justmotteingaround
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User ID: 2002
justmotteingaround
9mo ago
I've actually wondered how public schools dodged the bullet of horrific pedo scandal that rightfully hit the Catholic church and the Boy Scouts.
It's probably way less common on a per-capita basis. For whatever reason, males commit ~90% of child sexual abuse. The younger the students, the more overwhelmingly female the teachers. And unlike schools, The Catholic Church and Boy Scouts have structures where the highest ranking authority figure can create significant alone time with children. The Sandusky scandal was similar.
Adding to your comment from a linked article:
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NYC has 3.8M city income tax payers
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Average burden to each of the 41k top 1%: $18,000
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Average burden to each of the 410k 10-1%: $1,141
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Average burden to each of the 3.3M 0-90%: $180
Those 3 points lay on a graduated curve, but still. Oooof.
The NYC budget for FY 2023 is 37B, so the settlement (probably paid out over time) represents 5% of this years budget.
Also notable: NYC/NYS spent over decade fighting the case. The state was detached at some point. The case originated in the 1996's, and became a class-action. The implied argument was that the test was not designed to be g-loaded, nor was it confirmed to be a predictor of classroom success, which lead to unfair disparate impact. In one item, applicants were asked to explain the meaning of an Andy Warhol painting. 90% of white test takers passed the 80 question test, while 53% of Blacks and 50% of Latinos passed.
justmotteingaround
9mo ago
I couldn't find the link for this claim:
The U.S. Department of Education found that 5% to7% of public school teachers engage in sexual abuse of children per year.
It seems outrageous. 1:15 teachers sexually abuse kids? And only 20% are males? The a-priori likelihood is low because of the offender rate and composition of the institutions. Unless schools hire females with a 10x offending rate, AND churches (broadly) hire males with 10-100x lower offending rate (based on this averaged with this, accounting for this. Its a-priori statistically very unlikely for male dominated or 50/50 places, to have higher offending rates than 60/40+ males spaces. But its possible.
All that said, the offender rate comports well with a good article from a solid source. But definitions make everything wonky, conflating language with acts sometimes. So I don't really know with any confidence. Bayes makes me think sex abuse is always much lower the more female dominated a place is.
justmotteingaround
9mo ago
First, how could they forget about Waylon Smithers; a man who thinks women and seamen don't mix. Second, the claim that cartoons influences sexual orientation is extraordinary. I'm skeptical. I had heterosexual romantic feelings and sexual fantasies as a 3rd grader. Is it because I internalized the "strike hard, strike first, no mercy" ethos of Kobra Kai? I have my doubts. Third, exactly how much health has been lost, on net, by gay cartoons? Its extraordinary to claim that "million of kids would have led otherwise healthy lives" if not for gay or effeminate cartoon characters. Lastly, where are the parents? I was a horny bastard as a teen. Thankfully, I had good parents, good role models, and health class. If horny gays had the same upbringing, what is the quantifiable additional risk, and most importantly, how much of that is due cartoon characters?
How many boys, bombarded with the images of Tinky Winky and other non-masculine characters on a daily basis, either adopted a gay lifestyle or began to see nothing wrong with the lifestyle?
My honest guess is that almost nobody was turned gay by cartoons. Whatever LGBTQ craziness is going on in the culture and in peoples lives, I think there are other well documented, more data driven explanations.
justmotteingaround
9mo ago
Based on the source you provided it sounds like the outright majority of sexual abuse happens at school.
It does sound that way. And it might be that most sex abuse outside of family (most common iirc) happens in schools. However, my confidence on that proposition is proposition is quite low because of some bayesian reasoning. For example, the established prior is that men commit 80-90% child sex abuse. This is a high confidence, long standing datapoint. Because it's so heavily weighted towards males, any male dominated group should have dramatically more abuse. Like, my heart says the sources we have, but my math side says just default to maleness as a proxy.
