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curious_straight_ca


				

				

				
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joined 2022 November 13 09:38:42 UTC

				

User ID: 1845

curious_straight_ca


				
				
				

				
1 follower   follows 0 users   joined 2022 November 13 09:38:42 UTC

					

No bio...


					

User ID: 1845

You shouldn't take stated goals on their face if there's some reason to believe otherwise ... but what reason is there? Businesses paying to get access to politicians or influential people is hardly surprising or a WEF exclusive.

circumventing the democratic process

How do you think democracy works? "The people" aren't drafting legislation and regulations, interest groups, lobbyists, staffers etc promote or write them, and networking and conferences to that effect are necessary and normal. There's always some elite, even if only by stratification of competence and interest, iron law of oligarchy etc. "a democratic republic" has always been about delegating the responsibility of creating and enforcing laws to 'representatives'. Nothing outside that norm is happening here. Of course, those 'elites' can be malicious, democracy may be a lie and harmful, but that the people aren't having a vote on Proposition 5928: Eat The Bugs Act is entirely expected (was there an explicit vote on the Air Fryer Act or the EUV Lithography Act?)

Why do you think insects are being suddenly and simultaneously approved for consumption in all these countries

Maybe some companies applied for approval, and tried to create buzz about it by pitching it as green and sustainable? There is an application process.

Finally I'm not at all convinced 'the bugs' are unhealthier than much of the current american diet. Is there any evidence for that, beyond "modern food bad + insect disgusting + elites not nice"?

99% of transgender"ism" is all the things trans people actually do - gender dysphoria, hormones and surgery, dressing and acting and speaking and looking like a girl. 1% of it is "forcing conservatives to use the right pronouns". that may be the part you're objecting to, but that doesn't make transgenderism communal.

Uh, if they are better, then a 'push to promote them despite unpopularity' is good? Was the green revolution bad because it was pushed by the elite? (There may be problems wrt unnatural food, pesticides, etc but that goes along with the population increase) There was a push against cigarettes because they were unhealthy, this isn't exactly malicious. Nobody would care if the WEF were pushing for whole grains, food waste reuse, or food safety in africa (which, indeed, they are).

Yeah, it's not hidden...

You're claiming something is, because we're not taking their stated goals at face value, as if they're hiding something. But hiding what?

Musk is based and anti-woke

Based just means 'guy i like' now. Communists have been saying 'based' since 2016. Musk is an independent centrist who is good at engineering and management. Maybe that'll change! His memes, and those of his supporters, are about as funny as r/AdviceAnimals. I'll take @rapegroyper1488 and @gaypissretard420 being unbanned (not ironic), but that doesn't make him 'based' or right-wing or make his twitter decisions competent.

The real question is, why does the left hate an anti-establishment, egalitarian, and pro-meritocratic guy like Musk? Could it be because the left is the establishment now? And they fear losing their power?

the right has been saying 'whoa the left is powerful and bad and doesnt like us' for a century now, it clearly isn't enough to just go 'whoa what if the left isnt nice' over and over

That clip is debating "should lethal force be used to prevent theft of a car" (in the specific instance of a probably black 13yo).

Note that in the US, using lethal force solely to defend property is generally illegal! Although "In basically all states, you can use nondeadly force to defend your property—and if the thief or vandal responds by threatening you with death or great bodily harm, you can then protect yourself with deadly force."

Also, this isn't motivated primarily by ethnic tribalism, it's motivated by wanting to save the downtrodden from harm, hence the 13yo example.

"I'll specifically give credit for things he did that were commendable." ... "To motteposting's credit" ... "I think motteposting made some good points" ... "Overall, motteposting did a good job convincing me that Bobulinski is telling the truth" ... "I updated my belief to"

Less Of This, Please. There are plenty of 500k follower twitter accounts that react with horror to tweets with out of context clips and screenshots of news headlines, I know where to get it if I want it, and I don't want it here.

Ok I swear I don't just get up every morning and ask, "How can I be schizo today?"

It's funny how all sorts of "conspiracy theorists" and people with weird ideas are halfway self-conscious of the fact they're like that, and make jokes about it. You should either genuinely believe your ideas, deeply investigate them, debate them - or consider what 'schizo' ideas you had five or ten years ago and how many of them have held up, and admit you're very wrong.

