coffee_enjoyer
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User ID: 541
coffee_enjoyer
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3mo ago
The parsimonious explanation is that Musk is using his voice to mold opinion, not to plainly tell the truth. This is “immoral” in the sense that punching someone is immoral, when they have been punching you for years. The news has been doing this forever. Everything else Hanania writes is not a full representation of facts, but a partisan slant to make you dislike Elon (eg, no proof that cutting Department of Ed employees will reduce the longterm collection of debt in any way that it deserves a moment’s thought; no entertaining the notion that he did not cut those specific employees; no entertaining the notion that “build fast and break things” may be the overall utilitarian strategy which simply looks worse when you write a slanted list of all the bad things; etc)
coffee_enjoyer
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3mo ago
Before we go without roofs, roofing companies will increase the wages they offer employees, and roofing companies will increase the quality of life they offer employees (fewer days a week, shorter hours). This is exactly what we want: greater quality of life for lower income and middle income Americans, at the direct expense of the upper class who waste our precious resources on ugly cars, biohazardous laws and Peloton machines. Contrary to popular belief, it has always been a zero-sum game.
coffee_enjoyer
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24d ago
Orthodoxy (like Catholicism) does not establish the social requirements necessary for true Christian life. A person’s social identity must be governed by their faith in a deeper sense. There needs to be real brotherhood where peers esteem and honor each other for faith, where even small infractions may lead to reprimands (as Christ advises), and where there is an implicit pious competition over faith (wherever men gather with a genuine shared aim, implicit competition exists no matter always, as a feature of human nature and Christ ennobles this fact). They must celebrate Christ as their shared superior peer, not just as a figure in a ritual. A person needs to look forward to sharing their faith and progress like they do today with their grades, deadlifts, cars, haircuts, vacations. But actually, no, 10x more than this — but at the very least you need the social institutions which enable and guide it.
For a long period, churches were able to ignore explicating this social requirement, because —
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Churches had a monopoly on the most compelling art, music, and schools, creating an effortless social draw
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Churches were willing to genuinely condemn and excommunicate members whose behavior was not up to par, forming behavioral-belief enforcement, and if a priest heard you were living an unchristian life or denying dogmas, you would face actual condemnation. This condemnation would have real effects on your social identity: your job prospects, marriage prospects, your ability to make friends or to find occasions for fun
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There was no competing religion or science, in a way we can hardly fathom today, meaning the Christian worldview did not need to be reinforced like it did in the earliest days of the religion. If all the smartest people who know the most are Christian, then it is believed as default. (Today we are competing with a secular culture that doesn’t just promote a more compelling argument, but has significantly better media at their disposal, and your child is pressured into attending their institutions).
The current institution doesn’t work. But what would work is if we look at the church Christ established. How did the first Christians thrive despite more scientifically compelling beliefs and more hedonistic movements?
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Brotherhood was enforced via the agape eucharist. This was an intimate feast with real food and wine, had in honor of Christ every week, where all the brothers enforced each other’s social identity in remembrance of Christ, with peer praise and songs. This is the do this in the Lord’s do this in remembrance of me. (Women were kept submissive so as not to derail the vibe, and chastity was enforced so that men do not compete over women.)
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A norm of esteeming each other’s faith was enforced as the prevailing mode of conversation: “Let love be genuine… love one another with brotherly affection. Outdo one another in showing honor. Do not be slothful in zeal, be fervent in spirit.” “Timothy has proved himself, worthy as a son with his father”. "I am reminded of your sincere faith, which first lived in your grandmother Lois and in your mother Eunice.” "I always thank my God as I remember you in my prayers, because I hear about your love and the faith you have toward the Lord Jesus and for all God’s people." "It gave me great joy when some believers came and testified about your faithfulness to the truth, how you continue to walk in it. I have no greater joy than to hear that my children are walking in the truth”. This is all throughout the epistles: men and women are esteemed for their faithfulness and obedience to righteousness. We first see this habit of esteem in Jesus, who honors and praises John publicly.
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On the other hand, a culture condemning defectors, even by name to the entire church, as Paul does on different occasions in the epistles.