Around the time of the Sandusky scandal I recall reading that some abusers spend years inserting themselves into professions which might have the ability to provide access, acting gregarious and helpful. Its all very frightening. The sources we have indicate waaaay to much abuse.
justmotteingaround
9mo ago
This article is an semi-coherent jumble of truth mixed together with ludicrousness.
That's basically my take on everything I've read on amren. Extremely well written and inspiring, but the claims and leaps of logic that follow are indeed ludicrous. I understand the allure of the narrative, but trying to map it on to the world as I know it leaves be utterly bewildered.
justmotteingaround
9mo ago
then it makes explanations involving hallucinations and weather balloons less plausible.
I think you're dramatically underestimating the likelihood and causes of misidentification. Extremely smart domain experts misidentify the benign for the outlandish all the time. Michael Shermer's old TED talk 'Why people believe weird things' gets into this. Also, youtuber Thunderf00t has several videos debunking UFO stuff, including more recent claims, with lots of examples of people mistaking the benign for the outlandish.
justmotteingaround
8mo ago
I'm okay with any politician being thrown in jail for a decade for merely doing what Trump did on his call with Raffensperger.
justmotteingaround
8mo ago
When the PODUS, or any higher ranking politician, calls someone to tell them "The ballots are corrupt and that's illegal... Its more illegal for you than it is for them. You know what they did and you're not reporting it, and that is a criminal offense. You can't let that happen. That's a big risk to you... And you're letting it happen. I'm notifying you that you are letting it happen. And all I want to do is find X votes" just put them in jail.
justmotteingaround
8mo ago
When the POTUS asks someone to overturn election results immediately after falsely notifying them that they are committing a serious crime if they don't, just chuck them in a jail cell for a decade to teach them about reckless disregard for the truth, and intimidating election officials.
justmotteingaround
8mo ago
he believed those "results" weren't legitimate at all!
And that illustrates why the legal standard of "reckless disregard for the truth" exists. Such concepts put limiting principles on credulity. Without such limiting principles a future president could claim they believe they are legally Emperor for life, while amassing functionaries to carry out that goal. If if such an attempt were to fail, they could hide behind "well my lawyers were saying it was true, and I sincerely believed them, so I declared martial law." Elites have enough power, and I'm fine holding all rulers to something like a "reckless disregard for the truth" standard. At a minimum, they should end up in court.
justmotteingaround
8mo ago
That's great and I don't want to take anything away from a fantastic accomplishment. I do want to provide some useful info on your diet plan. There is lots of good published studies on which weight loss strategies lead to long-term decreases in fat mass (youtuber jeff nippard covers a lot of the science if interested). In short, you want to aim for an average weekly calorie consumption of about 10% below maintenance, with weekends eating at maintenance, and weekdays consuming 14% below maintenance, with 2-3 times a week resistance training, and protein consumption of 1.8-3g protein per kg bodyweight. Cardio is not strictly necessary. Low impact cardio is recommended. So that is a brief description on how to increase and keep lean body mass gains. I think calorie tracking apps are a good idea for the first few months. Keto is fine for many, but I would bump the calories, take the fat off more slowly, and do something to retain muscle. That way when you're done dieting down, you're most likely to keep the gains you made. Whatever you choose, best of luck and congrats!
justmotteingaround
8mo ago
IQ is no better or worse.
I would argue IQ is better as it substantially correlates to job performance in high, medium, and low complexity jobs. All else being equal, companies want a higher IQ programmers, mechanics, and window washers). Perhaps IQ is bet thought of as latent merit.
justmotteingaround
8mo ago
how do you keep a strict diet without counting calories?
For me its getting really good at estimations after logging everything in a paid app for a couple of months. Now I just log my weight a few times a week, and the scale keeps me honest. Everything is a habit now. I cook most of the food I eat, and I think thats important. If I go out, I try to eat a filling snack before (veggies, fruit, low-cal smoothie, water, etc). I just assume the calories I consumed while out are double or triple my norm, so I just go hungry for a meal or two afterwards. If the scale is trending up, I just get more strict for the next week and see what happens. The key is never letting the weight creep back up.
so I figure 1g / kg will be sufficient; do you disagree?
