I can't remember, was there this much hubbub among election nerds over one particular poll in Iowa as a bellwether as there has been/is now? When I saw this first start someone had spelled it as "Seltzer poll" and I thought that it was like the bakery "cookie polls" expect with different varieties of Alka-Seltzer or something.
I heard about this poll pre-election back in 2020. But I think its prominence has increased in the years since because of the amount and degree of polling errors the other big boys have had, which has increased since. Selzer made big outlier pro-Trump calls in 2016 and 2020 and was dead on both times. So given the track record of success combined with the increased inaccuracies of other polls the attention on this specific one has mounted considerably since 2020.
johnfabian
1yr ago
It’s hard not to view this as just the latest in a long string of people lighting their credibility on fire for a tiny chance of stopping bad orange man. It seems to run contrary to every other piece of evidence: polls, registration, early voting, “vibes.”
A Trump blowout still seems like the most likely scenario to me. There is just too much going in Trump’s favor relative to the very close 2020 election.
We've only got a few days to wait so we'll see. But how willing are you to consider that rather than your ideological opponents willfully blinding themselves, it is perhaps you?
I've got no horse in this race; I suppose I would prefer Harris wins but it would certainly be funnier if Trump does. Seems like this pollster has a sterling track record. I'm not sure why your initial response would be blanket denial.
johnfabian
1yr ago
It definitely still is in Canada. I've mentioned this before here but a major part of the reason the affluent Toronto parents I talk to frequently are swinging against the federal Liberals is because none of their kids can get the typical high school jobs (fast food, grocery store, cashier, waiting tables, etc) that they expect them to get anymore.
johnfabian
1yr ago
I'm reading The Count of Monte Cristo and enjoying it a lot. It feels very much like a sort of shlocky Hollywood action movie dressed up as literature, but like in a good way. A man is wronged by his friends, imprisoned for a crime he didn't commit, escapes, becomes rich and plots his elaborate revenge on his enemies? I can just imagine Dumas whispering "hell yeah" to himself constantly while writing this.
johnfabian
1yr ago
I don't think the PLA Navy is ready yet. I don't think they'll be ready for a few years. But with the ongoing rearmament of Japan and Australia as well as a growing awareness in Taiwan and the USA, there may be a threshold where China decides that future gains in readiness are not worth waiting for given the potential of increased western capabilities to resist.
But in any case I highly doubt that this war would ever go nuclear. China simply does not have the nuclear stockpile to destroy the US; we're not in a MAD situation here so neither side has the incentive to strike first, or strike at all.
johnfabian
1yr ago
Mountains also have another possible source of flash fooding: spring melt.
Yeah, I had a similar experience to you going back home last month and finding out the old hairdressing place I went to as a kid is now all Indians. And the grocery store I went to as a kid is all Indians. Etc. etc. I live in a very diverse part of Toronto so it's not like I'm easily shocked or whatever. Hell, even in my neighbourhood we're a lot different than three years ago, because the Filipinos and Chinese and African immigrants have been shunted out by Indians too. My brother-in-law who lived in Toronto for a decade was very surprised when he came back this year, and remarked how Toronto feels so much less diverse now that Indians are forming a new pseudo-majority in many neighbourhoods or employment sectors.
In my personal life I engage with a lot of well-off Torontonians, the type who have historically been among the most pro-Liberal (capital L) and pro-immigration. They have up until recently been insulated from the effects of immigration while benefiting enormously from higher property values and depressed wages. It's finally creeping up on them too: it's car thefts and the fact that their kids (like high-school, university age) can't get jobs. There are no typical student jobs left anymore. McDonalds? Grocery store? Retail? Forget it. There are a dozen people from Punjab for every Canadian kid, and they will put up with a lot more shit. These well-off Canadians are finally starting to realize they've created a country that is hostile to their children.
johnfabian
1yr ago
Yes, but Sicilian/pan pizzas are very easy at home with no specialist equipment
johnfabian
1yr ago
So people are responding with action which is great to see, but politically this is going to be the greatest ever repudiation of the left in Canada. The conservatives are polling at 47% among the young.
It will be interesting to see what the Conservatives actually do if (when) they form government. So far Poilievre has only offered the vaguest commitments to reducing inflow (saying things like he will "match immigration to rate of homebuilding").
