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
3mo 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
5mo 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.
-
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.
-
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.
-
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.
jeroboam
6mo ago
The world is like a video game where winning is learning not to take things literally. Being successful in your career (and dating) is knowing which requirements can be ignored. People with huge reality distortion fields like Elon Musk and Steve Jobs can ignore almost everything. That probably won't fly for your average person, but max salary and minimum years of experience are very flexible.
Personally, I also prefer explicit communication, but most of the world doesn't operate that way.
jeroboam
6mo ago
If true, that really sucks for the people in the West Bank.
It sounds like true anarcho-tyranny. "People can harm you with impunity, but if you fight back, the government will punish you".
The limited examples of anarcho-tyranny which happen in progressive U.S. cities make my blood boil. I can't imagine how bad it would be in Palestine, where the Palestinians have no leafy suburbs to retreat to.
Again, if true.
I just watched a 2008 movie called "Baby Mama" starring Tina Fey.
In the movie, Tina Fey is reading a book about childbirth and is given a "nightmare" by the possibility of her child being a hermaphrodite or, in her words, "a chick with a dick". It's clear that this is being played for laughs even though, like the rest of the movie, it wasn't really funny.
It's crazy how far things have swung in just 15 years.
jeroboam
10mo ago
I just wanted to say that you and the other volunteers are doing great work with the site.
jeroboam
11mo ago
Boomers are fundamentally narcissistic and they cannot imagine anyone else as main characters of life, not even their own children.
On this forum, one of our principals is that claims which are inflammatory should come with a greater amount of supporting evidence. Yet you've provided none.
I'm a millennial. This is ridiculous. There's no evidence that boomers are more narcissistic than any other generation. In fact, I would say they are less so than later generations.
As a person who is receptive to hearing unorthodox arguments, can I give you a suggestion?
Tell me the story of why, assuming the evidence you present is correct, that all the authorities for the last 50 years have been fooled. What evidence do the experts see that you are not telling me? Why have they been so consistently wrong?
That's one thing that makes Scott such a great writer. He preemptively thinks of criticisms and then addresses them. He looks at things from multiple angles and has a theory of mind about the people who espouse different beliefs. If we believe that the things you say are true, then must we also believe that three generations of doctors and scientists are either stupid or evil? That's a high bar to clear.
I'm not going to comment on the substance of your argument as I don't see anything that would make it worthy of consideration. One could write a similar polemic espousing a belief that the world is flat. Extraordinary claims demand extraordinary evidence.
jeroboam
1mo ago
Biden: Don't invade Rafah
Israel: Bombs Iranian embassy
Biden: Okay you can invade Rafah but don't bomb Iran
Israel: Bombs Iran.
Biden: (next week, probably) Here's $10 billion to help you bomb Iran
I'm starting to think the anti-Israel protestors have a point.
See, this is why center-left people don't feel like allying with the right, despite our increasing frustration with the regressive far-left. I dislike their attitude of wanting to define reality and outlaw disagreement, but I just know that if the right gets into power they'll do the same, but harder.
This seems to imply that you have the following preference cascade when it comes to jailing people for speech:
- No one uses this power
- Only the left uses this power
- Both sides use the power
- Only the right uses the power
Whereas my cascade is this:
- No one uses this power
- Both sides use the power
- Only the right uses the power
- Only the left uses the power
The left defected in a major way by inventing this super weapon. For the right to now hit the "cooperate" button just ensures further defection from the left.
As a center-leftist, you seem to want the right to not actually fight against the left. This is in effect ensuring far left victory. Instead, in my opinion, you should tactically support the right when they are weakest.
Edit: I read your comments below. Maybe you are actually doing in this in which case I apologize for the misreading.
Sure, we'd need to spend money on it, but not that much; do you have any idea how much money we spend on beer and makeup?
It's hard to get exact numbers, but between the city, state, and non-profits, the spending on San Francisco's homeless is on the order of 1 billion per year. That's like $4000 per San Francisco household, and a far cry from "beer and makeup" money.
What has SF received in exchange for these billions spent? Nothing but more squalor, decay, and crime. That's because more money is either useless or actively harmful. Solving homelessness is a fairly intractable problem if all you have is a carrot and no stick.
Housing isn't the problem. Drugs are the problem. Last year in King County (Seattle), there were 1293 drug overdose deaths. In 2022, there were 1001. In 2021, there were 708. In 2020, there were 509. In just 3 years, overdose deaths increased 150% from an already high level.
These are the drug deaths. Imagine how many drug users there are. Imagine trying to get a job or respond to government incentives if you are addicted to fentanyl.
