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
5mo ago
This is probably because driving is treated as a "privilege" by the state.
Driving should be treated as a privilege. I'm more opposed to safetyism than the median person, but it still surprises me that we came up with a norm that operating one specific class of heavy machinery is basically a right that's hard to remove, even for individuals that are incompetent or repeatedly demonstrate that they will drive while inebriated. Tens of thousands of otherwise young, healthy people die in vehicular accidents annually and it remains an entirely niche issue to even think about traffic safety.
This doesn't get me to the point of favoring this particular sort of intrusion, but I generally think licensing is far too liberalized.
Walterodim
Only equals speak the truth, that’s my thought on’t
5mo ago
Law enforcement clashed with protesters calling for a ceasefire in the Israel-Hamas war outside of the Washington headquarters of the Democratic National Committee Wednesday night after authorities said the demonstration turned violent and lawmakers were evacuated from the building.
“Tonight 6 officers were treated for injuries – ranging from minor cuts to being pepper sprayed to being punched. One person has been arrested for assault on an officer. We appreciate our officers who kept these illegal & violent protesters back & protected everyone in the area,” US Capitol Police, who responded with DC Metropolitan Police, said in a statement on X.
...
Beth Miller, political director of Jewish Voice for Peace Action, said in a statement Wednesday night that “hundreds of peaceful anti-war activists came to the DNC to call for an end to bombs and violence in order to save Palestinian and Israeli lives.”
“They were met with brutal assaults by the police,” Miller continued. “The Democrats need to decide: will they stand on the side of peace and justice, or will they continue to support war and genocide?”
Riot, attack cops, claim to be the victim. This pattern of conduct isn't remotely surprising to me at this point, but I am surprised that anyone other than fellow travelers is willing to treat these things like a both sides situation, where we can't really know who caused things to turn ugly.
Walterodim
Only equals speak the truth, that’s my thought on’t
4mo ago
They take the viewer's eyes off of the actual visual content of a scene and diminish the need to listen closely to dialogue that is intended to be listened to closely. Try it out with a scene where the actors are speaking in hushed tones - if you turn on captions, do you tend to just read them without changing the way you're listening? If you turn off captions, do you tend to tune your listening to the sort of secretive tones that you would in real life? Different types of immersion impact the experience of content in a meaningful way.
I'm not saying everything needs to be engaged with this way. If I'm flying, the audio quality is going to suck anyway, the visual content is on an iPad, and I just want some entertainment to kill a couple hours, so I'm going to turn captions on. Nonetheless, I think it's a bad habit to get into more generally and feeds into the inclination to divert attention to multiple things instead of just paying attention to one thing.
Walterodim
Only equals speak the truth, that’s my thought on’t
5mo ago
far more restraint than almost any other country in the world given their situation.
I don't think this is true - many European countries would simply not retaliate at all if left to their own devices.
Walterodim
Only equals speak the truth, that’s my thought on’t
6mo ago
To my knowledge, imprisoning children and subjecting them to unbelievable cruelty for months or sometimes years at a time is broadly illegal.
Walterodim
Only equals speak the truth, that’s my thought on’t
4mo ago
What does putting oneself in the shoes of the individual being questioned have to do with it, though?
For me, it means considering that my own response would be nothing but contempt for Stefanik and a refusal to cooperate.
I suppose where we differ is in believing there was any noble goal here at all.
Walterodim
Only equals speak the truth, that’s my thought on’t
6mo ago
That seems stretching term occupation quite far. Are you going to argues that Japan and South Korea are also occupied by USA?
Yes, obviously. Why would I say otherwise? A nation that has tens of thousands of soldiers from another country is occupied. That asking them to leave seems like it would be basically impossible with current political constraints further solidifies that this is an occupation, albeit a polite and friendly one. Some countries are better to be occupied than others, the Romans and Americans were both civilizing influences that protected the interests of their clients and vassals, but this is still what occupation looks like.
Walterodim
Only equals speak the truth, that’s my thought on’t
8mo ago
What does better choices mean, in this context?
It refers to people exercising intentionality to consume the foods that align with their physical goals. If that's losing weight, it means a caloric deficit. If that's endurance sports, it means eating a bunch of boring sugars and simple carbs out of your back pocket while you're on the bike because it'll go poorly later if you don't. If it's normal homeostasis, it means matching your appetite to your activity. If it's bodybuilding, it means protein shakes, egg slonking, and chicken breast when you don't want anymore because it's necessary to add muscle.
