jeroboam
6d ago
There is something hellishly dystopian about fleeing to another country, possibly even across the ocean, and your country of birth is still trying to pull you back. Particularly because women are given a free pass. It's natural to feel like there should be some cost associated with the privilege of not having to be forcibly conscripted to fight against an invading army.
Very strange how blank-slatist ideas just sort of vanish when any sacrifice from women is involved.
For the record, I am not a blank-slatist, think women should not serve in combat, and think they would make terrible soldiers for the most part. But if we are going to live by the rules of the blank slatist, those rules should at least be applied fairly.
jeroboam
1mo ago
Conversation has been slow here. I feel like the standards have increased to the point where people are afraid to post (except of course for bad faith posters who don't care).
So, let me try a post that's more of a conversation starter and less of a PhD thesis.
According to Bernie Sanders, it costs about $5 to make a monthly dose of Ozempic, the blockbuster-weight loss drug. Americans pay about $1000/month. Canadians pay $155. Germans pay $59.
The stock of the company which makes the drug, Novo Nordisk, has doubled since the beginning of 2023. (I considered buying in 2022 but didn't because I thought I was already too late 💀) It now has a market cap of nearly $600 billion, making it the most valuable company in Europe.
I assume that if companies were forced to charge the same price in U.S. as they do in Europe, the global pharma industry would become insolvent.
So why is the United States paying for > 100% of global pharma research? And how can we fix the glitch?
@gattsuru linked an earlier post by @FCfromSSC that opines that Blue Tribers are less likely to face consequences of these sorts of scuffles. If that theory is correct than perhaps Jewish Zionists still rate higher than Palestinians on the progressive stack and in situations like this the lower ranking Blue Triber will face punishment more like the Red Tribe.
That's why the whole Israel / Palestine is such juicy culture war bait.
Western Jews are the most privileged group in the history of the world. But, because of positive in-group biases and working together, they have managed to get diversity carveouts that other whites have not.
The progressive stack is not about fairness, it's about power. Or, to quote Voltaire (maybe), "to find out who rules over you, ask who you are not allowed to criticize".
A lot of the current conflict is people noticing this and trying to apply the same standards to Jews that have heretofore only been applied to other whites. Nevertheless, I don't expect these new standards to stick. I expect the assaulter to face a heavy sentence.
You're right, but now race flip it. Imagine the shitstorm that would ensue if the mayor's office had a media book saying it would be wrong to have an image with 3 non-white people (not real Londoners!) without at least one white Briton.
Let's say the current scandal is a 2/10. The race-flipped version would be an 8. So is it really accurate to complain about oversensitivity here?
The best way through the culture way is an armed standoff, not one side ceding all ground to the other. We will have fewer cancelings when the right is able to cancel as well. When it's a superweapon that one side can use exclusively, they will use it as much as possible.
jeroboam
2mo ago
For a long time, the trend was down. Things were getting safer, and the number of bodies dead on the streets declined nearly every year.
But during the pandemic something broke. In 2020, the rate suddenly spiked upwards. Many explanations were given, some more convincing than others. But most people expected things to return to the previous downward trend. The thing is... they haven't. The rate of people killed each year has remained at levels not seen for decades.
I'm talking, of course, about the rate of fatal auto accidents.
In 2019, the U.S. death rate per 100 million vehicles miles reached an all-time low of 1.10. But in 2020, it skyrocketed by over 20% to 1.34. This was by far the largest annual increase ever. In 2021, the rate increased slightly to 1.37 and then in 2022 it moderated to 1.35.
It's not just the rate that's increased either. The absolute number of deaths is up a lot. There are 6,000 excess deaths per year over the 2019 level.
The cope for the 2020 uptick was that, with highways empty, people built up greater speeds leading to more deaths. This might explain 2020 but certainly can't explain the 2022 data when highways had returned to parking lots speeds. Never mind that every year the rate should be going DOWN as older cars are replaced with newer, safer ones.
