lollol
4d ago
CPC kremlinology
I prefer Pekingology myself. Quite a great name and a great podcast. I am certainly waiting for the analysis coming out of these guys and also from the Hoover Institution.
lollol
5d ago
Maybe not in those exact words but does Ruben Gallego senator from Arizona count? Here is his plan
https://www.gallego.senate.gov/wp-content/uploads/2025/05/immigration-plan.pdf
Especially since the people now claiming "Oh, go after the cans of tuna" favor providing free tuna by the palletload.
I'm going to call out on this as strawman-ing. Hypocrisy is so delightful to call out but it's also very cynical and essentially provoke the other side to dig in and become defensive.
sudden received indisputable wisdom that going after the employers is the best and only reasonable way to do anything about illegal immigration
As for this, I personally think that Americans want enforcement of both, preferably kindly but firm. If your complaints is that undocumented illegal immigration is treated with kids gloves then the way employers are treated is a parent yelling from the living room "remember to eat your vegetables!" while the kid is in the kitchen sticking his hand in the cookie jar for seconds and thirds. Calls for harder enforcement of the existing laws on employers or updates to the incentives of employers with regards to the illegal immigration debate are plenty based on this brief search I have:
- 2025 - Video: "ICE Raids Are Only Half The Story" - Sarah Taber, Farm to Taber (I actually already knew this one, great video from a liberal farmer)
- 2022 - Supply and Demand in the Illegal Employment of Undocumented Workers - Brian Owsley, Catholic University Law Review
- 2019 Jun 08 - Employers must be prosecuted to end the flow of illegal immigrants - Jonathan Turley, The Hill
- 2016 Nov 30 - Forget the Wall. If You Want Less Illegal Immigration, Go After Employers. - Kevin Drum, MotherJones
- 2013 May 9 - It Takes Two: Immigration and the Rule of Law - Peter Skerry, Brookings Institute
- 2008 - Is the IRS the Solution to Illegal Immigration? - Katherine D. Black, Stephen T. Black, Ryan H. Pace, William Mitchell Law Review
I'm going to go back even further, let's go to the 1997 final report by the U.S. Commission on Immigration Reform (Jordan Commission) under President Clinton where there is a section on "Immigration-Related Employment Standards (DOL)" and I'll quote it here and bolding some parts:
The Commission believes all worksite investigations to ascertain employers’ compliance with employment eligibility verification requirements should be conducted by the Department of Labor. Although DOL already conducts many of these investigations, under this recommendation, DOL also would assess penalties if employers fail to verify the employment eligibility of persons being hired. DOL would not be required to prove that an employer knowingly hired an illegal worker, just that the employer hired a worker without verification of his or her authorization to work. With implementation of the Commission’s proposal for a more effective verification process, this function will be critical to deterring the employment of unauthorized workers.
I would recommend reading the full report, there would be plenty of proposals in there that I think you like.
Illegal immigration sucks but if we are going to get anywhere, let's not just selectively pick the parts that makes you feel good but actually carry out a comprehensive strategy that would fix the problem.
edit1: Let me update my analogy, the state of immigration in the US so far up until Trump 2 is the employer being the bio kid going in for seconds and thirds with the cookie jar in the kitchen while the parent is yelling "eat your vegetables" in the living room, while the immigrant is the unwanted foster kid supposedly grounded but is climbing out of the window to get some cookies for the bio kids in exchange for favors.
lollol
5d ago
So does anyone have any thoughts on the ongoing military purge in China by Xi Jinping? This image started floating around showing how all but one member of the Central Military Commission (the realest hard power in the country)(Deng Xiaoping was never Secretary General but he made sure he was Chairman of the CMC) has been purged by Xi. Now the WSJ is reporting that the latest purge is because the latest general got accused of giving nuclear secrets to the US. Now either this is a reveal of the best HUMINT achievement by the US intelligence community ever or this is Xi just throwing the kitchen sink at a guy he approved off literally just 4 years ago.
lollol
6d ago
Why not? Maybe if you go after the CEOs, the people of the state would not vote in the politicians that “helps the helpless” because clearly CEOs aren’t helpless.
lollol
6d ago
The pragmatic response is to acknowledge that immigration enforcement needs to proceed with some appreciation for the fact that we have dug ourselves into in a very deep hole. The laws weren't really written for a world where they would be neglected or subverted for decades before finally being enforced, and they would likely have been written quite differently had that circumstance been taken into account.
