VoxelVexillologist
🇺🇸 Multidimensional Radical Centrist
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User ID: 64
VoxelVexillologist
🇺🇸 Multidimensional Radical Centrist
1yr ago
I think ISIS went a bit similarly: the promise of a new caliphate brought out a big chunk of violent fanatics that otherwise would have been terrorists hiding from view, gave faith that they would win battles in a traditional type war with God on their side, and pitted them against a number of local powers backed up by Western air and ground forces. They lost.
I'm not conspiracy minded, but it would at least be an interesting one that this was done deliberately as a honey pot, but I have zero evidence of this. I also can't speak to it's long-term effects on the region --- how many of those dead IS fighters would have fought with the Houthis, Hezbollah, or Hamas in recent conflicts?
VoxelVexillologist
🇺🇸 Multidimensional Radical Centrist
1yr ago
its own period of dealing with failed prophecies
I have seen a common thread on this: there are a few topics where what I consider to be "woke" types express epistemic certainty based on a tiny number of very small studies with results that sound really nice and politically convenient for partisans explaining the world, and occasional shouting down of alternate takes. For lots of these we've collectively thrown lots of effort and money at applying more broadly, but strangely have never gotten a good larger scale followup on those implementations. I personally have found it frustrating how slow we are to walk back claims that I suspect a good chunk of conservative-leaning people [1] thought were "too good to be true" all along.
Other examples [2] that come to mind (hopefully not too uncharitably phrased):
- Housing-first approaches to homelessness
- "Harm reduction" against drug addiction
- Failing inner-city schools are that way exclusively because they are under-funded
- "Poverty causes crime, and crime doesn't cause poverty"
- Fat-acceptance and body positivity
- Gender medicine, especially in children: taxpayers funded a study on the efficacy of puberty blockers that strangely hasn't been published, presumably because its conclusions aren't positive. "Trust the science", though.
- The lab leak hypothesis for COVID
- Almost all conflict globally can be mostly blamed on colonialism
- It feels to me like there is an element of ivory-tower elitism in many of these conclusions in that they feel very out-of-touch with people who have to go outside and interact with the public on a regular basis. I think this is at least an element in the ongoing political realignment.
- Just because these claims likely seem overplayed doesn't mean that the inverse claims are completely right. I think there is a bit of a short-term alliance between reactionaries that'd claim the inverse and nuance-enjoyers that I think will gradually fall apart while they're trying to govern as a coalition.
VoxelVexillologist
🇺🇸 Multidimensional Radical Centrist
1yr ago
That statement is even more true of senior athletes, but we generally don't have ethical qualms in allowing them to race. The oldest Boston finisher this year was 84.
VoxelVexillologist
🇺🇸 Multidimensional Radical Centrist
1yr ago
Amenorrhea isn't unheard of in professional-level runners (and other very lean athletes), but these days it's considered to be part of RED-S, previously the "female athlete triad" , indicative --- along with bone density issues --- of under fueling and eating disorders. It's not a healthy state of being. RED-S occurs, if more difficult to observe, in male athletes too.
I don't know that I've heard of long-term issues of fertility, but they might be more common than the background population.
VoxelVexillologist
🇺🇸 Multidimensional Radical Centrist
1yr ago
If phone companies were required to give a phone line to anyone who is not provably a crook, then the main beneficiaries would be crooks with plausible deniability.
I'm pretty sure that under US common carrier rules, telephone companies are largely required to offer service in this fashion as regulated utilities. See also "universal service" requirements.
VoxelVexillologist
🇺🇸 Multidimensional Radical Centrist
1yr ago
Linus Pauling has entered the chat, and is interested in selling you some extra Vitamin C.
VoxelVexillologist
🇺🇸 Multidimensional Radical Centrist
1yr ago
At the scale Valve operates at, surely banks pass the costs of chargebacks along to them. But also, banks probably aren't worried about them going bankrupt from chargebacks and leaving them with the bill.
This wouldn't be true of a fly-by-night porn site, though.
VoxelVexillologist
🇺🇸 Multidimensional Radical Centrist
1yr ago
This is the "just build your own international financial system" objection.
