Walterodim
Only equals speak the truth, that’s my thought on’t
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User ID: 551
Walterodim
Only equals speak the truth, that’s my thought on’t
1yr ago
St. John's Well Child and Family Center, a network of public health centers in South and Central Los Angeles, cannot access $746,000 remaining from a $1.6 million grant used to provide prevention, testing and treatment for about 500 transgender people at risk of HIV, sexually transmitted infections, tuberculosis and hepatitis C.
When I was younger, I had developed pretty libertine attitudes about human sexuality and I still mostly have the same gut feelings, but every now and then, I bump into things that make me think the conservatives have a point. This is roughly $3K per person for STI testing and treatment. Why? Why do these people insist on doing such consistently risky behavior that they need constant STI surveillance? Even being somewhat promiscuous doesn't result in constant infections, the behavior here really just has to be completely outside the range of anything that most people would consider normal. As you note, the other Life Center apparently spends about five times that much per capita, clocking in over $15K per person.
Making everyone else pay for egregiously bad behavior is just galling.
Walterodim
Only equals speak the truth, that’s my thought on’t
1yr ago
It feels like 90% of what's annoying about politics and political discussion would just disappear---all the obnoxious bad-faith argumentative games wouldn't work anymore because everyone would see through them, we'll actually be able to have national discussions about substance instead of the nonsense that happens now, etc.
Is this your impression of how legal battles play out? My impression is that everyone does see through the obnoxious bad-faith argumentative games but elects to play them anyway and award points to the person that most successfully weaponizes them to the preferred ends.
Walterodim
Only equals speak the truth, that’s my thought on’t
1yr ago
Federal judge pauses deadline for federal workers to accept Trump’s resignation offer.
I was initially surprised by this, not because of any detailed reading of statute, but because federal employees can simply ignore the offer. I find it intuitively odd that proceeding with the status quo is fine, making this offer without a deadline might be fine, but making the offer with a deadline isn't fine. Concerns about enforceability seem at least plausible to me, but I really struggle to understand why a short deadline to make the decision would be a problem in and of itself. If you don't take it, well, you're just back where you were a couple Tuesdays ago.
Walterodim
Only equals speak the truth, that’s my thought on’t
1yr ago
I don't think this is a realistic solution but somehow think it's still more realistic than just going back to the pre-10/7 status quo of waiting until a bunch of Islamists launch another attack on Israel. If you start with the presuppositions that Israel should exist as a Jewish state, that Israel is an important American ally, and that coexistence with a Palestinian state isn't possible, what are you left with? I'm not saying you should adopt those presuppositions, but they seem to be what Trump is working from.
Just another chapter in, "OK, if what you're telling me is that giving these guys a dollar today means I owe them a dollar every day for the rest of my life, then I am against all new expenditures".
Walterodim
Only equals speak the truth, that’s my thought on’t
1yr ago
Are A-F correlated in any meaningful way? I prefer the interlocutor that just disagrees with me in a consistent, predictable way to the guy that says, "I like to think through each issue" and winds up with an incoherent dog's breakfast of views.
Walterodim
Only equals speak the truth, that’s my thought on’t
1yr ago
Beer is a pretty good example that's adjacent to that. Right now, Modelo is one of the most consumed mass market lagers. If you increase the price by 25%, many people will elect to consume fundamentally similar American substitute goods (e.g. Budweiser). Supply lines and distributorships complicate this somewhat, but demand shift would certainly be expected under standard models.
Walterodim
Only equals speak the truth, that’s my thought on’t
1yr ago
This was one of the reasons that I insist that policy decisions were the major drivers of Covid-era inflation. Not only were massive supplies of money printed and distributed, but governments banned or severely restricted major sectors of the economy for a long period of time. That money is going to go somewhere.
Walterodim
Only equals speak the truth, that’s my thought on’t
1yr ago
My lab actually seems like a pretty good choice. She's easily trainable and has natural hunting instincts that are useful with almost zero prey drive. While she's surely not as adept in a combat situation as other dogs, I'm probably already in deep shit if I've arrived at that point, but she's large enough to make someone else an easier target. Their cold tolerance is impressive, they're great swimmers, and they're about as adaptable and flexible across a wide variety of roles as any breed. Ultimately, I think flushing and fetching prey is probably the biggest thing a dog can bring to the table after protection.
