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VoxelVexillologist

Multidimensional Radical Centrist

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joined 2022 September 04 18:24:54 UTC 

				
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VoxelVexillologist


								

								

								
								
								

								
							
					
 
				


				
Multidimensional Radical Centrist

				
				
				

				

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					joined 2022 September 04 18:24:54 UTC
				


				
					

					
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User ID: 64


					
					
					
				

			


					

						
					



		

	

 











			
			

			
			

			




	


		

			
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				Culture War Roundup for the week of April 29, 2024
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
It's funny to me how both sides of the battle of the sexes will endorse the Mike Pence rule, while also mocking the other side for adopting it.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of April 29, 2024
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Does it specify which species of bear?  Black bears are common in the lower 48, and I've run into them before: I've even heard of people aggressively chasing them off.  Not cuddly, but some of them aren't that much bigger than a large adult human.  Grizzly and polar bears are much larger and dangerous.


I think the distributions of danger here are relevant: a 99th percentile dangerous human might well be much more dangerous than the equivalent black bear, even if the median black bear doesn't even get seen because it avoids humans.  The median human is, I would guess, a net help in a survival situation, or at least tries to do so.  In my experience, people evaluate risks like that very differently.


Somewhere in here is a decent joke about cougars in the woods: mountain lions are quite dangerous if they decide to kill you, but so are divorces.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Wellness Wednesday for May 1, 2024
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


How do I capitalize on the fact that the social fabric is fraying at breakneck speed?




I think this is more complicated than that in terms of market strategy.  If anything, my feel for the zeitgeist is that this statement is true, but also that the median (Western) human is becoming acutely aware of this fact and it's starting to change behaviors.  More than a few friends, even tech oriented ones, have done things like moving to tight-knit rural communities and taking up growing vegetables and raising chickens.


I don't have huge confidence in this, but I think there may be a groundswell of interest in deliberately investing in social fabric.  This could conceivably go badly for tech companies: something like "social media is like alcohol: okay in small amounts, but everybody looks down on that guy that drinks beer for breakfast.  Abstaining isn't frowned upon."   Although I would be interested in something like Facebook was in 2010 that was primarily focused on actual social connections and not "influencers" or anonymous-ish groups.


There may be some business opportunities for explicitly creating Third Spaces, but what shape new ones would have is much less clear.  Most of the general examples of those (gyms, coffee shops, bars) aren't in short supply, but also don't feel like they really are establishing communities anymore (or maybe large chains can't do local culture).


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of April 29, 2024
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


Abortion was made a constitutional right by first finding a roght to privacy, and then discovering abortion being made illegal violates this right (but only in the first trimester).




It's worth noting that doctor-patient privacy somehow also only extended to abortion, and not, say, to Kevorkian or medical marijuana.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of April 29, 2024
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


Every single information and/or discussion channel/forum is getting shittier and shittier. I posit that in addition to algorithms maximizing engagement or minimizing whatever, it's also the userbase.




The true old timers will tell you that they wish September '93 would end.


Not that I disagree, but the observation is hardly new, and yet we're nominally still here.  I sometimes wonder if it's bias in the observation, but maybe there are objective measurements somewhere.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of April 22, 2024
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


It definitely annoys me that "access to the financial system writ large" has become so utterly critical to doing anything useful that it immediately has a totalizing effect on what anybody can do, anywhere in the world, even on the internet.




You're not wrong: despite general libertarian sympathies, I do think there is a role for utility-type regulation in a number of new critical roles that didn't exist a few decades ago.  Credit cards and cashless payments are certainly one.


I'd toss out email and online identity infrastructure as another that doesn't get much press: I've come to realize that my dependence on my Gmail account (which I've had since it was an invite-only beta) would be almost impossible to replace.  Maybe with a lot of work I could replace it with one provided through Microsoft, but that wouldn't really fix the problem.  Practically hosting your own email is basically impossible, from what I can tell, due to spam blocking mechanisms.  Given Google's propensity to sunset things (or really, the level of risk of corporate spontaneous failure), I think it'd be a pretty serious crisis if their email and identity servers went down for a day.  Or worse, permanently.