A decline in policing might be at least partially responsible. The overburdened police in my home city of Seattle no longer enforce traffic rules, for example. Predictably, Seattle's proposed solution to increased deaths is to install a bunch of cameras which will only punish those who choose to abide by the laws. For those who steal cars, or drive drunk, or refuse to get a license, or don't get insurance, or refuse to pay citations, the penalty will remain the same: nothing. The police isn't allowed to chase criminals even if it wants to.
Are these misguided rules the reason for the uptick in deaths? I'm not sure. I've heard that nearby conservative areas have also seen an increase in death rates. I think it's more likely that this is simply evidence of the U.S. becoming a more low-trust society. People in low-trust societies in Latin America and Africa drive like maniacs. People in high-trust societies in Europe drive safely. The U.S. is somewhere in the middle but slouching lower.
jeroboam
3mo ago
The behavior of the federal government here is bizarre.
In the US, how many people are open-borders advocates? 5% 10%? And yet, the people who pull the strings in the federal government seem to be okay with defacto open borders. Let's be honest. Most of the people who are processed, shipped to another state, and given a court date years in the future will be here for good.
There appear to be two paths to US citizenship. A legal route, which is nearly impossible for most people, and an illegal route which gets easier and easier.
Recently a school in Brooklyn was shut down (for one day) to house illegal migrants. Source, with bonus inaccurate fact check:
https://apnews.com/article/fact-check-house-migrants-school-shut-down-673190116310
New York and other cities are howling about migrants being bussed into their communities, but so far seem reluctant to change their sanctuary city policies. Why? Just to stick it to Trump? To me it seems only fair that migrants be housed in the communities that explicitly claim to want them.
This has to be the number issue for every Republican candidate in 2024. It seems that the European migrant problems have made it to America. The situation seems to be getting out of control.
jeroboam
11mo ago
The boycott worked this time because Bud Light is completely interchangeable with other products and they attacked their core audience. For the same reasons, the Gillette boycott had a real impact.
Other companies, like Disney or Apple, can get away with woke signalling because their business has a moat.
jeroboam
1mo ago
Hedonic adjustments, fake and gay?
There's been a lot of talk about a U.S. "vibecession" lately. In the last couple of years, incomes have risen, unemployment remains minuscule, the stock market is roaring, and inflation has returned to normal levels. Yet, when polled, Americans remain gloomy about the state of economy. What gives? Why aren't we partying like it's 1999?
The usual suspects are out as usual, telling us to ignore our lying eyes, pointing at charts, and saying ackchually, the economy is doing quite well thank you very much.
I don't think so.
Larry Summers, former Treasury Secretary and consummate insider, had this to say:
"We show that if we make an effort to reconstruct the CPI of Okun’s era [1970s]—which would have had inflation peak last year around 18%, we are able to explain 70% of the gap in consumer sentiment we saw last year."
18% annual inflation is quite a lot. The official number peaked at only 9%.
Of course, none of this is news. People have been complaining about inflation numbers being fake for awhile now. A can of Campbell's soup cost $0.40 in 2000, but rose to $1.23 by 2023. That implies an annual inflation rate of 5%, vs. the official number of only 2.5%. And while this is just a single product, similar patterns have held true among other immutable products like gasoline or Coca-Cola.
On the other hand, there are hedonic adjustments. Unlike a Campbell's soup can, a TV in 2023 was nothing like a TV in 2000. It's better in nearly every way. So even though a family might still spend $500 to buy a TV, the quality has increased by 10x, so the price had reduced by 90%. Or something.
You can easily see how inflation numbers get fuzzy. One thing I don't think CPI is taking into account is the degradation in the quality of services post-pandemic. The price of an HVAC repair is skyrocketing. But the quality is plumetting. Does CPI measure that? Do they measure being guilted for tips at fast food restaurants and convenience stores? Do they measure waiting in line at the pharmacy for 45 minutes because there is only one harried pharmacist on duty? Do they measure being bombarded with ads where previously there were none. Do they adjust (up or down) when TikTok becomes 5% more addictive? I doubt it.
