eudemonist
1yr ago
Rarely is it mentioned that Shokin was then replaced with a prosecutor who dropped those prosecutions entirely.
eudemonist
11mo ago
Let's keep in mind the context here--the examples given of rightist/right wing policies are tough-on-crime things like Three Strikes. Whether that's "right wing government" or not is not really relevant: it's a less-progressive stance than the alternative at the time.
eudemonist
1yr ago
But we're trying to sell Optimeme performance-enhancing "cognition supplements" to twitchy med students who find mainlining Adderall doesn't do it for them any more, which takes more sophisticated online marketing.
Is...is this an ad? Because I want some Optimeme now.
eudemonist
1yr ago
When neither the proponents nor the opponents of the bill claim it's a proper tax
I'm not sure if you're making a distinction with "proper" tax, but opponents, heck even Democrats, definitely claimed it was a tax, and it was a live enough question to get addressed in a one-on-one (sorry, it's an amp link):
STEPHANOPOULOS: That may be, but it's still a tax increase.
OBAMA: No. that's not true, George. the -- for us to say that you've got to take a responsibility to get health insurance is absolutely not a tax increase....
STEPHANOPOULOS: But it may be fair, it may be good public policy...
OBAMA: No, but -- but, George, you -- you can't just make up that language and decide that that's called a tax increase.
STEPHANOPOULOS: I -- I don't think I'm making it up. Merriam Webster's Dictionary: Tax -- "a charge, usually of money, imposed by authority on persons or property for public purposes."
OBAMA: George, the fact that you looked up Merriam's Dictionary, the definition of tax increase, indicates to me that you're stretching a little bit right now. Otherwise, you wouldn't have gone to the dictionary to check on the definition. I mean what...
eudemonist
1yr ago
But in those cases, I've parked somewhere, or broken my contract with the library--there is a punishable action.
The Corner, but more particularly, The Wire, which is the fully flourished version. Without overstatement, one of the best television shows ever made.
EDIT: Looks like The Corner is on YouTube, free. https://youtube.com/watch?v=iMJMOoW8y6o
eudemonist
1yr ago
Very generally speaking, Conservatism is based in risk avoidance: the core conflict is basically a risk/reward evaluation of courses of action, weighing potential benefits of further societal optimization against potential dangers of disrupting a currently-mostly-functional complex dynamic system. It seems like such a thing might well have genetic components.
Individualism vs. Collectivism also seems as though it could well be genetically influenced: different species are gregarious to different extents, and that almost certainly interplays with genetics. Williams syndrome in humans is a clear display of genetic changes to sociability and desire for the presence of others.
Besides, if we accept that genetics affect I.Q., well then obviously--the genes that give the low IQs are the liberal genes, duh! (jkjk don't hurt me)
eudemonist
1yr ago
However, guys who are mainly driven by wanting validation and/or intimacy can sometimes encounter the problem that they want validation for being themselves as they are now, they want intimacy for being as they are now.
I want to take a screwdriver
Mutilate my face
Find a beautiful woman
Make her love me for what I am
Then say I don't need it and walk away
- Hank Rollins
eudemonist
1yr ago
It's not the most important story in the world, I agree, but I felt it was an example of "Culture War" so shared it to the Roundup.
To me it's pretty emblematic of the larger CW on a very micro scale. In the culture I grew up in, teenagers TPing houses and grownups trying to catch them was a common trope, as was the "extra-grumpy old man" whose land/lawn nobody cut across or messed with. These were experiences universal among my peer cohort, regardless of ethnic or economic background--everybody knew That Guy, he was a dick to everybody, and that shared experience helped create peer bonds across ethnic barriers. Everybody pranked somebody, whether having their car sitting on blocks when the bus got back from an away game, or TPing a house, or dying coach's dog green, or saran wrapping a car, or pennying a new teacher's door shut, or whatever. There was pretty much a peace convention on egging dating back to before my time due to some severe paint damage, but being rowdy and having fun is great for kids....as is getting hemmed up by some grown folk when they go a bit too far.
I see no reason to read, or even suspect, racial bias in this incident, and based on what I read in the police report, I see no reason for Langkamp, or anyone really, to be arrested or lose a job. This is, or was, a pretty run-of-the-mill enactment of an old drama with deep roots in my culture.
