haroldbkny
7mo ago
Well, I really don't know too much about the Biden family's situation, so I could be wrong. But my general assumption would be that it'd destroy his family if Hunter were in prison. It'd be detrimental to Hunter and his kids to have a father behind bars, creating emotional trauma and financial and logistical hardships that could last generations. As opposed to if he is pardoned, he could still be a father and go on to still achieve things.
haroldbkny
5mo ago
That's fair. But I don't personally think that's the case. Most anti-leftists I have known have no scruples or even much higher level thought other than an extreme hatred of the left, and an arguments-as-soldiers kind of approach. For whenever reason, I've become different from that over time (and I believe many people in the motte, and anti-leftists in the rationalist community as well are more like me than other anti-leftists). I am anti leftist because I care about the truth, not in spite of the truth. It's just hard to meet other anti-leftists like that. Rationalists are rare to meet (where I am), anti-leftists are rare to meet, anti-leftist rationalists are really rare to meet.
I think for all his children, but especially his youngest, it could take a big emotional toll to have a father in prison. I just don't really know how they feel about him, but I could see that it could cause anyone to have additional layers of self loathing and feelings of inadequacy to be told that they come from someone that is deemed as not worthy to participate in society.
Finally there's the point about Hunter providing for his children financially, to which my only response is a high trill of gay laughter. Whether Hunter had gone to prison or not, I think we all know that, either way, his children would have been financially provided for by their grandfather, not their father
Yeah, that's probably true. Though I don't know much specifics at all. It may be a drop in a bucket, though, but it is generally costly to a family to have a father in prison.
Hunter's children being elevated to being a point of material concern in whether or not he should serve jail time, and not the welfare of the children of all the other people who've been convicted under the same laws he's deemed to have violated?
Well, I'm definitely not saying it's fair, or the right or just thing to do, or that Hunter shouldn't serve jail time. I'm just saying what I would do as a father if I had the power to. But also that Biden may also wish to think about how such a move may have repercussions for his party or the political system.
haroldbkny
7mo ago
Yeah, I'm somewhat aware of that, though I didn't know all details. I still think that for all parties involved, having Hunter in prison would have far more detrimental effects, emotional, psychological, legacy-wise, and otherwise, than not.
Definitional question: if the victim enjoys it, is it even rape? Note: I'm not taking about if the woman feels pleasure or orgasms from it, but if she actively thought it was a good experience and she was glad for it.
I used to joke with my wife and ask her "can I rape you?" When she would say no, or roll her eyes, I would say "fine, I'm not going to rape you if you don't want me to".
haroldbkny
10mo ago
Well, I can't speak for everyone. But I can definitely say that I've seen more introspection from some, and many fewer spouting their opinions like they're the only logical ones. Three months ago, I don't remember nearly as many Dems doing that sort of behavior as, say in 2020, when it singled you out if you didn't act with no awareness that others might disagree
haroldbkny
6mo ago
But like I said, I don't think it's "justice" in any way to pardon him. I just think it's what a father would want to do, and maybe should do, because fathers should always protect their children in any way possible.
I have an idea for an invention that will revolutionize the fashion industry in the Northeast. It's a garment that women can wear underneath their shirts that will support their fleshy bosoms. This invention would have the benefit of further concealing the breasts, but making them appear firmer and fuller, and preventing sagging when women approach old age.
Seriously, I feel like the modern urban world has forgotten about the bra. When I'm in big Northeast cities riding public transit, I rarely see a single woman wearing one. What's with this development? Is it some feminism thing? Is it fashion? Is it just that it's hot these days? Was the bra always worthless but women wore it out of modesty, but now there's no more modesty? I would guess that is some feminist notion that bras are a relic of patriarchy, and that has influenced fashion over the last decade to make it less fashionable. And that this has enabled the more lazy women out there to just not bother wearing it, and in turn, the link between bras and female modesty is disappearing (along with maybe the modesty itself, or the idea that women should be modest).
I see that, too, but I'll be frank, the people who show their support for Trump come off like loonies. They're often the ones who deck out their cars and lawns with Trump signs like they're decorating for Halloween. I think the crazy conservative conspiracy theorists are the only ones with little enough self awareness these days that they feel comfortable broadcasting their political beliefs to all neighbors. Sometime between 2020 and now, I think the leftists learned not to need to tell everyone all of their political beliefs. Maybe it was the internal Israel Palestine divide in the Democrat party that taught them that lesson.
haroldbkny
5mo ago
I don't strictly mean this in particular was a bluff. But it's all a part of these types of big business tactics.
Would he try this on other more dangerous countries? I don't really know, but it is worrisome. He went further with North Korea than most others have, but that was probably overall a win. Still though, it's a much bigger risk than most presidents would be willing to take.
haroldbkny
10mo ago
That's a tough question. The short answer is, nothing I can't handle, though I get irritated with feminism saying EVERYTHING is female oppression, so I'd be annoyed if my hypothesis is right.
haroldbkny
11mo ago
While I don't know the history of "ask" vs "aks", I do also tend to find a lot of stuff like this in descriptive linguistic spaces, which is something that annoys me that I did not include in my original post.
Often when I see someone committing a prescriptive faux pas by questioning certain misuses of language, I see many people rush in to tell that person they're wrong.
