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
10mo 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
10mo 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
10mo 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
11mo 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
11mo 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
11mo 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
11mo 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
11mo 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.
Walterodim
Only equals speak the truth, that’s my thought on’t
11mo ago
It's only when somebody talks about White Advocacy that everyone pretends they don't know what White is.
OK, I don't know what "white" is for this purpose. Is a half-Asian kid white or not? As near as I can tell, they'll get to face the academic discrimination of any other Asian kid if they happen to have inherited Chang as a last name or the same discrimination that a white kid would if they're named Stevens. Culturally, they'll be treated as whitish. This isn't some weird, borderline case that requires adjudication via genetic clustering maps, it's just a common product of the many Asian-white couplings in the United States. That white nationalists would feel the need to dig into the PCA plots to answer the question rather than just saying that they're white enough or that they're actually Asian highlights a reason this project is just not very appealing.
Walterodim
Only equals speak the truth, that’s my thought on’t
11mo ago
Mr. Rufo is married to an Asian.
I laughed here at the "married to an Asian". It seemed to come from nowhere. But ok, if they shouldn't get jobs at companies that hate them, where should white men work? Is the suggestion to build their own businesses?
Yeah, this and the Usha portion of things highlights that while he may be unfailingly polite, I simply have no interest in allying with guys like Johnson. I can somewhat understand their angle when we're thinking about long-term ethnostates or some hypothetical land, but that's not where I live and it's not a way I would want to live. For Johnson, this does seem to mark them as traitors of some sort, but this just not how anyone I know lives or thinks about the world around them. Rufo, Vance, Zuckerberg... take your pick, these guys all seem to have pleasant families that should be considered the conservative ideal. Ultimately, most white people just don't share the sort of crass racism that's bubbling just under the surface of Johnson's niceties and when he shows it hand, it alienates them.
Walterodim
Only equals speak the truth, that’s my thought on’t
11mo ago
I'm happy with this EO but I think calling Trump an idiot who couldn't govern was reasonable during his first term.
It seems to me that the "idiot" part of it is wildly overplayed. The explanation that seems more consistent with everything that has come after is that he was a neophyte that hadn't learned how to do politics beyond having such incredible retail political ability that he was able to defeat entrenched opponents and take command of their party. Not knowing how to run the government machine once he was in is absolutely a reasonable criticism, but it doesn't imply that he was an "idiot". To all appearances, he spent his four years out of office professionalizing his campaign team, creating a ready-made staff that's ready to actually implement policy plans, and allowing that team to draft orders to override the recalcitrant bureaucracy. It seems unlikely to me that an "idiot" would do that.
Walterodim
Only equals speak the truth, that’s my thought on’t
11mo ago
I doubt this is all that effective of a wedge. It generates online buzz, but at the end of the day, there isn't a large constituency that's willing to go to the mat over work visas. I'm on the side that's very skeptical of importing Indian software developers as a net positive for the United States, but it's just not worth infighting over when getting rid of fake "asylum seekers" is correct, popular, and will take all of the resources currently available.
Walterodim
Only equals speak the truth, that’s my thought on’t
11mo ago
These all seem like good reasons to restore McKinley.
From that link:
“It’s a gross misuse of the pardon power, and says that Trump is willing to meddle in a process that helped strengthen the rule of law,” said Joyce Vance, a former U.S. attorney in Alabama during the Obama administration.
These people should really, really, really consider strategically quieting down for a bit. Not to overstate things, but for clarity, when I read this, my thought is "FUCK YOU, YOU DO NOT CARE ABOUT MISUSE OF PARDON POWER". Biden capped off his Presidency with an absolutely deranged sets of pardons and commutations for everyone from his family to random "non-violent" criminals to political cronies to the literal worst murderers on federal death row. My impression is that most people on my side of the aisle feel basically the same way, so the histrionics about undermining juries and judges is going to do worse than fall on deaf ears, it's going to highlight just how impossible it is for me to view these people as anything other than enemies. Yeah, I am well aware that it's a tit-for-tat situation, I don't think it's very good, but the caterwauling deepens my resolve in wanting every last one of them released in order to rub the faces of people like Joyce in it.
Walterodim
Only equals speak the truth, that’s my thought on’t
11mo ago
Accepting the terms of the thought experiment, I would still want retributive punishment to match the crime. Even if you could absolutely assure me that a man that robbed my home could be turned into just a perfectly decent man and that no punishment would impact others, I'd still want him caned. He deserves the suffering for inflicting it on others and to deny his victims that penance is an injustice. So, yeah, that's probably not a reconcilable value difference.