I'd up the protein. Iirc the research shows that protein drives lean body mass and helps spare muscle. You may have more muscle than you think and probably want to save it as much as possible. I think you have a lot of headroom for additional calories and should be mindful of crashing, yo-yoing, and lowering your BMR for a few months. Whey and filtered milk (ie Fairlife)/water might be a good low carb protein and calorie adjustment; 40-50g protein, 6g carbs, and 250-300 calories. I don't know much about keto to say if 6g is too much. Also, I do know that people take keto supplements like magnesium for some reason.
I've thought about what you're trying; melt the fat then build back the muscle. The research convinced me to go the very slow route of 0.25-0.5% body-weight loss per week for 15-30 weeks. My base metabolic rate, satiety, and fitness should be exactly where I want it as soon as I'm done. But I love to cook and lift weights so it also suits me personally.
If you go for operation fat-melting, you should start a really dialed-in fitness routine when finished, which should take 4 months to figure out. Done correctly, that should stoke your metabolism. Then you can maintain easily (with keto or whatever). I've had friends that had success going this route. Eventually they found the keto too boring, but I eat a lot of repetitive meals so who knows. You'll gain water weight if you stop keto, which isn't something to worry about. Then just keep your eye on the scale. Best of luck.
As I mentioned before, I got most of my info from youtuber Jeff Nippard. He has a lot of videos going through quality research on diets, proteins requirements, cheat meals/compensatory overeating, rep-ranges, and progressive overload.
justmotteingaround
8mo ago
I'm about 100kg right now, with a goal of 95kg. 250g of weight loss in a week means a net expenditure of some 1900 calories over the week. That alone is quite noticeable to me just from an appetite/ caloric budgeting perspective. In order to end the whole week 1900 calories under maintenance I have to try pretty hard. I don't have room for cheat meals, regular drinking, heavy drinking, peanut butter, empty calorie snacks, etc. I had to make noticeable changes just to get 1900 under per week. I eat so many frozen veggies and chicken breast now! Some weeks I come in 3800 calories under (or theoretically 0.5% bw), but they're the exception. With a calorie tracking app you know exactly where you land. There is random weight variation throughout the day/week, but I habitually weight myself after my morning piss and make a note. The trend is down about 4kg's in 10 weeks. I've got 10-20 weeks left to go. It's the slow and boring route, but time keeps on slippin into the future, and all I have to do is stay the course. At the end, my fitness should be where I want it, and I'll just maintain.
justmotteingaround
8mo ago
I think the CW blowback will be in line with what you'd expect from decades ago: a career deranging storm lasting a year or so, echoing forever. He is a much less sympathetic case than Charles Murray, who can actually stand by what he wrote. According to Hannia, he wrote some vile and idiotic stuff up until his mid twenties because he was somewhat of a sexless, friendless, loser writing anonymously. He disavows what he wrote. His past motivations were to score political points - not to think things through - leading to a bunch of hairbrained "modest proposals". He explained all this, his journey to where he is today, and his motivations to prevent people from descending into the kind of unreason which captured his mind well into adulthood.
On the one hand, I can believe he is now writing honestly, and I see him as a valuable insider. On the other hand, I can see how people would be reasonably skeptical. I mean, he sincerely argued for the forced sterilization of ~80M Americans, an idea which doesn't portend a great thinker. To me, the sheer idiocy of his former ideas makes me believe him today.
I think his September book release will be heavily impacted and probably outright cancelled, although I don't know much about publishing. This would be a shame, although understandable from the POV of the principle actors. It's been blurbed by people with solid reputations who probably want nothing to do with the guy anymore. Its being published by Broadside Books, an imprint of HarperCollins, who are likewise going to want to distance themselves.
justmotteingaround
8mo ago
Well I guess everyone is opaque about "crossing the Rubicon". Assuming Hanania is honest, we don't need to guess about what he thinks because he responded to the huffpo piece on his substack. He finds his old views repugnant; largely explained by immature, emotional reasoning. His solution was intellectual advancement, and personal development. After looking at the data he realized hbd is true, and small-l liberalism is the best path forward.
