incognitomaorach
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User ID: 1274
incognitomaorach
1yr ago
This is a bit of a myth actually. There are two main areas where "positive discrimination" comes into the admissions process. Probably most importantly, the extensive outreach and support provided to target backgrounds and demographics, schemes such as UNIQ and reserved open days/state specific mentoring mean that smart state school kids can often get their hand held throughout the admissions process. This might also include admissions test help and mock interviews, provided by current students or that way inclined profs. In practice this tends to benefit the middle class state school kids more than those right at the bottom of the pack, ignoring base rate intelligence. And you probably wouldn't be able to take advantage of this unless you did at least 2 years of state sixth form, and then they'd still likely check your prior history. On top of the long standing class based programs there are increasingly racially oriented schemes.
The other obvious way the scales have been tipped is by dropping standards. Classics admissions, for example, no longer require prior knowledge of Latin/Greek, although I think there are only a few of these places available where they fast track you up after you've arrived. If you lower the bar, then more people get over the bar, and so you can start to do a bit of selection for people who may be "diamonds in the rough".
In terms of direct discrimination in applications, officially this very much doesn't happen, or at least that was the case 10 years ago. Occasionally there was some extra leeway afforded over grades (getting AAB for example), but having seen behind the curtain a bit the only point where the thumb can actually get on the scale is the interviews/GCSEs, as future grades and entrance exam are scored identically for all.
As interviews are semi-subjective (although scored by multiple tutors), ideologically inclined tutors could happily penalise a posh Eton boy and help out the nervous inner city kid, but this would vary substantially. But the interviews make up at most 25% of the scoring process (tends to be a semi filtering and then 50% admissions test, 50% other stuff depending on subject). So in theory sending your kid to the good state sixth form probably shouldn't have that much of an impact unless you want to try and take advantage of the tutoring/open day opportunities. But if you go to a good enough private school then this shouldn't outweigh the benefits.
Having said all that, there are some particular sixth form colleges which seem to do exceptionally well (Hills Road, Peter Symonds) either through an extremely middle class catchment area, or extremely selective admissions (Harris Academy). The top 10 schools for admissions in 2024 are split 5/5 for state/private, and of those 10 there's a 37% admission for the private sector and 29% for the state. So it doesn't look like things have substantially changed in the last 5 years.
incognitomaorach
1yr ago
More high trust and pro social than the current inhabitants of London, which of course is mostly not British.
incognitomaorach
1yr ago
If I've understood you correctly you think that there's a 1-2% daily chance of nuclear exchange conditional on ROW joining a war between Taiwan and the PRC? Given an 80% chance of the ROW joining the war, this should work out to about 50-70% chance of a nuclear exchange by D-100 of a war. Not sure what your odds of the war breaking out at all in the next 5 years or so would be (presumably pretty high).
incognitomaorach
1yr ago
Worth noting that GPT-4o (the currently available text only version that is) is less intelligent than GPT-4, it's just much faster and more efficient in terms of compute i.e. cheaper. Would be worth testing with GPT-4.
incognitomaorach
1yr ago
I'd take umbridge with the idea that the closest parallel to Starmer is Rishi Sunak, or that he is a neoliberal centrist. Whilst Starmer is fundamentally a manager rather than a leader, and is very comfortable with the grey bureaucratic blob of the civil service, Starmer has been deeply ideological since his younger days, where he was a Eurocommunist/Left-Green. Whilst I'm not quite as convinced as Peter Hitchens that Starmer is secretly an ultra-leftist waiting to pounce (he has certainly moved to the centre) his instincts are deeply "woke", for lack of a better term.
For those who don't know, Eurocommunism was that strain of non-USSR aligned leftism that started the whole intersectionality craze, where various oppressed/marginal groups could become objects for the revolution now that the industrial working class had either been co-opted or ceased to exist in the affluent west. And this wasn't just a university debate club phase! Starmer wrote for Trotsykist adjacent magazines well into his 20s, and was chair of the Society of Labour Lawyers, which was well on the left of the party, well into the 2000s.