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A culture of condemning all distractions, like Tertullian does against the theater and the “spectacles”. Can you imagine there are churches where people talk proudly about having seen Hamilton? Or going to a basketball game? Yeah, you would have been disciplined in the early church for that.
Essentially, all of the normal wholesome motivations of man are Christened. They are “baptized” within the social immersion of the Church, the prototype of which is the Ark (“by which a few, namely 8, are saved”.)
Modern churches are like the “we are one big family” pep rallies that corporate retail makes you do. It doesn’t matter how often it’s repeated, you’re not a family, because such feelings aren’t formed that way. Because brotherhood doesn’t come from sitting in a building listening to someone or watching something happen. That’s one step above watching TV. Christ wasn’t redefining the nature of brotherhood when he commanded brotherly love, He was saying, “all this stuff I’m saying? If it doesn’t exist in a zealous brotherhood it’s all for nothing.”
I’m sure there are some brotherhoods that develop incidentally within a modern church ecosystem, where a small group of zealous men genuinely try to keep aflame the Holy Spirit through frequent meetings. But I think this is probably rare in the wild and I almost never hear about it. I have seen some on Discord, but of course, that’s not any better. And if these brotherhoods do develop within the ecosystem, almost all the gain occurs outside the church. Maybe you’ll hear some wisdom in the church and hear a good song and that’s beneficial, but the “real presence” will not be in the church rituals, so it’s effectively worthless.
Maybe a scenario would have been better to sum up my babbling. Imagine it’s war and you’re in the trenches. You’ve gotten word that your death is near-assured within the month. In the trench with you are two other Christians, brothers in arms, as well as a small hymnal (powerful melodies) and a reasonable amount of wine. If all three of you wanted to secure the salvation of your souls before death, what would you do? Imagine the gains that you would have in that month with nothing but the bare minimum: a sincere brotherhood, some songs, some wine, and the certainty of death. Wouldn’t it exceed anything you could gain in a modern church over an entire lifespan?
coffee_enjoyer
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25d ago
No, they have America and European powers protecting them from many of the projectiles while also feeding intel on Iran
coffee_enjoyer
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25d ago
The superior communities may be the result of the psychological changes brought about from belief in a life to come, with all of its contingent reinforcements and punishments
coffee_enjoyer
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1mo ago
Falluja was fought against insurgents in Iraq. While 60% or more of the buildings in Gaza are destroyed, after this battle (the worst of the urban combat in Iraq) only 20% max were destroyed. Why didn’t America just bomb the city until everyone died? Al Qaeda was fought in the battle of Ramadi. Years long urban battle. Why didn’t America just blow up every single dwelling? Same for in Baghdad, over 2 years.
In reality, footage of postwar Dresden, Berlin and Tokyo looks pretty similar to footage of urban Gaza today
Comparing Hamas, with limited offensive capabilities, to Nazi Germany, doesn’t make much sense. They were compared in the above to show that even the comically worst enemy of history weren’t despised with genocidal intent as Israelis despise Palestinians. But you can’t compare Hamas and their kidnappings / killings to a Nazi invasion of continental Europe. The best comparison is our fight against Al Qaeda and insurgents. They launched an attack on American soil that killed twice the number as Oct 7. We went after Al Qaeda and Baathists as a result. We didn’t aim to starve them to death. This is the closest thing to a 1-to-1 comparison. Vietnam was a notably bad war, people still bring it up all the time as an example of what not to do.
If you were in charge of the IDF and were given the order to militarily destroy Hamas with the soldiers Israel has and the equipment it has, you could likely come up with no military strategy that had fewer civilian casualties than the current approach.
This is unfalsifiable. The few accounts we get from the ground indicate little regard for human life. The recent video of the ambulance workers being killed is an example. You can do what Americans did in Iraq and go into Gaza on the ground. You can enter tunnels and raid homes like we did in Vietnam. If they are unwilling to do this out of fear, then Israel should give up and make compromises. I don’t think the answer is starvation and trying to destroy everything in Gaza.
coffee_enjoyer
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2mo ago
It’s really not a big deal at all. Children are insulted by other children all the time. As a kid, skateboarding with long hair, I had lots of adults insult me. If anything, the kid developing a phobia about stealing is the best possible experience a young black kid can have in America.