Hmmm, just jumping in here but what are your proposals? What are these “pragmatic responses”. On some level I think the wolves should be fed on both sides. Do some mass deportation of illegal immigration AND high profile CEO arrests for employing said illegals.
JUST had a reveal
This emphasis is just bollocks when the fraud was out in the open and essential shut and close by 2025 if what I am reading here is correct https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2020s_Minnesota_fraud_scandals
Anyway, ICE can do both and should do both. Let’s round up the illegal immigrants (kindly) AND prosecute the employers that employ them (kindly). I bet that if we crunch the numbers it would also be “B” worth of dollars that employers “took” from an equivalent hypothetical American worker.
If we think of the population of illegal immigrants as the “supply” of illegal work meeting the “demand” of cheap labor then it makes sense to shut off the supply. But we can also think the “supply” of willing dollars to employ shadily/illegally is meeting the “demand” of people wanting better economic future, then it’s just as important to shutoff that supply too.
lollol
6d ago
Well we are talking about a possible illegal that is definitely homeless and was in the process of dying of exposure, this isn’t the usual illegal that has under-the-table jobs and has some level of resources and gumption as you say.
lollol
6d ago
I’m a liberal, I don’t think immigration restriction is wrong and would not call you a nazi even though I wish I was in a position to protest. I guess that means I’m not extreme in your books. I wanted to focus on one thing though because I think it highlights one of our differences.
Had the man been picked up by ICE and sent back to Honduras or Ecuador or wherever he came from, I don’t view that as an inhumane outcome compared to a lonely death in a strange land.
I don’t trust that ICE currently would treat the homeless kindly. To me, the way ICE follows the law is not the way I think you follow the law. Would they really get the paperwork right? Would they talk to the man if he’s able to talk? Would they deport him to the correct country? ICE says they followed all procedures, how can I tell? Who can verify? I admit mistakes are just going to be baked into any large scale system, and I’ll hold my final judgment until the dust settles and the stats can be collected. But I don’t feel good vibes at the moment with the way ICE carries themselves. At the very least, what ICE should do is target the companies and individuals that hire illegals, Americans are complicit in creating the initial circumstances of the current situation.
As a last note, “Honduras or Ecuador or wherever he came from” might at least be warmer, but I don’t think it guarantees there won’t be a “lonely death in a strange land” for him still either.
lollol
7d ago
lookouts who raised a racket by banging garbage-can lids when British soldiers approached
https://time.com/archive/6877571/northern-ireland-the-women-and-the-gunmen/
Not the same thing obviously but the same vein of the evolutionary purpose of raising a din so that “someone please look into fixing this”. I think you are primed to think of them as your enemies so they become annoying to you. I’m not saying you are wrong, I think most straight men like women that are “chill” and “cool”. The people who are on the side of the women probably think in total contrast to you. They probably think the whistling is effective and smart (in terms of low risk high rewards). Is it annoying for the supporters? Yeah, probably, but look at soccer fans in Europe (or World Cup 2010 in South Africa) to see how many decibels people are willing to put up with for their team.
lollol
8d ago
Absent being inside the officers heads instead of what written down, I’m going to assume the officers froze or at best had decision paralysis. If we have an alternate mirror universe where the door was fully unlocked and open, we can then contrast and compare, but froze is froze, and others (that Nashville school shooting showed that) didn’t freeze assuming essentially the same training.
lollol
9d ago
Yes, change starts with oneself. And you're right that I was really hoping for some deep analysis of why Greenland, is it possible, are these the right moves, how does it fit in the context of Venezuela and beyond, what are the psychological, political, historical, sociological, emotional, cultural implications etc. It is exactly the feeling that the Trump modeling is so calcified in the discussion that as @gattsuru mentioned that "there's not much to discuss" anymore and I'm like sitting here wondering "what am I missing that everyone else seems to get".