Walterodim
Only equals speak the truth, that’s my thought on’t
1yr ago
Tariffs on Canada are incredibly stupid and I haven't heard a coherent defense of them.
Tariffs on Mexico, I'm agnostic about. There are demands to make of Mexico that I support making. Whether tariffs are the best way to get there or not, I don't know.
Tariffs on China are good. Full stop. We should buy less from China.
Walterodim
Only equals speak the truth, that’s my thought on’t
1yr ago
Effective Altruist Amos Wollen published a defense of PEPFAR on the 29th, which doesn't steelman the programs' current critics, but does address the current politics of the programs.
Man, that's pretty charitable to just say it "doesn't steelman". To wit:
In response to a tweet by right-wing PEPFAR advocate Richard Hanania, many of his followers expressed their grievance at the country with the largest share of the world’s GDP shelling out a small sliver in foreign aid to do something unambiguously good:
As for whether the US has reason to set aside a skimpy sliver of its budget for a programme that has saved easily more than 20x the lives that the Iraq War stole, the most important justification for PEPFAR funding is that saving that many lives is straightforwardly morally good, and failing to engage in a baseline, easily-affordable level of Christian charity when that many lives are at stake is Satanic.
OK, well, I'm not Christian, so that line of defense isn't really going to work for me. More importantly though, this doesn't actually meet the argument head on, it just insists that you have to agree that it's morally good because it's such an eensy-weensy-teeny-tiny expense that does so much good. Without arguing about just how eensy-weensy the program is or how much good it does, this prompts a couple immediate thoughts:
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If it's so tiny, why is it critical for American taxpayers to cover it? Things that are so tiny and so good should be pretty easy to convince people to participate in voluntarily rather than via confiscation.
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In the event that there's really a coordination problem, that it can't be done via charity for some unclear reason, why isn't it an internationally shared expense? It's super-duper tiny, barely costs anything at all, and does so much good, so it should pretty easy to get the UN to fund this instead of it just being a responsibility for the United States.
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This argument is fully general for anything that you just think is good in the federal budget. It precludes ever cutting anything if its advocates say that it's really important and doesn't cost that much anyway. If it's true that nothing that supporters think is good and costs less than eleventy bajillion dollars can ever be cut, fine, I'm probably just going to oppose more or less all new programs since they can apparently never be ended or shifted to the private sector.
At the end of the day, my real question is why the hell HIV spreads so well in Africa. I've read the explanations and they just don't really make much sense to me. In the United States, Europe, and Asia, HIV just spreads really poorly among heterosexual populations that don't use intravenous drugs.
Walterodim
Only equals speak the truth, that’s my thought on’t
1yr ago
If you learned for a fact the election wasn't stolen, and you had been shouting otherwise, you'd be forced to consider how you contributed towards lowering societal trust by lowering its faith in our democratic process unnecessarily.
If I learned for a fact that it had zero effect on the election, I would still not regret mentioning to people that I think it's very bad that the clerks of the two largest counties in Wisconsin encouraged people to lie on election forms to avoid providing identification and a large number of people did exactly that. I can imagine this washing out to zero actual difference, but it's still very bad and I'm not the one bringing social trust down by noticing that. Even if this (and the million and one other examples of violations of clear law with Covid as justification) had no effect, I would still favor restoring trustworthy elections where people vote in person with identification.
Walterodim
Only equals speak the truth, that’s my thought on’t
1yr ago
[Insert Performance Enhancing Drugs joke]
Speaking as someone in that age bracket, I don't think the attractiveness of myself and my wife has changed dramatically from our mid-20s. We're both plainly older than we were a decade and a half ago, but just as slim and fit as ever, and with the added benefit of much better sartorial taste and the money to support it. I'm not saying there's no difference, but our attraction to each other and likely to others hasn't changed dramatically over the years.
I do think this is a basically reasonable expectation and as I've aged, I've become surprised by how willing other people are to become frumpy at such a young age and just chalk it up to age rather than their sedentary lifestyle and disinterest in style.