Also, whatever standard approves of this post but not posts about perfectly reasonable topics that just don't have enough context isn't serving its purpose.

incoming modhat comment: "This isn't a good comment for the culture war thread" - effort, uninteresting meta topic "posting about posting", etc.

The twitter files themselves were discussed here, how is a rehash of them in congress interesting? The new J6 footage isn't particularly interesting imo, but it's more relevant, and anyone (you?) could've make a post about it.

The eu novel food regulation is a broad system for regulating "food that had not been consumed to a significant degree by humans in the EU before 15 May 1997, when the first Regulation on novel food came into force.". More "central" examples, from that page:

Examples of Novel Food include new sources of vitamin K (menaquinone) or extracts from existing food (Antarctic Krill oil rich in phospholipids from Euphausia superba), agricultural products from third countries (chia seeds, noni fruit juice), or food derived from new production processes (UV-treated food (milk, bread, mushrooms and yeast).

The novel food catalogue has several hundred items! A few insect products were approved along with hundreds of plants, and someone tweeted about it.

That Food 2030 link sets out "10 areas known as pathways for action":

Governance and systems change, Urban food system transformation, Food from the oceans and freshwater resources, Alternative proteins and dietary shift, Food waste and resource efficiency, The microbiome world, Healthy, sustainable and personalised nutrition, Food safety systems of the future, Food systems Africa, Food systems and data

This is a variety of goals, and 'eating bugs' only fits into one (dietary shift).

From a WEF opinion called What will we eat in 2030?:

One can imagine a different food system. If we lived in a world where demand was different – perhaps because people wanted to eat healthily and sustainably – it is possible to imagine a much greater mix of big and small farms, producing a larger range of produce, employing more people and creating a more local and circular economy. So what might we eat in 2030? I think demand will be shifting and more people will want to eat a healthy diet, one that is less intensive (and wasteful) of resources. The increasing emergence of localism, wholefoods, organic, artisanal and “real food” movements is a sign of this – at least for the rich and dedicated. So our diets may be more veg and fruit, whole grains and vegetarian food or new alternatives (soya products, or perhaps insects or artificial meat), and less fried and sugary things. We’ll still eat meat, but, perhaps more like our parents and grandparents, see it as a treat to savour every few days.

Sure, it mentions insects, and meat reduction ... but along with 'organic, whole foods' and 'small farms, local economy'. This isn't an 'elite planning to force people to replace meat with insects', it's just vague vibes about Creating A Better World.

I don't think this is a good comment. It just gestures at a bunch of vague right-wing ideas without providing any detail, evidence, or new information. An equivalent left-wing comment would be "America is occupied by the entrenched forces of conservatism and racism. They know what they are doing, they see our pain, yet they refuse to even let us speak. They hold all the levers of power and are not afraid to use them against us."

It probably violates the "speak plainly" rule too. Who are the occupiers? How are they keeping Germany in line with the new ideology? What would happen? Which german thinkers? Which direction? Yeah, obviously it's the nazis, but I'd be happy to read an open and evidenced defense of Nazi ideology or historical actions, but this isn't that.

But NPR's quality is leagues above russian and iranian state media. And the latter are regularly censored on matters of minor corruption in ways the former is rigorously guarded against. There really is a kind of "state-run media" that the soviets had, and that Russia today has, that the US doesn't have today. Trying to pave over that distinction as an 'own' makes your concerns, even when otherwise correct, look silly and easily dismissible.

Musk’s only relevant goal right now is to humiliate them, rob them of their power to control the narrative, and demoralize their audience in any way possible

... It's just musk doing yet another epic musk thing, like "legacy verified. may or may not be notable". Robbing power? NPR continues to post exactly what they did a month ago, the same people as last month trust it or don't trust it, etc. Nobody's been demoralized.

