These charges were patently frivolous from the very start but setting that aside they don't even make sense from the political grandstanding perspective. Bewildering.
Think on the meta level just a bit. As in, not about whether these twenty people themselves were or were not intentionally trying to commit a crime, and catching them is proof of anything.
From a pure signalling standpoint, if you want to prevent people from knowingly casting illegal votes and demonstrate that you are capable of enforcing this rule (i.e. detecting illegal votes), then yes, you have to arrest people who do cast illegal votes, even if they possess a defense for the action.
Especially since "I was told it was legal to cast my vote" is such an easy defense to invoke and hard to disprove otherwise. You show that you will STILL investigate such situations and try to verify the defense as valid.
Do you think that this action will, on the margins, increase or decrease the chances of someone attempting actual voter fraud in the 2022 elections in Florida?
Or would the effect be entirely minimal and worth disregarding?
faceh
21d ago
While I think there are real concerns about what happens to the GOP Post-Trump, yeah, the Dem's issues are structural and the alliances they've forged by being maximally divisive on sex, on race, on religion, on class, and on age too, I guess, mean there's no way to please each of these disparate groups.
In fact, the post-Trump era might be harder on the Dems because opposition to Trump was like the one thing that united them!
Dems can't run another stodgy White Guy for President. I mean, they can, Biden proved that the party can get everyone in line and on task if needed, but it is impossible to imagine the guy who has the political juice to win the primaries at this point.
Likewise, Dem leadership is ossified and they've hamstrung any new blood from acquiring much power. AOC is popular but she's also been ground down by the party machine. Pelosi et al. will grip the reins of power right up until their dying breath. Trump, by elevating Vance, is giving the 'new Generation' a generous toehold on power which they can use to climb up.
David Hogg was stupid about it, but he had the right idea that there needs to be enough of a shakeup that young upstarts can compete for influence in the party and identify talented candidates. Kinda how Obama got into power (which, ironically, was probably what prompted the party to lock down that issue so Hillary could win next time).
On top of that, I don't see any possible way the Dems can attract young male voters back. They've gone way too far out on the "men are inherently evil" limb. Can't reel that back in without pissing off the unmarried white female demographic that is their backbone. But any guy who looks and sees how they force any popular young Democrat male through a struggle session, like with Harry Sisson, will balk at anything they say. There's NOTHING to offer them.
Whomever they nominate, it'll either annoy their base, or it'll alienate the median voter.
And all this is before we talk about how the extreme progressive wings are demanding concessions constantly.
Hot on the heels of failing out of art school and declaring himself the robofuhrer, Grok now has an update that makes him even smarter but less fascist.
And... xAI releases AI companions native to the Grok App.
And holy...
SHIT. It has a NSFW mode. (NSFW, but nothing obscene either) Jiggle Physics Confirmed.
EDIT: Watch this demo then TELL ME this thing isn't going to absolutely mindkill some lonely nerds. Not only can it fake interest in literally any topic you find cool, they nailed the voice tones too.
I'm actually now suspicious that the "Mecha-Hitler" events were a very intentional marketing gambit to ensure that Grok was all over news (and their competitors were not) when they dropped THIS on the unsuspecting public.
This... feels like it will be an inflection point. AI girlfriends (and boyfriends) have already one-shotted some of the more mentally vulnerable of the population. But now we've got one backed by some of the biggest companies in the world, marketed to a mainstream audience.
And designed like a fucking superstimulus.
I've talked about how I feel there are way too many superstimuli around for your average, immature teens and young adults to navigate safely. This... THIS is like introducing a full grown Bengal tiger into the Quokka island.
Forget finding a stack of playboys in the forest or under your dad's bed. Forget stumbling onto PornHub for the first time, if THIS is a teen boy's first encounter with their own sexuality and how it interacts with the female form, how the hell will he ever form a normal relationship with a flesh-and-blood woman? Why would he WANT to?
And what happens when this becomes yet another avenue for serving up ads and draining money from the poor addicted suckers.
This is NOT something parents can be expected to foresee and guide their kids through.
Like I said earlier:
"Who would win, a literal child whose brain hasn't even developed higher reasoning, with a smartphone and internet access, or a remorseless, massive corporation that has spent millions upon millions of dollars optimizing its products and services for extracting money from every single person it gets its clutches on?"
I've felt the looming, ever growing concern for AI's impact on society, jobs, human relationships, and the risk of killing us for a couple years now... but I can at least wrap those prickly thoughts in the soft gauze of the uncertain future. THIS thing sent an immediate shiver up my spine and set off blaring red alarms immediately. Even if THIS is where AI stops improving, we just created a massive filter, an evolutionary bottleneck that basically only the Amish are likely to pass through. Slight hyperbole, but only slight.
Right now the primary obstacle is that it costs $300 a month to run.
But once again, wait until they start serving ads through it as a means of letting the more destitute types get access.
And yes, Elon is already promising to make them real.
Its like we've transcended the movie HER and went straight to Weird Science.
Can't help but think of this classic tweet.
"At long last, we have created the Digital Superstimulus Relationship Simulator from the Classic Scifi Novel 'For the Love of All That is Holy Never Create a Digital Superstimulus Relationship Simulator.'"
I think I would be sucked in by this if I hadn't developed an actul aversion to Anime-Style women (especially the current gen with the massive eyes) over the years. And they're probably going to cook up something that works for me, too.
faceh
11mo ago
Harris is bad product with good marketing, so I continue to be near certain she ends up dragging in the polls when the honeymoon period ends and she actually makes public appearances.
I've been asking blue teamers to name the most impressive achievement attributable to Harris.
Aside from "got picked as VP" then "got picked as Presidential candidate" there's literally nothing. Every other attempt to rehab her image failed, too. She's got almost every liability Biden has aside from age, yet none of the experience or achievements to her name.
