anti_dan
2yr ago
You do realize the effort and investment you've described so greatly exceeds what most people are capable of at 25, right? 6 weeks of vacation? On what planet does the average guy making $40k trying to work up to a position that makes 60k have that? Learning rudimentary foreign language skills? You're talking about something most people simply cannot do. Those with high enough IQs are probably better served just putting in OT at their current company and getting promoted. Use that money to snag a woman.
Teaching English in Korea/Japan is not unheard of, and it does sometimes let you snag a woman, but its mostly a thing only an option for higher status men anyways. Those countries don't let McDonalds workers have work visas.
anti_dan
2yr ago
I don't really believe in diminishing marginal utility in its strong form. I also don't think the modern welfare state does much to eliminate the real sufferings of poverty, its more akin to a heroine drip for addicts. And on top of that, the taxation for a welfare state reduces economic dynamism (as does the welfare state itself, by disincentivizing work for some populations).
Overall, I find the welfare state an overwhelmingly unredeemable invention that only justifies itself with morally monstrous arguments along the lines of "think of the children."
anti_dan
2yr ago
Is this about the cake thing (shopping around for a bakery that wont make a gay wedding cake, just to bring them to court)? Sure, I disagree with what happened there but isn't that painting with a rather large brush? I would also say holding all religious people to the actions of a crazy church would be wrong too.
The cake guy is merely one of many. He's the one who can afford to litigate. Most people merely are forced into compliance.
Do you really think this happens a lot?
Happens a lot is a subjective call. It happening once is enough for everyone to be afraid and walk on eggshellls.
I don't understand this point. Can't we say being gay is fine but maps are bad? Or must we adhere to a slippery slope?
We can try. But the gays don't want that. And its not really clear that there is any line between gays and MAPS that is principled as they all appear to have an interest in lowering every standard.
So a small percentage of people are crazy, therefore everything is bad. Is that really your argument?
I wish the percentage was small. The LGBT mindvirus controls a significant number of public school teachers now.
anti_dan
2yr ago
It shows that free speech does not apply to libel.
It is still very much up in the air that suits so political in nature and related to political debate will be allowed in the reverse scenario. Is the owner of that computer repair shop going to succeed against people who called him a Russian plant? Will lab leak hypothesizers ever recover for being called agents of various states. Indeed, will anyone called a Russian agent in the 2016-current era recover?
anti_dan
2yr ago
Quite the opposite. It is, in many ways, wise to prioritize the votes of land over people. People are silly, particularly when they get packed in. OTOH, the interests of land and cattle are less silly, and more fundamental.
anti_dan
8mo ago
I mean. Its not really about the article itself, although the article is good. The point is true. Gay and transgender ideology have become akin to the pagan/satanic religions of old. Many people have noticed. Scott just figured out the best headline.
anti_dan
2yr ago
Blended salads will go mainstream by 2050--that is, people will blend up what is very obviously originally a salad based on the ingredients (and so different from today's veggie smoothies) and drink it for efficiency's sake.
I doubt this because people don't actually like the ingredients. They like ranch or whatever other gross and caloric dressing they put on, and they don't want to actually know how many calories of it they are consuming, because it will obviously be so much that their salad is about as healthy as fried chicken in ketchup sauce.
People should probably just be like me and admit vegetables are gross, and force yourself to eat a bowl of kale or romaine before the meal starts in a quick, but unsatisfying fury.
anti_dan
1mo ago
When I was forced to play basketball in high school PE class, there were some girls who played with the boys, and I can tell you from first hand experience, a clumsy autistic nerd who’s just getting into shape absolutely cannot just move a 5’10 elite female athlete with broader shoulders than him.
The existence of such a person is a failure of the public schools.
I agree with you with regards to comparing elite female athletes with average guys. But the fact is almost no high school has even one such elite female athlete. Under a proper physical fitness regimen, if the school held a 1v1 tug of war competition girls would win against guys like 5% of the time. That there are so many weak and feeble men is a choice propagated by the system that not only doesn't prioritize physical fitness, it actively discourages it for all but the top percentages. That is why you have guys thinking girls can beat them at things. Because those 20% are working out everyday while he eats potato chips and does nothing. If he merely did 20 minutes of running and 20 minutes of lifting every other day he'd instantly be in the top 5% of females.
I am by no means an elite athlete. That said, I once faced a girl who would go on to be an Olympian in a 1v1 match. I won. It was not close. I wasn't even fully into puberty at the time. I was embarrassed by the existence of the match.
The fact is, if you are losing to girls as a guy in basically every sport but super long distance swimming they are substantially outworking you. If you told George Washington that his country would be dominated by places of child education wherein the average kid just sits all day and cant run a 2 mile sprint to notify the neighbor you need some butter for a pie, he'd be appalled. Movement is the solution. It is, of course, pain as well. But pain is weakness leaving the body.
anti_dan
1yr ago
A few points that I think are salient to the issues presented, but I don't think were appropriately discussed.