The Conservative Party has historically been reliant on industries that take advantage of TFWs/international students. Almost half their MPs are landlords. They don't really want to slow this down anymore than the Liberals do. The swing of the youth vote towards them is in large part predicated on anti-immigration sentiment, so how do they reconcile this?
Luckily for them the Liberals have given them so much room to maneuver this is less of threading the needle and more finding your way out of an open door. Even cutting the inflow by half would leave them at roughly double the rate of the Harper years.
johnfabian
1yr ago
It would be wrong to break down the way Canadian politics operates with respect to immigration as a conservative/liberal split. It is more coherently a young vs old dynamic, and somewhat even more pointedly people who own property vs people who don't.
Up until very recently there was a very strong national pro-immigration consensus across pretty much the entire political spectrum and all demographics, with the one exception being a fringe national party (People's Party). Canada was by a decent margin the most welcoming country to new immigrants and perceptions of the immigration system in general were strongly favourable. This was I think in part a reflection that the system itself was well-designed: priority to well-off, educated immigrants who spoke either national language.
The capital "I" immigration rate has gone up, but people don't really have a problem with this. More concerning to Canadians has been the growth in other types of migrants: international students, temporary foreign workers, asylum seekers/refugees. It's these categories that have driven the massive increases in population. For example in 2023 the breakdown was 477k new immigrants (i.e., foreign nationals offered permanent residence) and ~ 1.3 million "temporary" residents.
While the federal Liberals have certainly enabled and to a large part driven the abuse of these other flows of migration, they have not been the only bad actors. Provincial conservative-run governments have absolutely followed them in this race to rebuild Punjab in Canada. Together they have in the course of about two years absolutely destroyed the national consensus on immigration.
johnfabian
1yr ago
I think there is certainly an advantage in making your enemy distrust all possible forms of communication. If they have to abandon pagers it's on to carrier pigeons next.
johnfabian
1yr ago
It's not necessarily true that green parties are progressive/leftist; the one I'm most acquainted with, Canada's federal Green party, has always been sort of derisively referred to as "Tories on bikes" for its general conservative bent. It was going through an increasingly woke/progressive phase which resulted in longtime leader Elizabeth May retiring and being replaced by Annamie Paul (the first black woman to lead a Canadian federal party, everyone was constantly reminded) but that all fell apart when she tried to force all the Green MPs to make declarations of support for Israel. Now Elizabeth May is back in charge and things are somewhat back to normal. In Ontario the Green Party is emerging as a force among centrist liberals who don't want to vote for the corrupt PCs and Liberals.
I would say as a somewhat broad generalization Green Parties tend to fairly badly fail at their central purposes (a. getting elected and b. protecting the environment) which makes them vulnerable to hijack by outside causes.
johnfabian
1yr ago
I was wrong not to buy bitcoin in 2010 (this was partly laziness and partly that I thought it was too risky, that I would end up sending money to drug dealers by accident or something and get roped into an investigation).
This isn't quite like saying "I was wrong not buy yesterday's winning lottery ticket", but I think circa 2010 it was hard to tell exactly the kind of mania/cult of enthusiasm that would grip bitcoin. You could've maybe predicted that an alternative currency would generate some buzz, but to have picked Bitcoin specifically (let alone imagine what kind of heights it would rise to) would have been to much to dream.
johnfabian
1yr ago
"War-related famine" was not exactly incidental; it was a matter of German policy.
Generally "the Holocaust" is used by historians to refer only to the murder of Jews. Some people say you should lump in other groups murdered by the Germans but I think it is fairly coherent to exclude them because as you have noted a. the Germans pursued Jews with a unique sort of intent and b. the methods and organization with which they murdered Jews was in large part distinct.
Yes, there were plenty of instances where the Germans rounded up groups of Poles, or Russians, or Serbs, or Italians, and shot them to death. But it was not done on the scale or with the deliberate forethought of the initial phases of the Holocaust where something on the order of ~2.3-2.5 million Jews were killed in mass executions.
Yes, there were other nationalities and classes who went to the gas chambers, particularly ethnic Poles and particularly at Auschwitz. But at nowhere near the numbers that Jews did; and a number of the extermination camps pretty much exclusively killed Jews.
