either.
VoxelVexillologist
Multidimensional Radical Centrist
26d ago
It is crazy to me that most people alive today will be around to see how this - this journey of civilization, this grand process of technological development - ends, or at least moves far, far beyond us.
Maybe you're right, but there are plenty of times in history where people have felt this way before, and most of those examples I can think of are from long before I was born. Most recently, the Atomic Scientists would have you believe we've been on a knife-edge of nuclear armageddon -- maybe they're right, but never materialized during the Cold War. Or you could go back and look at any number of doomsday cults, even including early Christians anxiously awaiting Christ's return in their lifetimes.
The pattern has held long enough that I'd personally discourage making any huge life changes assuming it won't matter.
VoxelVexillologist
Multidimensional Radical Centrist
26d ago
Why don’t universities simply put out fake studies with made up data that flatters the current administration’s priorities in order to get money? That’s just not how universities think.
Given the general direction of the replication crisis in the the social sciences, retracted questionable applications of statistics, and the number of high-profile plagiarism accusations against university leadership in the humanities, are you sure they don't? I don't think anyone is doing it out loud, but it's at least happening in practice through some combination of only studying problems that could have the flattering solution, or just hiding the report when you don't like its results.
VoxelVexillologist
Multidimensional Radical Centrist
26d ago
Given that we are animals and so have self-preservation instinct, it doesn't surprise me that "of course life is good" is what all right wingers think
I think this is generally true, but there are right-coded (religious, at least) "anti-natalists" like the Shakers (there are two left), or, more arguably, any absolute-celibacy endorsing religious order (nuns and monks, for example).
VoxelVexillologist
Multidimensional Radical Centrist
27d ago
There is also some variance in wisdom teeth: most people have 4, but other numbers happen from time to time. I know some family members of mine had only 2 or 3. More than 4 is possible too.
VoxelVexillologist
Multidimensional Radical Centrist
27d ago
People pushed luggage around on wheeled carts for decades before figuring out we should just put wheels on the damn suitcases.
Is this true, though? Wheels are only effective if they're large relative to the bumps on the surface you're using them on. Modern wheeled luggage (2 inch wheels) is only effective on smooth, swept concrete surfaces. And those are a quite modern invention (maybe we can blame the ADA here?), at least in quantity as far as I can tell. Having once lugged a wheeled suitcase a mile on cobbled European roads, a cart would have worked better. I wouldn't even try on an unpaved road.
VoxelVexillologist
Multidimensional Radical Centrist
28d ago
Hot take: "Europe" is only a separate continent because geographers have a very eurocentric view in drawing the lines. Every other continent has a pretty clear separation from its neighbors by sea or at least small isthmus. "Eurasia" makes more sense from the map.
VoxelVexillologist
Multidimensional Radical Centrist
28d ago
same sort of threat as attempting to invade the house floor as member of congress are fleeing.
If I were far more right-wing than I am and feeling snarky, I'd probably say something about the right to petition one's government here, but I'd generally agree with the "play stupid games" line in this sort of scenario. Maybe that particular argument would be different if members of Congress were known for ignoring their constituents generally.
But it's also not terribly out of line with the times for police shooting "unarmed" but hostile citizens: Ferguson settled with the family of Mike Brown — of "hands up, don't shoot" fame where forensic evidence suggests his hands were not, in fact, up — for a bit under $2M 8 years ago, which is not that different adjusted for inflation.
VoxelVexillologist
Multidimensional Radical Centrist
28d ago
Are anti-natalists citing Marx or the Frankfurt School?
I feel like you could also reference communist China's deliberate embrace of Malthusian ethics in adopting the One Child Policy. I can maybe imagine a right-leaning government adopting such a plank — I've heard radicals suggest that legalized abortion is a deliberate policy to depress the TFR of certain supposedly-less-desirable subgroups — but in practice I associate it with left groups. There is also a left-coded streak of anti-human environmentalism that seems relevant (the right-coded environmentalists have a religious concept of human "dominion" that the left lacks).
VoxelVexillologist
Multidimensional Radical Centrist
29d ago
Singapore has a pretty large chemical refinery business, although the plants are operated by multinationals.
VoxelVexillologist
Multidimensional Radical Centrist
1mo ago
Status-wise, there's no doubt Spanish has a lower socioeconomic association, so if you're trying to raise your kid to me a major climber, Chinese might be better if that's your primary goal.
At least in my part of the US, there is a niche for small business owners who use Spanish to communicate with (some of) their workers. This may be less status than you are looking for (construction contractors, restaurant franchise owners, ranchers), but it is something.