Unless they pull the "she makes no appearances publicly unless absolutely necessary" strategy that Biden pioneered, there's simply no possible way her public persona improves the current situation, and many ways it harms it.
Ironically Walz might have been chosen simply because he's really good at putting a decent spin on his own bad policies and that's literally what Harris needs to do right now.
Even if women would prefer a longer “runway” towards consummating a relationship, it’s the men who get to set the timetable, with their implicit threat of walking away otherwise.
Have to snort if THAT is how this is phrased.
The guy gets to "set the timetable" with their "implicit threat of walking away."
That's generally not how negotiations are framed. A woman has just as much power to walk away, and just as much power to define/set a timetable... assuming she's capable of keeping to her own commitments. "Look, I'll have sex with you by the 5th date if and only if we are exclusive and you've spent ~$400 on me by then" is a valid way to filter out fuckboys... if the guy can reasonably expect that she will keep such a promise.
And a guy is going to walk away only when he doesn't value the sex that highly and/or has multiple other women he can try to hook up with, which devalues sex with any given one of them. There really ISN'T an imbalance in bargaining power here! There's just women who aren't able to state their position and then enforce it, so they don't even attempt to bargain.
From the perspective of virtually every guy who ISN'T trying to solely extract sex, the woman is the one setting EVERY timetable, and even if he does have the power to walk away, he knows he can't/won't cajole her into sex unless and until SHE really wants it, he wouldn't even dream of trying to force the issue.
There was a time in my life when I figured that religious rules against premarital sex were at worst arbitrary and at best outdated given modern contraceptives.
Now, I have to accept that they're an ingenious way to create a Schelling Point where both men and women can be truly sure that they'll be getting the thing they're hoping for, and, much like closing on a house, every material part of the transaction will occur at approximately the same time so nobody can duck out of the bargain before coughing up their side of it.
That is, since it is clear many women are susceptible to being manipulated, and some large subset of men are hardcore manipulators, don't set up a complex set of unwritten rules that can be exploited and that women barely understand. Just tell everyone "no sex until marriage" and don't allow any bend whatsoever. That's a rule that everyone CAN follow and can be policed more directly. Men who want sex... get married. Women who want commitment... get married. Don't agonize over how many dates or how long you have to be with them before giving it up, and don't let guys make implicit promises they fully intend to break.
Maybe it is arbitrary, but no less arbitrary than any other boundary you could set, and a hell of a lot easier/more intuitive to enforce.
One of Willy’s more off-putting qualities was his pathological need to gamify sex. On top of the not totally atypical notes app list he kept cataloging every woman he’s ever slept with, fit with a plus or minus sign, Willy had an obsession with using ‘automation’ as a method to get girls. He’d send automated texts, the contents of which ai generated, to thirty something women at a time and kept a spreadsheet of how many responses he’d get in return, how many turned to a follow up date, and how many to sex.
Willy got a similar thrill when girls would send him text-walls expressing their distraught feelings to him, upset with his behavior. He enjoyed defusing them like a bomb, and getting them to be happy with him again, no matter the number of lies necessary and no matter how little he cared about them – he’d laugh at their gullableness.
In a slightly saner world, Willy would probably be dead. One of these girls' fathers or brothers would have confronted him by now and beaten some sense into him or just put him out of our misery.
But noooooooooo instead the sociopaths are allowed free reign so long as they don't run completely afoul of the law because we've left the sexual marketplace to be regulated solely by social shame and rumor-mongering and removed any implicit threat of violence. And Sociopaths aren't effected by social shame.
I've become exceedingly fatalistic about the 'outcome' of this war because it really feels like the ultimate destiny of each nation (for the next 50 years, at least) is largely baked into the cake at this point.
Ukraine may very well be able to maintain autonomy over most of its' own territory. But their population has been in decline for decades now. Now add in a few facts:
-
Lots of Ukrainian men are dying on the frontlines instead of starting families.
-
Even those men who survive have been deployed for a year+ and probably won't be starting families anytime soon.
-
Russia has apparently been abducting tens, possibly hundreds of thousands of Ukrainian Children. The prospects of getting these kids BACK even if Ukraine wins are slim-to-none.
I don't see any way to slice it to avoid Ukraine entering terminal population spiral/decline, and it may as well already be there. If the war drags on for another year then even if Ukraine prevails and all the men return and start enthusiastically knocking up women it'll be 16 or so years before those kids can become economically productive in any way.
In short, win or lose I don't see how Ukraine maintains itself as a functional nation as their demographics become untenable to support economic activity. Unless perhaps all the other nations of the world commit to pouring massive ongoing support into the country.
And most other countries face a similar, though less sharp, demographic crunch.
Russia, well, they're slightly more likely to hold together as a country but it seems increasingly unlikely they'll achieve their overall goals for territorial security and so I would assume they will just continue to fight a war of attrition to their last man rather than return to the status quo ante.
faceh
1mo ago
I literally just want to figure out the most most efficient way to show the Boomers pushing the "just improve yourself and then women will flock to you" advice that this is horribly insufficient and increasingly divorced from reality, so that they can be convinced to either start helping with the problem or, preferably, stand aside to let others fix it rather than just interfering with anybody who tries so NOBODY can fix it.
The fact that they don't let any 'serious' guy talk about the problem or take genuine actions is why Andrew Tate is the main voice men get to hear about this from.
This might be SLIGHTLY too big for small-scale Sunday, but I will give it a go:
What is the strongest argument against "you will own nothing and be happy" as a concept?" Ideally an argument that can be expressed in a few sentences of average complexity.
