anti_dan
1yr ago
shared a deranged conspiracy theory about parents of victims of kids who died in school shootings, the damages might be lessened.
Sharing a deranged conspiracy theory is bad for the universe, in court what usually happens is the plaintiffs get laughed at and shown the door 2 weeks after they file.
anti_dan
1yr ago
The damages, as traditionally calculated, would not be lessened. The damages as calculated by an incredibly emotional jury, seemingly empaneled by an emotional judge, might be.
Running a CW podcast shouldn't legally have higher risks. In many ways its supposed to have less than a money podcast, because there are actually very specific rules about financial advice.
anti_dan
1yr ago
The NA region actually has more players than the Korean region, and there are serious incentives to get a high-performing team together.
Where are you getting this stat? It was never true during the Korean heydey a couple of years ago. Particularly when comparing ranked play.
America's computer game mediocrity is mostly attributable to console-culture (Japan also lags) and geography. The first means the American playerbase for most computer games is small compared to other countries, or is on the casual console version. The second means the average American has shit ping in online play. Back at launch, LOL's servers were in LA, which meant 80% of the US population was on over 70 ping.
anti_dan
1yr ago
Chess, LOL, and Soccer are all examples of competitions the US is bad at for, IMO almost the exact same reason: They require very high investment from children and teens, and have almost no benefit to you if you don't make it.
Other countries have less high of an upside for a smart and talented people going a conventional direction (and obviously less of a downside of failure because of more generous welfare states and less college enrollment, which means white collar women can't turn their noses up at plumbers and truckers like they do in the US), like investment banking or tech. American football and Basketball are nowhere near the skill expression of soccer and tennis, demonstrated by the many many pros who picked up the sport at something like age 16, so they are much easier for the dumb, but athletic to get into at any age.
So yeah, I don't think these things matter much on the big stage.
anti_dan
1yr ago
There are plenty of people with other mental illnesses that are happy and well adjusted. Alcoholics come to mind. Pedophiles and bestiality-practitioners would be in this category if their conduct was not stigmatized and illegal. That doesn't mean they aren't mental illnesses in general which we need to treat with a deterrence treatment, rather than an encouragement treatment.
anti_dan
1yr ago
Because some places are private and thus by design everything going on there is a he-said-she-said. We don't like rape and non-consensual groping, so we go about in ways to reduce them. Gender segregated private areas is the least bad solution to this problem.
On top of that, women, in the feminist age, wanted to have access to some traditionally male activities for things like developing leadership skills, fitness, etc. They would have no hope to not be crushed in the competition (and severely injured in most) without gender segregation.
anti_dan
1yr ago
Liver disease from alcoholism isn't all that much different in life reduction from hormone therapy + full transition surgeries. The resulting creations are a constant infection risk somewhat akin to an open wound, for the rest of the person's life. Plus, there is little evidence of affirmation actually reducing suicide rate, whereas the suicide rate does plummet for kids who give up on the notion before hormones and surgery.
So there is a massive gain to the individual if they are deterred. There is also a massive gain to society because the deterred is a healthy adult who can procreate.
anti_dan
1yr ago
True, but if you go by the Wunderlic which the NFL famously used to administer to all incoming rookies, the average NFL player is slightly above the American average, ~105 IQ. But there are several position groups like running back and cornerback where the average IQ is far below 100.
anti_dan
1yr ago
Fox News has been the #1 cable news channel for 20 years
And yet none of the CBS, ABC, or NBC newsmagazines or Sunday morning talk shows have taken note and even pivoted to neutrality. They remain staffed with left of center ex-Clinton and ex-Obama staffers with panels that, at best can be expected to have one milktoast Republican as a whipping boy.
anti_dan
1yr ago
I know people who genuinely and sincerely claim to have heard God talking to them - not in a delusional "God spoke words to me and told me I was the Chosen One" kind of way, but in a "I absolutely know for a fact that God is real because I have Experienced Him" kind of way. And people who've had like religious and/or allegedly supernatural experiences which I consider as delusional or non-real as any trans identification.
