anti_dan
2mo ago
There's an obvious point here where ordinary cops have a real job maintaining public order, whereas nothing about what ICE does requires them to act the way they do other than the appetite for ostentatious thuggery.
Please elaborate. Given the Resistance (TM) to ICE doing its job's increasing boldness and aggression, escalations by ICE officers are predictable, if unfortunate.
anti_dan
2mo ago
It's not a big problem anyway because the police have the ability it catch criminals without threatening their lives.
This assertion would be big news to every police officer I know.
anti_dan
2mo ago
Given that the cop deliberately created a dangerous situation by standing in front of the car, I do think it is entirely reasonable for him to bear the responsibility of accurately determining the risk of the situation he put himself in.
Isn't the job of a cop creating dangerous situations? Their purpose is legalized kidnapping of persons suspected of a crime or of impeding public order.
but it's just a fact that death is far too severe a consequence for what is a fairly minor offence.
I find this sentiment naive and disturbing in how widespread it is and how often it gets invoked by people complaining about police shootings. Enforcing any law, no matter how minor, will eventually end in a death if the person committing the crime is committed enough to not complying.
anti_dan
2mo ago
You more or less staked out my position, and the important point is that most situations involving self defense are hard to apply boilerplate to. Often each one is unique to itself. We saw this with Rittenhouse as well, his incredible trigger discipline rubbed some people as evidence that he was a madman, others recognized it as a display of calmness in chaos and good training. I am typically inclined to give the benefit of the doubt to the person claiming self defense, not just police, but also to someone who's in the opposite situation, that of being a driver being surrounded by a mob of people. It is very difficult to re-create from video the real world tensions and feelings that were being generated. Was the lady actually trying to kill him? Probably only she, the officer, and maybe his partner have any real insight, and one of those 3 is dead.
anti_dan
2mo ago
I think this is wrongheaded way to think, for one big reason, is I wish a lot of it were true, but it simply isnt. If Trump can't shrink the federal workforce, there is not going to be a deterrent effect. Federal employment isn't some high-prestige-low-pay proposition anymore. Its Mid-Mid. If you threaten the stability levels you aren't going to run out of candidates. In fact, most the lawyers and engineers I know that work for the feds basically got a huge pay bump and a lifeline out of failing careers in private practice to go federal. Those people aren't deterred by a few weeks or even months of interruptions so long as the civil service protections get them their back pay. If the AOC administration wants to hire 5000 new lawyers for the EPA to write crushing green regulations it will easily find 30,000 "underemployed" zealots to fill those positions, that, even if fired 4 years later, will have had 4 years where they made 30% more while working 50% less than they did at some PI or SSDI mill that advertises on billboards on the side of the highway.
The migrants issue is a little rosier from my POV. The fact that no laws were changed, and the border was significantly sealed AND people are getting deported I think does have a real incentive effect. But that is not some wrecker thing, its just actually following the law as written, and particularly with regards to border security, its what Americans have been asking for for basically 40 years at this point. The deportations are occasionally uglier, but that is just how its going to be when the majority of corporate media is hostile to any sort of action. I could, as a police chief, run an operation where my goal is to confiscate firearms from convicted felons, and the public perception of it would be largely determined by how the 3-4 local tv stations cover it. If they like me I'm making the streets safe, if they don't I'm racistly putting minorities in prison, and they will pick the appropriate video footage to so portray me (angry man with a gun vs. graduation picture of a guy whos now 29).
I do wish we could scare the Euros straight as well, I think they are too foolish for it though. They wont figure out self defense. They will continue to jail people for teaching their dogs to salute, or for complaining about their daughters being raped in impolite ways. Even the financial sanctions on the international court people wont get them to change their ways (just like the federal employees, its again a cadre of mediocrities making lots of money for doing little at all).
anti_dan
2mo ago
I dont think that is true. Anti-AA folks with say that is both unfair to the candidates, but also unfair to customers and shareholders. Particularly with government positions, anti-AA advocates have long said it is cheating the public. I do think that the sentiment that ignoring the output is a necessary assumption of the pro-AA side, or at least hiding it/ignorance of it.
anti_dan
2mo ago
What percentage of federal workers with a clearance are actually underpaid these days? The GS salary structure is not miserly, particularly if you are somewhere other than Northern Virginia, and the feds have often recruited for more permanent positions (places like the DOJ are often temporary places of employment for strivers and are outliers) middling candidates. Paired with stability of employment and the generous retirement programs and it seems like a good deal for a lot of them. Particularly given in a lot of these positions, maintaining clearance once you are out of government is not guaranteed and losing it would mean losing your private sector position.
anti_dan
2mo ago
It is not uncommon at all. Other than the standard fare of boyfriends and stepdads, a very common scenario is that the son/brother/spouse of a woman running one of these "home child care" places just abuses several of the kids.
anti_dan
2mo ago
It’s almost scarier if it turns out these are all technically legit businesses and the government was just this bad at not getting Dutch Booked.