For instance, one argument might be that "people will not be able to build up wealth." However, I note that most of the property people own are depreciating assets. It actually might make sense for someone to not own a car and instead simply rent one on a weekly basis from a fleet of vehicles maintained by a larger company that are mostly standardized and will suit whatever their needs are at the time. Or a system like Citibike for cars. Or maybe later on, just call a robotaxi as needed.
This means they will not have to worry about the costs of repairs and maintenance, or insurance, or storage, and they can expect to get new models on a regular basis, thus it reduces a potential source of stress and unexpected costs to a simple monthly subscription. This seems like it would work well for a lot of people, and save them money in the long run!
And similar can apply to housing! If you live in a rented, pre-furnished apartment you are far more flexible if you want a change of scenery, to expand your living space, or need to move to a new city to pursue opportunities. Home ownership introduces lots of complexity and presents an illiquid asset even if it appreciates.
Same can apply to, say, smartphones, which upgrade so fast that 'owning' one almost doesn't make sense as it becomes outdated in < 1 year.
So extending some logic, I begin to see reasons why the average person might prefer to own nothing but a retirement account, and simply have a subscription service for most items they will use throughout their life.
What philosophical, economic, psychological, social, biological, political etc. etc. argument do you think most strongly refutes or rejects this as an ideal?
Taking a guess at the argument that will be the most common response, Rot-13'd:
Vg qvfpbhentrf snzvyl sbezngvba naq yrnqf gb n pvgvmrael gung vf vapncnoyr bs erfvfgvat nhgubevgl.
(Let us be clear, I'm not supporting owning nothing, but I do plan on trying to do a steelman or similar in the future)
It is clear to me that the modern Democratic Party is essentially an enabler of violent crime, and that is one of the main reasons why I cannot imagine myself voting for a Democrat. However, I also see how the Republicans' pro-2nd Amendment position has contributed to the problem, and I cannot let them off the hook.
There's an OBVIOUS synthesis here, and I actually consider it an useful policy point that the GOP should adopt in their platform:
We should enact a federal ban on any registered members of the Democratic Party (or any organization that is their successor in interest) from owning a gun.
Yes, this 'technically' weakens the Second Amendment.
But since it also effectively bans firearm ownership for like 30% of the U.S. population, it actually brings the Democrats closer to what they CLAIM to want. So I expect they would not object to this particular law.
And lets put it this way, if the Dems don't believe in an individual right to bear arms, they shouldn't even care to fight this law in Court. Even if we GRANT that it is facially unconstitutional, who would bring the suit on their behalf? (This is tongue-in-cheek, the very SECOND anyone gets arrested under this law, there's going to be a civil rights suit filed). In the alternative, it would be funny to have the Dems funding lawsuits to strike down a gun control law.
From a moral/ethical standpoint, I see no problems with denying a group of people a 'right' they argue doesn't exist anyway (I also apply this to freedom of speech). ESPECIALLY when they can recover the right by simply changing their party affiliation.
I'm just curious if they would balk at such a law because it has a 'disparate impact' or it 'singles out one group', even if their underlying assertion is that the interest in question doesn't actually exist. Whining that its 'unfair' would be almost an admission that the right to own a gun does have some important value!
Johnson has apparently set his particular calling card as a director to be "All extremely rich people are simply irredeemable fuckups and only obtain their wealth by luck; the only people who are trustworthy, empathetic, or heroic are the salt-of-the-earth working class." No comment on the fact that the working class also correlates with Trump support in the U.S.
He even shoehorned that into STAR WARS of all things.
Which is... FINE, but he ends up making the rich characters into blatant, openly incompetent fuckups, and not just subtly ineffective, nor does he add any other facets to their character. So when he doesn't give them any moments which might allow the viewer to empathize with them and he does minimal work to humanize them, the ultimate effect (to me) is that it feels smug and nasty.
And likewise, I don't even buy that they 'lose' in the end. The irony here is that Johnson wants to have his cynical cake and eat his idealistic ice cream too. That is, he posits a view of the world where rich (but incompetent) people dominate most industries and use their influence to pull the wool over everyone's eyes. There's no way for the common man to strike at them in a way that will matter.
Then, enter Benoit Blanc, who can outmaneuver the rich dummies, see through their deceptions and machinations, and use their own blackened souls against them to arrange for their downfall, then handing that off to the enlightened everywoman to enact the final, decisive blow. Johnson works very hard to make his 'good' ending irrefutable and irreversible.
But to believe that you'd have to ignore the rest of the message that wealthy, connected people are able to use their influence to manipulate outcomes. In this world, shortly after the movie ends, all the wealthy assholes are going to hide behind expensive lawyers, bring in PR firms to spin the story, and while yes they're almost certainly financially ruined for the short term, I rather doubt they will end up serving jail time or losing 'everything.' Okay, the billionaire will probably serve a LOT of jail time for murder (but maybe not) so that's something. But in order to believe that the 'bad' people 'lose,' you have to both believe that all of them were 'bad,' and that they have fully 'lost.' And I wasn't convinced of either by the end. And that's because of the world Johnson set up for us, not my own cynicism!
He wants to push forth the idealistic vision that a smart, educated, clever interloper like Blanc, who champions all the 'right' ideas too, can assist an underprivileged, exploited commoner to win against connected, wealthy idiots through sheer effort and persistence when the stakes are high enough. But then he has to end the movie before reality ensues and the world he posited reasserts and reverses most of the alleged gains.
Side note, whilst I get that destroying the Mona Lisa as a cultural artifact to get some revenge is an iffy message, I think the core idea that the Protag had been extensively and personally wronged by the villains and thus wouldn't give a damn about destroying a mere physical possession was completely valid. A human being was killed, and you're more outraged at the destruction of a tiny little portrait?
That might be one of the few truly interesting points the movie makes.
