jeroboam
4hr ago
Let me be annoying and argue with your steelman case, which I acknowledge you are offering to keep the conversation moving.
Few woke people actually care about appropriation. For example, it's perfectly fine to talk in a silly Italian or British accent. "Its-a bigga pizza pie-a".
But it's actually worse. Woke people don't just appropriate. They want to actively erase non-Anglo cultures. Witness, for example, the use of the term "Latinx". Or the insistence that traditional people abandon their customs and religion to support LGBT ideology.
So why do they pretend to care? Status games. Accusations of "appropriation" are a convenient way to signal higher moral status. If you can get a high-ranking person to grovel before you, you are higher status than them. If you can get a competitor fired for wearing a silly costume, then your chance at the top job just increased. This is why woke status games are most extreme in situations where 100s of people compete for a sinecure such as a college professorship. It's a crab bucket mentality.
How could you see this and not be reactionary?
Answer: Boomers.
Boomers don't see it because they are the beneficiaries of it.
Imagine a boomer living in Monterrey. Their house is worth $3 million. They pay almost no tax and in fact receive large checks and free health care from the government. Services are high quality because of an army of low-wage immigrants. The town isn't crowded despite its magnificent natural environment. Nothing has been built in 30 years.
There's an eerie lack of children but that's a small price to pay.
It's like when all the old union workers sign a contract to grandfather in their benefits while screwing the new workers. And it's why the Democratic party is now the party of the old, upper middle class whites. The high/low coalition makes the present comfortable for these wealthy boomers while replacing their society wholesale over time.
jeroboam
4hr ago
After nearly a decade of commenting on this sort of stuff, I don't think there's a lot more to be said about any of it.
True. Which is why the people who comment about HBD are also the people who discovered it like last Tuesday and have all of the same bad takes.
Then random people on the other side pop up saying "my dude, all the races have the same IQ, it's science", apparently having missed the entire conversion or feigning ignorance.
It's Eternal September.
So it gets boring. At first HDB felt exciting because it was "forbidden" knowledge. Now, the HBD thesis seems so obvious and settled that it's not really worth debating. But every September more young rationalist will have to make that journey again, walking over well-worn footsteps.
jeroboam
4hr ago
Attempting to reach this goal by conducting a war of annihilation
I'm going to get accused of being a "Putinist" surely, but Russia is not waging a war of annihilation. They are conspicuously avoiding civilian casualties.
As usual, the worst victims of war are the men actually doing the fighting, whose lives are treated as worthless by basically everyone.
jeroboam
5hr ago
I think there’s also an element of them getting to wear keffiyahs (which look cool) and do a big cultural appropriation without getting in trouble for it socially.
It's too bad that the woke schoolmarms ruined cultural appropriation.
Some people really, really, love to play dress up. Its not for me, but it seems like harmless fun and now its just another fun thing that's been ruined so that some people can signal their own moral superiority.
If some bored college girls want to wear a keffiyah I say go for it. Let's make the keffiyah and low-cut blouse look a thing!
jeroboam
5hr ago
The California model.
I just got back from a brief trip to California that didn't include the parts where the violent drug zombies live. It was a lovely vacation. California is absolutely beautiful.
Let me introduce the secrets to California's success.
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Be blessed with the most amazing geography and weather anywhere in the U.S. and maybe the world
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Be the center of the world tech and entertainment industries
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Make a deal that baby boomers get to live out their natural lives in splendor and grace while a complete population replacement happens beneath them
As a wealthy tourist, it was all very nice. Whereas the coast of Florida is loaded with aggressive traffic and people, the coast of California is dotted with pleasant beach communities. All the houses cost like $3 million dollars so no one can afford to live there. Despite the best weather and scenery on the planet, the population is going DOWN. People are friendly and nice. The restaurants are full of white retirees, still paying $1000 in annual property tax on their $4 million house they bought for $200,000 in 1981. 95% of the workers are Hispanic. I have no idea where they actually live. But the quality of service was very high and prices were reasonable (at least compared to Seattle).