Some of them are technically legit, and the people who work in child sex crimes units will agree that it is scarier. Although, not so much because the government is getting bilked.
anti_dan
2mo ago
This is why porn is dangerous; it creates such expectations in society, then normalises them, so 13 year old boys are now faking nudes of 13 year old girls for sexual gratification. And not a stranger or any random 13 year old, someone they know. Someone who will get the reputation among her peers of being easy, a whore, all the negatives that the "coerce women to have sex with men they don't want" posters on here like to throw at women. Creating expectations that she'll agree to sexual activity of some kind with random boys, because hey I've already seen your nudes.
I agree! The problem is porn. The problem does not lie with 13 year old boys using the tools provided to them to get quality fapping in.
anti_dan
2mo ago
The story is they took pictures already existing and nudified them. I highly doubt they were pictures of her wearing a burka. The point is not that their behavior was good, just that it is expected of teenage boys. Allowing some girls father to beat up your son because he did a thing that father would have done to your sister if the tech existed in the 90s is an absolutely stupid reaction.
anti_dan
2mo ago
Are you hardcore no-fap? Not that I think the dissemination and whatever other social stuff around this is outstanding, but obtaining nudes of cute girls in your high school would have been considered a high accomplishment for high school boys as long as high school and photos have existed.
Like with all porn the AI nudes are a little queer. Its much higher status and much better behavior to seduce her in real life, but some edits to an already existing thirst-trap image is hardly something you should let your son be beat over. I'd suggest the more appropriate action is the girl is removed from any ability to be online and the boy has to agree to supervised courtship if the girl's father so demands.
anti_dan
2mo ago
That is one of the main problems with consent as a standard. It does not hold up under any of the hard cases.
anti_dan
2mo ago
anti_dan
2mo ago
Most of these seem outright counterproductive if you want more children. People have more children when life is difficult and uncertain no matter what they do, and someone will probably turn out sickly or disabled, so you're best off having six kids and hope half of them turn into productive adults who can provide a buffer for the rest.
I mostly agree with this overall sentiment. The problem is family formation is delayed, which makes women have less than the number of kids they want, which if they had the number they want would be a bit low, but still high enough to not make our populations look like inverted pyramids.
So, the simplest solution is do the opposite of what we have been doing: shorten school, and make the shorter school a better employment signal. This means, High School ends at 16 or 17, and college is 3 years. Both having vigorous entrance and exit exams intended to mean only people who really need college go, and only those who are super qualified finish. Law and medicine would also be reformed to fit into this new system and you'd be done with those in 3 or maybe 4 years after HS. Oh, and because college entry and exit is actually hard again, fewer women will do it, which dulls hypergamy effects.
anti_dan
2mo ago
UBI is also impossible financially. Social security's minimum payments right now are about $21k/year. So just for the walking around money part 5.5-6 trillion. But social security is mostly supporting people who get free medical care and have already figured out housing and substantial assets to draw upon. Healthcare adds another $5 trillion in needed value to the outlays, and housing is another 1.6 trillion. Sum that up and we have total outlays of about 13 trillion for the UBI, approximately double the current total budget.
anti_dan
2mo ago
My God, any potential mates are out there having sex, commitment-free sex, and are economically independent, plus picky about who they'll eventually settle for? They have options and freedom and exercise those options? How appalling!
What they are missing is both knowledge and responsibility. Current women are not good at evaluating their worth on the dating market.
anti_dan
2mo ago
So you keep saying. Women would argue that the problem is with men. We could go back and forth on to what degree this is self-centered female narcissism (your preferred theory) and to what degree this is men being of genuinely lower quality and women not actually needing to settle to avoid starving. You hate "men need to step up," but some men really do need to step up, and by that I do not mean they need to wife up carousel-riding Cathy at age 35, but I mean I see a hell of a lot of men who don't really bring much to the table at all other than "Penis, not a drug user (unless you count weed), has a job." Why would a woman want to settle for that if she doesn't have to? Why would you settle for that level of pickings?