Now this isn't to deny that he is a 'centrist' figure, or has moved the party to the right. He abandoned various left wing policies and commitments pretty quickly, and I think his economic views are certainly well to the right of Corbyn. But his political instincts and ideological basis are certainly on the left in a cultural/social sense (read: woke) in a way that they very much aren't for investment banker Sunak. Perhaps the best description of Starmer would be as a "cultural" or post-68 Leftist. Starmer spent decades advocating as a lawyer for migrant rights, environmental activists, civil liberty organisations and so on.
This is all to say that whilst Sunak and the Conservatives have let the country drift to the left on social views, and presided over massive overhauls, Starmer would not only allow this for political reasons but positively embrace it.
Also worth noting for those not in the know, that despite the frothing allegations that Reform and Farage are neo-fascists, they are in fact basically Thatcherite. Farage is a classical liberal- his anti immigration commitment is getting net migration down to ~0, and if outflows were in the hundreds of thousands he'd bite the bullet and allow inflows of a similar amount. This is not the same kind of politics as the Identitarians over the channel. Having said that, the voter base is pretty similar, and sits firmly in the socially conservative, economically left wing corner of the political compass. Farage is very much a top-righter. From the social media content they are putting out I suspect that many of the Reform activists/staff lean toward the redpilled side of things, but seeing as the party has little to no chance of being in power, it is most likely a marriage of convenience. Farage's play is presumably to try and destroy the Conservatives even further to lead whatever remains of the right in 10 years time (or to set up someone else to do so).
incognitomaorach
1yr ago
The Normans and the Vikings left remarkably little genetic impact on the island. There were only around 8000 Norman conquerors, and outside of Cornwall and some parts of the North, there is very little visible genetic distance in the English population. Where phenotypic differences do exist I suspect it is largely due to intermarriage and self selection (with limited franco-german exchange into the upper classes). A caste of people who only marry themselves, wealthy semi-foreigners, or those of the lower orders who successfully rise to the top will tend to look somewhat different. Nutrition etc. also played a large part. The "white urban working class" of most UK cities, has also had huge amounts of Irish influx. Manchester, Liverpool, Glasgow and even London must have upwards of a 25% Irish component in their traditional working class populations.
incognitomaorach
1yr ago
Two of the videos were riding the "Deano" wave as re-popularised by semi-obscure esoteric RW anons on twitter (e.g. https://x.com/kunley_drukpa/status/1572994810499432448 )- which is sort of a British archetypal "working class lad done well" but with the modern consumer culture modernity dialled up to 11. The other two both fall more into the "Gammon" genre, popularised during Brexit and also Euro 2020. They often feature Tango (this chap: https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-11486337/England-superfan-Tango-Man-apologises-going-topless-Qatar.html) or other Brexit/Nationalistic discussion. These things come and go in waves, TiKTok seems to play a large part, but they're always getting shared by slightly elderly relatives a couple of years after they did the rounds the first time. It mostly seems to be middle class white Brits laughing at their lower class brethren, rather than inter ethnic or anything, and Americans sometimes get involved as well.
The poking fun between classes genre has always existed, but the underlying "Gammon" concept can be traced back at least as far as Enfield's Self-Righteous brothers sketches: https://youtube.com/watch?v=CvbXwwob8Kw.
incognitomaorach
1yr ago
Yes, but if any of those three places were referred to in anything other than hyper local media (perhaps the local radio station) then they'd be referred to as New York in North Yorkshire, for obvious reasons. Similarly, if a British press piece was covering something in London, Ontario, then I'd be nearly 100% sure that they'd refer to it as "London in Ontario" or "London, the city in Canada", again for self explanatory reasons.