lollol
10d ago
Yes and I suppose this perfectly illustrates that people cares more about the things that affect them. I do understand that there is an American Main Character Energy and I suppose the Europeans rightfully (or pathetically) bristles at that.
lollol
10d ago
Yeah I get you. It’s precisely what I mention about people get bored of discussing something. I suppose I’ll have to think deeper about whether silence or lack of a discussion signals “anti-scissor/nothing to argue” vs “because of some emotional/logic avoidance”. In a sense, I suppose if I want to get thinking and perspective contrary to mine, I have to put mine up to test and draw out those thinking and perspective as @wemptronics mentioned.
lollol
10d ago
The silence on the ongoing global events reinforces my impressions both of the US and of this forum.
I would like to echo this sentiment. I always wait a few days after a major event to see what people in this forum would bring up for discussion and put a focus on. Admittedly, there are lots of news I would never see like the church storming in Minnesota, but the example of the Trump letter to the Norwegian prime minister was something I was itching to see a deep discussion of. But what we got was not that, just discussions around the letter, not about the letter. These events say something, they're not "thought-terminating" because I don't think these events shutdown discussions, they're more akin to "the missing missing", where the event is just so seizure-inducing, so much logic-acrobatics required, that the discussion just subconsciously avoid it.
I do have to say though that because I am not an active participant but only lurk this forum, maybe I've missed discussions before. Maybe people here are so bored of discussing Trump idiosyncrasies that there are things that are taken as a given about what a person in this forum should know.
lollol
15d ago
Any East Asian education system would touch upon proof by induction, and most certainly of any Math-specialized classes. Seems like AP Calculus briefly touches upon it. IB Math Higher Level and Further Level certainly does. The British A-Level Further Maths also does. India probably does.
Obviously teaching material quality varies and I'm not a math expert but proof by induction might not be accessible but definitely within reach for most high schoolers out there.
lollol
16d ago
Kids studying for 5 hours a day after school is worse for society than them spending that time digging ditches and filling them in; the latter at least involves exercise.
Hi, can you expand on this point? My position is that there's obviously marginal utility in increasing/decreasing schooling duration/homework, but then that's a very individual thing where some need more and some need less. This individuality expresses itself in extra tutoring (some people need more time than the average to get something) or special classes (some people need less time than the average to get something and is ready for the next thing). Since society most often rule in averages*, then yes an arbitrary fiat of extra 5 hours system-wide is probably going to be bad, probably just as bad if kids spend 5 hours digging. I suppose what I am trying to get at is do you have a different more clarifying example of your position?
* It's been said before but the dream for education is obviously personalized individual study plan suitable for the person. AI and tech seems to be 1 or 2 years from being able to offer this.
lollol
1mo ago
it's really, really uncommon for Easterners to care that much about Jews, as far as I can tell.
Hmmm, echoing what @Amadan said, as an Easterner, I think we don't care about Jews so much as just accept that Jews are powerful. Kinda like what Amadan already said, it's like a given that "Jews control the [Western] world". At the most basic level, East Asians identify and relate with Jewish attitudes towards education and community. Albert Einstein being a Jew and then all the scientists that worked on the Manhattan project, and then the disproportionate overperformance of Jews with the Nobel prize is like sweet candy to the education-loving Asians. You know how Asian parents compare you to your successful cousins, Jews being powerful is the example of a successful race/community. And community is important to Asians because they do think continuing being "Asian" is a good thing and they look to Jews as an example of how a particular ethnic group retains what makes them them while functioning in the modern Western context.
So with all that context, I actually don't think it's a grift, I think this professor is a genuine believer in whatever he's teaching. A reduced comparison would be like if someone teaches about the Rwanda Genocide and says that power is in the hands of the Tutsi minority historically and in the present (absent of about 40 year period that culminated in said genocide). Since most Asians already have a good impression of this minority, and verifiably we see lots of Jews being big and powerful, it's not a big leap for a person to believe the grander theories as well.
lollol
1mo ago
Echoing @Imaginary_Knowledge but on a different tangent, in terms of garbage collection and high performance, the exception is obviously Jane Street with OCaml. Now is this the exception that breaks or prove the rule, I think only the long arm of history would be able to discern.
lollol
1mo ago
In defense of Rust:
- Rust was created in a world with C/C++, it has to account for existing developers, existing workflows, existing code, existing bugs (that are now features), etc.