Walterodim
Only equals speak the truth, that’s my thought on’t
1yr ago
Lack of physical attraction is a deal breaker for marriage right?
Kinda late for it at this point, but it's honestly a deal breaker for even beginning to date someone for me. I would not enjoy having a partner that I didn't find attractive. I think if I found myself in your position I'd have an equally difficult time, but the answer is still what it is. I don't blame her for being frustrated and insulted by it, but that doesn't really mean it's going to improve.
Walterodim
Only equals speak the truth, that’s my thought on’t
1yr ago
As a hypothetical, if you're someone that isn't in favor of continuing to spend ~$50 billion annually on USAID, what's the appropriate way to handle it? I don't think this is it because it probably isn't legal, but I'll note that there isn't any way to stop it that is going to avoid the caterwauling about how you're killing innocent children in Africa. From a certain viewpoint, the United States is responsible for the wellbeing of children in Africa in perpetuity and no amount of spending would be too much - would smaller cuts get them to agree that maybe a little bit less is fine? I kind of doubt it.
Walterodim
Only equals speak the truth, that’s my thought on’t
1yr ago
Stargazer cast iron pans are fantastic. Season properly and they're highly nonstick.
Walterodim
Only equals speak the truth, that’s my thought on’t
1yr ago
I don't understand how this is a meaningful reply or what you're intending to reply to with the magic power line reference. That there are imaginable scenarios, which have not happened, where this would be a bad play does not suggest to me that the individual making said play would just run it back in the imaginable scenarios where it's a bad play.
Walterodim
Only equals speak the truth, that’s my thought on’t
1yr ago
What indication is there that he would try the same tactic with a nation that's more dangerous? I don't see any reason to believe that there was any bluff involved - being willing to impose tariffs that would be inconvenient for Americans but catastrophic for Colombians is a powerful tool of economic leverage that Trump seems willing to exert on a country that really has nothing they can do to meaningfully retaliate.
Walterodim
Only equals speak the truth, that’s my thought on’t
1yr ago
The number of conversations I have had with people that have tried every diet under the sun and firmly believe they have arrived at a deep understanding of nutrition despite the obvious failure of their diets boggles my mind. People will tell me, to my face, that carbs make you fat. I can observe that I am, in fact, not at all fat and eat rice and noodles on a regular basis. This has zero impact on their belief that carbs make you fat.
Walterodim
Only equals speak the truth, that’s my thought on’t
1yr ago
I haven't used Facebook in a long time, but I am extremely dubious of the idea that if only management had been turned over to guys with business degrees, it would have made a lot more money. In general, I think it's a pretty bad bet that the most successful things ever are actually failing and could have been run better if the guys in charge weren't so incompetent.
Walterodim
Only equals speak the truth, that’s my thought on’t
1yr ago
Yeah, that's fair.
In any case, I only have a couple weeks in Australia, but I had a great time. It's the only country I've been to that had the visually obvious size and wealth that I associate with the United States. Really such an interesting thing of its own that it's hard to really group with other countries meaningfully. I suppose Canada has a bunch of similar traits, but sharing the continent still makes it feel less singular. Americans also tend to underestimate just how far it is to get to Australia - people know it's far, but a 16-hour flight from LA still shocks the senses. To be honest, I didn't even think about it in the post above - the places I had in mind were European countries, Japan, Korea, and South America.
Walterodim
Only equals speak the truth, that’s my thought on’t
1yr ago
Australia is probably just about the only one that cracks into "true nation" range that I would put on par with the United States for quality of life. Being a gigantic island certainly helps it feel more like a real nation than a place like The Netherlands (which I adore, for what it's worth), even if the population is still in the range of being a large state.
Walterodim
Only equals speak the truth, that’s my thought on’t
1yr ago
The example I provided addresses at least part of it directly - I don't know what an Asian is for the purpose of advocacy and I think this has been an obstacle for Asian-Americans that would prefer less discrimination against them.
I am open to the idea that this is actually the best policy given a number of realistic political constraints. This does not move me to find it less galling that I'm stuck paying for people to live degenerate lifestyles. Avoiding HIV is absolutely trivial, but the "community" in question apparently insists on spreading HIV.
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