anti_dan
9mo ago
Even if I took all of your post as sincere and true, I'd still be running into confusion as to why the environmental movement has caused nuclear to 10x in price, inflation adjusted. The confusion isn't, "why does this particular person dislike shale?" It is, "why does the general movement of people who dislike shale also dislike nuclear?"
You appear to have a specific view on shale that is far more specific and niche than 99.99% of people who oppose shale could ever express. I like shale because it is an avenue that circumvents the anti-energy caucus for now. I am in favor of all cheap energy, hydro, coal, oil, shale, etc. As long as it foils the anti-energy people, and keeps us advancing towards a day where energy is actually sustainable, I am good. The people who think they can force it via regulation are evil or naive. So called "green" energy is already overinvested, and mostly rubbish.
anti_dan
6mo ago
TBH, what is the difference? If Israel blew up a hospital, it probably contained Hamas operatives and weapons (there are none in Gaza known to lack such things, ditto schools, retirement homes, and all other potentially sympathetic targets). Lets say IDF missile launch operator #112 misread an intelligence report that said a mass barrage was about to be launched from the roof of Mecca Hospital in Gaza, and instead leveled Medina Hospital. What would change? there would still be operatives and a weapons cache there in most cases. In the incredibly unlikely scenario that there was not, fog of war is fog of war. Is Israel not allowed to make a mistake when targeting rocket launch sites? Police forces in the 1st world are certainly not held to such a standard in active shooter or hostage scenarios (both of which are easy to deal with compared to the current situation in Gaza). If a hostage in a bank heist is wearing a Nixon mask and charges a police officer the PO is not put on trial for shooting said Nixon masker.
All that said, its probably not Israel, because they know they are held to a standard that is higher than almost any other country in history. Most would have ethnically cleansed the West Bank and genocided Gaza by now. Israel might be the only country in history to show such restraint.
anti_dan
1yr ago
Men can either deal with it or not
Except, as is regularly ignored, that is asking the wrong question. Miranda he 33 year old lawyer with 42 partners and chlamydia is basically guaranteed to be miserable for the next 45 years of her statistical life. She will have no, or at best many fewer children than she wants. She will not, statistically, be happy with whatever man she settles down with (if she finds one to do so with at all).
In other words, framing it as "men can just suck it up" is like looking at a rash of teenage girls cutting themselves and thinking, "well teenage boys will just have to deal with seeing scars on their girlfriends." Sure that is a secondary effect that negatively impacts the teenage boys, but the girls are the ones being primarily damaged, and they are the one's who we can treat. And then after that treatment the boys will have a spillover benefit of unscarred girlfriends.
anti_dan
1yr ago
Because it is akin to the government subsidizing courses to teach QAnon conspiracy theories as the truth.
anti_dan
1yr ago
Do wine connoisseurs enjoy The Rings of Power?
AKA, is wearing skin suits actually a virtue?
The question is prompted from the Scott article, as well as the discussion of said article here. Not to call out any user, but I find some of these responses illustrative:
From FiveHourMarathon
But even more on point, to a wine aficionado, saying you don't appreciate good wine is just like saying to me that you would sooner buy a Lay-z-Boy recliner than an Eames lounger. If you don't see the difference, you just aren't one of our sort, which is a small subset of people but it's one to which I belong. I recall an argument here before where an interlocutor (since departed) told me that he saw no difference between consuming LibsOfTikTok and reading Marx's Kapital, I remember thinking this is just such a disconnect there's no way to even explain it.
A more Motte-ish analogy to the different studies Scott cites here: take three authors, Scott Alexander, Stephanie Meyer, and Honoree Jeffers. Scott cites studies where mass consumers are given different wines, if you gave mass book consumers passages from the works of each of those three authors most would prefer Meyer. Scott cites studies in which experts were given wines, if you gave literary experts passages from each they'd pick Jeffers every time. Yet I'd pick Scott every time, and there's a subset of people who would pick Scott who I align with, and to call literary skill "fake" is an absurd (repugnant?) conclusion.
I'd argue that wine is no more fake than literature.
From Paracelsus
I'm with you, and in fact this is the thread that finally got me to stop lurking on the new site and set up an account (under a different name, not that I posted a lot or was well-known on the sub beforehand).
I think what a lot of people here, Scott included, are missing is that wine is not just about the taste. In the same way that literature is not just about the plot. The style of the prose, which gives the book structure, usually matters much more than the story itself. And the background behind the work--the circumstances in which it was written, and when and where and why the author wrote it--also contribute to the importance of a work. Sum up Moby Dick in a sentence or two and it doesn't sound very interesting. But actually reading it is an entirely different experience.
Wine is basically the same way. The taste matters, of course. Nobody wants to drink a bad wine. But for a wine lover, it's just as important to explore WHY it tastes that way... what the winemaker chose to do, how that year's vintage compared to the year before, where the vineyards are, how the climate at the vineyards affects the growing conditions, whether the winery has been around for 30 years or 500.