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The FBI, prior to J6 had many directives to investigate conservative orgs. There really was no rational and reasonable reason to be doing this, so it is very strong evidence (alongside the cornucopia of evidence discussed here) that there is serious anti-conservative bias at that organization, which obviously is a key cog in the "deep state" as defined in the discussion.
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Yassine didn't think entering the Capitol Building/encouraging that was all that dispositive, and I don't think this was pushed back against enough. Entering the Capitol IS why J6 is "JANUARY SIXTH". If no one enters the building its a boring protest outside the Capitol that has no political value to Democrats at all.
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More buttressing of the problems with J6 is how, if there is no inside job, its just a demonstration of outright incompetency. I will describe a generic building to you: Large masonry structure, at the top of a hill, with armed guards. What have I described? A fort. Julius Caesar could have held the Capitol building against the J6 crowd with 8 men in sandals equipped with no more than some sticks and a few shields. An the Capitol police lose it with dozens of times that manpower? That is, indeed, suspicious.
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Also, chronically under-discussed is how incredibly valuable "JANUARY SIXTH" has been to Democrats. Not only has it been an excuse to prosecute thousands of conservatives in connection to it, not only has it been an excuse to prosecute an opposition candidate for the office of the President, but its been nearly their only political argument for 3 years now. Without J6 they have nothing. That protesters were allowed into the Capitol has resulted in the largest political victory for either party in my lifetime. And that really should mean something to anyone discussing the events of that day.
anti_dan
1yr ago
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."
anti_dan
1yr 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
17d ago
Congress has put many conditions on Medicaid, and only through controversial interpretations of various statutes is PP eligible in any state, let alone South Carolina.
anti_dan
10mo ago
Ive never met someone like Walz. Every person who served I know underplays their service. Every teacher I know doesn't start pedophile adjacent clubs for kids (except the one who was arrested for giving 16 year olds booze and we all knew was a creep). Walz is an outlier in my life in that he simply lies about everything in very important ways. Much more important than Trump saying he had the biggest crowd somewhere. If Walz was in Vance's position he'd already have dropped out, that is how bad he is and how extreme the Democrat media advantage is.
anti_dan
1yr 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
2yr 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
2yr ago
Because it is akin to the government subsidizing courses to teach QAnon conspiracy theories as the truth.
anti_dan
2yr 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
6mo ago
protections against retributive genocide
This is incongruent with the population of Gaza being given political power. Even if Israel for the last 50 years had engaged in solely defensive actions, accepted mass bombings as a thing that happens, and never did any counterstrikes, the Arab Palestinians would still try to genocide them.
anti_dan
10mo ago
I mean, to be fair, no taxes on tips acknowledges a de facto reality: who reports their tips in their tax returns? Enforcement would be impossible. As a handout to Nevada, it makes sense politically.
Taxing tips is basically a huge part of IRS enforcement. It is why you always see stats that most audits are on low-mid income people. The IRS knows they dont report so they audit them and check bank statements, and almost always find the person was committing tax fraud by underreporting tips.
anti_dan
1yr ago
Attempt crimes always have allowed for mistake of fact and are not given the same sentence as the crime itself. Not only is this set of facts enough to prove burglary, it also would prove attempted murder.
This is not akin to the Trump case, because in your case we would know that the alleged felony that the burglar had the mens rea to commit was murder. But in the current case, we do have an exact crime. Instead the prosecution waved at a bunch of statutes and said its possible that Trump committed those crimes (while they and the judge didn't let Trump put on an expert witness who would have said he, in fact, did not violate those laws). This is a novel application of the law in many ways, so its not really serious to compare it to burglary.
Nor even something else like criminal conspiracy, where again you need not succeed in robbing the bank, but it is enough for your gang to buy guns and masks and bags with money signs on them, then drive to the bank, go into the bank, and if you get arrested at the front door, you still are guilty of conspiracy to rob the bank. Again, totally unlike the current situation.
anti_dan
2yr 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
2yr 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
2yr 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
7mo ago
The reason the average trial takes so long to commence is defendant delay. If you shoot a clerk at 7/11 and get picked up that day. You'll be charged by tomorrow, in bond court the day after, indicted and arraigned within 30 days, and the prosecution will be ready for trial in 60. But your public defender (because lets be honest you dont have and cant keep a real job) wont be. And you will flirt with a private attorney half a dozen times. And they will lose the discovery the state already gave them and demand the same video surveillance 10x before trying to get you to plea, and you will flirt with said plea for 3 years before demanding a trial that you will lose. But now it will be a big pain for everyone because the murder detective retired to Florida and all the 7/11 employees who used to maintain that video system now work for wal mart on the other side of the state.
The reason Ron Desantis is still a much bigger threat is almost 80% of Desantis voters have Trump as 2nd choice. Knocking him out hurts Haley. OTOH almost all Haley voters dont have Trump as #2.
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