The caveat to all of this is that the Holocaust was not going to be unique if the Germans had won. It was merely to be the first in a grand series of genocides to depopulate Eastern Europe for German settlement. As it stands if you tally the dead in history's genocides, coming in at numbers 2 and 3 on the list is the German murder of Soviet POWs and the German murder of ethnic Poles.
johnfabian
1yr ago
I can commiserate. Last week I ran my first marathon (just a pussy normal one) and it took me a day and a bit to walk like a normal human being again.
I saw this as a another riff on a marathon I want to try some time. Would be fun to do with friends.
johnfabian
1yr ago
need to carry your shield and spear the whole way like a proper hoplite!
johnfabian
1yr ago
All through my childhood the stories of people supposedly kidnapping or mutilating animals were all, as far as I know, fictitious. But it was a common enough type of rumour that you'd hear it every couple of years - yeah my friend says that his older brother found this dog that was all slashed up with a knife. They think some kid in the neighbourhood is doing it.
That being said the next neighbourhood over from me in Toronto is currently dealing with an actual teenage catkiller at the moment, so this particular story has finally had a proven example for me.
johnfabian
1yr ago
I think that's slightly underrating Trump's competency as a candidate. He's obviously a very polarizing figure, but also a very energizing one, or at least he was.
But that was 8 years ago now. The man is 78. People should have seen the writing on the wall. His mental decline was shielded in part by his nature, in part by his rabid fanbase, and in part by the fact that Joe Biden was doing a more visible and advanced version of the same.
johnfabian
1yr ago
There have been various attempts to produce carbon-light concrete (or some similar replacement) but as far as I'm aware they are all decidedly inferior as a construction material.
Part of the problem with climate change is that reducing emissions gets harder and harder the farther you go: there's low-hanging fruit like coal-fired power generation which basically has no downsides to eliminating, but every element after that becomes more difficult. You need concrete and steel to build the hydro dams and nuclear reactors and train lines you want. You need oil to produce food and clothes and electric cars. Plastic is universal because it is universally useful. Our entire modern existence and quality of life is rooted from fossil fuels and so it's very difficult to pull out the bottom Jenga piece without the tower falling over.
johnfabian
1yr ago
Like others I'd say the frontier. Smaller cities were also less oppressive in terms of the environmental pollution. London in particular had infamously bad air quality. The crux of the problem is though you're assuming you have options: the reason so many people ended up in these awful situations is because they were chasing what limited employment and opportunities were available to them. It's not like the rural exodus was just because people decided they didn't like farming.
johnfabian
1yr ago
Generally whenever possible you would try to make the larger jumps within daylight so that you could see any potential bad weather coming. Obviously the Romans didn't stay off the nearest coast the whole way to Alexandria but the actual sailing routes tried to practically limit the time spent in open ocean.
johnfabian
1yr ago
If you're poor in the US the military is a fantastic option for upward mobility. But the US also hasn't fought a war like WWI for 80 years, so the potential downside is significantly lower than the prospect of someone signing up for the Great War.
johnfabian
1yr ago
By "ocean-going" I assume you mean ships you might actually want to leave sight of land with; then the answer is no. Roman ships traded up and down the Atlantic Coast of Hispania/Gaul/Britain and across the Indian Ocean to India, but with the same kind of coast-hugging galleys they plied the Med with.
Of course this makes you wonder: well how did the Vikings get to North America then? Well they hugged the coast too. @hydroacetylene if you use the trade winds you inevitably arrive in the Americas in the tropics, not from the north like the Viking expeditions did.
The development of the caravel was a marriage of deliberate conceptual design of an oceangoing vessel that was smaller, more flexible, and more capable of weathering storms; as well as technological advances/borrowings in terms of construction and sail design. Kind of a counterfactual thing but it's not easy to imagine the Romans building them. They didn't have the need or the ability.
johnfabian
1yr ago
It was an interesting twist of WWI that for many citizens of the UK getting drafted into the army was a substantial increase in their quality of life. If you were a common prole you were likely medically or physically unfit for the high danger roles, and now you were getting 3 square meals a day and proper medical care for the first time in your life.
Well, we've got three days to see. I'm willing to eat crow if I'm wrong.
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