Basically, it means making an actual choice, electing to eat the things that make sense rather than defaulting to absent-minded gluttony.
Walterodim
Only equals speak the truth, that’s my thought on’t
6mo ago
I don't think firebombing Tokyo feels quite morally right, but trying to fight a war when constrained to conventional moral standards is probably never going to really feel right. Leveling Hamas-occupied areas of Gaza has more moral legitimacy in my mind than leveling Dresden did.
Walterodim
Only equals speak the truth, that’s my thought on’t
8mo ago
Did north Ireland work?
Nope, which seems like as clear of a demonstration that the problem isn't race. No one that's not from the isles knows what the hell the difference between Ulster and the rest of the place is. Ireland is pretty ethnically homogenous, but because it has conflict, you define it as multicultural.
Walterodim
Only equals speak the truth, that’s my thought on’t
4mo ago
The one he cheated on with a porn star?
Walterodim
Only equals speak the truth, that’s my thought on’t
8mo ago
Yes, really, I genuinely can't imagine preferring a sedentary life to a life with some chosen sport. I chose biking because I like biking, but it sure doesn't have to be biking - go swimming, do a hard trail hike, roll on a ju-jitsu mat, do Crossfit, play soccer, just pick something and do it. I cannot imagine someone experiencing the joy of fitness and mastery in a sport and saying, "no, I am too busy getting knowledge". The extent of how weird I find it is that I basically just don't believe people and think it's excuse-making for sloth.
Walterodim
Only equals speak the truth, that’s my thought on’t
8mo ago
I know people constantly insist on this, but running 50 miles per week is actually a lot of calories and isn't even half of what pros are doing. When I ramp up from my typical 40 mile/week schedule to 70+ miles per week during marathon training cycles, I will either lose weight or make a deliberate choice to eat more simple carbs and keep weight. This is even easier in cycling, where long rides are easier to pull off consistently than long runs. Unsurprisingly, the extra ~600-1000 calories per day from exercise makes it much easier to maintain homeostatic calorie intake than what sedentary people would eat; I know this because maintaining my weight required much more conscious choices before I picked up endurance sports.
Walterodim
Only equals speak the truth, that’s my thought on’t
9mo ago
Waves of immigration to major cities continued apace throughout the 19th century as well. New York City, Chicago, Boston, Philly, and other large American cities relied heavily on immigrant labor and the new immigrants formed large ethnic enclaves in those cities. Irish, Italians, Poles, Germans, Jews - these people and their experiences building our major cities are certainly important parts of the formative story of the United States and many of them weren't headed for the frontier.
Walterodim
Only equals speak the truth, that’s my thought on’t
1mo ago
Is Putin still strong and trad?
Probably. Are there people that would characterize Putin as strong and trad that like the CIA?
Walterodim
Only equals speak the truth, that’s my thought on’t
1mo ago
I think I pretty much endorse this, even though I recognize that there's a fully general version of it that could be pretty mindkilling. Nonetheless, when someone sneers that free will is incoherent and would have to be powered by magic, I might as well just respond, "yeah, isn't magic cool?". I don't really buy that their argument amounts to much more than, "I don't understand it, so it must be magic", but since I don't think I actually understand it either, I might as well shrug and declare that it is indeed magic.
Walterodim
Only equals speak the truth, that’s my thought on’t
4mo ago
Seems obviously stupid, like a waste of time to admit the not-very-bright kid, but I just don't care very much. Life isn't going to be fair in every individual example, but it's fair enough that I'm not really going to get wound up that a 1460 kid wound up one rung lower than they "should" be.
Walterodim
Only equals speak the truth, that’s my thought on’t
10mo ago
...lack of access to weapons
The combination of demographics and access to weapons seem to combine to drive murder rates, in my view. As I mentioned in another post, the murder rate among whites in Minnesota and Wisconsin is incredibly low, almost non-existent, and yet there are tons of weapons in the rural areas. The people are just not really the shooty types so much. As @rudig points out, Oslo has some populations that are fairly violent; I would guess that their capacity for large numbers of murder is moderated by their access to firearms. Where the two intersect, Milwaukee and Minneapolis have high murder rates among their black populations - violent subcultures, predicted by demographics, combined with easy access to firearms gives predictably bad outcomes.
Walterodim
Only equals speak the truth, that’s my thought on’t
16d ago
But unless they're exceptionally rude, most girls won't say to your face that your height isn't good enough, so you might well be missing out on those, especially since you say you've only dated the ones shorter or just very slightly taller.