Walterodim
Only equals speak the truth, that’s my thought on’t
11mo ago
I don't know that visible punishment as its own end is why we have punitive justice.
As others have covered, I vigorously disagree. Others ends can be legitimate as well, but retribution is a good reason to do punitive justice. Retribution is a good and legitimate motivation and the inclination to suppress it is perverse. Mere restorative or preventative measures deny victims of crime their just outcome.
Walterodim
Only equals speak the truth, that’s my thought on’t
11mo ago
Sometimes, yeah. We tacitly acknowledge this with all punitive justice - we may not be able to make a right, but the best we can do is visible punishment of transgressors.
Additionally tit-for-tat is a better game theoretical strategy than cooperating with a defectbot.
In any case, the situation can't be addressed with cliches, at least not adequately. The response like what @satanistgoblin is expressing above is largely about the complete intellectual and moral bankruptcy of people that have excused all manor of political terrorism in the past (including the recent past, when BLM rioters killed dozens and destroyed billions in property) suddenly deciding that a riot that got out of hand requires tracking down everyone present and charging them under novel interpretations of statute that had never previously occurred to anyone.
Walterodim
Only equals speak the truth, that’s my thought on’t
11mo ago
I love the United States! We're the fucking best. Almost everywhere else sucks by comparison and even the places that are pretty good are on such a small scale that they're more akin to nice states than major nations. Nonetheless, being the best doesn't ensure that there isn't just a secular decline in quality of life across the world, which is what I think would happen if the Pax Americana recedes. To that end, I hope we do reassert our authority with a Monroe Doctrine style of foreign policy.
And to paraphrase Curtis Yarvin, I'll bet you 50$ that if you look around your neighborhood, you'll notice 0 changes over the next 4 years attributable to Donald Trump.
We could talk about deportations, but on a small scale, I do credit Trump for appointing Supreme Court justices that sided with Grants Pass. Cities not being able to stop bums from camping in parks really would be a pretty terrible outcome that would be immediately obvious to everyone involved. They may or may not realize what the cause of that effect is, but pretty much everyone would notice bums camping in parks freely.
Walterodim
Only equals speak the truth, that’s my thought on’t
11mo ago
My view is that the appropriate response to this is for the incoming DoJ to open an investigation on every single person pardoned with a statement that "no one is above the law". Did they do anything? I have no idea and neither does anyone else, but the sitting President just pointed a glaring GUILTY spotlight at them by preemptively insisting that they're definitely not guilty of anything. People that can't be convicted by a jury don't need pardons. Would they be able to make this blanket pardon stand up in court? I have no idea, but I think we should find out whether the President actually has the ability to preempt any efforts to bring justice to his cronies.
Walterodim
Only equals speak the truth, that’s my thought on’t
11mo ago
I was just telling someone that I'm glad we're leaving the darkest years of American governance in my lifetime behind, but it appears that we're leaving it in the same sense that a dog that just took a big shit in your living room can be taken outside and you're still stuck cleaning up. The final days of this administration have been worse than I would have guessed by a pretty wide margin.
Walterodim
Only equals speak the truth, that’s my thought on’t
11mo ago
If the intent was to ban TikTok, they would have just banned TikTok. The intent was to stop having one of the most used social media applications in the United States owned by the chief adversary of the American government.
Walterodim
Only equals speak the truth, that’s my thought on’t
11mo ago
There is a relevant in that first sentence. Let's try it out with different subjects and objects to see if we would call that a ban:
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The law signed in April mandates a ban on liquor sales at Total Wine if bottles are not labeled.
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The law signed in April mandates a ban on Toyota produced in Japanese-owned factories rather than American-owned factories.
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The law signed in April mandates a ban on cheeses if the milk is not sourced from FDA-inspected farms.
I would not describe these as "bans". They impose requirements (divestment from ownership by an adversarial government in this case). Perhaps they're bad regulations, but they aren't bans on the products in question. That ByteDance is apparently going to elect to sunset the application rather than take the money and run is strongly suggestive of the real value being non-monetary advantages to the Chinese government.
Walterodim
Only equals speak the truth, that’s my thought on’t
11mo ago
In fact, it's not even being "banned" at all.
Walterodim
Only equals speak the truth, that’s my thought on’t
11mo ago
At some point we're going to need the Bart Simpson meme but with "it's a vibe shift". Jokes aside, it really does seem like the election marked closure for quite a few prior modes of restraint when it comes to blunt communication. It's too early to say if this is going to stick as a meaningful change, but I'm glad of it even in the short run.
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.
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