I think this sums of where he was when he was writing anonymously.
A young LARPer with a tendency to get carried away with certain arguments, enamored by the romantic idea of grappling with supposedly suppressed ancient truths, simply couldn’t handle that level of nuance.
justmotteingaround
8mo ago
Give it a listen and see if it does anything for you: https://youtube.com/watch?v=sqSA-SY5Hro
Honestly not much, but it wasn't written for me. Unlike the wonderful sound, the lyrics resonate like a laundry-list of complaints. It's too prosaic to be subversive. Plus I think it misidentifies the problem as rich men north of Richmond, and not the local power brokers enthusiastically elected and re-elected. But the song is overwhelmingly well-liked, so I'm glad for the artist.
Someone below linked the Antifascist Blues. While I found that song more catchy and clever, I have some of the same criticisms.
justmotteingaround
8mo ago
Forget the name but there’s a book about one of the guys who ran Xerox PARC
Fun note: I've read a few popular books on the history of science which tell stories about places like PARC, Bell Labs, GE, and IBM funding pure research in the ~40-60's. Iirc companies got leaner, financialed, government funding expanded dramatically, more people went into academia, bureaucracy expanded at all levels etc. Walter Isaacsons recent "CRISPR" book talked about research labs spending weeks filling out 100 page forms for government approval/grants for some projects (possibly the recent mRNA vaccines). Lots of factors at play. It all sounds sad, but I can only hope its somehow closer to optimal.
justmotteingaround
8mo ago
I don't think the solution to the problems of the poor is "kill the poor". But it's a classic pro-abortion talking point, isn't it?
I mean, that's the least charitable interpretation of: allow people to answer the widely debated philosophical question of the moral worth of a fetus for themselves, all while providing society with a list of known benefits. The implied eugenics (initially a progressive cornerstone) is just a bonus imo.
justmotteingaround
8mo ago
This literally begs the entire argument.
At one nanosecond after fertilization, has a person formed? Is the affirmative obvious and/or rational? If not, what about 2 nanoseconds? Should murder charges apply for disposed IVF embryos? Why don't we have funerals for every lost embryo? Should the State be able to enforce veganism? Etc, etc.
The State shouldn't be able to force behavior in accordance with unfalsifiable beliefs without broad consent/consensus from the governed - which is lacking with abortion. It's exactly the kind of thing that should be left to people's own mind.
justmotteingaround
8mo ago
Should the state be able to enforce infanticide?
I think you meant ban infanticide, but otherwise all excellent points! Which is why your initial comments just begs all the questions.
rhetorical tricks and misleading turns of phrase
Unless you point out examples, this critique is just misleading rhetoric. AFAIKT, we merely disagree about how powerful a government should be, when, and why. That sort of thing.
It should be able to do whatever the people have given it the power to do.
I totally agree in theory/practice. I aspire to a government limited by its founding ideologies, but I concede that it could later vote in a communist dictatorship, bans on meat eating, renewed bans on abortion, freeing slaves, whatever. Things change.
we only lack consensus regarding some details of the timing of abortion.
Here too I totally agree. For the last several decades, only around 50% think abortion should be legal in most or all cases, which is not an overwhelming consensus, and I'm leaving out a lot of important details. Eyeballing things, I'd guess 10-20M Americans no longer have the freedom to see their beliefs about abortion enacted (ie from your gallup source, the 69% deciding it should be legal to abort in the first trimester X how many people live where this is illegal). More good data below. I don't see anything like a consensus either way, which is why I don't think the government should intervene in principle.
https://www.pewresearch.org/religion/2022/05/06/americas-abortion-quandary/
justmotteingaround
8mo ago
Some bodybuilders swear by machines if they are designed to isolate muscles, maximize time under tension throughout the lift, and reduce injury risk.