Not everybody needs to care about these things... there's nothing wrong with buying an $8 wine, or a $30 or $70 big-brand wine without much character to it. There's nothing wrong with reading Dean Koontz or John Grisham or James Patterson novels either! But there's so much more depth out there, for those who are interested, and that transcends far beyond just the actual flavors in the wine.
Both these arguments, to me, seem to argue in favor of The Rings of Power. It does not matter that anyone who watched the show and read the books could identify that they are not related in any way aside from labeling. Labeling, and what it implies is POWERFUL and should affect your experience. Shut up and drink the $2000 wine, its good because the label says it is. Just like ROP is good because it has the LOTR label. We should ignore the actual show, its writing, CGI, etc deficiencies because it has the label, and that label has history and work behind it.
But, from my POV, I find I prefer the opposite. I only wish to give prestigious labels to things I consider prestigious. Marvel studios has lost the right to call its outputs Marvel. Star Wars is not. ROP is not Tolkien. They are all inferior products wearing skin suits of better brands that they happened to have the money for. Why wouldn't wine be the same? Surely I acknowledge that is the truth in my libation of choice: Beer. Goose Island is dead to me as a brand despite being one of my favorites earlier in life. They simply have gone the Rings of Power path. I can taste it. I don't know when it happened, but it has, most of their beers are now gross. Why couldn't the same have happened to a French winery founded in 1273?
anti_dan
10mo ago
Dont forget: They still want to have sex with "your children" as a group. That some of them dont identify an individual 10 year old they want to bang at 10, 12, 16, or 18 is still only a small defense. If a bunch of heterosexual men started going to girls schools espousing the merits of unprotected sex and then we saw a spike in teenage mothers, few in the media would fail to recognize the connection.
anti_dan
1yr ago
This brings me to my first point: Atlas Shrugged in schools. A book which inspires diehard followers to spend their time and money bringing its insights to the unenlightened masses. A book which, simultaneously, people must be paid to read. That contrast is enough to make Atlas Shrugged useless in the eyes of public schools; it would be enough even if elites were united in their admiration for Rand's alien prose.
What? Every book in public schools is foisted upon the students.
anti_dan
1yr ago
The answer is no, they don't know it will make it "suck" because they don't care if someone who's read the Silmarillion doesn't like what they did to Tolkien's lore. Nobody else (sigma the tiny, tiny percentage of the audience who's read the Silmarillion) cares either. MCU movies aren't made for you, the middle-aged dude who has boxes of X-Men and Avengers comics from the 80s in your cave. They are made for the new viewers they want to attract.
Yes, this is their attitude, and it is objectively wrong. Wide appeal never works without hardcore buy in. The hardcores are the tastemakers of virtually every IP, perhaps rom-coms excepted, I don't know much about that area. "But League of Legends" you will exclaim. Well, first DOTA2 is still incredibly successful despite being punishingly hardcore, and second, its weird you aren't touting the overwhelming success of the super casual Heroes of the Storm, which even had the benefit of tons of loved characters! Fact is, it was way too casual, it couldn't succeed even with you being able to make Jim Raynor fight Diablo and Arthas fight Kerrigan. LOL is the example of what you want to do, balance hardcore appeal and skill expression with the ability to be a bit casual. This is actually what early MCU did. Hardcores enjoyed Iron Man and Captain America. Hardcores don't enjoy She Hulk, and its tanked.
anti_dan
5mo ago
You get banned on most political subreddits for bog standard conservative thought. I was banned from /r/science for asking an AMA poster whether IQ could explain the differences in his group outcomes...
anti_dan
11mo ago
Sure that is a story. But being breakable is easily translatable to domestication so long as breeding isn't a problem. There is no evidence that, for example, Bison or zebras don't breed when put into fences.
If livestock is breakable + breedable, it is maximally easy to domesticate, so long as you have a long timespan outlook. Pigs are seemingly unbreakable and were still domesticated. Under the Diamond theory of the world, pigs would be an order of magnitude harder to domesticate than zebras.
anti_dan
1yr ago
I think it would be easier to list the places where it isn't a problem than list the bad eggs.
anti_dan
3mo ago
Alternatively...Biden could enforce the border. I know it sounds crazy, but at this point its a political win for him to work with Abbot.
anti_dan
10mo ago
I am, along with others it seems, confused by this post.
I think anti-bullying campaigns have gone too far and now are a net negative over the 1950s system. But it makes little sense to talk about nerds/jocks in this context. That is, mostly, a false artifact of Hollywood culture. Almost all the best jocks are also super smart. The CEO of Goldman played Rugby in college. Zuckerberg was the captain of his fencing team, and now has apparently taken a keen interest in training in Jiu-jitsu.
anti_dan
1yr ago
The reaction of right wing populists, elected officials, intellectuals, and media regarding our lovable insane maga hammerbro doing a little trolling are making me wig out. People I thought were wrong but serious passing around clear bullshit about gay escorts, pretending the dude wasn't Q radicalized, and laughing it off. It's one thing for the lunatic fringe to do that shit, it's another entirely when the largest single conservative news network and most popular intellectuals are doing it.