(I didn't expect NPR to ragequit twitter though, that was dumb)

This kind of political 'analysis' is omnipresent in normal politics spaces - "the other team are doing , it's lies all the way down, more and more people are leaving the democratic plantation / republican hate machine every day!" isn't really enlightening. What should 'banning books' have to do with puberty blockers? An even-handed attempt to articulate why a poll changed wouldn't exclusively be insults and exaggerated culture-war anecdotes.

entitle you to look down on people living ordinary lives without being questioned

Should we just look away from the filth? Should we lead the flock of civilization to become 380lb tokers, typing away at some job to pay for the munchies? Is criticizing that entitled?

The best experiences, or highest duties, one can find aren't found in banging other 300lb girls, eating takeout, or smoking pot, they're found in complex, often adversarial intellectual, artistic, political, economic, etc acts / projects / explorations. Any time someone goes a bit from the former to the latter is good, any time the reverse is bad - both for them and everyone else (leaving capability/contingency/selection aside).

writing crank essays doesn't automatically make you an intellectual

It's just a bad sneer if "meandering essays about utilons [or] degeneracy" are things genuinely worthy intellectuals have done.

7.3 percent of all living Americans have served in the military at some point in their lives.

According to fiscal year 2017 data, the most recent available, the South's share of the U.S. young adult population was 33 percent, but it provided 41 percent of new military enlistees nationwide. As a result, the region's representation ratio is 1.2, which means it provided 20 percent more military recruits than might be expected given its young adult population.

This is a factor of ten smaller of a difference than would justify the above comment. 90% southerners never serve in the military, and those that do serve only 20% more often than northerners. Calling them the 'warrior class' is absurd.

Or, you know, maybe the first numbers on Google are wrong. That's possible. (I skimmed the articles, they seem reasonable). But if you're going to make fiery moral pronouncements, maybe bring a number or two with it, so we can check if the claim is justified?

It's the same principle as - you think your wife conspired with a corrupt family court to take your children, so you forge documentation to get a school to turn them over to you, breaking a court order. Maybe you're right. But there are processes for addressing that, and if you ignore those (or in trump's case try them but perform terribly and don't prevail), you don't have a right to lie and manipulate other processes.

This is a fundamental way modern governance works. The process prevents conflict by giving both individuals and the state a - usually fair - 'final authority' to appeal to, instead of using violence, coercion, or deception. Even if it's sometimes wrong, it's better to have a single source of truth to prevent conflict - whether that's individual conflict over who owns what or who deserves what, or political conflict over who has power. It's known who wins and how that's decided, according to the process and the court, the monopoly on violence enforces it, so nobody bothers to even fight. If you're wrongfully convicted, your supporters don't suicide bomb the cops/accusers and start a blood feud, they collect evidence and appeal. If someone screws you on a deal, you sue based on the contract both parties signed. If you lose an election and are upset, you file a lawsuit.

It could be argued this is a fundamental pillar holding up modern life. I'm not entirely sure - certainly a neoreactionary government would have less of this at the top-level, but that isn't ours. And if the election wasn't stolen (and I'm very unconvinced by arguments that it was), then Trump's actions is not good for democracy.

I'm pretty sure this wouldn't have happened if he hadn't hid the documents and "corruptly concealed a document in a federal investigation, and made false statements and representations". I'm not even sure why he did those things, it doesn't seem to have helped him at all.

Reminder that around the same time, biden was found to have kept classified documents - but he (as far as we can tell) hasn't tried to hide them or lied about their existence!

Imagine - New large RCT: Emergency medical treatment in rural Nigeria largely ineffective. Okay. But the potential causes are 'long distances so it takes too long to arrive at emergencies, poor training of medical personnel, patients and practitioners hold non-western medical beliefs, lack of resources to purchase good medical technology'. Not 'emergency medicine is bad'.