I'd point to the common carrier rules for other utilities as a reasonable example of what could be done.  I think expanding those to include things like credit card payments and email would be possible.  However, those have their own concerns with fraud and such that might prevent applying the existing rules as-is.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of April 22, 2024
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


but Biden needs the progressive left to win this election




Unironically, I don't think this was true two years ago.  If he'd have played Bill Clinton's playbook from the 90s and governed as center-left, I think he could have a high enough approval rating that we wouldn't be taking a rematch of the 2020 election seriously.  But it seems, to me at least, that the current administration doesn't want to moderate its positions to appeal to the median voter: I'm hard pressed to think of many cases where it's been willing to push back against progressive partisans.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of April 22, 2024
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


Even one day in prison would be a cruel and unusual punishment for the "crime" of having a common cold.




Who made this argument?  I'm not generally of a "it's just like the common cold" take on the pandemic, but I'm assuming a SCOTUS justice would at least see the parallel hypothetical about house arrest for (potentially) having a contagious disease.  If nothing else, it seems like an interesting set of tea leaves to read about how future cases might go.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of April 15, 2024
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


which is why they unfroze billions of Iranian funds and reduced sanctions (in what now looks to be a serious blunder).




It continues to surprise me how many of these blunders date back to the first weeks of the administration.  I'm not a huge fan of the previous president, but many of Biden's first actions included repealing the "remain in Mexico" policy (which seems linked to ongoing trouble with immigration), making nice with Iran (which didn't prevent October 7th, and seems hotter now than before), and passing the final round of pandemic stimulus (which we were told wouldn't cause inflation).


It doesn't exactly inspire the most confidence in me.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of April 8, 2024
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


The death toll seems to have come to a grand total of zero.




You know, for all the frequent concerns about AI killbots, modern smart weapons have, in practice driven what is, to use your term, kayfabe.  I could point to how concerns about nuclear mutual destruction, while technically a valid concern, have thus seem to have caused a (fragile) truce on Great Power conflict.  It seems that one outcome of true "smart weapons" would be the establishment of this sort of kayfabe, like in the Star Trek: The Original Series episode "A Taste of Armageddon," but with no actual deaths, just our robots going at each other with the owners of the losing bots ceding the conflict, because of the implication.


Now that I think about it, the post-WWII era already has quite a few conflicts that are settled not by outright conquest, but by leveraging power into situations where one nation-state could clearly squish the other like a bug, and the loser taps out like a wrestling match, rather than a mano a mano fight to the death.  It seems that some of the more enduring conflicts that exist (Israel/Palestine, for example) continue because the "losing" side refuses to tap out, and the rules of the international arena don't really consider such cases.


But it leads us to weird things like today's events, where one clearly-outgunned side is clearly and deliberately firing live ammunition at the other, and the fired-at parties seem to be left batting down the ammunition, and wondering whether it's worth the trouble to flatten the other side.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of April 22, 2024
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
This is a good point, and I don't really have an answer to the question.  Most (but not all) common carrier laws I can think of only require that utilities accept all comers -- AT&T can't deny phone lines to sex ships -- but some also go so far as to define specific performances like service areas -- AT&T doesn't run wire to my house specifically.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of April 8, 2024
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Have you looked at the numbers for pumped storage?  A kilo of gasoline stores enough energy to raise a similar kilo of water more than four thousand kilometers.  The sheer volumes you'd need to lift to match the energy density of a single floating roof tank (or oil tanker) would be absurd, and you'd need to scatter pumped lakes the size of Lake Mead all over the country, and even then probably couldn't handle seasonal variation. Not to mention that reservoirs are themselves not that environmentally friendly or that there aren't many good sites to start from that aren't already used.


IMO generating hydrocarbons is the most viable storage technology (plus it works with existing supplied energy infrastructure), but even there robust, scalable chemical processes are lacking.  Hydrogen is easier chemically but harder to store.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of April 15, 2024
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


Only boring people are bored.




I was talking with [a child] the other week, who was complaining about boredom (in the absence of screen time) and observed that I remember being bored when I was a kid, but as part of growing up, I'm never bored as an adult.  There is always something (many things, actually) I should be doing, and never enough hours in my day.  And I even have to take care to use my hours wisely: not all interesting things have equal long-term value: I've largely retreated from video games except in a social capacity with IRL friends far away, instead working on improving myself (exercise, learning languages, art, hobby skills, reading), and valuing getting things done that provide long-term benefits.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of April 15, 2024
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
From what I can tell, early computer operators were not infrequently people (many women) who had previously worked as human computers.  The story of Dorothy Vaughan of Hidden Figures fame comes to mind.