Nor could they. I doubt any of this can be measured.
And so we return to the can of soup and opinion polls. Maybe they're not such a bad measure of inflation after all. And I think they will show what many of us feel intuitively: that the economy is doing a lot worse than the official numbers show.
Malcolm Gladwell is not highly regarded by hipster intellectuals. This is, no doubt, because hipsters often hear their "midwit" friends riff on Gladwell and thus form an antigen to such palatable fare. But while these hipsters go off to read Foucault or Nietzsche, trying to glean meaning from a fever dream, I think Gladwell actually has a lot of valuable stuff to say.
One of his ideas was the difference between a "mystery" and a "puzzle". Forget the choice of words, they don't matter. Gladwell defines them like this (paraphrased):
A puzzle is something for which you just need more information to get the answer. For example: The files are in the safe. You need the combination to the safe.
A mystery is something for which all the required information is present, but difficult to process. Examples: The prevention of scurvy, which was learned and lost several times.
One conceit that many people enjoy is the idea that a large conspiracy is impossible, because if even one person spills the beans, the jig is up. For example, keeping the AACS encryption key secret was impossible. One person spilled the beans and it was over.
But large conspiracies are not impossible. Many conspiracies continue to exist even when all or most information is publicly available. For example, there was a large scale effort to convince the public that Covid had a zoonotic origin. Perhaps it did, perhaps it didn't. But evidence in support of a lab leak was deliberately denigrated by nearly all authority figures. There was no need to maintain a secret channel of communication. Once consensus was established, peopled picked up the signals to stay on side, and ones who didn't were punished. The best evidence in favor of a lab leak (that the pandemic started near a lab doing gain-of-function research on coronaviruses) was never secret. It was just not spoken of.
I'm taking a long time to get to the point but I recently discovered this remarkable Reddit thread. It's simply amazing that this is buried in a random AskReddit thread.
For context, /u/yishan is Yishan Wong, former CEO of Reddit. /u/samaltman is Sam Altman. At the time, he was still using capital letters and, in addition to his duties as head of Y Combinator, posting on /r/buttcoin.
In the thread, Yishan explains how Sam Altman used a series of leadership crises to essentially steal control of Reddit from its parent company Conde Nast. Sam Altman chimes in to admit that, yes, this is what happened and also to taunt Yishan.
Sound familiar?
Amazing that this information was never revealed or discussed in the recent takeover of OpenAI. Or maybe it was. But no one cared. It's revealing that Sam never even bothered to delete the thread. Information is only damaging when you have a competent media and one that wants to attack you. When they're on you're side, or they don't care, there is no need to hide anything. The OpenAI board was probably right about Sam, but the focus quickly became the behavior of the board. Slow clap.
jeroboam
6mo ago
My favorite Clinton anecdote is that Newt Gingrich needed a chaperone to meet with Clinton because every time he went in alone he got charmed and gave Clinton whatever he asked for.
Bill Clinton (né William Jefferson Blythe III) might not have fallen too far from the tree. His biological father was a traveling salesman who married Bill's mother while still legally married to his 4th wife. He died in a car wreck before Bill was born. I wonder if we'll find the charisma gene?
jeroboam
7mo ago
Zelensky is playing the American culture war. This isn't an indictment of Zelensky, who is in a desperate position. But it's an interesting glimpse into who really matters (and who doesn't). In Zelensky's belief, pandering to the most ridiculous beliefs of American leftists is a winning strategy. I think he's wrong about this, but it's revealing glimpse into the state of affairs.
jeroboam
10mo ago
I can't believe how many lockdown supporters are still around.
The lockdowns...
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Didn't work.
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Had massive negative side effects.
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Were an illegal imposition against personal rights.
This leaves just one weak pillar of support: "I personally benefited".