I can do all three
If you can do those lifts competently, you may not need a trainer. If a trainer is why you show up, you can ask a program based more on free-weights. Many trainers are schmucks. Good trainers can design you an evidenced based program, and help you track results.
Evaluating a proposed program from your trainer can filter out most schmucks. Example: if your goal is adding muscle tissue (ie hypertrophy), the program should know, in advance, your approximate target weights (percent of estimated max. this may take a take to figure out), rep-ranges (6-30 for hypertrophy), target reps-in-reserve (RIR) (1-4), progressive overload, weekly volume, and exercise selection. In theory, trainers exist to do this, motivate you, watch your form, give you tips, and critically assess your true RIR (to make sure you're approaching physical - and not mental - failure). Different numbers if your goal is strength.
Note: if you are approaching true physical failure with good isolation on your cable work, while in the proper rep rangers, then it produces the same result. Compound lifts are often better loading the muscles as you get stronger. Back, and especially leg muscles, are the most powerful so eventually cables and some machines shouldn't be optimal. Approaching true physical failure with progressive overload is how we add new muscle tissue. Good trainers should be assessing this along the way. Good trainers should instruct you to lift X weight isolating Y muscle until you are Z reps away from total failure, based on the previous week. Less good trainers say things like "today we're gonna do this for 10 reps".
Diet is half the picture, but that's not what they do.
Are gym owners idiots for spending all this money on machines
They're catering to the largest customer base.
all the weights room needs is squat racks, benches and free weights?
Gyms like this exist and I like them. Different customers.
(with embarrassingly low weights, but still)
Unless you're just being modest,or humorously self-deprecating, don't worry about this. Many studies show weight lifting and strength training works for the vast majority of people. Over 20 years of lifting I've pulled in plenty of friends and got them stronger than they ever thought possible. "All" it takes ~6 months of steady progressive overload, 2-3x/week, a decent diet, and injury avoidance/prevention. I love it more than most, so I keep up with it.
There are probably some good heuristics to cut through dubious social science publications, from simply ignoring it, to ignoring journalism about specific studies while perusing the study yourself. It seems the op-ed writer didn't understand some basic points about the study. He seemed critical of the (not unusual) large amounts of screening/filtering of participants. This only means that it isn't a study about homelessness in general, which isn't necessarily good or bad. The NP author also seemed to imply a (not unusual) about 50% loss to follow up. This didn't happen. The half of people they lost contact with were never enrolled in the first place. They did exclude people with severe drug and mental problems for ethical issues, fearing overdose. Nevertheless, ~15% of the participants had moderate drug problems, and about 50% had mental health diagnoses. So this seems to make the case for ignoring journalists. The study results seemed to indicated that giving a well screened subset of homeless reduces the State and saves money. Its one study. And I'm reminded of this Oren Cass article on "Policy Based Evidence Making". So while I'm optimistic, I'm only about 2% swayed. More study is needed.
https://www.nationalaffairs.com/publications/detail/policy-based-evidence-making
that you often reject social science research or findings unless personally having vetted them
Well, the easiest person to fool is myself, so I'm generally skeptical of unreplicated social science (there have been some fantastic, salacious recent scandals!). Plenty of liberals write books and papers making the case for skepticism of social science, so I just mention those books, the reproducibility crisis, the math behind it, things like Bem (iirc there is also a study that proves you can age one year backwards), the recent scandals, etc, and the conversations are pretty normal.
Seems more highly predictable than amazing. I'd save such questions for a more appropriate social context (ie here, among a different group), even if they're interesting. To borrow an imperfect analogy from the imperfect gender debate: momness is a spectrum. If the kids, father, and law all view the stepmom as a mom, then yeah, stepmom is pretty much a mom. Self ID doesn't work here because so much of momness is contained in others. Steven Dubner of Freakonomics fame has talked about adopting a kid (after having many kids the usual way). The kid was adopted near birth, and he says it was just as special.
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