(FWIW, I don't think that "New York, North Yorkshire" qualifies as a real place. There's an old mill, now with some other commercial uses, but it is at best a single road in Summerbridge. I was surprised as I have some familiarity with the area and had never heard of it.)
incognitomaorach
1yr ago
Absolutely, the main point does stand. I'm unfamiliar with the French case, but London's role as a central capital of a single polity probably contributes to this phenomenon. London's been an immigrant city (internal migrants) for 600 years, the closest thing to "standard" English is based on the London prestige dialect, which itself was just a variety of that spoken in the East Midlands- the population churn was constant. Prior to 1750 there was basically London, a few market towns, the other national capitals (Dublin really) and that was it for cities. Places like Rome, Milan, Naples, Munich, Cologne etc. were all independent city states, or capitals of smaller polities which later unified, which must have encouraged the decentralised growth.
incognitomaorach
1yr ago
Britain is really lopsided in that London might as well be a different country economically speaking, with vastly higher wages, economic opportunity and so on, but by any reasonable definition London is only 3-4x larger than Manchester. It's just a boundaries definition, a bit like when Paris gets reported as having a population of 3m. Greater Manchester is ~3m people and Greater London is 9-12m depending on the source. There's a case to be made that the Liverpool-Manchester urban region is a Ruhr equivalent conurbation, with bad transport holding back the economic integration.
incognitomaorach
1yr ago
I really liked Busan the two times I visited- nicer climate than Seoul, although in summer it becomes overrun with a spring break type atmosphere. Beaches, near to more historic/rural parts of the country as well. The night life felt more relaxed and the food was more varied. In terms of opportunities, its the centre of the main industrial zone (with Ulsan/Daegu). It's also a bit different politically. For the number 2 city to be 3m/7.5m metro in a country of 50m sounds pretty large to me!
incognitomaorach
2yr ago
I very much doubt it is the largest reason for racial disparities in professional sports, given we have the international Olympics where we can plainly see which (usually homogenous) countries are represented in which sports. The Caribbean overrepresentation in sprinting is due to starting sports training earlier?
Not to mention the assortment that takes places in US sports, e.g. QB vs RB demographics. I know differences in puberty onset is technically HBD (well 'HBD lite' that may plausibly be impacted by environmental factors such as diet/BMI), but I buy that other socio-economic factors definitely impact professional sports participation. Which sport played, which roles, which positions and so on. But to pretend that the number one factor isn't adult biomechanical differences I struggle with- a 6'9'' 300lb man is more likely to be a basketball player than a 6'2'' man regardless of whether they hit puberty 3 years later.
incognitomaorach
2yr ago
That's my mistake. But I still don't see how density is a reasonable cause- there's the classic Japan example, swathes of China, Singapore (any city state).
incognitomaorach
2yr ago
Well England's population density was around 160/km² in 1870, 22m in total. Maharashtra has a population density of 365/km². Mumbai now must be 3 or 4x denser than the West Midlands of the time if the state as a whole is that dense. I don't think density is the key at all (look at the Ganges valley, UP and Bihar combined is ~USA worth of people!).
incognitomaorach
2yr ago
Sure, Ambani can pull that off, if he made it a priority. That leaves about 99.999% of us. Certainly the few hundred million middle class who wish it were otherwise
There's clearly either a revealed preference here or some kind of skill issue. India is around 41% urbanised. Take away the rural classes and a "few hundred million" people represents like 30-50% of the urban population, which would be even higher in non-slum areas. If those people and a smattering of billionaires can't or won't clean up their cities then I'm not sure what would get them to. There doesn't appear to be that spirit of municipal capitalism that was prominent in, say, the late 19th century in England. Mumbai must have greater resource than 1870s Birmingham, and look at Chamberlain! And if not grand paternalistic mayors, then at least naked self interest to carve out a space for those few hundred million you mention.
incognitomaorach
2yr ago
Judging by online reaction there are a hell of a lot of people who believe it. Some believe a CP version (also doesn't pass smell test). It's been amplified by some DR voices online, presumably just as engagement bait.
incognitomaorach
2yr ago
As regards strangely high eBay or Etsy (etc) prices, this has been a thing for decades and while it’s occasionally a (usually very unsuccessful) attempt at money laundering, it’s often just mentally ill individuals. The same thing is true if you look at weird eBay where people “pay” insane amounts for things - the purchaser is usually challenged in some way and the money never changes hands
Mentally ill individuals being targeted, making the listings, or both? I could buy that. It does seem particularly schizo.
incognitomaorach
2yr ago
Fact checking should have been in quotation marks, amended
So some of you may have seen the latest round of pizzagate type posts on twitter revolving around Etsy digital images. It started with someone bringing back the Wayfair cabinets story from 2020, here's a "fact checking" post from the time as a reminder https://twitter.com/mediawise/status/1281711438462177281. Essentially the idea was that Wayfair were selling cabinets with the names of children on missing person lists for very large amounts of money, so really they must have been selling kids. Ergo, in plain sight paedophile ring.