As much as I'm not a huge fan of cryptocurrency stans --- it has spurred a bunch of interesting cryptography research, and there are a few reasonable uses, and a bunch of speculators who seem to care about neither --- I have to give them "and they took that as a challenge" on this one.
VoxelVexillologist
🇺🇸 Multidimensional Radical Centrist
1yr ago
They are collecting the contents of communications of foreigners on foreign soil.
Room 641A is distinctly in San Francisco. The Ninth Circuit case involving it largely resolved because Congress granted retroactive immunity in 2008.
VoxelVexillologist
🇺🇸 Multidimensional Radical Centrist
1yr ago
The BLM riots were never about challenging the peaceful transfer of power on a national level.
The CHOP/CHAZ incident was pretty openly questioning the sovereignty of the federal and state governments.
VoxelVexillologist
🇺🇸 Multidimensional Radical Centrist
1yr ago
Sorry, the best we can offer is JD Vance mocking the UK PM about "freedom of speech" in the Oval Office and on Twitter. It's not much, but it's more than the previous administration, I suppose.
VoxelVexillologist
🇺🇸 Multidimensional Radical Centrist
1yr ago
By contrast, the constitution is silent about armed goons breaking into the Capitol
Perhaps my memory is incorrect here, but I thought it was IMHO generally notable that none (or at least very few) of the charges for J6 involved bringing 'arms' into the Capitol. For a crowd of right-wing protesters, there was, if anything, a dearth of guns.
VoxelVexillologist
🇺🇸 Multidimensional Radical Centrist
1yr ago
This depends on a very narrow reading of "secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures ... but upon probable cause" that, to my knowledge, hasn't seen any precedent at the Supreme Court level. In fact, the secrecy of the entire apparatus seems largely to exist to circumvent judicial and democratic review.
VoxelVexillologist
🇺🇸 Multidimensional Radical Centrist
1yr ago
Clapper was under oath, and had been given the question in advance by Ron Wyden's office, and asked very deliberately about "any type of data at all". It's a joke that Clapper is allowed to work for think tanks and CNN as a "respectable" expert.
VoxelVexillologist
🇺🇸 Multidimensional Radical Centrist
1yr ago
I feel like I'd appreciate this argument more if I hadn't lived through electing a "Constitutional law professor" who proceeded to approve of wholesale spying on the contents of almost everyone's Internet traffic --- see Snowden, et al, and Clapper lying to Congress about it. Or approving extrajudicial drone strikes on underage American citizens in foreign countries.
If anything, I don't like much about the Trump administration, but I feel like "the system" is doing a much better job making known and criticizing his actions.
VoxelVexillologist
🇺🇸 Multidimensional Radical Centrist
1yr ago
I think he probably is someone that's hard to deal with in person. I saw him speak once in college, and the most memorable part wasn't his own presentation, but when he showed up at a symposium the next day and started asking questions about copyright licenses in a presentation about algorithms (I honestly don't remember what sort) and not accepting "we haven't gotten to the point of releasing any code, and haven't decided on that yet" as an answer.
I've been feeling of late that we've (well, maybe not the youngest of us) living through The Internet going through the entire cycle from "new digital frontier" to "the railroad has moved in and brought civilization". Open rangeland has been wholesale fenced off into walled gardens, and those of us "digital natives" (not really analogous to Native Americans, but the term was bandied about a couple decades back) are sometimes struggling to deal with the massive cultural changes that entails.
Google is talking about disabling side-loading on Android, making users unable to run their own code on their own devices. Social networks are closing access to non-account users. New PC games are even talking about requiring Secure Boot, which limits what you can do with your own purchased hardware. And as you mention, payment processors are swinging their weight around to control what we do online.
I remember reading RMS' short story "The Right to Read" (written 1996) probably 20 years ago. Stallman is a controversial figure for a bunch of reasons --- I suppose all prophet figures are --- but it feels disturbingly prescient in a way that I remember thinking "oh, that can't all happen" at the time, but subtly thinking "oh, this is normal" in 2025. I'm not sure I like the changes, even if I can see why they're taken: security (keep your devices updated, required Internet connections), copyright (although Netflix, Spotify, and iTunes did manage to diffuse the Copyright Wars of the 2000's), or limiting unfettered access to obscene and abhorrent content ("think of the children" hits different once you have kids).