But I also suspect that the tasks these operators were doing differed quite a bit from the very abstract notion of what a computer is today.  It makes sense to hire the folks that were previously manually crunching, say, your numeric integrals for artillery shell trajectories to operate a machine that does the same, because they already specialize in breaking that problem down into discrete operations that can be done by hand.  That seems qualitatively different from writing an operating system or building a web app, partly because the digital computer was still seen by most as a machine that replaced the human computers.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of April 8, 2024
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


There is something undeniably effective about just having very different people sit down and talk/interact with each other in a non-violent setting. Not that I really disliked either set of people before visiting them, but I felt I definitely understood them better afterwards.




When I was younger, I did a fair number of programs that involved getting grouped with other people you didn't know and having to work together.  It was also an eye-opener for me.  The rural/urban divide was certainly present, but not the only divide: having been raised in a straight-laced, middle-class, white collar household that I thought knew how to do physical labor, the blue collar work-hard-play-hard approach to life wasn't something I expected.


I have occasionally mused in the last few years that mandatory national service after high school would probably improve national cohesiveness. Not for militaristic reasons (although those aren't completely invalid), but also because being forced to meet and work together with very different Americans would be good for the country as a whole.  And there are some useful life skills that some would never pick up otherwise.  Even if it's just cutting trails in National Parks/Forests or whatever.


But I'm not sure how I could convince the median voter to go for it: probably half don't trust the country to be left in charge of their kids, and a similar portion think their kids are too good to spend months of their lives on something outside of their worldview.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of March 25, 2024
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


to ban free speech at universities




You know, the folks that take umbrage with this (outside of a few truly principled libertarian types) were probably completely fine with the speech banning here, they just disagree on the targets.  Free speech absolutism on campus sailed probably a century or so ago.  The Obama Administration helpfully defined "sexual harassment" banned for the purposes of Title IX to include "unwelcome conduct of a sexual nature" including "verbal conduct".  Democrats were completely on board with these rulings at the time, and similar ones about racial slurs.  But now that Republicans are passing rules that students can't cheer "gas the Jews" (or, admittedly, several more modest phrases that still advocate for ethnic cleansing) and remain in good standing, that is clearly a bridge too far.


I'm not sure anyone is really being principled here, which as someone with centrist-to-principled-libertarian views is rather frustrating.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of April 8, 2024
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


Destruction of the Rafah Ghetto




Why is the obvious World War II comparison of Rafah to the Warsaw Ghetto?  I can think of a number of other plausible comparisons that are probably worth considering.  This is, admittedly, a rather hot take, but why not compare Rafah to Berlin in 1945?  After the Third Reich invaded most of Eastern Europe, including rampant raping and pillaging across the countryside, and that entire campaign of deliberate ethnic cleansing and genocide, nobody looks at the Allied decision to demand complete, unconditional surrender as unreasonable, or that they kept fighting all the way to Berlin.  Nobody argues that Stalin was deliberately unprepared at the start of the war to justify flattening Germany and running parts of it as a puppet state for Soviet gain.  Nobody of import says "countless German civilians died because Roosevelt and Stalin were unwilling to enact a unilateral ceasefire at the Rhine and the Oder."  Nobody serious mourns the Volkssturm civilians (frequently children) that were handed primitive weapons for futile resistance, without also recognizing the broader context of the tragedy of the entire war.  And I'm not even going to even try to deny that the Red Army was infamous for its war crimes against civilians in the East, or the decades of subsequent political repression the Soviets brought to Eastern Europe during the Cold War.


The Axis powers entered the war in the late 1930s even though almost all modern historians consider their possibility of overall victory bleak.  Maybe they could have bargained for an advantageous quick peace, but even Yamamoto has (possibly-apocryphal) quotes about expecting to lose a longer war.  Hamas had even lower chances of winning in October.  I'm not convinced that this merits assuming that either power, as the "underdog," merits obvious sympathy, although that seems to be in vogue these days in certain circles.  Heck, if you look at ratios of civilian casualties -- as I've seen some argue makes Israel's actions unjustified -- America had almost none (generally counted as a few thousand if you include territories and civilian ship crews).  The British claim 70,000.  More civilians than that died in the Battle of Berlin alone, and Allied bombing campaigns killed hundreds of thousands.  Not to mention the nuclear weapons.


I have trouble embracing the progressive worldview on Gaza because those same principles, applied to WWII, would have me side with the Axis powers.  And I am quite certain that the world is a better place because the (Western) Allies won the day.  Not that they are perfect (ha!), but I'll certainly stan them over the major Axis players.