Anyway, the latest round focuses on Etsy. There are a variety of 'digital images' of foods/children that are selling for $1000-$90,000 such as here: https://twitter.com/littleapostate/status/1734207558905106462 or https://twitter.com/ShadowofEzra/status/1734368320441192593/photo/1. It doesn't help that a lot of them are pizza related, so obviously catnip to Pizzagate believers- presumably this isn't coincidental.
So what is going on here? Assuming prima facie that these aren't children being sold via online distributor stores this leaves four main options:
- "Fake news"/trolling
- A scam
- Money laundering/tax evasion
- Illicit sales of something other than children
1- The listings were real, you can follow links through to some of them (or see them on webarchive). But that doesn't preclude the possibility that they were made by the people whipping up hysteria or engagement baiting, or just trolling the internet nut jobs. All very possible options
The other options are much more interesting.
Scams
On the face of it, there are a few very funny scamming possibilities:
-
It could be a scam targeted at pizzagate truthers. They try and buy the $3000 digital pizza. png to see whether they get a child delivered, and in fact get a pizza picture. Scammer makes free money.
-
It could be a scam targeted at paedophiles! This would be funnier, as above but believe it and want to try and get a child delivered.
-
It could be some kind of weird automation thing, are there algorithms that buy things on Etsy?
-
It could just be trying to prey on people whom make a mistake or kids. But you could presumably just get a refund, so seems unlikely.
Only the first option really makes sense of these imo, if even one brainrotted internet person decided to fork out thousands to expose the Etsy paedophile ring you'd be laughing to the bank. Again though, I don't know how refunds work, so maybe they could just embarrassingly claim it back.
Money laundering
Fairly self explanatory- maybe the customer base is just other accounts set up by the same organisation, where the flows/receipts from Etsy can contribute to the image of a legitimate commercial enterprise. It might help evade certain checks, but surely the FBI or whoever would see something like this a mile off if it was genuinely an attempt to launder funds. Is there a possibility it's to do with capital controls from a foreign country?
Other illicit sales
There is also the possibility that they're selling another product, like drugs or weapons or so on. But this doesn't make a lot of sense either- why wouldn't they make the sales using the dark net or offline?
I lean strongest towards it being some kind of trolling/scamming effort by non-Pizzagaters, but the possibility that it is a false flag to whip up engagement is also possible.
I don't think this is a conscious (from the POV of the candidate) 'enemy of my enemy is my friend' thing with the Tories though, e.g. Zac Goldsmith had a bizarre set of views that didn't line up neatly with Hindu voters, but the PR/election gurus presumably realised that was the way to go.
I think it's generally underrated how the British class system is sort of race/ethnicity neutral- the upper crust were (and are?) MUCH more comfortable in the company of a Maharajah or a Chief of the Whatever tribe vs. Steve from Sunderland or Paul from Poplar. And related, I think it's underrated how the British imperial light-touch multicultural divide and rule system that was used in e.g. the Raj has basically been transplanted to modern multicultural Britain.
Regardless, the main point is that it is pretty circumstantial that in modern Britain we have this Islam-Labour, anti-Islam (Hindu, African Christian) Tory alignment. Go back to say 1920 and the British intellectual class was fascinated by Persianate literature, the Mughals were seen as the civilising force etc. etc. It is almost certainly down to the fact that (mostly) Gujarati East African Indians or the initial waves of upper class Nigerians are incomparable to say the Mirpuris who dominate Bradford. One is a market dominant minority, the other largely rural labourers. Of course in 2023 this isn't necessarily true- many Hindu or African Christian migrants are working class and so forth.