Oh, sure, I accept pretty much without question that genuinely tall girls are right out. They don't want me and I don't want them. Nothing personal. That just doesn't eliminate enough of the pool to really be much of a problem.
To be clear, I'm not claiming that height isn't a distinct life advantage, just that it's a sliding scale rather than categorical. Being doomed to date women that are mostly median height and below isn't really much of a problem. Like a number of other things in life, the good news is that if you get it right even once, you're all set anyway.
Walterodim
Only equals speak the truth, that’s my thought on’t
23d ago
Why not just buy this little guy instead? Same price, low miles, only ten years old, intentionally designed to be that size, and it's even kinda cute. Come to think of it, I ought to buy my wife one of these.
Walterodim
Only equals speak the truth, that’s my thought on’t
2mo ago
"I would respond to someone's principled, albeit harsh, verbal condemnation with physical violence." I'm really not sure that's the kind of argument you want to advocate.
I wrote that this is what I would want to do. Personally, I have pretty strong impulse control, so it's unlikely that I would actually react that way. I wouldn't think less of someone that replied to OP's "advice" with a physical challenge though.
I don't read OP's comment as having contempt for Bob.
This is not consistent with, "as my churning viscera limits my rhetorical strategy from being much more sophisticated than, in so many words, just yelling "CUCK CUCK CUCK" at him".
Slippery slopes are greased by the shrugging nonchalance of the agnostic and conformist.
Yeah, that's why I think the correct response to your putative friend expressing how much they despise your wife and calling you a cuck is feeling an impulse towards violence. I'd be a lot more concerned about the slippery slope of thinking, "well, my wife is a bit of a whore and might deserve to be lonely and miserable forever" than the one where your first impulse is to defend her.
I really don't know how you can read that post and think it's about sincere concern, respect, and values.
Walterodim
Only equals speak the truth, that’s my thought on’t
5mo ago
Sure, I can agree that focusing on looks overly much over competence in an employee might be an example of misalignment from the idealized version of themselves that would be best for a business, but given that the two of them only had a minor difference in terms of competency, I don't particularly care.
My view on the matter seems common in practice, but uncommon to articulate, which is that being around attractive people is more pleasant and that all else equal, I would always choose the more attractive person. In the United States, so many people are grotesquely fat that it's easy to opt into being way more attractive than the median simply by being reasonably physically fit, which also makes attractiveness a marker for character.
Walterodim
Only equals speak the truth, that’s my thought on’t
6mo ago
You're right, I should have explicitly stated that I was referring to "Islamophobia" being unacceptable in liberal circles and coding as a hard-right sentiment. The JP columnist I linked to is very much on the broader left, and I suppose I still think of that set as my ingroup.
Walterodim
Only equals speak the truth, that’s my thought on’t
11mo ago
The balance expressed by a pro rock climber who can also run a marathon is much more interesting than the specialization expressed by a 5'6" skeleton ambling to a 2hr45m marathon time.
Strong disagree. The only reason the former seems "balanced" is that pretty much all fit humans are at least somewhat decent at running, so they're capable of doing a crappy job of running a marathon. This is pretty much the equivalent of the fact that most runners can do at least some pushups - they're still mostly bad at it and it doesn't demonstrate that they're complete athletes because they can do a little bit of another sport.
I also reject the false dichotomy. One of the guys I run with is 5'6" and roughly 170 pounds and is a 2:35 marathoner. Running pretty fast for amateurs doesn't require a skeletal frame.
Marathon running might be kinda bimodal in terms of interest: it is interesting to watch pros try to break 2hrs, and interesting to watch complete rank amateurs try to gut it out, but it's not that interesting to watch a bunch of junior product engineers try to break 4hrs.
I have no idea what's interesting about watching amateurs try to gut it out. They're basically just not even trying to do the activity. If you already know going in that you're going to spend a bunch of time walking, then you're simply not running a marathon.
Marathoning is boring to watch no matter what the level is and I won't try to convince anyone otherwise, but gimmick versions of running that skirt around someone just having shitty conditioning doesn't make it more interesting.
Of course, the drugs seem to work like shit compared to be an authentically mentally healthy human being. I expect that Wegovy and similar drugs will wind up similar on a number of dimensions. I genuinely cannot imagine preferring a lifetime of pill popping to just riding a bike.
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