Should she not do it? Yes. Is it “absolute” trash behavior? It’s a mild act of immorality, unlike the act of allowing your child to steal.
coffee_enjoyer
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2mo ago
A list of Trumpisms according to colloquial usage (am I missing anything?)
Very common
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Many such cases
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I have concepts of a [plan]
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Open the schools
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Many are saying this
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Big if true
Common
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We do a little trolling
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You’re telling me this for the first time
Used Uncommonly
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Sad!
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Thank you [Kanye], very cool
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Fortunately or unfortunately
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Lightweight (more aptly a repopularization)
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Everything’s computer
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Don’t we, folks
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Fake news (as interjection; regional variations in popularity)
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Bigly
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Drain the swamp
Deprecated Use
- Bad Hombres
coffee_enjoyer
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3mo ago
He was engaged in Reddit communities dedicated to disproving and dunking on incels: IncelsInAction and IncelTears, 39 posts altogether. In the community IncelExit, specifically dedicated to ensuring people do not become incels and instead find “healthy ways to cope”, he had 148 posts. He was a contributor to the Virgin subreddit, but that community actually has nothing to do with incels (obviously not every guy concerned about his virginity is an incel, otherwise literally every boy before his first experience is an incel).
He wrote,
”I’m not clarifying [sic, classifying] myself as an incel but people like similar to me they have had nothing but themselves and they socially had it tough. Like how can you have drive and will power?”
One could even argue that had he a community of people to commiserate with, that the chance of the attack would decrease; the whole reason for social support is to be heard sympathetically and to relate to someone else. Instead he was participating in subreddits that are absolutely merciless to boys to who exhibit anything approximating inceldom, which winds up including what a teenage boy naturally feels when he doesn’t have a girlfriend. (How many tens of millions once felt the pangs of “tfw no gf”?).
https://voxpol.eu/jake-davison-an-incel-case/
As an aside, I find the case especially sad because he posted in AfricansGoneWild. Look at his beard! His love for guns! My guy could have walked into a mosque and left with a Somali and a shahada.
coffee_enjoyer
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4mo ago
I’m not sure if you’re aware of who has been influencing Ukraine and what that means for “sovereignty over their land”. Kolomoisky, a Jewish oligarch, is responsible for Zelensky’s rise to power and has an outsize influence in Ukraine. Some information about him —
Dozens of New York’s Jewish organizations have had their bottom lines bolstered by two businessmen accused of laundering billions for a Burisma-connected Ukrainian oligarch, public records show. Mordechai Korf, 48, and Uri Laber, 49, have shelled out more than $11 million to nearly 70 yeshivas and religious charities in Brooklyn and across the state, according to federal tax filings.
But Korf and Laber are more than just generous benefactors: since 2006, the Miami-based pair have allegedly been middlemen for Ukrainian billionaire Ihor Kolomoisky, funneling $4 billion of his ill-gotten gains to buy property and businesses in the U.S, according to three civil lawsuits filed by the U.S. Department of Justice in Florida federal court.
Kolomoisky, who built his fortune during the lawless years immediately following the fall of the Soviet Union, reportedly has a controlling interest in Burisma, the Ukrainian oil and gas company which put President Biden’s son, Hunter, on its board of directors in 2014 at a salary of $50,000 per month. Kolomoisky dispatched his private army to take over companies and destroy a Russian-owned oil and gas refinery in Dnipropetrovsk in 2014, according to reports. Korf and Laber — who met Kolomoisky decades ago while working and volunteering in the Ukrainian province he governed — gave a total of more than $1.4 million to Brooklyn’s Jewish Educational Media, and nearly $1 million to the Manhattan-based Federation of Jewish Communities of the CIS [Commonwealth of Independent States, nine countries which banded together after the 1991 dissolution of the Soviet Union].