Also, the real 'twist' wasn't one that the viewer could have reasonably guessed in advance, I think, so I find it a bit bad faith to hide so much from the viewer, rather than merely misdirect their attention so they miss or misinterpret the clues. There were NO clues as to the switcheroo, so the audience was just left in the complete dark until the flashbacks, which recontextualized everything. And that was neat, but a bit unbecoming of an actual mystery story where the audience is looking for clues. But then again, with modern genre-savvy audiences it may have been impossible to fool them if there were any clever clues hidden in plain sight, so perhaps this was the only way to pull it off.
All that said, I still enjoyed it. I don't think one can effectively deny Johnson's pure technical skill as a writer and director.
P.S. people keep saying he's targeting Joe Rogan and Elon Musk specifically, and I see why, but that seems more based on the particular cultural moment rather than the intent when he wrote or even directed it.
The billionaire asshole is much closer to a pastiche of Steve Jobs and other tech founders than Musk in particular. Especially since Musk, of all Billionaires, is not the one who would spend gratuitous amounts of money on a private island with a giant architectural abomination on display. As far as I know, he doesn't own an island, or even a yacht. So 90% of the 'critiques' in this film would roll off him anyway.
The redpill manosphere streamer character also doesn't really fit Rogan. Rogan of course didn't 'lucky break' his way into prominence, he had a lengthy career as a comedian and hosted mainstream TV shows before starting his podcast. And by and large he is known for being a genuine and empathetic guy rather than loudly spouting any particular ideological viewpoint. And given his deal with Spotify, he wouldn't need to cater to some Billionaire's whims to maintain his platform. So again, 90% of the 'critiques' in the film would roll off him.
I genuinely don't think these were the targets Johnson had in mind when writing. He wrote much more generalized sendups of a given cultural archetype and viewers projected the current pop culture bugaboos onto it.
Practically speaking, what measures will gun rights advocates actually tolerate? It seems like the only thing they can countenance is more guns.
Correct. Since the entire history of gun control regulation has shown that advocates of gun control will never admit to a policy failure. Any violence that occurs is ultimately because there was insufficient gun control in place, thus no failure is actually a failure of gun control policy, it is instead a failure to go far enough.
California has some of the most stringent gun laws in the country and also one of the higher murder rates. To say nothing of fucking CHICAGO. You literally can't get much stricter than Chicago in restricting firearms, and you also can't find many places with a higher murder rate. They've tried heavy gun control and it didn't help. So can they admit that gun control has failed in this instance?
If there are no circumstances under which they'll admit the policy is failing, then in what sense can they be said to be acting in good faith?
Every single compromise gun rights advocates have made previously has been met with demands for further compromise, and nothing is offered in return.
The best you can do is probably something like move to New Hampshire. The most reasonable thing you can do is nothing.
Speaking of, NH has some of the most permissive laws and also a negligible homicide rate. Again kinda makes the point for me.
The odds of concealed carry protecting you from victimization of any kind, let alone a mass shooting, is incredibly low, if for no other reason than because a middle class defense contractor is already extremely unlikely to be victimized and the efficacy of concealed carry in stopping mass shootings is... mixed. It's a psychological prop more than anything.
The odds of a fire extinguisher protecting you from a house fire of any kind, let alone an arsonist, is incredibly low...
You see the subtle error in reasoning here?
Terrorism doesn't kill very many people, but it does scare people and make them feel powerless because it is outside the 'normal' sociology of murder.
And because those instances are given outsized attention by the national media, who has every intention of maximizing the fear felt by their viewership.
But that's a fundamentally different problem. If it weren't terrorism it'd be something else.
IIRC the statistically average Ukrainian woman wanted to be a mail order bride before the war, so it’s entirely possible that the vast majority of the most fertile women leave and never come back.
But gets to my point. If Ukraine wins, they've got a decades-long rebuilding project ahead of them, and their standards of living will be comparatively horrendous in the meantime. How do you convince people (esp. females) to return, stick around, and have babies when they could just retreat to a wealthier country and shack up with a local there?
And if you CAN'T convince them to return and have kids, then the country dies out in a couple generations anyway, despite rebuilding efforts.
That said, the thought has crossed my mind that if my dating life doesn't improve over the next few years, the idea of finding a displaced Ukrainian woman who would presumably be quite grateful to not be in an active warzone vs. the current elevated standards of American women has a certain appeal.
My personal take was that transactivism was just the next, inevitable step in the march to atomization in liberalism. And it probably still is. But there may be bridges too far, even for liberals. I hope.
Similar here, I figured that the high water mark before the tide receded would be somewhere in the vicinity of HAAS Fat Activism and the push for acceptance of "Otherkin." I hoped dearly that it would be be WELL before we hit the "MAP is a valid and acceptable sexuality" movement.
My suspicion is that the very visible entrance of Trans women into female sports leagues combined with the push for gender reassignment of prepubescent children is what snapped normies into a posture of resistance.
Note that I don't think the resistance is particularly well organized or even coherent, but with NYT taking the position that "it is in fact acceptable to consider the implications of these policies and one is not required to accept activist claims at face value" at least there's some room to breathe for those who actually WANT there to be a discussion on the matter.
But the left has no option to just retreat on this point, and as we've seen even the most milquetoast of defiance is treated as a nigh-existential threat, so generally I just find myself wondering which angle of attack they will implement next.
It feels very weird, though, to be on TheMotte talking about a culture war issue where the right is seemingly the one with momentum and the left is now on defense. Only took the combined might of the most popular author on the planet, the largest newspaper on the planet, and some of the more popular GOP governors and pundits.
The Cathedral as a whole appears to be proceeding with it's general plans quite unhindered, mind.
faceh
2yr ago
If we posit the world where the guns are removed, you've just made it so that physical prowess is solely determinant of success in violent encounters.
Which is to say, you're making females less able to resist male attackers, or allowing organized groups to terrorize individuals more freely, or make it harder for the old and infirm to defend themselves.
