I think it's more common to have naive Westerners wandering into off-the-beaten-path places and getting robbed/raped/kidnapped/killed/all of the above. US Gov's travel warnings don't come with an "unless you're really cute" exception.
Also I think you're really downplaying novelty effect. John Derbyshire's review of An African In Greenland includes passages on how the Eskimos reacted to a coal-black African guy having never seen one before (they let him sleep alongside their families in the big beds they all shared):
https://www.johnderbyshire.com/Reviews/Miscellaneous/africaningreenland.html
Also that African guy who spread HIV to dozens of Polish women. A lot of people are just drawn to something they've never seen before.
Ezra Klein saying BIden should step aside because of age, and a new candidate be chosen at the convention:
https://old.reddit.com/r/ezraklein/comments/1as537m/democrats_have_a_better_option_than_biden/
There's a link to the podcast episode in the (heavily downvoted) Reddit discussion above.
Quite frankly, that would be quite a stupid thing for Democrats to do. Last time that happened was 1968, with notable results. He then lists alternative candidates such as AOC, Newsom, Cory Booker, Gretchen Whitmer, and a bunch of randoms I've never even heard of, though his top pick is Kamala Harris.
What material does the GOP have on him to make him advise such obvious electoral suicide? Harris would never win, but passing over the black, female VP would come with tons of blowback. Plus all the infighting at the convention would make the DNC look like a party in chaos when they're trying to portray themselves as the stable, responsible alternative to MAGA craziness.
Getting rid of Biden this late in the game is simply not a winning move.
My advice: Get Biden's carcass over the finishing line in November, have Harris step in as replacement sometime early in 2025, and then start figuring out what to do about 2028 with four years breathing room, not a few months of lead time.
aeqno
7mo ago
At some point? They've been leveling buildings by the dozen. You can be pretty sure innocent civilians have already been caught up in this.
aeqno
28d ago
democrats are the party of status-quo predictability, managed decline included if necessary, and republicans are the party of out of left field high variance ideas
Strong disagree. The past 60 years have been Dems instituting sudden breaks with the past, and the Repubs begging for a chance to slow down and catch their breath.
I mean, can you predict what Dems will platform next, denial of which will be a fireable offense in 2030?
aeqno
1mo ago
99.99% of people running unrecognized code are the technologically clueless about to install malware, not tech whizzes building direct from source.
Especially on Windows. If you're actually serious about code and computers, you're almost certainly on Linux/BSD anyway.
aeqno
7mo ago
Some of the footage from Ukraine was really grim, especially the videos of drones finishing off wounded soldiers.
aeqno
2mo ago
heterosexual men denied access to women will never just accept that fact
They have in Japan.
aeqno
7mo ago
The first to get to AGI will most likely be Bay Area tech nerds, and they'll ensure their values dominate the future of the human species.
So the question is, what are those values?
aeqno
2mo ago
He can just refuse to debate, like Trump did. I mean, he won in 2020 without leaving his house.
aeqno
9mo ago
I wonder how hard it is to predict who will marry interracially.
I ran into an old acquaintance the other day and was surprised to find out he married a black woman. Not surprised because he was a raging racist or something. It's just that in our social circles it's still a bit of an unusual thing to do. Looking back, there was nothing about this guy that said "yes, this is precisely the kind of dude who would marry a black woman."
Maybe the big ML models used by dating services are able to identify people more likely to "marry out" than the average user. Either way, it's clear some humans do, and some absolutely never would. What's behind it? Is it genetic? A particular upbringing?
I'm not even sure why I'm so interested in this question, but I am.
aeqno
2mo ago
this issue has lost its place in the news cycle. A quick google overdose deaths topped 112k in 2023
"112k ODs is a statistic"
-Stalin
aeqno
9mo ago
It's also funny that after years of him lambasting people for apologizing to the mob, he's now in full, grovelling apology mode, and more grovelling than any of the other cancellation victims he mocked.
I mean, did he not realize this stuff would come out one day?
aeqno
2mo ago
Could you elaborate on how the P and NP complexity classes are related to this?
If Biden's situation is that bad, the last thing Klein should be doing (if he doesn't want a second Trump term) is shouting it to the world.
Just keep Biden's public appearances to a minimum until November and allow Trump to do his thing.
aeqno
7mo ago
Coz Meloni recognizes she's looking at extinction-tier fertility rates in the native Italian population.
What is she supposed to do? Who's going to pay for the upkeep of all these aging Italians?
aeqno
2mo ago
Anglosphere Turks are largely secularized middle class immigrants who - in Turkish elections - overwhelmingly vote for secular candidates. German Turks are descended from poor Anatolian peasant laborers, and overwhelmingly vote for the Islamist Erdogan.
And all are actually ethnic Greeks.
aeqno
2mo ago
working behind the scenes to ensure a smoother primary win for Biden against Bernie
Why on Earth wouldn't he help out the guy who'd been his VP for 8 years?
Usually the "and then a miracle happens" step is in the middle of a proposal, not at the very beginning.
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