Kolomoisky associates with and helps mostly other Jews, not just when he launders his money to his tribe abroad, but also at home:
Kolomoyskyi has been a prominent figure in Ukraine's organised Jewish community.[38] In 2008, he was elected the President of "the United Jewish community of Ukraine" in Kyiv.[39] He became a major funder in Ukraine of the Chabad movement, which has Ukrainian roots.[40][41] In 2012, with Gennady Bogolubov and Victor Pinchuk, he financed construction of what purports to be the largest multifunctional Jewish Community Center in Europe,[42] the Menorah Centre, in downtown Dnipro. Comprising seven marble[43] towers (of which the highest is 20 stories) arranged in the shape of a menorah,[44] it houses a synagogue, two hotels, kosher restaurant and grocery store and Jewish Memory and Holocaust Museum.[45][46]
His money went toward building up a parallel ultra-orthodox Jewish colony in Ukraine:
Over the years, he [funded by Kolomoisky] built up parallel education networks, ranging from kindergarten to college. One offers a high-level Jewish liberal education (its primary school once claimed to be the biggest Jewish school in Europe), and the other is much smaller and runs along Chabad-Haredi lines, with a program of Torah studies and separation of boys and girls. Kaminetsky is the archetype of the enterprising Chabad shaliach (emissary), building his own institutions while blending himself and his family into the local community and culture.
His relationship to Zelensky:
The journalists uncovered that law firms running offshore companies — used by former owners of PrivatBank Igor Kolomoisky and Hennadiy Boholyubov to funnel millions of dollars in depositors’ money abroad — lied to the financial monitoring agencies as to who was behind these firms. Also, according to the journalists, Zelensky’s offshore companies accepted payments from Kolomoisky for video content. Kolomoisky’s 1+1 media holding was the key buyer of TV series, shows and films created by Kvartal 95 production studio, founded by Zelensky
Kolomoisky gained his power by hiring gangs to kill whoever stood on his way, at least according to Ukrainian authorities last year. And according to the Atlantic Council:
Zelenskyy’s campaign depended heavily on the backing of Ihor Kolomoisky, arguably Ukraine’s most controversial oligarch of all
During the campaign, Zelenskyy appointed Kolomoisky’s personal lawyer as a key adviser, travelled abroad to confer with the then-exiled Kolomoisky on multiple occasions, and benefited from the enthusiastic endorsement of Kolomoisky’s media empire.
Kolomoisky is accused of helping Zelenskyy settle scores and undermine potential challengers. One of these is Vitaly Klitschko, the former world heavyweight boxing champion and current Mayor of Kyiv who is often cited as a potential future rival presidential candidate after comfortably securing re-election in the Ukrainian capital last year. Kolomoisky’s media outlets have stepped up their attacks on Klitschko, while friends and allies of the mayor have become the targets of police investigations. Klitschko himself complained about harassment after armed officers from the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) raided his apartment building in May.
Kolomoisky, of course, owned the TV station that first propagandized Zelensky to the public. He played a character who becomes President, a way to manipulate the public into eventually voting for him.
So yeah, when I think of “sovereignty over my land”, I don’t think about Kolomoisky taking over the resources of a country through murder, illegally extracting all the money he can, spending that money on a lavish 100 million dollar “Menorah Center” and services for his foreign tribe members, funneling the rest of the money through his tribe members to help his co-ethnics 5000 miles away, and then using this media control to boost the popularity of yet another tribe member by depicting him as the president in expensive TV series. When I think of sovereignty, I do not think of “the largest money laundering operation in history”.
If I were Ukrainian I would not want to be controlled by these guys. I would rather be controlled by my brothers in Russia. The fact that they have put out calls for their tribe to flee Russia tells me all I need to know.
coffee_enjoyer
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1mo ago
Just speculating, but provided that you already appreciate drawings and can distinguish between better and worse drawings, it should simply be a matter of
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imitate technique 1
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recreate technique 1 in varied contexts and applications
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recreate technique 1 in novel scenarios once general applications have been mastered
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be able to assess your ability to perform technique 1 by imagining it as someone else’s work
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do the same for techniques 2-9999
I don’t actually think there is a relationship between “visual reality” and drawing, because the most prized drawings in different cultures do not depict reality but instead “signal” what the mind considers significant information according to the culture. Even the “realistic” renaissance drawings are only emphasizing particular aspects
coffee_enjoyer
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5mo ago
The word stochastic terrorism is rightfully derided, but what do you call this kind of speech, which received 42k votes?