This leaves aside the generally observed tendency towards government tyranny become gradually (or suddenly) more harsh against disarmed populations.
And of course probably going to see a rise in Cars as tool of mass homicide
Seems to me like an attempt to paper over a major hole in their ideological worldview.
I've spoken on the topic before, martial arts, combat sports, and such similar endeavors based on physical prowess in an actual fight for 'survival' against another human remain mostly untouched by the forces of 'woke' and are still a place where masculinity is allowed to exist without suborning itself to female-centric norms of behavior or lefty egalitarianism.
Its a cultural arena where any and all illusions about socially constructed gender norms smack into a wall of sheer pragmatism. Quoth myself: "end of the day, there is simply no amount of social maneuvering that will make up for the strength differential between men and women, and you can't 'fake' martial arts skills without willing participants, which makes entryism nigh-impossible."
A biological male who goes through male puberty has an insurmountable advantage over any person whatsoever who hasn't gone through male puberty. Unironically, If I were forced to bet on a no-holds barred brawl between a barely-trained 70 year old male and a heavily trained mid-twenties female in the same weight class, I am picking gramps for the win. Cardio will 100% be a factor here, but also, old man strength is REAL. (Oh I'm prepared to lose my money, but absent actual medical problems a 70 year old is not as fragile as you think.) I wonder why such a matchup hasn't been done before. Hmmmm.
But biology also has a tendency to be messy and perhaps defies categorization on the margins, so we can have women who produce a lot of testosterone and maybe some weird genetic quirks that trigger the same disgust reaction as a male whalloping on a female even though, technically, if we squint, its still women fighting women. But closer to the center of the respective bell curves for men and women there are no surprises to be found.
The lefties who want to claim the only reason anyone objects to Imane Khelif being in the women's division is wanton transphobia are depending on some very, very rare and unique circumstances to justify the situation that has come about. If we apply the left's logic, literally any person who was "assigned male at birth" who transitions at any age should be eligible to compete in the women's division. That's how they treat every other sport. So if we see some jacked, bearded wrestler sweep a women's karate tournament what exactly are we supposed say that ISN'T transphobic?
But the reason I reject the idea that it is 'fine' to let a trans woman compete in a fighting sport against cis women is mostly what I alluded to up above. Biology is messy but also merciless. Just as one might be repulsed by the image of a muscular male cracking a young lady's skull, the image of a strapping young buck trading blows with a senior citizen thrice his age also tends to also generate pity for the older guy and disdain for the younger who is showing blatant disrespect for his elder and risks hurting, maybe killing someone who is much less able to recover from the damage.
BUT WAIT, age is just a social construct. A 'spectrum,' one might even say! There is no exact set of physical traits that makes someone "sixty years old" other than the date on which they exited their mothers womb! How can you assert that a 25-year-old is going to have inherent advantages in a fight over a 65-year-old? Why should these arbitrary categories justify rules that seek to protect the latter from the former? Somebody can identify as a different age than the one presented by their body, that much is true!
Well, because our current scientific understanding of how aging works... and common sense from what we can observe with our own eyes, tells us that even if we can't precisely predict how 10, 20, 30 years of time passing will impact a human body, we can be certain that the general trend will be that person will become slower, weaker, more prone to injury, and thus overall at much greater risk than the equivalent person who is 20 years younger.
So uh, when our current scientific understanding of how sexual development works... and common sense from what we can observe with our own eyes, tell us that even if we can't precisely predict how 300 ng/dL of added testosterone will impact a human body, we are still going to be certain that the person without that testosterone will be slower, weaker, more prone to injury, and overall at much greater risk than the 'equivalent' person who has 200 times their testosterone levels.
Yes, there's a plethora of other factors and the causal arrow can point in multiple directions, remember I'm granting that biology is messy.
Leaving aside whether women should be competing in combat sports at all, if they're going to have their own league or division, the rules should be focused on mitigating the risks to the competitors (and maximizing 'fairness,' I guess) and thus shouldn't be thwarted by the aforementioned weird edge cases, and definitely not thwarted by someone who can convince the organizers that they REALLY REALLY believe they're a female.
And I would say precisely the same about age divisions. A 30-year-old could in theory have the mind of a 60-year-old, but lets not force the actual 60-year-old into the ring with them because we want to accommodate the younger guy's beliefs... Again leaving aside whether 60-year-olds should be competing at all.
Lefties don't (currently) see the age spectrum as an issue worth fighting over, but dohoho they certainly will take any and every opportunity presented to fight over the gender identity spectrum. Especially when they're desperate to make inroads into the combat sports world which, as I stated elsewhere, is extremely resistant to entryism. This helps them slap a facade over the "males and females are fundamentally physically different in non-trivial ways" hole by arguing "transphobes can't even tell the difference between a trans woman and a woman who is merely huge physical outlier."
Anyhow. Maybe we revisit this topic after the Jake Paul/Mike Tyson fight
Bud Light/Anheuser-Busch just penned a large advertising partnership deal with the UFC. The unconfirmed reports I've read are suggesting the 7-year deal totals about $100 million or so.
Dana White, President of the UFC, suggests its 'not determined by the money' and while this is an eyeroll-worthy statement, in a sense it must be correct, because the obvious benefit to Bud Light is that partnering with one of the few remaining bastions of 'toxic' masculinity left to Western Culture offers a promising route to rehabilitate their image and customer base after the Dylan Mulvaney Kerfuffle tarnished their red-blooded, blue-collared reputation.
Which of course means it is still about the money, since Bud Light sales remain in the tank and thus regaining customers would mean a return to their former glory and profitability.
