lollol
22hr ago
I counted 3 things in that list I haven't seen.
But anyway, of the ones I have seen I thought they were good experiences and I would recommend to people. I also don't see them as relatively worse than other older adaptations. So anyway, the examples I listed are the reasons why I disagree that "visual media, specifically adaptions, have declined in quality over the past decade".
Why do you think visual media, specifically adaptions, have declined in quality over the past decade?
Counter examples: Dune, The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes (Hunger Games prequel), Project Hail Mary, The Boys (TV) I haven't seen, Poor Things, Wicked (I believe Wicked fans loved it for how it's faithful and enhanced the stage play), Mickey 17, The Housemaid, Running Man, Slow Horses (TV), The Queen's Gambit, I never saw Bridgerton but I heard good things. And so on.
Even for The Odyssey, there is also the alternative choice of The Return (2024 film) which I also haven't seen.
I guess I'm not really sure what quality are you trying to look for? is it specifically faithfulness to the original? It's clear to me that Nolan's Odyssey clearly takes a lot from Judeo-Christianity and is more of a commentary on that than trying to stay close to the text.
And btw, the pipeline of manga/manwha/manhua to anime/aeni/donghua is strong.
lollol
23hr ago
I agree, there are always tradeoffs and at some point the callousness of life happens.
But yes, I think many people have different ideas of what they want changed about the immigration regime. What I'm advocating for is a better thing that comes out of two different presidencies approach to immigration.
The worst is that it swings back and forth in different extremes instead of finding a stable point.
lollol
1d ago
But in most cases I think allowing or even entertaining edge cases just muddies the waters of incentives. If you tell people they can get a better life here if they manage to stay hidden for five years, they will sneak over the border and try to stay hidden for five years. If you tell people they can get a better life here if they manage to have enough children first because deporting the children would look bad, they will sneak over the border and have children.
I agree. I want congress/government to aim for the efficiency of Smiley in Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy (not just in immigration but all things):
Unfortunately I couldn't find a clip so I just have to describe it for you twice.
But we could just allow people to do that legally, in limited numbers that are economically viable. Whatever type of people we want, in the numbers we want, we should issue exactly that many legal papers to the right kind of people. If we need cheap labor to pick the fruits, we should issue visas that let people in to pick the fruits as cheap labor.
yeap, exactly, this is exactly the anti-inflow and pro-outflow measures that should be re-thought and re-examined with an aim to expand on the good bits and curtail the bad bits.
People should do the right thing, not the thing that sounds good on paper.
Well legislation and government is about finding what the right thing is and putting it on paper as a collective. And that's my point about the thesis, antithesis, and synthesis. I think that now the US electorate has suffered through the uncontrolled incompetent immigration regime of the Biden era and the furious callousness regime of the Trump era, then they are primed to find another path forward.
lollol
1d ago
First off I would like to point out that Carlos Odio is not some impartial analyst, he's a former Obama staffer and DNC Superdelegate who founded an NGO "dedicated to immigrant and Latinx outreach".
I'm sure he is left personally and socially, but from what I've heard of him on the old fivethirtyeight podcast and now the gdpolitics podcast, he always seemed to have the thumb on the scale with regards to latino voters and report what he sees without embellishment. I distinctively remember him raising the early "alarm bells" about Latino voters moving towards Trump. I know everyone has an agenda, but I think a commitment to the truth and facts on the ground means everyone will at least be directionally moving in the "right" direction.
I would also ask how confident should we be in anything coming out of Cambridge University these days when viewed in the context of recent events?
Yes we still should. Different people can raise different level of salt though.
Given the above, just how sure are we that Trump and the right are "failing"? As I was telling @cjet79 down-thread, US Mexico border crossings have hit a 50 year low.
As I said, I do think border patrol is an anti-inflow measure. Gattsuru has warned me though so maybe it's not as much an anti-outflow measure as I thought it is. When I talk about failing, I wasn't talking about meeting the policy objective, but of how the voters view your policies. As I already mentioned, voters rank border patrol very high for Trump, it's the other parts of the immigration agenda that is considered unsavory, and therefore, a failure.
Personally I find the "anti-flow" "pro-stock" position logically untenable, as what it boils down to in practice is "I don't believe in open borders, I just don't think that immigration laws should ever be enforced".
I think that's a pretty extreme view of what the position could be. Closed borders is part of immigration law, so already some immigration law has to be enforced. But anyway, I wasn't talking about not enforcing immigration laws, what I'm talking about is choosing immigration laws that would meet the objectives (keep immigration low/manageable to get the best stock, high inflow is fine if it's also matched by high outflow) AND is tolerable and acceptable to most voters (therefore ensuring a lasting regime that continues to be successful no matter who is in charge).
lollol
1d ago
We don't know how much she and the university knows about his views when they first hired him.
I like her initial statements in that article though.
"I understand the outrage and concern and take it seriously," she said. "The statements referred to are hurtful and disturbing to many people. They affect me as well."