A quick 5 minute drive from Santa Cruz and you're in a beautiful redwood forest. No houses or people here. Just a beautiful state park with miles of trails. I saw a school group with an earnest white teacher explaining tree rings to a group of about 20 young students. 100% of the students were Hispanic.
People are actually leaving this state, the state that has everything, that was dealt a hand of aces. Productive citizens are taxed at eye-popping rates to prop up the seniors and the underclass. It works for now. It seems kind of similar to what's happening in Europe and where the rest of the U.S. is headed as well.
In any case, I had a wonderful time. I highly recommend California as a tourist destination.
jeroboam
1d ago
Despite making up 13% of the population, 15% of NFL players are black
Typo. 53% are black.
jeroboam
1d ago
That was a beautiful and erudite post. Thank you for sharing.
As late as the 18th century, there was still a case to be made that China was the most powerful and prosperous nation on the planet
I believe that, excepting nuclear weapons, China is currently the most powerful nation on the planet. It's true that the western nations are in general more creative but this is offset by China's higher population, higher IQ, and higher diligence. In 2024, China produces most of the things that matter.
So, if China was ahead before, and they are ahead now, what happened in the meantime?
My answer: The Industrial Revolution was unique. Productivity increased at an extremely high pace for 200 years. In this brief, high-growth environment Western creativity dominated over Chinese diligence. But this period of history appears to have ended. Growth has slowed in the West, allowing China to catch and even surpass the West in many key areas.
Caveat: AI is a major wildcard.
jeroboam
1d ago
The status increase going from America to actual Africa is pretty extreme.
Examples:
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I had a friend whose father was an exchange student from Ethiopia to the US. The father remained in the US for obvious reasons and became a professor of African studies or something. When the family returned to Ethiopia as tourists they had a private audience with the president of the country.
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I traveled to Tanzania to walk up Kilimanjaro. (Quick aside: this is not an impressive accomplishment. It is quite doable by anybody with money and a modicum of fitness). Our hotel, average by American standards, was like staying at the Ritz. Anyone who was anyone stayed there. Middle class Americans wearing cargo shorts mingled with the top 0.1% elites wearing bespoke suits. And honestly, we were probably much richer than them.
True. California, for example, was actually against gay marriage in 2008 when they had a secret ballot vote to make it illegal statewide.
People's actual opinions changed rapidly, not just their stated opinions.
jeroboam
9d ago
I would think the 2017 result is an outlier due to Corbyn's antisemitism.
But that is indeed remarkable. American Jews have been thoroughly captured by the Democrats. I expect Jews will continue to be big supporters in 2024 despite the vibe shift.
I suppose this speaks to class differences between the UK and the US. In the US, the Democrats are the "posh" party whereas the Republicans are for the proles. In the UK, it's more complicated.
jeroboam
10d ago
The British Jews have been solidly conservative since like, forever. Continental European Jews also tend to be right wing.
Is that correct? If so, it would be pretty remarkable. As much as I hate it, the educated class tends to be left wing pretty much everywhere, and Jews are highly educated.
Would be interested in a source.
I'm pretty sure American Jews vote left wing because the American right has a history of racial discrimination, which Jews pattern match to Nazism.
This doesn't seem to parse. Surely the German right wing has a much stronger history of racial discrimination?
American Jews vote the way they do because it matches their identity and status signalling, just like everyone else.
jeroboam
10d ago
Tweet likes are probably a bad metric. Twitter doesn't have a downvote button. Outrageous posts that are net unfavorable can get massive amounts of likes.
But agree that support for ADL among non-Jews, non donor class rounds to zero.
jeroboam
12d ago
Start a cult.
If you aren't charismatic enough find a charlatan and then be his right-hand man that handles the finances.
The Bagawan is a good model: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rajneesh
jeroboam
12d ago
It's all so depressing.
We're banning a future of delicious and nutritious food with zero animal cruelty.