- Reality is inherently unsafe. Anything Rust relies on is
unsafefrom the perspective of Rust. Like even if all of technology is built from the ground up in only safe rust, well, pesky cosmic rays get in the way and flip a bit somewhere. - Because of 1 and 2, developers need to do
unsafestuff, and like always, it's git gud time. - The guarantee of Rust from my perspective is that the search radius is reduced. Critical bugs like this and the Cloudflare incident happens in and around
unsafe/unwrap. This bumps up the chances of bugs being caught before code is even introduced, during review, or even when it gets through, it's easier to find out where. - I think more stats is needed. Let's take the same time period as Rust has been in the kernel, how many lines of C code was added vs how many lines of Rust code was added. Let's compare how many CVEs were introduced by the new C code and the new Rust code. If I have to make a bet, I would bet on Rust.
I find criticisms that Rust is not good for exploratory work (data analysis, game development, scripting, etc.) much more persuasive, but then that just goes back to "find the right tools for the right job".
If there is a cultural war element to this, I think broadly people are yet again conflating their distaste of the tool (Rust/gun) with their distaste of the users (Rust community/gun owners).
And maybe a greater technology story of the usual people thinks !new_thing will solve all their problems, but actually !new_thing will only solve most problems and the remaining ones are the really complex ones (leading to a paradox of automation). And then certain people become cynical and disappointed and retreat to their old tools when others younger and newer people just adopts and proliferate the use of the !new_thing and then someday the cynical people wake up and found they missed the boat.
lollol
1mo ago
Great comment, thank you! What is your opinion on the competency at varying levels of the public security apparatus? Maybe just a rating from 1-5 from the lowly traffic cop up to the FBI?
lollol
1mo ago
Just wanted to note some news coming out of Vietnam
- There has been a lot of flooding in the last month or so in Vietnam.
- The incompetency of only giving 2 hour warning for residents downstream of the dam release can easily be painted as downstream of the messy re-organization that Vietnam went through, something I talked about 4 months ago
- I am myself not plugged into the situation but this is all within the context of a military vs police political fight in Vietnam. Currently the police is in ascendant because the current general secretary risen up from the police.
- A highly morbid story about consensual sexual decapitation, cannibalism, and snuff film dubbed "The Vietnamese Butcher" brew up and exploded all over the Vietnamese interwebs the last few weeks. The "Butcher" has been arrested btw.
- Which brings us to the conspiracy theory that 4 is actually just part of the fight in 3, which is to distract the masses from looking deeper into 1 and 2, because there is unconfirmed news that the "Butcher" was some kind of minor government official, possibly from the military.
Personally, I was shocked by my fellow compatriots and wondering if judging by the Japanese penchant for bizarre deaths, maybe I can enjoy good Vietnamese comics in a few decades or so.
My anecdata consists of two things that happened within the last month or so:
- An African man posting on Reddit about not eating pizza for the first time. I know that reddit has plenty of other spaces that I don't interact with, but from time to time there would be spikes/spurts from random communities into /r/all or I suppose my bubble. Like how /r/ScriptedAsianGifs can be thought of to signal the dominance of Douyin and inevitably TikTok. This isn't an African community per se, just a person from Africa that got attention, but it's enough for me to start thinking that Africa as a whole is coming online.
- A HN thread on the article "Why Solarpunk is already happening in Africa". The article is very optimistic, the thread less so, but the general vibe I get is that at the very least this is a major development that not many are paying attention to with regards to macroeconomics (similar to how the fertility crisis is not paid a lot of attention by the masses and only recently gotten into the zeitgeist).
Maybe it's all bullshit just trying to tie a pattern to small data points, but I am inferring a positive upward trend with regards to Africa.
lollol
1mo ago
Yeap, should have pulled a Batman and just say “I won’t kill you, but I don’t have to save you”
"Legible" stood out to me, is this a "Seeing Like a State" analysis? I am currently reading it and it's fresh on my mind. The relevant passage is here for other mottizens:
More options
Context Copy link