No one would be making Paul Pelosi conspiracy theories if, instead of trying to exploit their own security incompetence for political gain (the second time in 2 years for a Pelosi), all the media was meming them for incompetence. The MSNBC line should be, "Pelosi is clearly too old to secure her own home from drug addled nudists, she should be removed from Democrat leadership and replaced with new blood." The NBC line should be "Once again Nancy Pelosi has failed at basic functions of government, we need to replace her as speaker. Give Jim Jordan a try."
anti_dan
7mo ago
I wasn’t really clear on why choosing a speaker was so hard in the first place, to be honest.
Because the Republican majority is thin, and contains both people who are almost Democrats, full on Tea Partiers, and Full on MAGAs. Given his tiny majority and discordant caucus McCarthy has been possibly the most effective speaker of the last 25 years, adjusting for degree of difficulty. This is Gaetz taking home the ball because he only won 11-10 instead of 11-0 and saying he was fouled every play.
anti_dan
8mo ago
It appears to be quite a lot of words to say not a bit of much. Let us imagine an alternative scenario:
Everything is the same, Trump does all the same things, gives the same speech, but instead of the FBI, DHS, and DOD failing to give the Capitol police up to date intelligence about the size of the protest, they give them that intelligence. Then, being given that, the Capitol police's request for reinforcement from the National guard is not denied by the House and Senate. Thus instead of its barricades being mostly unmanned and folding like a cheap suit, they perhaps stop the riot at the steps. Or, perhaps they just shut and lock the doors.
Who seriously thinks that in such a situation anyone would make a case for insurrection?
So, we see the truth: The whole thing is actually about incompetent security. Possibly intentionally incompetent.
anti_dan
8mo ago
I don't think this is true, or at least it's not true in a golden rule sense. If for example you identify as a heterosexual man, but people in your life consistently refused to respect your identity as such, you'd find that pretty offensive I bet.
Explain to me how this affects me? Like all the dudes around me pretend I am gay and thus? The ladies all pretend I'm gay even though they know I am not, so they accept my dates and then make out with me at the bar anyways until the best one "pretends" her way through our wedding and kids and we die together as a totally gay man has totally tricked himself into living like every happy straight man ever. Except he lived life on easymode because he could hang out with any woman at all times (even those with boyfriends which he then could steal away if he so wanted because the delusion only can be maintained up until the boner is in your vagina). What is this burden?
anti_dan
11mo ago
So, in your theory, self defense and defense of other is only available to like, Jon Jones and Chuck Liddel?
anti_dan
1yr ago
I think the norm breaking and hand waving of precedents is very similar in its problematic nature. The issue here isn't that any individual case cannot be justified on some grounds. The issue is that it is being justified for no other reason than the DOJ wanting to justify them. I tried and could not find an equivalent database for the 2018 Capitol riot. As best I could see all but 5 were handled with "‘Post & Forfeit" procedures, with the other 5 being released the next Monday on bail.
anti_dan
1yr ago
The whole Alex Jones trial is banana republic kangaroo court BS. The case would have been thrown out 100x over if it was a different defendant, and now with a ridiculous judgment it is borderline unreasonable for anyone to defend any aspect of the whole farce.
anti_dan
3mo ago
Regarding a podcast, I would be wiling to do one, but it would probably not be on this topic, which I am not passionate about. That being Ray Epps status as a fed or no.
Regarding the specific subsections my points would be:
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The Whitmer case presents a prima facie case that needs to be rebutted by an equally ridiculous prosecution of left wingers to rebut. See also, the abortion cases (protesters at clinics vs. at pro life clinic protesters). Until the FBI entraps lefties by conjuring a kidnapping plot out of whole cloth of a Republican governor you will never satisfy the level of scrutiny you asked for in this interview.
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The value to Democrats is literally the whole game. If you dont care about this point you don't care about the most important thing.
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I am simply saying that it was trivial to prevent J6 from being "a thing". So the fact that it is "a thing" is odd.
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I did not want to invoke this because its silly, but the best analogy of J6 is the Reichstag fire. Maybe it was Commies, maybe it was Nazis. But we know who it benefited. And in many ways it is worse. There is testimony on the record from the former chief of the Capitol police being denied backup.
Do I think a podcast would be beneficial? Maybe. It would take an exorbitant amount of time to assemble the sources, of course, because they are mostly suppressed by search engines. So, it would only really be of benefit to talk about things where you don't stipulate to facts if you have some unpaid interns that can go out and get the transcripts from testimony and bookmark them for us. Otherwise I am going to be saying things and you will be asking for citations that are onerously burdensome to provide.
This isn't even close to fraud. It is just basically random speculation by him and banks. Everything is estimates made by people without even 12% knowledge of what reality is. These cases shouldn't be legal because they are treating art like a science. Its basically punishing a person extra above the bet they wagered just because. "Oh you put $500 on the Bills to beat the Redskins and Jim Kelly lost again on a fluke field goal, well actually we are taking another $2500 from you because reasons."
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