To my fellow Feds, especially veterans: we're at war Announcement
We watched this goon try to overthrow the government on live tv four years ago. Now, we are witnessing him try to overthrow it from within. We are the last line of defense against fascism.
We are being led by the same types of people our grandparents fought against in
They want to harm you. Do not give in to this nonsense and remember your oath to the constitution and the people of America. I don't know what the future holds, but I refuse to bow down to this fascist authoritarian elite class. Nobody is coming to save us but we have strength in numbers. It's time to buckle up, and continue protecting freedom and democracy.
Edited for brevity. If you convince a person that they are at war with Hitler, and in fact the last line of defense against Hitler, what do you think the end result is?
coffee_enjoyer
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3mo ago
Keren Yarhi-Milo, the current dean of Columbia’s School of International and Public Affairs, is a former Israeli intelligence officer. Do you think she is “advancing American interests”?
coffee_enjoyer
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2mo ago
It is disproved on the grounds that humans are not machines, they are in fact living animals, and hunger no more obeys our will than thirst or sleep. If I ask you to voluntarily keep yourself at starvation level for an extended period of time, and offer a moderate monetary reward, you will break after a few weeks when you smell a slice of pizza or remember cookies exist. If hunger were subordinate to our will, we wouldn’t have instances of cannibalism caused by intense hunger despite the preferences of the hungry party or the threat of eternal damnation. And when you remember that modern life already requires willpower and cognitive expenditure, it’s no more surprising that the obese cave to hunger than that a thirsty person drinks sewage.
So CICO is a theory in the sense that conservation of energy is a theory
That’s not how the expression is used. The expression is used with the implication that the feasible locus of control in obesity is our willpower in regards to caloric intake.
conceiving in the winter gives your baby a slightly higher chance of being slightly better at burning energy
The significance is in the extrapolation. The takeaway is to not have babies in winter in Japan (that would be silly), but that we may be able to modify obesity significantly through pre-conception cold exposure, the limit cases of which are explored in the study. Japan is probably not even a top 100 place in the world where residents experience genuine cold for prolonged periods, due to their urban living and wealth to buy clothes.
You eat too much and you dont exercise enough" remains the core of any and all successful diet criticism.
Only if you ignore the hundreds of millions of times it has practically failed. (I have a photo of a plane with a lot of red dots to show you.)
coffee_enjoyer
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1mo ago
Very awesome quote. “What would CS Lewis think of Disney” now makes me wonder what all the other greats thought of Disney
coffee_enjoyer
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4mo ago
The same European countries who sided with Zelensky after his insulting comments against Vance (insinuating he doesn’t know enough about Ukraine to comment, then interrupting him) are now aghast that Vance demeaned their relatively irrelevant militaries? These are unserious leaders. Perhaps we should actually consider allying with Russia.
coffee_enjoyer
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1mo ago
Suppose you were the de facto “leader” of a large progressive social network in real life. You have heard frightening accounts from other social networks, where members have damaged the health of the network through antisocial behavior. Sometimes this leads to its destruction. Maybe they redirected all the attention in the group toward their own plight or pet cause; maybe they mistook an occasional unkind word for deep prejudice and tried to alienate members; maybe they become a roommate and stop paying the rent; maybe they make unreasonable demands, ruining the dynamic of the network; maybe they constantly guilt and catastrophize, ruining the enjoyment and fluidity required to motivate social activity. What norms would you put in place to exclude these antisocial individuals from social events and social spaces?