Don't you know that use of the singular "they" in English is correct and ancient? Shakespeare used to use the singular "they". The same goes for use of "literally" as an emphasis. And we've always been at war with Eastasia.
I'm not personally equipped to argue back at these people, because I don't know enough of linguistic history, but something just feels like it could be wrong, like they may be misrepresenting history. But I have no way of knowing.
Maybe it was used, but was it "proper"? Must we defend any language simply because it was used at some point in history?
haroldbkny
11mo ago
What did NYT say? I really doubt they'd make factual claims that go beyond reporting what other people say.
What did Joe Scarborough say? Once again, individuals actors or outlets would not be enough to fully falsify Scott's claim. There would be to be many, and then it'd end up being a judgement call about how you define "rarely"
haroldbkny
4d ago
Ah, I see. Well, that makes more sense, then.
haroldbkny
15d ago
For almost a decade I have worked two days a week and I have never been happier or ironically more successful.
What do you do?
haroldbkny
5mo ago
I'm guessing you're being sarcastic, but truly, I have had so many experiences where I go to meet people on some conservative or libertarian meetup, and I'm excited to meet them, but then I find they're just extremely confrontational mindless drones who will jump on board any conspiracy theory, parrot anything they heard no matter how little sense it makes or how likely it is, or champion anyone who likewise wants to own the libs. Whatever it takes to convince themselves just a little more that leftists totally suck. That's not the sort of person I want to be or care to be around anymore.
haroldbkny
5mo ago
Yes, that's my assessment based on my company. It's a big company, but I know that at least one other big company totally differs from mine in how hiring is done (it's more central, less team-owned). I don't know which is closer to the norm for others companies.
Despite all of my company's flaws, I've always been proud of the fact that I really don't know any diversity hires. The team owned and data driven process to assess candidate skills have been very effective at keeping DEI's influence on hiring almost non-existent.
haroldbkny
6mo ago
Imagination is dead, for men anyway. I don't really know if imagination was ever a consistent way for men to get off, or if people kept records on that, but it probably is less used today than ever before.
Also https://youtube.com/watch?v=fQTOAWCpe44?si=eDG7ebQXX_kDQunV
For women, I think imagination is still alive and well. It's all about thinking up scenarios for them. Although I could imagine it's possible to get hooked on erotica to stimulate your mind's eye, I've never heard of any cases.
haroldbkny
11mo ago
That's good to know. I still may not risk it, though, I have pretty low threshold for stuff like this getting to me.
haroldbkny
11mo ago
Looking at that article, I don't think they make any strong factual claims that can be proven false. They say the clips are misleading and it of context and edited to remove crucial details. That's hard stuff to say "that's factually incorrect". The video clips were edited so some contextual info was lost. "Crucial", and what details are important to the context could vary person to person.
Are they now citing the same clips? If they are, that would be weasley, but I'm not sure if counts as proving they were "lying" before. I definitely think that nytimes and the media in general suck, and they have no scruples, and are probably bad for the world, but I do think that it's very hard to catch them in an outright lie.
haroldbkny
8mo ago
I wouldn't ask you to dox yourself, but I'd be very interested to hear it!
Don't worry about anything like that. How much energy you can get out of crops is capped by photosynthesis. It's not that much because photosynthesis is extremely inefficient. If there was a plant that had a higher photosynthesis efficiency, we'd know.
That was just a doesn't-matter-farfetched-hypothetical to quickly illustrate how past shifts in ecology might (or might not) have unrealized impacts on human progress, it's not meant to be a serious postulation. I could have said "What if the Gros Michel banana specifically contained some protein that could have cured malaria"
You heard wrong. Truffles are still farmed, and apparently there's been a recent breakthrough. Some micro-testing which lets people buying tree seedlings are successfully inoculated with the symbiotic fungi that grows truffles.
That's interesting. Do you have any links you can share? Perhaps only certain species of truffles were impacted?
haroldbkny
10mo ago
I don't know anything about the economics of slavery, so I'm just trying to understand. But why does having population in excess make slavery less enticing? I understand you can get lots of cheap labor if you have excess population. But at the same time, slavery is free labor, and wouldn't having excess population mean you have more people to enslave?
haroldbkny
11mo ago
Fair enough. How far would you take this? We could introduce distinctions between reflexive and non-reflexive possessive pronouns, so that in the expression "John spoke to his brother and his wife", we would know whether the wife belongs to John or his brother. What about clusivity? Or reintroducing noun classes/genders for easier referent-tracking? There's no shortage of cool features we could add if we were really interested in making language "as effective as possible".
Omg, I would love a way to distinguish between reflexive and non-reflexive possessive pronouns. I really face that problem all the time when I'm trying to write extremely succinct reports of technical details to senior leadership. And the only way around the problem is to make it wordy-er. And in the worst, case, you didn't even think to distinguish up front, and you realize after the email was sent that it's confusing or could have multiple meanings.
I'm generally in favor of useful features.
That's interesting. I kind of feel the same way, in that it is absolutely virtuous for a father to protect his son, and ensure his family has a future. But this also makes the future of his political party more difficult, along with worsening the state of partisan politics in the world, as it gives the other side both a bludgeon against his party and an excuse to do corrupt things like this themselves.
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