Will it work? I'm personally skeptical. The move is actually a pretty good, and costly, way to show that they're returning to their roots as a beer for the hard-working and rough-handed everyman, since the UFC is honestly synonymous with uncouth, politically incorrect athletes beating the snot out of each other, and features sexy ring girls at every fight with the Machisimo levels simply off the charts. Trump himself is known to attend events and get standing ovations. Tying themselves to THAT brand is actually likely to hurt their 'cred' (such as it exists) with any liberals who might have been swayed by their moves towards increased inclusion. I'm honestly looking forward to the next Sean Strickland (the current UFC middleweight champion) fight, just to see how he might mouth off in a way that will lead to controversy against Bud Light pushing in the other direction. EDIT: It has already begun LMAO
That said, it's not like anyone expects the "beefy men beating each other to death" league to try to conform with polite norms anyway.
Still. It isn't anything resembling an acknowledgement of the mistake, and even if the logo is plastered all over the Octagon and fighter's shorts, all that has to happen for this to backfire is for people to just... not buy the beer. The UFC pockets the money and the needle doesn't budge otherwise. It sure didn't work for Crypto.com or Vechain, both of whom forked over a ton of money for UFC sponsorship.
There's also the insidious take that this is an attempt to try to bring the UFC itself to heel, by exerting enough influence over it to cause it to clamp down on its athletes and 'clean up' its image (read: bring in line with progressive values) rather than allow it to exist as a potential rogue cultural element resisting the leftward swim of Cthulhu.
Given that I hold the position that martial arts/combat sports are probably the last remaining healthy outlet for positive masculinity, if THAT is the goal I'd be extremely alarmed. Not saying it is, but when that much money is getting thrown around, you expect strings to be attached.
I had 'jokingly' suggested to friends a while back that the single best way to bring male customers back to Bud Light was to simply hire a cadre of busty women who would stand in the beer aisle at the grocery store wearing an American Flag bikini and offering to fellate anyone who bought a case. Boom. Apology accepted.
And considering how many buxom ladies with relatively lax morals you could afford to hire for $100 million, I am wondering if that might have been a better plan overall.
faceh
10mo ago
The point is to make someone live with the consequences of their own stated beliefs, whilst minimizing collateral harm.
If they won't accept THIS deal, then I refuse to accept any other proposal they could offer because its clear they DON'T actually believe that gun control measures would reduce crime and death, or else they'd jump at a chance to enact a partial gun ban.
If they can't get gun control passed any other way, surely those 20% of Democratic gun owners (who are an astoundingly small minority overall, so its not a big loss!) will sacrifice their rights for the greater good.
Or not, and force a reckoning.
Literally, I will accept any proposed gun control measure, background checks on down, as long as the caveat "only applies to registered Democrats" is appended to it.
Find me one they'd accept.
I'll just link to the comment I made on @Dirty_DemSoc 's "WHY BOTHER" post. Since its relevant to the protests AND the assassinations.
Quote:
And yet we know that democratic elections don't completely avert violence, or else Mexico's most recent election wouldn't have been so damn bloody. Turns out that violence is also a way to influence outcomes in a democracy, when you don't expect the votes to go your way 'organically.' So there's a bit of a feedback loop.
Right now we're in a phase where a minority faction is fomenting chaos for want of being able to achieve their goals via electoral process.
In a sense, this is ALSO one faction that is demonstrating that it has motivated, competent shooters on its side, so if something real DID pop off they are at least capable of carrying out deadly violence. The capacity for this violence is no longer just theoretical.
Of course the basic motives will be more complex than that, but the goal of having mass protests is ALSO to demonstrate "we are numerous, we are organized, and we could turn violent if things don't change in our favor!"
But we had a spate of lefty-coded assassination/killing attempts going back at least to Trump's earshot, and THAT trend is a bit scarier because the people of his tribe either ignore it (tacitly approving, I'd say), line up in support like with Luigi, or actually denounce it and try to lower the temperature and root out the radicals among them who are willing to get froggy.
Anything other than the last option will mean MORE attempts going forward. I'm waiting with a TON of consternation for the first FPV drone-based assassination that succeeds.
PLEASE try lowering the temperature, Dems.
faceh
2yr ago
This is economically very efficient, as it encourages land to be used for its most economically efficient purpose. However, this butts directly up against peoples' real-world desires to "settle" - to establish a home in a place and be able to stay there indefinitely. If, for reasons beyond their control, the price of their property increases, they can be financially forced from their homes, which is about as soulcrushing as being foreclosed upon, while also seeming much more unfair.
The solution I've seen mentioned is that you can permit the homeowner to 'name their price' i.e. the value of what they think their home/land is truly worth, with the caveat being that if someone offers to purchase at said price they are legally compelled to accept it.
If they name an astronomically high price, then they are going to be taxed accordingly.
So the incentive would be that they name a price that is sufficiently high to make up for the the distress of leaving a cherished home, of finding and moving to a new one, and whatever other burdens would be placed on them if they were to move, but not so high that they couldn't afford the tax burden.
I've not thought of nor seen a solid rebuttal to this proposal. If a homeowner has a price they are genuinely willing to accept for a property they have an extreme emotional attachment to, then 'forcing' them to sell at that price is barely a harm. If they claim that the property is actually worth far more than any buyer would reasonably be willing to pay, then they are prevented from complaining if their inflated valuation is the one they pay tax on.
Because if we take the complete inverse of your scenario, we end up with nail houses where a person refuses all reasonable offers to sell, and ends up having all the positive features of their neighborhood stripped away and end up distressed anyway, but with no money to show for it.
faceh
2yr ago
The right isn't gonna accept trans people no matter what at this point, when you start calling people pedophiles the conversation is kind of over.
When you openly and blatantly state your intent to convert people's children to an ideologically driven belief system backed by the power of the state, then no conversation is possible. Arguably it never started.