I don't think they're crazy or trolling, and while I won't pretend I believe that their experiences are real, nor will I start a fight with them. I don't feel obligated to sneer and say "You're just experiencing things you've convinced yourself are real."
But this isn't anything like a trans person. If a person sincerely (or trollishly) says they've experienced god, nothing changes for you. You need not call him "Holy One". This god experiencer doesn't then start undergoing sterilizing medical procedures. There is nothing to start a fight over.
anti_dan
1yr ago
money (clothes, make-up, perfume, hairdressing etc. are not cheap).
Except 90% of the choices women make in this arena are negative for sexual attraction of men. Thereby blowing the whole theory out of the water. Imagine men wearing orange overalls and telling every woman they meet they are an alcoholic and you have an approximation of women's fashion over the last 2 decades.
anti_dan
1yr ago
Yes, fashion is intra-female signaling. That there are no straight men in the industry is proof enough of that.
anti_dan
1yr ago
And I’m left asking, can we predict that? How can we predict how leaders will react under pressure? How can we predict how wars and matters of state will conclude if they hinge on these personal decisions of individual, fallible, men?
I think at least Re: Zelensky, there is a plausible, well worn model: Follow the money. Specifically, Zelensky and many of the people that kept Kiev Ukrainian have patrons in Western Europe, patrons whose interests are not served at all (or mostly not) by a government in exile. Since Euromaiden there has been lots of investment in Ukraine. Investments that would be seized and redistributed to Russian oligarchs if Ukraine falls. There are lots of politicians who have a finger in these investments. Some of the legitimate kind, and many of the Paul Manafort/Hunter Biden grifty kind. Sure, being under Putin would be a bit worse for the average Ukrainian, and some people legitimately believe in spreading Democracy, but its much easier to understand if you realize that there are large interests in maintaining a West-friendly kleptocracy, as well as lots of interests in spending lots of money to make things go boom, and Americans and Europeans have no stomach for their own boys doing this at the moment, so Ukrainian boys making Russian boys go boom with Lockheed supplies is great for business.
anti_dan
1yr ago
I disagree with your Hillary point, in that I disagree with your evaluation of how hard it is to do what she did. Given how sloped the media and social media environment is, my prior is that any Democrat that doesn't win in a landslide is a schmuck.
anti_dan
1yr ago
Saddam didn't have a friendly border to slowly fall back to and ultimately cross. Ukraine is much muddier than Iraq, and obviously the Russian military is not the US military. Even assuming exemplary performance by the Russians, a walking person would have stayed ahead of their advances, on average.
anti_dan
1yr ago
Both are far too valorizing of Zelensky. He just kept making the choice that was best for him personally. If I do a date-limited search about him you get results like this:
Right Before the Invasion: https://www.nytimes.com/2022/02/21/opinion/ukraine-russia-zelensky-putin.html
The tenor of all the articles I found is this: Zelensky is inherently an actor, he plays what role he thinks suits him.
Now lets go right after: https://www.cnn.com/2022/02/25/europe/volodymyr-zelensky-profile-cmd-intl
Tenor is: He's picked his role, and that role is hardass.
Now a few months after the invasion: https://www.wsj.com/articles/who-is-volodymyr-zelensky-ukrainian-president-11646161781
Grizzled face of the Ukrainian resistance.
But what changed about his posture? Nothing ever. He just kept doing what was best for his image, and the press slowly came around to embracing the image that gave him the most prestige and power. The posture has allowed him to crack down on domestic opposition parties, Russian-connected and not. Its gotten his country a military slush fund. What would fleeing have brought him? An end to his political power, an end to his future financial prospects, and embarrassment as Ukrainian militias kept up the fight as he hides in Warsaw.
anti_dan
1yr ago
whole rest of the division said "2016 is more of a rebuilding season for us."