We recognize it's evil when a Halliburton exec benefits from a cruel and unnecessary war. It's also evil for people to support lockdowns because they personally came out ahead.
jeroboam
11mo ago
The tough on crime bills weren't an overcorrection. They were responsible for the huge decrease in violent crime we saw in the 1990s and 2000s. Likewise, our current crime wave is caused by prosecution becoming far too lenient again.
Segregating violent criminals from the population is really the only effective way to reduce violent crime.
People concerned about the rights of violent criminals should lobby for better prison conditions, not for letting them loose onto the streets to prey on the rest of the population.
jeroboam
1yr ago
This is really awful. In effect, the government has levied a tax burden on everyone, but then has selectively "forgiven" the burdens of a favored group.
Taken to an extreme, they could use this same mechanism to pass a bill of attainder against an individual. The government would simply levy a charge on everyone, but then "forgive" it for all but one person.
Hopefully the Supreme Court puts the kibosh on this. When you forgive the debts of a select few, you harm every person who has paid their debt. Money is fungible.
jeroboam
1yr ago
I recently read "Antifragile" by Nassim Nicholas Taleb and while I found it overly self-indulgent, I think his point about skin in the game is very valuable.
A western journalist has zero skin in this game. If journalists shame Bukele into releasing the gang members, then crime will explode, thousands of people will be brutally murdered, and the journalist will shrug and say "too bad, too bad".
As far as I'm concerned only people who are directly affected by the crime or by the arrests should have a say in this matter. Amnesty, western journalists, and the other usual suspects wouldn't lose a single night's sleep if a Salvadorian is murdered although I'm sure they'll be "deeply concerned". To indulge my inner Taleb here, I'll call them what they are: parasites and grifters.
jeroboam
1yr ago
Thus proving that (at least in the eyes of Google) the median person is more likely to be biased in favor of blacks than against them. So this initiative is not meant to correct an imbalance but to further reward an already favored group.
jeroboam
6mo ago
It makes you realize what an incredible coup flipping Twitter from far-left to neutral was.
Once networks become entrenched they become almost impossible to dislodge. Despite the truly epic level of whining after losing their playground, progressives journalists and celebrities can't break their Twitter addiction and still use it. Even a new product with the backing of a trillion dollar corporation couldn't dislodge Twitter.
If progressives can't create a left-wing Twitter alternative, then creating a conservative Wikipedia is a doomed project from the start. The only hope is that Wikipedia is disrupted by new technology or there is a slow march through the institution.
I hope this sort of things really takes off and we have to learn Chinese characters so we can correctly refer to China as 中国. Failing that, we should at least have the Basic Decency™ to refer to it by its rightful name: "The Middle Kingdom".
Another fun example of this is the Mormon Church, which gets persnickety when you fail to refer to it as the Jesus Christ Church of Latter Day Saints. As you see, they are a typical Christian denomination like any other.
I think Scott's strategy of surrendering when 70% of people use the new name is a decent way of going about things, but I'd personally fight a little longer, say to 90%. You may call it Myanmar, but it will always be Burma to me.
jeroboam
8mo ago
Rufo was an impossible position. He was being asked to defend "a racist can still be a good person", which is true but against the current religion.
It's like 500 years ago, when church people were debating what to do about the ancient Greeks and Romans. The ancients were clearly atheist or pagan. Obviously this meant their works were evil and must be banned. Therefore, much like Rufo, people employed mental gymnastics to give the ancients a pass based on "different standards of the time". Dante placed them in the first circle of hell (the least bad one) along with unbaptised babies.
Rufo is smart enough not to say the blasphemous words. Better inconsistent than deplorable.
jeroboam
9mo ago
I think my contrarianism is going into overdrive.
2003: I hear this news story. "Oh no! Think of the kids!"
2013: "This is almost certainly sensational click bait."
2023: "This is a good thing"
Honestly, most schools need more discipline not less. And they don't need adults with certificates censoring and controlling the information they have access to either. Not that it matters. No one's using the library anyway.
So yeah, more discipline, fewer school librarians. I'm down for that. I'd like to thank ABC13.com for this totally worthwhile piece of journalism.