So, from the meta analysis:

We pooled trials comparing N95/P2 respirators with medical/surgical masks (four in healthcare settings and one in a household setting). We are very uncertain on the effects of N95/P2 respirators compared with medical/surgical masks on the outcome of clinical respiratory illness (RR 0.70, 95% CI 0.45 to 1.10; 3 trials, 7779 participants; very low‐certainty evidence). N95/P2 respirators compared with medical/surgical masks may be effective for ILI (RR 0.82, 95% CI 0.66 to 1.03; 5 trials, 8407 participants; low‐certainty evidence). Evidence is limited by imprecision and heterogeneity for these subjective outcomes. The use of a N95/P2 respirators compared to medical/surgical masks probably makes little or no difference for the objective and more precise outcome of laboratory‐confirmed influenza infection (RR 1.10, 95% CI 0.90 to 1.34; 5 trials, 8407 participants; moderate‐certainty evidence). Restricting pooling to healthcare workers made no difference to the overall findings. Harms were poorly measured and reported, but discomfort wearing medical/surgical masks or N95/P2 respirators was mentioned in several studies (very low‐certainty evidence). .

This is entirely consistent with universal proper use of N95s significantly reducing disese, and surgical/cloth masks not. I'm not sure how to square that with the substack post's comments on N95s, which was "The section on N95 masks was also devastating. [excerpt] Obviously, unlike the types of studies that the CDC likes— hairdresser anecdotes— randomized trials are the best way to separate an intervention from the habits of someone who embraces them."

I wouldn't say the review is good evidence either way on N95s - and the higher quality evidence is more negative than the lower quality evidence - but I don't think the above paragraph is compatible with "devastating". The review notes "relatively low adherence with the interventions during the studies" - it's almost obvious that, for very transmissible diseases, poor adherence to interventions (say, only wearing the mask 75% of the time you're around other people) for a quickly spreading disease might not do much when good adherence would - like, r0 4 -> r0 2, doesn't end up mattering. Of course, that poor adherence is the adherence a general mask nudge / mandate would get, making those particular interventions not useful, but other interventions are possible.

If a random person read the substack, they'd walk away thinking "wow, masks are useless for respiratory diseases". But this isn't the conclusion I come to when reading the abstract - it seems likely surgical masks don't work, and unclear on N95s. Combine that with the 'low adherence', and I continue to believe that 'wearing N95s rigorously probably reduces risk of respiratory illnesses' and 'rigorously wearing N95s may have been a good move during the pandemic if you're old/immunocompromised/etc'. The politics seems to be pushing people away from stuff like that - we're showing how bad the libs are! masks bad mandates bad!

And there's a big difference between 'masks are bad, mandates are bad, this was all a mistake' and 'ineffective implementation of mask mandates was the problem, if N95s were Warp Speeded and given out for free a lot of deaths could be reduced'. The latter is ... arguable, actually - imagine a case where N95s were mandated/heavily encouraged specifically for vulnerable populations (old, immunocompromised, other health conditions), along with early studies making sure they were useful & how to use them effectively, without lockdowns or mask mandates for most.

I don't think that study saying "there is a need for better studies" is biased or misleading, as the substack seems to imply. That's usually true. As the study says, "The high risk of bias in the trials, variation in outcome measurement, and relatively low adherence with the interventions during the studies hampers drawing firm conclusions", which also seems true. Just because it's a cochrane review doesn't make it perfect or conclusive. It does mean there's a good chance the result useful, but that's different.

Also, I'd be interested in more 'interesting meta-analysis results' posted here - good post imo just because of that, even if it's only posted because of the politics.

From the meta analysis:

Our findings with respect to hand hygiene should be considered generally relevant to all viral respiratory infections, given the diverse populations where transmission of viral respiratory infections occurs. The participants were adults, children and families, and multiple congregation settings including schools, childcare centres, homes, and offices. Most respiratory viruses, including the pandemic SARS‐CoV‐2, are considered to be predominantly spread via respiratory particles of varying size or contact routes, or both (WHO 2020c). Data from studies of SARS‐CoV‐2 contamination of the environment based on the presence of viral ribonucleic acid and infectious virus suggest significant fomite contamination (Lin 2022; Onakpoya 2022b; Ong 2020; Wu 2020). Hand hygiene would be expected to be beneficial in reducing the spread of SARS‐CoV‐2 similar to other beta coronaviruses (SARS‐CoV‐1, Middle East respiratory syndrome (MERS), and human coronaviruses), which are very susceptible to the concentrations of alcohol commonly found in most hand‐sanitiser preparations (Rabenau 2005; WHO 2020c). Support for this effect is the finding that poor hand hygiene, despite the use of full personal protective equipment (PPE), was independently associated with an increased risk of SARS‐CoV‐2 transmission to healthcare workers in a retrospective cohort study in Wuhan, China in both a high‐risk and low‐risk clinical unit for patients infected with COVID‐19 (Ran 2020). The practice of hand hygiene appears to have a consistent effect in all settings, and should be an essential component of other interventions.