It isn't that far away a world where the initial Muslim migrants to the UK were Nehru/Zanzibari types and the non-Muslims were Dravidian peasants. And I imagine in that world the left-right, Islam-anti-Islam alignment may be different.
incognitomaorach
2yr ago
Muslim population of England and Wales 2001: 1.6m 2011: 2.7m 2021: 3.9m
Christian population of England and Wales 2001: 47.3m 2011: 33.2m 2021: 27.5m
Somewhat tongue in cheek, so 2 caveats:
- 'No religion' has seen a larger rise (although as above, 'no religion' if replaced by the secular, humanist, liberal Western milieu which seems to be commonplace can be seen as a religion in and of itself).
- Large chunks of the Muslim population growth are either new arrivals or 2nd, 3rd gen migrants. It'd have been interesting to see if Islamic adherence over time could have continued if there'd been strong pressure to convert/the legal status of the CoE had been maintained.
I imagine that the replacement of Christianity with a weak 'Western Humanist' religion is not a long term equilibrium. Something else will fill the gap- what that is remains to be seen.
incognitomaorach
2yr ago
You're right- this got covered at some length in the latest Dan Carlin pod. It is up for debate whether these were Slavicised Germanics, just Vikings doing Viking things, or nonsense.
He suggested that the 'filth' part (which is in contrast with other accounts of the Vikings in their homelands) is a function of 'Men away from home on a slaving trip without their wives letting standards slip' rather than an inherent feature of their culture. There was an anecdote about washing their faces in the same dirty water too.
incognitomaorach
2yr ago
I think anyone who is using the term "Bantu-maximization" is:
a) familiar with the history, using the phrase in the context of the Bantu expansion, and the negative consequences there-of b) familiar with the genetics, Bantu peoples being about as far away genetically as you can get from Eurasians, with the exception of KhoiSan, pygmies, ghost population remnants in Africa etc. c) probably comfortable being openly racist, not designed to disguise the target but in fact making it explicit (this Hakan tweet is relevant: https://images.app.goo.gl/Sr4T1UADRFBM4nCh9) d) and derivative of a, b and c, specifically including African-Americans in their sights.
It is naive to assume that someone using this language would consider a group to be 'more like us Europeans' because they developed iron. It is precisely because of this and a) above that the term is used.
incognitomaorach
2yr ago
I didn't make any effort to defend the premise, but the idea is that that the family of humanist or humanist-derivative ideas in the modern Western sense are a direct result of the Biblical inversion of the weak-strong moral paradigm (Jesus died for our sins despite God, he died for all equally, Jew or Gentile etc). It isn't to say that there can be no atheism (the narrow belief in no God) unless it is Christian, but that the liberal humanist tradition which led to new atheism IS in this Christian pedigree.
I'd be surprised if a religion which has a genealogy that traces a path from Paul the Apostle through to the rights of man, and socialism, and human rights, and freedom of speech and the whole milieu we find ourselves sitting in today could possibly be seen as optimal (as a religion). I suppose if one thinks that a religion that popularises certain mostly beneficial (from the outside view) memes, and then self destructs is optimal then fair enough. I was just expressing doubt that a religion with no defence system could be considered optimal from the internal POV.
It's extremely unlikely that there will be a full blown war over Taiwan at all, in my opinion. The Chinese have no need to risk it all to secure territorial integrity, and as other commenters have suggested, there's no rush for China either. Economic warfare (cessation of PRC-ROC trade rather than outright blockade) is more likely. AFAICT the mainline scenario is where the US continues to onshore the useful productive capacity of Taiwan (chip fab), with possible human capital absorption as well. Eventually, the value of Taiwan for the US will decrease to the point where it isn't worth going to war, and a Hong Kong style handover will begin. This would disrupt the island chain strategy of course, but the reality is that as the Taiwanese economy becomes increasingly reliant on the PRC, and the value of it to the US decreases, there's only one likely direction of travel. Plenty of unknowns but I'd put a 40% likelihood on this kind of scenario playing out in the next 5-10 years or so, much more likely than a hot war involving the 2 superpowers.
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