"We don't have to convince YOU of anything, we'll just teach your kids to hate your beliefs and we may convince a few of them to undergo invasive surgery to alter their very personal identity, against YOUR wishes."
Explain to me how there's any room for negotiation when such a position has been moved to the forefront of one side's platform?
You see the dynamic in any online forum that is still pseudonymous (such as this one). Even though we can all guess based on general demographic surveys that 85% of the forum, at least, is male, one can't confirm the gender of any particular poster beyond their own representations.
As soon as you enable users to present as a particular gender (all the moreso if you let them add photos) that all goes out the window.
On a side note, this is also tying into my experience of becoming quietly convinced that the inability of society to 'rein in' female sexuality in a healthy way contributes to almost every form of social dysfunction we observe.
Note I'm not saying this is the ONLY condition for dysfunction (plenty of dysfunctional societies which heavily police female sexuality, cf. Iran) but just a seemingly major factor that contributes to dysfunction in the long run.
But as soon as you start letting attractive people leverage their attractiveness to gain popularity, you necessarily compromise the basic factor that allows people to engage in conversation on a 'neutral' playing field. That invites all the rest of the problems inherent to human social group dynamics.
Just say no.
I'm extremely leery about the potential short or medium term impacts here.
Yet, I find myself willing to see what happens, because the revelations of the past 6ish years is that the Experts WERE pushing buttons on the control panel, and were getting paid very handsomely to push the buttons, but weren't particularly motivated to push buttons that would benefit the people they nominally owed allegiance to. I'm not even talking strictly about NGOs and such, but that's a symptom of it. Hell, during Biden's term, we can't even be sure WHO was at the controls while Biden was half-cogent.
Lets push some buttons that will break some things in the short term, and then (hopefully) quickly build some replacements that are generally better for parties other than elites in the political class.
And I'm young enough I can wait to recover from any short or medium term losses before I'm forced to retire. I grew up during and in the aftermath of the '08 crash. Mentally I've been braced this sort of event for like 10 years. I do feel for those who are stuck in a position where their livelihood is reliant on stock prices, but if you're at or near retirement age you should be in safer assets anyway.
The (classical) Liberal World Order was premised on free trade and financial/industrial interconnections between various countries disincentivizing wars and conflicts and fostering greater cooperation. I sincerely believe that they do have this effect, but I can see and admit there are parts of this order that are causing major issues and yet are not being corrected. I'd point to mass immigration as one example, and collapsing global fertility as another. BOTH of these should in theory be addressable without attacking the foundations of the order itself... but we've not been allowed to even have the discussion.
I would suggest that we're in a particularly unfavorable equilibrium that could collapse into an even worse equilibrium in the nearish future. Whether this is due to irrational/malicious actors screwing with things, or due to inexorable historical forces is a good discussion. But taking a gamble that if you start wrenching on the controls now you can steer away from the iceberg and not crash into something else, well, that is not a thing to be done flippantly.
I can certainly understand people who would rather not have Trump and Co. be the ones at the helm, but the system itself wasn't going to let us have anyone better.
I do not see any reason why the government could not make an identical argument if an "administrative error" meant they deported a United States citizen.
Here's a small hint, U.S. Citizens are 'owed' certain 'duties' by 'their' (key word) Government. Non-citizens (once they've been determined to be such) are not.
Here's the actual Federal Law on the matter:
https://uscode.house.gov/view.xhtml?path=/prelim@title22/chapter23&edition=prelim
And the quote:
§1731. Protection to naturalized citizens abroad
All naturalized citizens of the United States while in foreign countries are entitled to and shall receive from this Government the same protection of persons and property which is accorded to native-born citizens.
Bonus points:
§1732. Release of citizens imprisoned by foreign governments
Whenever it is made known to the President that any citizen of the United States has been unjustly deprived of his liberty by or under the authority of any foreign government, it shall be the duty of the President forthwith to demand of that government the reasons of such imprisonment; and if it appears to be wrongful and in violation of the rights of American citizenship, the President shall forthwith demand the release of such citizen...
Granted, what this looks like in practice is up for debate. What does "unjustly deprived" mean?
I'll reiterate the point I already made that I think the only way the Administration gets any heavy pushback on these actions is if they accidentally deport an actual U.S. citizen, who is then tangibly, physically harmed or killed while in custody, where-ever that is.
I actually agree that these measures are pretty draconian, but its hard to feel like "due process" is a major concern.
It'd be MUCH, MUCH easier to get Due Process if these folks, you know, followed the process and entered the country via the channels established to keep track of them and grant them permission to be here, so they can have a 'known' status.
"I intentionally skipped the procedural steps that would have established my right to stay in the country, but don't you DARE skip the procedural steps that would delay my inevitable removal from the country" is not a winning argument, I daresay.
A thought and question I've had bouncing around in my head that I don't expect a real answer to, or even a coherent framing, since its possible there are a few false premises at work here.
Is it possible that one side effect of the rise of Onlyfans/digital prostitution is that (many) men are noticing that (many) women know precisely what men want in a sexual partner and are willing to provide it... but only outside the context of a committed relationship.
Simply put, Onlyfans creates an extremely liquid marketplace for attractive women to produce smut content for a large audience. Content producers want to optimize to capture as many customers as possible. Something like 87% of the customers/users on OF are men. So competitive forces drive the (mostly females) creators to figure out exactly what men's sexual preferences are and provide content tailored to those preferences and produce it en masse.
So by sheer economic necessity, these women are demonstrating that they are willing to engage with men's deepest sexual desires in order to make a buck.
Imagine being a 20-something male in the current environment, being aware of the fact that you can go on OF and for the price of a cheeseburger find women who will perform almost any male sexual fantasy you could imagine. Then going on the dating market to find a woman who might be willing to indulge in fantasies with him (assume he's seeking an otherwise healthy, committed relationship).