I suppose I'd be interested in reading "closing of the digital frontier" cyberpunk science fiction, if anyone has recommendations.
VoxelVexillologist
🇺🇸 Multidimensional Radical Centrist
1yr ago
to three-star generals, all of whom must now personally meet with Trump before their fourth star is formalized.
Is this unusual? Per 10 U.S. Code § 601, generals, lieutenant generals, admirals, and vice admirals (three- and four-star positions) require nomination by the president, and confirmation from the Senate. I'd be more surprised if the president, the commander-in-chief of the armed forces, didn't feel it necessary to meet with his top checks notes 37 military officers (plus a few currently-vacant positions).
VoxelVexillologist
🇺🇸 Multidimensional Radical Centrist
1yr ago
How much stock should we put in that? Plenty of whistleblowers in other contexts have turned out to be shady self-promoters, and I've honestly come to mostly disregard them without further evidence: Rebekah Jones seems to have pretty thoroughly shown herself as untrustworthy. On the other hand, I can think of examples that brought evidence and have demonstrably paid for their choices -- Manning and Snowden come to mind first.
VoxelVexillologist
🇺🇸 Multidimensional Radical Centrist
1yr ago
I don't remember the "reintroduce slavery" argument.
In 2012, then-VP Biden told a largely-Black crowd in Danville, Virginia that "They're [Republicans] going to put y'all back in chains".
The last sentence in the linked article seems a bit prescient for 2024, though:
Mr. Biden also told the crowd that if they get out the vote, "we can win North Carolina again." Danville is close to the North Carolina border, but it is in fact in Virginia.
VoxelVexillologist
🇺🇸 Multidimensional Radical Centrist
1yr ago
Boots on the ground in Greenland
I hate to break this to you, but there have been US troops stationed in Greenland since 1951, in addition to the Allies taking over the island during the German occupation of Denmark (Iceland became independent after the war).
VoxelVexillologist
🇺🇸 Multidimensional Radical Centrist
1yr ago
Trump appears to be the first Republican who realizes that exerting government pressure on these organizations can enact his agenda at second hand. And he’s much better at it than previous republicans; he got the deal shoved through with the top law firms, he got the teamsters to jump ship, he won over big tech, he’s going after universities.
This might be true, but I have trouble believing this to be an even-handed critique of government actions, and not just "Fascism is when the government does things I don't like". If so, we should consider things like Obama's Operation Choke Point, where the DOJ pressured businesses like firearms dealers that were engaging in "high-risk", if otherwise-legal activities. I'm not sure I'm actually upset by all the categories targeted there, but if you're concerned about this definition of "authoritarianism", it's been going on well over a decade at this point, arguably at least back to Congress pressuring states to adopt speed limits and drunk driving laws.
Finished The End of Eternity: it's a short read. Would recommend if only for its somewhat atypical take on time travel.
Started The Mote in God's Eye. It's a lot longer, but comes highly recommended. Not far enough to have a real opinion yet.
VoxelVexillologist
🇺🇸 Multidimensional Radical Centrist
1yr ago
They say that dose makes the poison. Sure, a cup of coffee is great, but we couldn't survive on coffee berries alone. This isn't a problem for humans because we have such a variety of calorie sources, but it would be one of we were bug-sized and trying to survive off a single plant (be it jalapeños, coffee, tobacco, or even raw white potatoes).
As I've heard it told, the culture war battles of the '80s with the Moral Majority didn't confine themselves to the pews. The likes of Tipper Gore and Jack Thompson were at least perceived as coming for your Black Sabbath CD's, Natural Born Killers on VHS, and Grand Theft Auto games because they were influencing corruptible young minds to commit school shootings (several of those examples pre-date Columbine) and other acts of mayhem.
Although from my chair here today, that historical kulturekampf feels almost quaint.
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