Hard Difficulty:
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Can’t use any ideological test
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Can’t judge by appearance
Legendary Difficulty:
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Can’t judge by speech pattern
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Can’t use any explicit social hierarchy, but can only filter or weed out antisocial members through group habits and group norms
coffee_enjoyer
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1mo ago
Speaking of which, I find Bernard Kerik’s recent death suspicious. It comes out that he lobbies for Qatar and within a week he is hospitalized for heart issues, dying a month later, with no prior history of heart issues.
coffee_enjoyer
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3mo ago
Indeed, acid attacks have increased 70% over the year prior, and are disproportionately committed by Africans. The UK has had 500,000 knife offenses since 2014, and yet not a single violent crime has been found to be committed for incel motives over the past decade. (We even have a case of murder, thePlymouth shooting, where the perpetrator was knee deep in anti-incel online communities, and the triggering event was when the girl he was talking to online in America posted about him being a creep leading to the mods to delete his account (quite funny))
coffee_enjoyer
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3mo ago
I’m not sure what you mean. In a democracy filled with uninformed and incompetent voters, if one side lies all the time, the other side must lie in turn in order to compete, let alone win. This is actually the very basis of newspapers in the American democratic tradition. X is not a newspaper, no, but it has taken on the same role. If the American voter wishes to learn about the facts and only the facts, they have to read papers and bills and data, and not Reddit or X or Bluesky. And yet they continue to use these services, at once proving that they are incompetent judges of the most obvious fact that the media lies. To quote Thomas Jefferson,
It is a melancholy truth, that a suppression of the press could not more compleatly deprive the nation of it's benefits, than is done by it's abandoned prostitution to falsehood. Nothing can now be believed which is seen in a newspaper. Truth itself becomes suspicious by being put into that polluted vehicle. The real extent of this state of misinformation is known only to those who are in situations to confront facts within their knowledge with the lies of the day. I really look with commiseration over the great body of my fellow citizens, who, reading newspapers, live & die in the belief, that they have known something of what has been passing in the world in their time; whereas the accounts they have read in newspapers are just as true a history of any other period of the world as of the present, except that the real names of the day are affixed to their fables. General facts may indeed be collected from them, such as that Europe is now at war, that Bonaparte has been a successful warrior, that he has subjected a great portion of Europe to his will, &c., &c.; but no details can be relied on. I will add, that the man who never looks into a newspaper is better informed than he who reads them
coffee_enjoyer
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1mo ago
The importance of status and peer judgment for promoting behavior. Outside of the workplace, there are few social contexts that try to guide or optimize behavior by consciously and meticulously allocating status. Especially not in a rigorous way to curb antisocial behavior.
coffee_enjoyer
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5mo ago
US government agrees to confer ‘minority’ status on Jewish-owned businesses
“We’re going to be able to benefit from billions of dollars of these programs, contracts, some loans, grants, the hundreds of different programs that every single Jewish business is going to benefit from,” Duvi Honig, founder and CEO of the Orthodox Jewish Chamber of Commerce, told JNS.
Tribalism is here to stay. I cannot actually find much information about the total amount of benefits that Hasidic Jews will reap from this ruling. The Minority Business Development Agency considers Hasidic Jews to be “socially disadvantaged”, which means that they would be eligible for the $50,000,000,000 in yearly benefits allotted to Small Disadvantaged Businesses. Harris increased Black SBA loans to 1.5 billion in 2023.
coffee_enjoyer
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3mo ago
There’s an idea I keep reading that “lower/middle income buy most of their goods overseas and so will be hit harder by tariffs”, but I bet that if you look at actual dollar amount of imported goods, the wealthiest 10% eat up 99% of the dollar amount of imported goods. The Rolexes, foreign cars, lululemons, Canada goose, the multiple consumer electronics, the French fashion, the French wine, the obscure ingredients and cutlery at their restaurants, and so on. I hate all of this. So if Trump really does replace the income tax in the lower/middle class with the tariff proceeds, this may be incredible for redistribution. (Not that I think this will happen; who knows what he is going to do).
coffee_enjoyer
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1mo ago
If Israel were to do everything they could to kill as many Gazans as possible without losing what remains of international support, what would they do differently than what they are currently doing? They know they can’t actually bomb everyone immediately, all at once. But they can bomb as many as they can get away with, keeping everyone in semi-starvation, causing maximum trauma, destroying every dwelling, and so on. They can kill them all slowly in this way, to reduce international outrage.
It would be like saying there’s a sprawling tunnel system beneath Manhattan which America uses as their primary war room. The Pentagon isn’t even in the middle of DC, let alone under the skyscrapers of Manhattan.
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