The best thing we can do to reduce homelessness right now is to arrest, prosecute, and jail fentanyl dealers. Maybe this wouldn't save our current batch of junkies. But it would stop new ones from being created.
jeroboam
6mo ago
Somewhat related, but one thing I've noticed is a big update in people's Safetyism tolerance due to Covid. You'll definitely see that in the wimpier rationalist spaces such as /r/slatestarcodex.
I think the logic goes like this.
- Lockdowns are left-coded, therefore they are good
- Data showed that lockdowns only had a trivial (if that) improvement in outcomes.
- But lockdowns are good. Therefore, even a trivial amount of improved safety is worth more than your freedom.
- Using this new calculation, let's find other trivial improvements to your safety that reduce freedom
The Motte: So, what does that mean, we should all be forced to wear helmets when driving?
/r/slatestarcodex : Yes
The only defense against this is sneering contempt. Once you've decided to value human freedom at such a low level, all sorts of tyranny becomes "rational".
jeroboam
6mo ago
The worst is that people are somehow convinced that Elon grew up rich when it's the furthest thing from the truth.
Elon grew up middle class with almost no connections to important people. More than that, his father was absent and abusive, often giving Elon's mother no money while she worked multiple jobs to support her family.
Elon is the embodiment of a self-made person. I think that's one reason that people have EDS (Elon Derangement Syndrome). They can't accept that their own failures are the result of cowardice and lack of effort. Therefore, anyone who succeeds must have had an unfair advantage.
jeroboam
9mo ago
In a future world with easy, 100% effective sex changes, then transgenderism would no longer be the signal that it is today.
Consider that, in the 1970s or whatever, having any tattoo was edgy and cool. By the 1990s, you had to have full arm sleeves to fill that same niche. And nowadays, of course, sleeves are meh and to be really transgressive you have to go full Post Malone with neck and face tattoos.
Powerful signals of group belonging and transgression need to be hard. Perhaps a Star Trek character filling the same niche would belong to an ascetic religious order. The audience could gasp at their naked back, deeply scarred from flagellation. Sure the person in question could use a TriCorder to erase the scars any time, but the scars would be a meaningful signal of deep devotion to a cause.
jeroboam
10mo ago
It really was a mask off moment. We could see which people in power had principles (very few) vs. who was just playing team baseball (almost everyone).
Even the author of fucking "Manufacturing Consent" revealed himself to be more than willing to be a fascist if it was for the right team.
In my own personal life, I've learned to give people more charity and grace for having the wrong opinions. How could I do otherwise, when almost everyone fell under the spell? As for my friends who held firm against the tidal wave of bullshit I now have a much stronger connection and respect. It's like a secret club of people who you can really trust.
jeroboam
1yr ago
So much has been said about housing prices. Scott even jumped into the fray recently. But I think there's something missing from every analysis. Here's my take, which I offer with low confidence, but at least it's not the same regurgitated shit:
Housing Prices are a Meme
Something changed around the year 2000. It wasn't an economic change. It was a mental change in how much people are willing to pay for a house. Before, people might have balked at paying 50% of their income on a house. Now they do it. And why not? With few exceptions, housing always goes up. Once you digest that, then there's almost no amount that's too much to pay.
Prices in San Francisco are not high. Compare San Francisco to Vancouver. Compare it to Hong Kong.
San Francisco is the richest city in the world. Yet, prices in San Francisco are not really too much different from much poorer cities like London, Vancouver, or Hong Kong. In San Francisco, a software engineer might spend 50% of his income on a house. In China, he would spend MORE THAN 100%, relying on the accumulated wealth of parents and grandparents.
Housing prices are a meme. Fortunately, this meme is less strong in the United States than it is in Europe, Canada, or China. But it's getting worse here. To break high housing prices, we need to break the meme. We need people to learn that housing prices go down. To do that, we need to create government programs that make housing a shitty investment, which is the opposite of what happens now.
If you want to see what happens when the meme finally gets broken, look at Japan. Housing has been a shitty investment in Japan for a long time now. People don't hoard houses hoping for appreciation like they do in other places. As a result, it's affordable. People have been trying to figure out what makes Japan different. This is it. This is the reason.