Because she does have to if she wants a long term relationship. The same 100% of women can't all have long term relationships with the 5% of men they swipe right on on the apps. If you are a college graduate woman working some office job, or at a school, you are a dime a dozen. You are the female equivalent of like a construction worker who drinks too much Budweiser during every Thursday night football game and ends up hungover at work Friday.
anti_dan
2mo ago
Yeah, I think the old belief that women are more romantic than men, on average, isn’t true. That’s not to say that women don’t read romance novels more than men, or that many women don’t have a great interest in romance, but there’s a revealed preferences sense in which men feel the lack of a partner more acutely than men do.
There is a large and real asymmetry to these two types of singles. Any woman that is not currently sleeping next to a man has the option of doing so so long as she is not completely grotesque. Like any of the "girlboss" types that are single and are proudly single, still can call or swipe on any single guy in the vicinity and simply trade a little fornication for companionship for at least a few days. A single man simply doesn't have that option. Even the guys who are 6'+ and great looking don't routinely get instant hookups from the apps.
anti_dan
2mo ago
While this was outright fraud, the fact is that there is lots of "legitimate" subsidized childcare that is also horrible. DCFS of every state will have hundreds of places on file that are allegedly childcare facilities that are just the basement of a minority woman's apartment building where she gets high all day and collects government bucks while her friends get high elsewhere.
How these schemes normally hit the radar of authorities is when the boyfriend of the woman whos allegedly running this childcare facility starts molesting the children and one finally outcries in a legible way to someone who actually cares. Which is rare.
From my POV, the fact that these childcare centers appear almost completely fraudulent is almost a happy scenario. If children were actually enrolled they would almost certainly be being sex trafficked.
anti_dan
2mo ago
A lot of states will mandate accepting these funds. So you are probably looking for expulsions and the reasons for them.
anti_dan
2mo ago
His rant isn't really about laziness though. Laziness is not what causes people to prioritize "prom queens" and "jocks". Indeed, the prom queen and the jock are examples of excellence in their own fields, that being maintaining physical beauty + good social status and athletic prowess. And what he further gets wrong is thinking these things are somehow anti-correlated with the things he would personally like to see popularize like "math olympiad champ" and "valedictorian", while in America they are not. Perhaps if he were more in tune with real American culture he wouldn't be buying into left wing movie tropes as indicative of real life. But here, in the real world, you can be prom queen and get a 1500 on your SAT and maintain a quality GPA (whatever that means in 2025 is not something I know, when I went to HS 4.0 was still considered exceptional, but grade inflation has probably changed that). In the real world you can win a science competition while making all conference or all state on the football team (or in my case winning a regional title in an individual sport).
Indeed, if we drill down into Vivek's screed, it is simply self serving ignorance. It was a bunch of jocks, who happened to also be brilliant, who ran the British Navy as it established an empire that easily subjugated Vivek's people, and Americans of the same ilk then won the world wars and beat back communism (which, again, Indians thought was really cool). But he attacks things he does not know, and/or cannot compete on (and in fact many other Indians tend to struggle in these realms as well). No mention of his sporting in his background, and we would expect from his rant he was not prom king. Indians as a whole struggle with athletics, having the lowest Olympic medals/capita of any large nation.
And is there a laziness problem? Yes, but it is not some problem with Prom Queens failing to cram in a dozen extra problem sets a day so they can get their SAT score from a 1400 to a 1450, and its not because some jock does a half ass job on some meaningless homework assignment given to him by an overeducated English teacher who couldn't get with the jock she liked when she was in HS. No, its the stoners and the antisocial kids that need to be reformed, but since Vivek buys into the Hollywood high school myths of dumb jock and repressed genius that gets shoved into lockers he doesn't have any real applicable solutions. Instead he has a dumb rant against the very great things about America that cause America to put every other country into the metaphorical locker.
anti_dan
2mo ago
This anti - Vivek rhetoric is wild to me. He was one of the most eloquent avid culture warriors and had the skin color and balls to say what everyone was thinking more than Trump or DeSantis.
Huh? Vivek went on a rant about American laziness wherein he listed a bunch of reasons why America would crush India in a war and somehow came to believe they were bad things.
anti_dan
2mo ago
This whole thing is depressing. Writing like that should practically get you removed from a liberal arts course. The student admitted in interviews that she never read the article.
The issue is that this is the level of the writing that other students have successfully coerced universities into giving high grades to over the last 30 years. If she had just done a woke AI slop essay with no citations she gets a solid 9/10 or whatever. So the "standards" argument is completely specious.
High speed chases are worse than cops just shooting the fleeing driver. They put not just the driver at risk, but the police and the rest of the public. At least if you shoot the criminal the worst that can happen is a minor criminal is dead. In a high speed chase you can have dozens of civilians killed.
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