We'll probably end up at a future where we're forced to eat seed oils and government workers are paid to torture animals as a jobs program.
Great post and I think it provides valuable context.
powerusers farming karma
But... why? There is no use to karma. I have lots of karma on Reddit. Trust me it's useless. This isn't Twitter. Posts from users with 1 million karma are not given more visibility than posts from users with 100 karma.
The game is not farming karma for $$$. The game is trying to capture Reddit for the left. And it worked.
Mods of even the largest subs are given no tools to identify bad users. We were never told by admins when a brigade was happening, we had no method of specifically detecting brigades
As to those random subs popping, the paid users either start new ones or take over dead ones, then upvote bot submissions in their critical windows so they're pushed to wider visibility and actual users start upvoting.
It's just so easy. 0.01% of users can control the narrative quite easily. Just create a bunch of accounts to upvote/downvote during the critical window right after posts or comments are submitted. They aren't even "bots". They're real people using VPNs.
Trump supporters did it back in 2016. Then they got banned. Now only the left is allowed to do it.
jeroboam
13d ago
"Would you rather be stuck in a forest with a black bear or a black man"?
I bet this would invert the response percentages.
In case anyone is reading this far down. You said: "SGOV dividends are largely federal tax exempt since it's 90%+ treasuries."
Now you posted a link that said the opposite.
I'll concede that states might not tax the dividends of SGOV. CA appears not to. https://old.reddit.com/r/tax/comments/1194lbk/treatment_of_treasury_income_in_etf_for_state/
Other states might. ChatGPT-4 thinks they do, but could be hallucinating.
In any case, in order of tax advantage, for high earnings, it's pretty clearly:
BOXX > SGOV > Bank interest
No. SGOV dividends (as well as treasuries) are taxed as ordinary income at a rate of up to 40.8%. Add in state taxes, and you're paying nearly half of your already paltry income. It's a very bad deal.
BOXX is taxed as capital gains and only when you sell. If you hold for a year, the maximum rate is 23.8%. Note that this is a somewhat novel product so there might be ruling against it in the future, but in theory it works.
Perhaps you are confusing SGOV for a muni, which is generally not taxed at the federal level. These have other downsides, such as higher risk and lower yields.
In any case, lending money to the government is a pretty awful deal. They dilute you constantly and charge you extortive taxes for the privilege. In the end you're much better off owning a shiny rock (might write a post about this later).
jeroboam
14d ago
I am also curious and PM'd the user. I am 90% sure he's talking about Bogleheads because we live in a boring world, but hopeful for something better.
Anyone ever try the Shangri-La diet? It didn't work for Yud but apparently nothing works for him, even Ozempic. Other people report near-miraculous results.
https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/BD4oExxQguTgpESdm/the-unfinished-mystery-of-the-shangri-la-diet
The concept is that your body's "set point" is controlled by access to familiar, flavorful food that your body associates with caloric intake. Your set point goes higher when you consume familiar high flavor/high calorie food. In the ancestral environment it made sense to take on extra fat when berries and nuts were plentiful.
On the other hand, the set point can go down when these familiar foods aren't available. Many people experience weight loss when traveling to an unfamiliar country and eating unfamiliar food. Seth Roberts, inventor of the diet, experienced this weight loss when traveling and drinking unfamiliar sugary beverages, not exactly a health food.
So here's the Shangri-La diet. Every day, drink one tablespoon of extra light olive oil (extra light flavor) mixed with water. Plug your nose so you don't taste it at all. This should happen during a window where you don't consume any flavors for one hour before or after.
Having calories but no flavor breaks the association between flavorful foods and caloric availability and lowers your set point. Or something.
I'm skeptical but I'm willing to give it a try.
Keto worked great for me but unfortunately I'm a cholesterol hyper responder and my levels shot up to over 400. That's probably fine, but I'm conservative so I gave up. Unfortunately, the weight all came back over the next 6 months. So now I'm trying this. Hope it works!
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