If he goes into the dating marketplace and is open about his own personal sexual desires, he can be branded as a pervert or a sex pest because "women don't exist solely to please men" and/or "you can't reduce women to sex objects, even if they sexualize themselves." In some cases, they might just simply express ignorance of men's sexual preferences and act as though expecting sexual gratification from a partner is suspect!
But this would read as extremely bad faith given that, as above, women clearly can figure out what men want if they put in a modicum of effort, and WILL provide it when provided sufficient incentive.
Seems, to me, that seeing the difference between what women are willing to do for money and attention from thousands of onlookers online vs. how they can be unwilling to indulge their own partner's personal desires could lead to a feeling of resentment.
I'm dragging up the gender, dating, and fertility discourse for one last rodeo.
The below analysis is a possible infohazard for young single males. It contains analysis done by LLMs, but I solemnly swear I drafted this through my own brainpower, using AI only for the analysis I was too lazy to do myself.
I'm following upon a comment I made about a year ago that pulled out some raw numbers on the quality of women in the U.S., and how this might impact the desire of men to actually develop themselves and find one of those women and settle down.
At the time I didn't bother doing the work to produce an actual estimate of how many women would match the basic crtieria, given that these are NOT independent variables. The though occurred to me that AIs are the perfect solution for exactly this type of laziness, and now have the capability to do this task without completely making up numbers.
So, based on my old post, I chose 9 particular criteria that I think would ‘fairly’ qualify a woman as ‘marriageable.':
Single and looking (of course).
Cishet, and thus not LGBT identified.
Not ‘obese.’
Not a mother already.
No ‘acute’ mental illness.
No STI.
Less than $50,000 in student loan debt.
5 or fewer sex partners (‘bodies’).
Under age 30.
And ask both ChatGPT and Grok to attempt to estimate the actual population of women in the U.S. that pass all these filters, accounting for how highly correlated each of the variables are.
Notable criteria I omitted:
Religious affiliation
Race
Political affiliation
Career
Drug use
Sex work/Onlyfans
I argue that a reasonable man would NOT want to ‘compromise’ on any of the original criteria, whereas the omitted ones are comparatively negotiable, or alternatively, are already captured in one of the original criteria.
Would you accept a woman who was carrying $50k in student loan debt into the relationship? I guess maybe if she was a doctor or lawyer or made enough money to justify it. Much higher than that and it starts to suggest financial recklessness.
5 as a body count is definitely an ‘arbitrary’ number, but again, you get much above that and it implies more bad decision-making. Ditto for being STI positive.
The age one is probably the most ‘unfair,’ but if having kids is a goal then this is pretty close to the ‘reasonable’ cutoff given the ticking fertility clock. Adjust upward if needed, I guess.
Here is the ChatGPT conversation. I used o3 in this case.
Here is Grok, specifically Grok 3.
In each case I used the “Deep Research” mode for the main query. I used identical prompts to start them off, they each seemingly did slightly different interpretations of the prompt. I was not using any fancy, complex prompt engineering to try and force it to think like a statistician or avoid hallucinations.
ChatGPT Gives this conclusion:
Grok comes to quite the similar conclusion:
Then I asked the truly cursed followup question: “how many men in the U.S. might be seeking these eligible women and thus how much competition is there for this population? How many are likely to ‘fail.’"
ChatGPT:
Emphasis Mine.
Grok:
Then the followup, when I tell it to extend the age range:
The error bars are pretty large on this one... the 9-out-of-10 number doesn't quite pass the smell test... but I think the point speaks for itself.
I don’t want to say that this is bleak, per se. I mean, 1 million or so women in the U.S. with some decent marriageable bonafides. That’s not a small pool! The problem stems from noticing that said women will have somewhere upwards of 5 men, possibly near 27 who will be competing for their affections, or more if they’re near the absolute peak of physical attractiveness.
Hence my increasing annoyance with the bog standard advice proffered to young males “become worthy and put in some effort and you will find a good woman” as it becomes increasingly divorced from the actual reality on the ground.
It’s not wrong. It is incomplete. Insufficient. If we increase the number of “worthy” men, that’s just intensifying the competition for the desirable women… while ALSO ensuring that more of those ‘worthy’ men will lose and go unfulfilled, DESPITE applying their efforts towards “worthiness.”
You CAN’T tell young men both “be better, improve, you have to DESERVE a good woman before you get one!” and then, when he improves:
“oh, you have to lower your standards, just because you thought you deserved a stable, chaste(ish), physically fit partner doesn’t mean you’re entitled to one, world ain’t fair.”
That dog won’t hunt.
Thems the numbers. I’m not making this up wholesale or whining about advice because I find it uncomfortable. No. The math is directly belying the platitudes. I’m too autistic NOT to notice.
So where am I going with this?
First, I’m hoping, praying someone can actually show me evidence that this is wrong. All of my personal experience, anecdotal observations, research, and my gut fucking instinct all points to this being an accurate model of reality. But I am fallible.
If I’m wrong I want to know!
I’m also not particularly worried about ME in general. I am in a good position to find a good woman, even though I’m sick of all the numerous frustrations and inanities one has to endure to do so. I get annoyed when someone, even in good faith, tries to suggest that my complaints are more mental than real. I can see the numbers, I've been in the trenches for years, this is a true phenomena, the competition is heavy, the prizes are... lacking.
And finally and most importantly, I genuinely feel the only way we keep the Ferris Wheel of organized civilization turning is if average women are willing to marry average men, and stay married, and help raise kids. I’m all for pushing the ‘average’ quality up, as long as actual relationships are forming.
Objectively, that is not happening. And so I’m worried because if society breaks down... well, I live here and I don't like what that implies for me, either.
(Yes, AGI is possibly/probably going to make this all a moot point before it all really collapses)
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