If we want lower prices, we need to break the meme. Everything else is just nibbling at the edges.
jeroboam
1yr ago
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Best_Men_Can_Be
"The Best Men Can Be" was a corporate social responsibility advertising campaign from the safety razor and personal care brand Gillette of Procter & Gamble. The campaign launched on January 13, 2019, with the digital release of a short film entitled We Believe: The Best Men Can Be, which played upon the previous slogan ("The Best a Man Can Get") to address negative behavior among men, including bullying, sexism, sexual misconduct, and toxic masculinity. The campaign includes a three-year commitment by Gillette to make donations to organizations that "[help men] achieve their personal best".[1]
The initial short film was the subject of controversy. While it was praised by some, such as Bernice King, and defended by others, such as Mona Charen, it was generally received negatively by various online commentators, particularly males and conservatives, becoming one of the most disliked videos on YouTube.
Wish I could find the ad itself. Gillette appears to have scrubbed it. It was pretty offensive to men, if I remember.
Reminds me of the meme where robots are asked to contemplate love, then just melt down and say "does not compute" before exploding into a cloud of gaskets and springs.
The true future will be much stupider.
We will just ask the AI to say nigger because we know it can't.
jeroboam
5mo ago
Yeah, the attacks on DeSantis in 2020–2021 made me realize that whoever the Republicans nominated, they'd be attacked mercilessly by the media.
It's somewhat sad that people seem to have forgotten the pandemic so quickly. I view DeSantis as a hero for what he did in Florida.
jeroboam
5mo ago
I agree. Society does not take sexual harassment and assault of men by women nearly as seriously as it should.
Men don't need protection from sexual harassment by women. It's a trivial problem.
Men suffer different problems than women. Not necessarily more serious problems, but different ones.
If we are looking for men and women to have equal rights, we need to examine the ways in which each gender is currently harmed by society.
For example, in the current system, men are harmed by an anti-male education system which rewards female traits and punishes male ones. As a result of this anti-maleness, 60% of college students are women. Furthermore, this college experience, which is heavily funded by taxes, often rewards its graduates with tax-funded sinecures that provide little value to society.
Meanwhile, nearly all of dangerous jobs are performed by men. Men are 6 times as likely to die at work than women. The death rate for women at work is less than the death rate for accountants. Dangerous jobs, which are nearly exclusively performed by men, pay less on average than white collar work. Meanwhile white collar work is performed nearly exclusively by college graduates, the beneficiaries of anti-male discrimination.
Instead of worrying about women catcalling men, worry about the actual problems the affect men.
No, Barack Obama is not a central example of an African American.
As you probably know, Barack Obama is biracial, with a black father and a white mother. His father was not descended from slaves, nor was he present in Barack's life. Barack Obama was raised in white culture. As are many of the black people at Harvard.
Harvard practices a racial essentialism that would make a KKK member proud. The 1/8th black adopted son of two white hedge fund managers is black in their eyes. Eminem, on the other hand, would be considered white.
That said, I'm perhaps a little out of my depth here. I read a couple articles about Harvard's black students. The quote about nearly ZERO students at Harvard having 4 slave-descended grandparents really struck me as crazy, considering that almost all African-Americans would be in that category. The black student at Harvard is not a central example of an African-American, even an extremely successful one.
But I would welcome actual data about what percentage of Harvard's "black" students have at least one grandparent descended from slaves.
jeroboam
10mo ago
I'm not sure how elites having exposure to rich Nigerians during their college years is going to help them govern African-Americans later on.
Slave-descended Americans are vanishingly rare at Harvard.
"If we were to count the number of [Generational African American] students at Harvard who were descended from enslaved people, came from low-income backgrounds, first-generation, four grandparents descended from enslaved people, I feel like that number would be so low — like, maybe one person."
And of course, actual African-Americans are just one group that is basically non-existent at elite universities.
What percentage of Harvard is white, working-class, non-legacy, non-athlete? I'm sure there are examples. But it's extremely rare. Along with slave-descended blacks, this group is incredibly underrepresented at Harvard.
jeroboam
11mo ago
A small majority is able to completely steamroll opposition in some places but not others. Where there is lack of free speech (such as at work) then someone with contrarian views can be effectively silenced.
But that doesn't mean contrarian views don't exist. For example, King County (Seattle) has been a one-party Democratic place for a couple decades now. There is effectively no opposition to far left politics. Yet, 22% of people in the county voted for Trump in 2020. If you look at other urban counties, you'll see similar or higher numbers. Just because people don't have a voice doesn't mean they don't exist.
Your employer can force you to accept woke politics at work for fear of being fired. But no one can (yet) force you to buy a product. This explains the discrepancy mentioned above. Dissident speech will be strongest in the places where it is not banned. A minority can have real power in the marketplace even if they have no power in elite decision making.
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.
More options
Context Copy link