We're not scared of the boogeyman because we know how the movie ends.
But it could have gone very differently. The story of Italian and Irish assimilation is not a story of open borders. In fact, quite the opposite. Starting in the late 1920s the United States closed its borders, shutting down almost all immigration. After decades with very little new immigration, the existing migrant stock more or less assimilated into the rest of the population. Unlike today, this "melting pot" culture was deliberately encourage and celebrated.
This success story is the exact opposite of what the open border types encourage.
jeroboam
1yr ago
It's worth pointing out that Twitter is still fully operational two weeks after losing some huge percentage of its staff.
People on this very board were calling for near-certain failure due to key staff leaving. And while it's too early to say definitely, I think it's not too early to start updating in the direction that no, these staff were not in fact necessary to the continued operation of Twitter.
I'd imagine that the administrators of a university are even more unnecessary.
jeroboam
2mo ago
Hanania's schtick seems to be the Republican who exclusively criticizes Republicans for being unlikeable and out of touch.
The problem is that he himself embodies the very things he criticizes in others.
- Unlikeable? Check
- Unattractive? Check
- Trollish behavior? Check
- Obsessed with weird online drama? Check
The argument Hanania goes like this: When the Republicans do have genuinely nice, non-weird leaders like Romney or Mike Johnson, those leaders still have massive amounts of shit slung at them. Is it any wonder that the Trumps and Musks of the world don't want to play the nice and normal game?
But for the record, I think Hanania's right. All thing's being equal, nice and normal wins. The average urban cat mom will still see Mike Johnson as the devil incarnate, but there are swing voters out there that will see a beautiful smiling family and think "maybe this guy's not so bad".
Hanania's a good writer. He should take his own advice and I bet he'd be more popular. He's trolled his way to a small amount of attention. Now it's time to pivot. When you're on the right, you need to save your weirdness points for what matters.
jeroboam
4mo ago
On the bird site (or is it the letter site now?) I'm seeing increasing calls to oust Harvard President Claudine Gay. Famously, during her recent Congressional testimony she was asked this question:
"Dr. Gay, at Harvard, does calling for the genocide of Jews violate Harvard’s rules of bullying and harassment, yes or no?"
Her memeworthy reply was: "It can be, depending on the context".
This of course, is pretty weak sauce considering that Harvard is ranked dead last out of 245 institutions for Freedom of Expression according to the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression. It would appear to an outside observer that Harvard's standards of what is acceptable speech vary greatly depending on who is doing the speaking.
Bill Ackman, billionaire and Harvard alum, didn't pull any punches tweeting "Resign in Disgrace".
Predictably the scandal has caused people to dig into Ms. Gay's academic work, and accusations were made that she plagiarized parts of her thesis. Nevertheless, many have come to her defense with more than 650 Harvard faculty signing a letter of support for Dr. Gay, who became the institution's first black President earlier this year.
It would appear that Harvard is in a no-win situation.
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If they fire Dr. Gay, they will have fired a black, female President and will enrage the social justice left who constitute the vast majority of Harvard's students and staff.
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If they don't fire her, they will have proven that Harvard has no consistent free speech principles and, furthermore, that calls for genocide are acceptable as long as they are against the appropriate targets.
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There is perhaps a third option, in which Dr. Gay cracks down hard on anti-Semitic speech and makes an example of a few students or staff who crossed the line, thus blaming it on a few bad apples and going back to the status quo.
Whatever happens, I think that Harvard's reputation has been damaged by this incident. There is an opportunity for another school in the elite ranks to set itself apart as the "sane" alternative and perhaps capture Harvard's crown at the top of the academic food chain.
As always, I believe that donations to elite institutions are harmful and the donors should be laughed at, taxed, and shamed.
Here is how I read your post. "Let's just assume that the Jews burned down the Reichstag. What does that say about international Zionism?"
The biggest story here is how the subreddit would instantly jump to this ludicrous assumption despite absolutely no evidence.
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