Not that I'd wholly endorse Israel to hit Rafah like Zhukov hit Berlin: I don't think the situation really warrants it, or that the situations are immediately similar.  Heck, I won't even try to argue that Israel hasn't committed atrocities in this situation.  But on the other, it seems about as reasonable as comparing Gaza to the Warsaw Ghetto, and I'd be pretty amused to see some Tankies argue that the Red Army was in the wrong.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of April 22, 2024
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
There is a long history of fighting with questionably-motivated conscripts.  I'm not convinced individual interest really matters: they seem to either get thrown to the worst fighting on the front, or to quiet rear defensive positions.  On the other hand, as far as I'm aware, Vichy French and Norwegian troops didn't see much combat action on behalf of the Axis during WWII.


I think you're right that after two years of brutal fighting, there is too much animosity for that to work today, but early in the current invasion Russia was fielding all the troops they could conscript from separatist regions, so it's not completely out of the question, I think.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of April 8, 2024
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
You're not wrong.  The self-selection process for the times I've seen it work is likely an essential part of it working at all.  Self-actualization is something that requires internal motivation, and can't be forced.  But it can be an aspirational picture.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of April 15, 2024
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


but how much does seniority matter in the SC?




Formally, I believe the task of writing the decisions is given out by the chief justice (if in the majority) or the most senior justice.  I've seen some suggest that Roberts keeps some of the potentially-spicier cases for himself and writes more moderately than, say, Alito would.  There are also fairly often cases where a new justice has to recuse themselves because they either previously judged the case on a lower court, or sometimes argued for one side.  Neither of those is a particularly large concern, I would think.  Their opinions are, to my knowledge, formally given equal weight otherwise.


I don't know about informally, where I suspect it matters for at least some time for a new justice.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of April 8, 2024
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


When progressives complain about straight white men, are they looking for a "scapegoat" for all their problems?




Sometimes there are reasonable facts behind the complaints, but have you seen the litany of things "white supremacy" and "patriarchy" are casually blamed for?


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of April 15, 2024
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
You know, I can acknowledge that the pattern you're seeing exists, but I've never taken that much umbrage at it, probably because I mostly limit my content to older, or really highly reviewed stuff.  Similar, to the question of whether the demographics of the cast need to match the source material.  But I did come across an instance of it recently that bothered me a little, and felt notable.


I really enjoyed Masters of the Air: it was really excellent on most of the axes I care about -- screenwriting, visuals, acting, and such.  But at one point, during an ensemble shot of the American air crews, I thought to myself "those guys all look British," so I looked into it on IMDB -- most of the main cast are British or Irish.  Even the Tuskegee Airmen weren't played by African-American actors.  Some of that might have been due to pandemic restrictions, or using local actors for logistical reasons, but it felt off.  Not that there aren't lots of Americans of such descent, but a group of (white, 1940s) Americans should look more diverse than that: I had a [redacted] whose family had recently immigrated from [Europe, not Britain] that served and died in a B-24 over Germany.


Maybe it's that it's intended as a historical account, but it feels like it cheapens the narrative ("heroic American airmen bring the fight to Nazi Germany"), and it's not as if the British weren't there and similarly heroic at the time.  A similar series portraying RAF Bomber Command would probably be pretty interesting!


That said, I would recommend the series overall as a worthy followup to Band of Brothers and The Pacific.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of April 15, 2024
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
In a rather similar vein, I really enjoyed the narrative and dialog in Firewatch (2016), even if, in some ways, it's more of an interactive novel.  It's probably not for everyone, but the menu option to play with only a map and compass is an interesting vibe, too.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of April 8, 2024
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
I've long thought the jurisdictional arguments would make it difficult: to my knowledge, Assange is not a US citizen, nor has he set foot in the US.  I can accept that the actions happened as-published, but it seems, well, inconsistent to allow nation-states to extradite people with such a limited claim to jurisdiction.  If such a principle were evenly applied, would the US seriously consider, say, a Russian demand to extradite OSINT twitter accounts?  Or is it just a principal that applies to citizens of close allies (Australia in this instance)?  Would it even be considered if the roles were reversed?


It seems we'd be better served writing it out explicitly and reciprocally: "it is against [local country] law to actively spy on [allied country] outside of the national intelligence apparatus" doesn't sound completely crazy, but I don't think it is written anywhere.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of April 22, 2024
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Ah.  I would personally agree they're at least different enough to warrant a separate discussion.  I was just surprised (and wrong) that a sitting justice today would use that as a hypothetical.  Makes more sense now.