The inversion of responsibility, the holding of instigators up as heroes, the apparent compulsion to shove race into every possible story, the fact that the arresting officer found it necessary to take all three dudes into custody immediately, without even allowing them to put on shoes, the failure of the detectives to find any video when the lady next door had some....all of these are things I find interesting. But not everyone shares my interests, I do understand. Hope you find a more interesting story to engage with!
Gotcha, I'll edit that--I wasn't clear on that detail, thank you!
I very much agree it was "assholes gonna asshole", for sure. But the guy was already standing outside when the Jeep pulled onto the street, before knowing what color of kids were coming to TP his house, so I have a hard time attributing it to racial bias.
eudemonist
1yr ago
Might be good to note that, in the case of No Country For Old Men, Moss' death occurring offstage is true to the source material, the novel by Cormac McCarthy. The film was notable for very tight adherence to the book, almost scene-for scene, and using McCarthy's dialogue line-for-line in many places.
Not showing Moss' death, as part of that keeping to the source, does very much go against "standard" movie storytelling and audience instinct, leaving the viewer with a weird sense of incompletion. Something in our brains likes resolution, a phenomenon we can see in music as well, where chord progressions "return home" and conflicting passages resolve into harmony. McCarthy's subversion of that internal expectation is absolutely intentional, another iteration of the themes of the novel, that our pasts are inescapable and our futures subject to influences beyond control: we don't always, or even most of the time, get things wrapped up tidily with a bow on top, even if they're things we don't like (sad endings for protagonists), and the world moves whether we are paying attention or not. It's a "brave" choice by the filmmakers to stick with the script perhaps, but I don't think Moss' offscreen death is the, or really even a, reason the film is highly regarded.
One thing I would like to add with regard to the climax: the film actually pisses me off a bit in that regard. It's been a while since I've seen it, but as I recall in the film Moss, at his final hotel, is sitting outside drinking a beer when a pretty girl walks by, and he whistles at her or some such. In the novel, Moss picked up a 15-year-old hitchhiker runaway girl headed to California, who offers herself to him for sex, more than once. He books them separate rooms at the ultimate hotel, and the absolute last word we hear from him is him turning the underage runaway down once more:
There's a lot of good salesmen around, and you might buy somethin yet.
Well darlin you're just a little late. Cause I done bought. And I think I'll stick with what I got.
The climax is Moss' internal struggle, really, and it's emphasized again in the description of the gun battle: the Mexican has a gun to the girl's head, and Moss has him in his sights. Moss, being the ultimate Good Guy, puts his gun on the ground. At which point the Mexican shoots the girl, then shoots Moss. The whole hitchhiker subplot (and it's gorgeous dialogue) are all excised, and we end up seeing a lecherous Llewellyn, an ugly representation of our Hero, as the last interaction with him.
Chigurh getting hit by a car is manifestation of, no matter how badass we are, we really don't run shit.
eudemonist
11mo ago
Please give the Urban Pioneers a spin: https://youtube.com/watch?v=exykZ5Cfuso
https://youtube.com/playlist?list=OLAK5uy_md8hhW9khqUen3RVFkurQfLJO01d2CQoI
eudemonist
1yr ago
- Inflation is defined as an increase in the general price level.
I think you get off to a bad start here. Changes to prices are not necessarily a result of inflation/deflation, but rather a change in the relative availability of Dollars vs Goods. An increase/decrease in the availability of dollars (inflation) affects prices, but so does a lot of other stuff that isn't inflation.
If, for example, there's a drought and the grain harvest is half of what it usually would be (moving the Supply Curve for grain to the left), grain (and thereby bread, beer, beer, and fuel prices) rise, that's not really inflation per se; conversely, if a new process comes about which enables greater production at the same cost, prices will fall without deflation occurring as competitors
By the same token, if we write in a 0 after the numbers on all our accounts so that everyone has ten times as many dollars, prices will rise without any change in the actual cost of producing a bushel of wheat. THIS is inflation.
Consider the case where the fed wants to create deflation:
There really is no such case as regards actual deflation. As you mentioned, it mostly relates to the velocity of money: if my money will be worth more tomorrow, I have incentive to hold it instead of spend or invest it. Shoving it under my mattress incurs zero risk and zero costs, and makes me MORE WEALTHY tomorrow, without having done anything or accepted any risk. (Imagine the whole country does this, and the money supply shrinks as the Fed lowers the money supply--has anybody actually gotten any wealthier, or created any value, by holding cash? Nah.) If someone can make money with no effort and no risk, they're gonna, because that simply doesn't happen in nature. So everybody waits and demand falls even further because nobody is buying. This is a problem. And we haven't even talked about lending or international trade...