... whoa, what? Fomites matter for COVID? I distinctly remember "handwashing for COVID" being something the health authorities recommended early on and were wrong about, and a consensus of 'handwashing doesn't matter, masks do'. Not sure what to do with that paragraph.

Routine long‐term implementation of some of the interventions covered in this review may be problematic, particularly maintaining strict hygiene and barrier routines for long periods of time. This would probably only be feasible in highly motivated environments, such as hospitals. Many of the trial authors commented on the major logistical burdens that barrier routines imposed at the community level. However, the threat of a looming epidemic may provide stimulus for their inception.

Exactly! Again, imagine challenge trials on masks, handwashing very early in the pandemic, with results implemented in nursing homes and hospitals.

Meanwhile in the substack, from the top two comments:

Its that public health officials should never, ever, ever, ever, ever, be given the keys to society again, and that individual liberties need to be fortified against such intrusions in the future because THEY WILL KEEP HAPPENING otherwise. Public health - when it has NO POWER - only has truth. The lies are hand in hand with the power

The follow-on pieces are clear. We need to dismantle, permanently, the current public health apparatus and rebuild it from scratch using some other paradigm. It has been an abject failure in every way. It has shown itself inimical to public health and, short reconstitution, will never be a trusted modality again...and it needs to be.

The first one is weirdly moldbuggian, but ... lol. It's not nearly that bad, and even if it was "LIES. NEVER. FAILURE IN EVERY WAY" is not a useful response.

Non-central fallacy. Eating lobster is not a central example of eating bugs

... why, exactly though? The 'non-central fallacy' implies the example has an important difference from / doesn't share an important aspect of more 'central' examples. Lobsters certainly aren't as disgusting to us as cockroaches. But the reason for that example is that, aside from extremely socially-contingent food-disgust ideas, insects aren't fundamentally unhealthier or disgusting than mammal meat or vegetables - some hunter-gatherers have various insects as a large part of their diet due to contingency of their natural environment. While I don't eat the cockroach-chips because they probably aren't produced very naturally, they're probably more nutritious, including in the trad holistic sense, than 'soy protein isolate' or white wheat flour.

I don't think that's manual censorship of 'fossil fuels', but ChatGPT responding to many only vaguely bad prompts with "I am an AI programmed by OpenAI and I can't respond bla bla bla".

No! I'm happy that we allow Holocaust deniers or the (iirc) nazi pedophile from a while ago to post if they follow the rules. But that's the kind of comment I'd expect to see as a reply to iamyesyouareno on twitter, not one I want to see here.

I don't liking making old arguments that didn't stick the last time I made them, but progressivism, trans 'ideology', being 'anti-white', all spread much more potently over the internet or through peers and popular media than through teachers. When you say that schools tell kids they're privileged or that they secretly transition kids, this gives off an extremely strong impression that the school's physical custody of or social power over the children is a significant force in actually causing the children to be trans. I am really confident this isn't true, just by observing the trans people (including kids) around me, and talking to trans adults and "might've decided to transition if my life had gone another way" types. The problem isn't that The State is using it's power to oppress you, the actual problem is that a lot of smart people are, without any particular malice or plotting, coming to severely incorrect conclusions and spreading them to others.

I often reflect how I could possibly explain to my child all the freedom we used to have. How easy air travel used to be. Or how fun it was to wait in the terminal to greet family as they stepped off the plane. How there didn't used to be security guards and metal detectors at theatres.

This does suck, but I think it's minor.

How there weren't transients destroying every public work constantly

This is less minor. Not civilization-destroying, but not minor either. I don't think this one is inevitable though. I don't know much about eg the "sf dems for change" and the recent win in SF, but that seems very positive for fixing the worst excesses within the progressive framework.

there is no evidence to assert this as unique

If you can find evidence that a past president did something like this and wasn't prosecuted, I'll significantly change my mind.

a federal investigation over a crime it is not possible for the president to commit.