Did you see who was available? They said that because it was literally true. Basically everyone's been bemoaning what Obama did the the DNC's bench since 2014.
anti_dan
1yr ago
Jeb was pretty uniquely bad, and had gobbled the institutional support, which made the rest of the field weird. In the end the other problem was Ted Cruz was the Trump challenger the people wanted, but none of the institutions wanted to try that until way too late.
John, My Father was a Postman, Kasich basically ego'd Trump to a smooth victory instead of what could have been an interesting match.
anti_dan
1yr ago
I mean, you make some good points, but I'm still confused who cleared the deck for her and why she was somehow so much better at it 8 years after failing said task to lose to a Jr. Senator from IL, who she was trouncing going into primary season. Klobuchar is one, meaningless name. She couldn't even compete with Sanders and Biden in 2020.
anti_dan
1yr ago
My priors, like with other red state election security measures, is that it will spend some amount of money to accomplish precisely nothing,
It will accomplish exactly as much as courts allow it to. Anecdotally, I've never cast an in-person vote in a blue city wherein voting procedures were followed. This is 3 major cities in the midwest, east, and southeast. What this amounts to is that, if judges follow the law, pretty much every vote coming out of Dem cities can be thrown out.
What will actually happen is left to the readers' imagination.
anti_dan
1yr ago
I've never had ID checked in a mandatory ID state (4x), never had my signature be rejected in a non-ID state (3x) even when I just scribble nonsense. Electioneering is regularly allowed right outside of and in the polling place, despite laws against this. Ballot control is non-existent, boxes are just stacked around and rarely sealed. Same day registrants are frequently brought in en masse and registered without the statutorily required amount of documentation. Students are registered on campus without fulfilling the mandatory residency requirements.
anti_dan
1yr ago
I've not been back to Madison in a long time, but last I went it was much more of a Suburb/Exurb vibe than actually a city. I'd expect their polling places are staffed largely by the same sort of old women as in my parents' hometown. I'd also expect it to look orderly and everyone to queue. If you aren't seeing a "fellow voter" who you suspect peed on themselves recently or is actively high on something other than marijuana you aren't really getting the real urban experience.
Although, being a college town, I'd expect Madison to have quite a bit of registration fraud.
anti_dan
1yr ago
some people are clearly using the word differently
True, but they aren't using it coherently. People who use gender as different than sex vacillate between "quixotic mental state" and "fashion" and possibly a few other definitions, but they cannot and will not ever pin it down.
anti_dan
1yr ago
Were groups belonging to this tribe never sympathetic to the Soviets, or at least suspected of such?
There were vast groups of elites in favor of the Soviets. The Rosenbergs were the tip of the iceberg. Many people defended them for decades until the Venona telegrams came out and then they all went silent and tried to pretend they weren't Rosenberg tankies all along.
Moreover, what do the elites stand to gain here?
Domestic threats to them vastly outweigh international threats now. China is ostensibly on their side as they have shifted to a sort of international corporatism (aka control of corporations) as a governing philosophy. When you say "death of the USSR" what you are ignoring is the more important thing: death of people. The same thing happened in the south with regards to Jim Crowe. The Jim Crowers rarely switched anything, from political party to being racists, etc. Instead, they died out. Same happened with the USSR hawks who were wary of the left. They have aged out of the intelligence agencies, and were bad stewards at replacing themselves. They relied on credentials (for legal or other reasons) instead of attempting to measure in any meaningful way the alignment of their new hires' interest with the American public, and as such it now has significantly deviated from that.
In general jury decisions are quite reasonable when it comes to who is culpable. But the more emotional and political a case is, the less likely (this is both, but the jury didn't even have the chance to decide on liability here).
In general, jury damage awards are entirely unreasonable. The more political and emotional the more unreasonable, but I've basically never seen one that wasn't greatly modified by the judge or an appellate court.
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