It's a truism of life that all things decay, and that you can't get somethin' for nothin'. In a deflationary environment, my money grows by sticking it under a mattress, a zero-risk zero-cost "getting something". If ya don't "work", ya don't "eat"--doesn't matter if you're a bee, a tree, a human, or a dollar.
The current system IS prejudiced, but the prejudice is toward people who pay their debts on time. This correlates to wealthiness, but isn't necessarily causative. Paying small amounts on time gives one preference when borrowing larger amounts, and leveraging larger amounts is how people get wealthy.
eudemonist
8mo ago
Okay, not missing one then. I suppose I just don't know Hobbes well enough to understand what hole in the discourse you're referring to.
eudemonist
1yr ago
Would you agree that borrowing a library book is a type of contract one enters into with the library?
eudemonist
1yr ago
They're not talking about something else, though. Did you read the full conversation? I just quoted that bit (and elided some) because I found Stepho's pulling out a dictionary and President Obama's swift about-face on "words have a meaning" amusing. But prior to that bit, it's quite clear they're discussing a penalty (Shared Responsibility Payment, "responsibility" being the buzzword) for not buying insurance:
STEPHANOPOULOS: ...during the campaign. Under this mandate, the government is forcing people to spend money, fining you if you don't. How is that not a tax?
OBAMA: (evasion evasion)... we've driven down the costs, we've done everything we can and you actually can afford health insurance, but you've just decided, you know what, I want to take my chances. And then you get hit by a bus and you and I have to pay for the emergency room care, that's...
STEPHANOPOULOS: That may be, but it's still a tax increase.
OBAMA: No. That's not true, George.
You're correct that in 2012 SCOTUS ruled the penalty (which is what makes the purchase a "mandate" rather than a friendly request) a tax--it's the only way Congress has power to impose such a thing. It's simply amusing because of how hard the administration has pushed "it's not a tax!", then subsequently had to go to court and argue it was a tax.
eudemonist
1yr ago
Yeah, I agree with everything you've said here. "Multiple genes could likely prejudice toward ideologies" is a better way to put it than "liberal gene", with the relative strength of that prejudice tough to decouple.
eudemonist
1yr ago
essentially no one thought of as a "tax."
Wait, what? Who thought that? My sense is that everyone knew it was a tax, but that label had been avoided by proponents of the bill.
It sure felt a lot like a tax, given that it was a box to check or uncheck when filing a federal tax return which changed the amount of the check one had to write to the treasury.
eudemonist
1yr ago
The Corner
You've seen the shows?
eudemonist
10mo ago
Sure, and many of the early Levittown suburbs were built this way, effectively on a production line. Why did we stop doing it?
We didn't, really. We upgraded a bit to where there are a handful of floor plans and some modularity, but the vast majority of new developments are cookie-cutter repetitions of their neighbors, pre-cut and packaged, to be assembled simply.
eudemonist
1yr ago
Are you an auditor? What you did with the names would be referred to as "vouching": taking a sample from your population and finding the source documents for those in the sample, to verify management's assertion that those transactions actually exist.
eudemonist
1yr ago
Is it not the case that, once we start moving towards those distant objects (in say a colony ship), the expansion behind us compensates for a growing portion of that total expansion? It's my understanding that there IS an inflection point as you describe, but we haven't reached it yet.
Perhaps "Save the Universe" is the ultimate point of the simulation we built ourselves. Seems fitting.
eudemonist
1yr ago
Anybody got links to good gene analyses of the two original strains of C19 that were found in Wuhan, L and S? I can find very few references, and it seems to me that having mutated into two distinct human-transmissible strains before a single sufferer was identified would be pretty long odds. It wasn't til almost a year later we started seeing Alpha variants.
Seems the two initial strains would have TONS of papers written about them, no?
eudemonist
1yr ago
I agree, and would suggest an ever better question might be "does a husband have more moral status than a wife?", given his scriptural position of head of household. The relationships are, in my mind, very similar between animal husbandry and familial husbandry.
Those are the same bucket. Hispanic isn't considered a race (anymore); most Hispanics are actually white.
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