Analogously, I've at least heard of Chinese-speakers being pulled in to negotiate with "the factory" (mainland or Taiwan) building products.
On the gripping hand, our Brave New World today could easily spell major changes in both of these with changes in immigration and tariffs, so my confidence would be low.
VoxelVexillologist
Multidimensional Radical Centrist
1mo ago
Matthew Yglesias has a repeated line that the middle class should not be able to afford full-service dining (except as an occasional splurge purchase) in a country with a functioning labour market.
I think this might have some truth to it, but there is an element of cultural choice involved. Some cultures have different expectations of "full-service dining" — I'm thinking of how American ones tend to push table turnover, whereas other countries expect to serve each table maybe once per evening.
But there is some reasonable bound on "how much time we spend on each other." One could total up "hours wiping butts" versus total hours worked and see that yes, having the median worker work 40 hours, 10 of which are spent wiping butts, is probably not sustainable. Maybe it'd be at 60 hour weeks, but I'd really prefer more leisure time. There are some real culture choices to be made about the relative merits of time spent on arts, capital investments (building stuff!), research, and medicine — is medicine an end, or just a means to it. It's honestly a pretty open question I'd love to see more debate on, rather than neoliberal "we can have it all" platitudes.
I suppose also that some historic cultures adopted senicide rather than spend time wiping (elderly) butts, although to my modern sensibilities that's rather abhorrent, but perhaps a bit understandable in resource-constrained situations.
VoxelVexillologist
Multidimensional Radical Centrist
1mo ago
One other obvious technology solution would be to automate butt-wiping. I suspect there are fewer qualms about automating geriatric care versus infant care, too.
VoxelVexillologist
Multidimensional Radical Centrist
1mo ago
Good question. But it's at least part of the formal curriculum for AP US History, so the answer is hopefully nonzero even if some have forgotten since.
There is some advantage to knowing what (shared) curriculum can be pointed to. Even here, we have a somewhat understood corpus of "things I can refer to and expect readers to understand", but there is always some context dependence.
VoxelVexillologist
Multidimensional Radical Centrist
1mo ago
Even today, bright right-leaning politicians come out of left-wing institutions. Vance graduated from Yale Law in 2013, and multiple Republican-appointed SCOTUS and other justices have come out of Harvard.
I think the academics would consider a "based" take (I'm assuming you mean yeschad.jpg to colonization) to be a very facile response to an actually hard topic. A better response might be to examine the incoherence of the progressive views on the subject: "Can well-meaning maybe-benevolent (government) intervention improve lives? The Spanish missionaries in the New World certainly thought they were doing so, and there are some 'based' examples of them ending human sacrifice, for example."
VoxelVexillologist
Multidimensional Radical Centrist
1mo ago
better off for having studied history at university, in a way I doubt I could have achieved by pure dilettantism.
As someone who majored in engineering, I've come across a few largely-self-taught coworkers. Some of them are quite talented, but most seem to have more trouble than the degreed folks when we get into the deeper parts of the subject that aren't quite as fun to study (linear algebra, complex analysis, there is probably part of this in any field). I think there is real value to an engineering curriculum that makes us study the useful but un-fun parts that puts tools in the tool belt to solve real-world problems.
I've seen analogous outcomes from home-school students that were allowed to focus near-exclusively on their interests, and, even while otherwise bright, can't have a coherent conversation about some reasonably-part-of-the-curriculum topics -- for example, "the Spanish-American war and its consequences".
VoxelVexillologist
Multidimensional Radical Centrist
1mo ago
companies were saying that with the tariff's they would lose $100+ selling a $100 PC case for example.
Everyone has been saying that the $100 case will now cost $200, but it seems the companies here aren't willing to raise prices and bet on that.
If nothing else, this seems like it will provide some interesting data on the exact shape of supply/demand curves. I doubt either extreme is exactly right: prices will probably go up (if nothing else, to cover the tariff), and demand will probably go down. But as to exactly how much of each, nobody wants to admit it's a bit unknown.
VoxelVexillologist
Multidimensional Radical Centrist
1mo ago
Surely the REAL ID Act and Alabama's decision to certify its driver's licenses to comply have a lot to say about names the DMV prints on licenses.
The (rural) South has, if anything, done better than most of the rest of the country over the last few decades. The entire Sunbelt has no shortage of brand new construction suburbs and schools and infrastructure (even some factories!) while the Rust Belt, when I've visited, has, at best, maintained the infrastructure from most of a century ago. Pick a suburb in Ohio and compare it to one in Florida or Texas.
Air conditioning has really changed things.
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