It is still illegal to lie under oath / to investigators about a crime you didn't commit!

I'm directly arguing against that point. Also, I know I'm carelessly trampling all over hundreds of years of vigorously debated philosophy, and this is a massive tangent, but it seems to be a big part of hiynka's issue with blue-tribers.

What is working hard, and what is being a good father? These ideas are derived from attempts to benefit society or one's kin, or accomplish greatness, or something. If one looks at someone clicking away at league of legends, even if they're trying very hard to click, or someone who's working very hard at applying makeup properly to attract a mate - this isn't "hard work", because it's not benefitting society or yourself. Playing league or doing makeup well are somewhat mechanically challenging, take patience and knowledge, and aren't obviously less so than working as a janitor. The only thing that really distinguishes someone 'hard at work' on a tough, soft task like writing, from someone lazily arguing on the internet, are the usefulness, or interestingness, of the output! Same goes for 'being a good father' - what makes a "good father" still requires the """consequentialist""" judgement of what actually benefits the child! If a father, to benefit their child, feeds them bleach to "clean out parasites" ... are they being a good father? No. Replace bleach with ivermectin, assuming the right kind of parasite, and yes. Similarly if instead of bleach, it's 1700 and the child is fed some poisonous healing brew that isn't "obviously bad" in society's eyes. Saying these particular categories are "valuable in and of themselves" still makes most of the same consequentialist value judgements, with all the latent complexity, just hidden behind socially-claimed sanction.

The idea is - i think - if you care about consequences over 'process', then you become corrupted by power / unrestrained / an evil leftist, and therefore, the argument goes, forget about the actual good things - i.e. consequentialistly pursuing "lots of good people" turns you into the progressive EA who forgets about his children and community. And to avoid this, we'll say "there are Goods - real moral actions you need to follow, that you can't reason around"! The problem is this still posits various ... good things, that are, purely observationally, justified by their consequences (your children and family are unhappy, your society collapses from deracination and lack of purpose), which are the 'principles you need to stick to' - but the complexity of causation means you can lose those goods too! The person 'sticking to their principles' is doing so because they're arguing those principles do maintain the children and family and society in a way the consequentialist doesn't, and that the progressive consequentialist, by abandoning them, gets confused or corrupted by power and forgets what's good - the issue is that saying 'there is a Good' doesn't make the goals of said 'Goods' go away - the children and society still physically exist, it's still worth actually helping your child, and when that conflicts with your list-of-virtuous-actions and you follow the Virtuous Action and your child learns less or your society collapses, nothing was gained! And progressives aren't failing because they forgot to follow the restrained-list-of-goods and were too rational, it's because they genuinely believe different values are Good and follow those!

What matters is that you stuck to your principles.

But those principles are clearly and obviously there to achieve certain ends! If you follow your principle of "working hard" but your hard work is as an accountant in the Progressive Eugenics Department - or what if you're a subcontractor, and you just work at Ernst & Ernst, you just happen to notice you're doing accounting for the PED - or you are a "good father" in that you indoctrinate your child into the Blue Tribe, like the rest of your community does ... and how can you even know this isn't "working hard" or "being a good father" without tracing out the physical consequences of those actions?

If I can say to you, "A mighty fortress is our God, a bulwark never failing", and mean it, live by it, raise my children and build my community by it

All the "red tribers" who've done this for the past century have had their childrens' values turn much bluer, while also being economically and politically dominated by the blues. Just saying "god is really really good" doesn't actually do anything, and it certainly won't stop the 280lbs churchgoing christian from enjoying tiktok and pornhub.

Normal doesn't imply "good", and wanting to be greater than "normal" is good.

He's not doing worthy intellectual things like dropping meandering essays about utilons and degeneracy

Much of the most "worthy" intellectual, as judged by mainstream thought, were convoluted essays about obscure topics! That is more worthy than smoking pot and consuming food. The sneer about 'utilons' is weird given utilitarianism is a significant part of philosophy, with a major proponent described as "One of the most influential thinkers of classical liberalism"!