She added that the university would continue to monitor the recruitment process while maintaining its commitment to academic debate.
"As a university, we have a responsibility to create space for debate, but also to ensure an environment where people feel heard and respected," she said to De Morgen.
In a sense, we can see the same playbook. Cambridge reaction was to defend the hiring and retention of Arday. And Ghent reaction was to defend the hiring and retention of Cofnas. Both failed.
lollol
1d ago
but a USCG man should presumably at least think to speak to base counsel or his CO prior to marrying any foreign national, let alone one who has immigration status issues?
I actually think this is a very American attitude. Very much in line with the apocryphal quote:
'God has a special providence for fools, drunkards, and the United States of America.'
lollol
1d ago
Well yes, that's the current law for illegal entry (because it's a crime). Illegal entry immediately triggers ban from re-entering, staying for more than 1 year ban 10 years from re-entering, and this stays on their record forever on any re-entry/visa application. Overstaying is not a crime, it's a civil violation. This means many things, the government doesn't have to prove "beyond reasonable doubt" of criminal intent and provide a court-appointed lawyer for the overstay-er.
And as always, the edge case trips us up if we want overstay to be classified as criminal. Aside from the costs above, what about the baby that was carried across the border and grew up in the US (at what age should a person have the sense to self-deport?)(I would rather argue the US should accept a person who has the integrity to self-deport). What about people who have medical emergencies and yes didn't file their paperwork (did they forget or were they willful?).
And ok, let's take the mother who 20 years ago left Mexico while pregnant, bore her kid in the US, she worked under the table for 20 years as a nanny for various families in her neighborhood and also as a kitchen staffer. Criminal entry for sure, but at this point, you might want to deport her because you don't know her, but her community do know her and probably doesn't like that she's deported, that's exactly the "ethics of proximity" in action. (Same reason why approval rating of Congress is always all time low but approval rating of congressional districts of their own congress member is always 50%+1 by voting time)
lollol
1d ago
Or in other words: yes, outflow can absolutely be a big counterbalance to the inflow.
"All I have to do it to move there, have a kid, avoid ICE for 15 years and then I've secured a statistically better life for all my decendants for generations?"
Actually it's 21 years, only then can an American citizen sponsor their immediate relative for green card. Only overstay can potentially get clemency, the ones who came in illegally trigger a 10 year ban from re-entry if they stay illegally for more than 1 year (notice how that's actually an anti-outflow punishment as it incentivizes people to stay and not leave). And imagine if E-Verify is enforced and businesses are disincentivized to pay illegals while also making it easier and less costly for illegals to leave, illegals are then pushed tobe pro-outflow because how does one survive for 21 years anyway? Especially if the way they got the Visa was at least having had proved to US consular that they have enough ties in their home country to incentivize them going home.
But to be fair, I already said that birthright citizenship is anti-outflow and I do believe in American supremacy in certain ways so it makes sense people keeps wanting to come. In fact the more I think about it, I think America should start expanding. There certainly is a lack of more America in the world. Cape Verde is great I'm sure, but do we need more Cape Verde or do we need more America? I personally would choose the best country in the world.
lollol
1d ago
So after reading the various discussion. I realize that if we go further in the definition of flow as "those who want to come or are coming and stay", we can further separate policies as "pro/anti-inflow" and "pro/anti-outflow".
The example of Singapore, UAE can therefore be classified as "anti-inflow, pro-outflow".
lollol
1d ago
I have a longer reply here that I think would be of interest to you but I think the gist is that pro-stock moves can be counterintuitively "pro-outflow" moves. We want to be pro-stock, but we want to keep the stock small by being anti-inflow and pro-outflow, with inflow here meaning people who want to come and stay. People who want to come then want to leave, we should encourage and make it easy for people to do so. All the anti-inflow measures are fine (even though we don't do all of them, for example punish the employers), it's just it should also be coupled with "pro-outflow" moves as well.
lollol
1d ago
People respond to incentives
I think we can start from here and expand on what it means to have a regime of "pro-stock and anti-flow", and also examining the 2nd and 3rd order effects of certain policies. As I delve into this topic and reading other discussion here, I'm also seeing that we need to differentiate inflow and outflow because with "anti-flow" what I think most really mean is "anti-inflow and pro-outflow". I'm also seeing a need to differentiate "pro-stock" is not to mean growing the stock, but rather as in develop and pathway to legalization so that they don't remain "stock".
Take this paper published in 2016 which tackles the effect of border enforcement:
Prior to 1986, Mexico-U.S. migration was characterized by great circularity, but since then circularity has declined markedly for undocumented migrants but increased dramatically for documented migrants. Whereas return migration by undocumented migrants dropped in response to the massive increase in border enforcement, that of documented migrants did not. At present, the Mexico-U.S. migration system has reached a new equilibrium in which undocumented migrants are caged in as long term settlers in the United States while documented migrants increasingly range freely and circulate back and forth across the border within rising frequency.
...
Although deportations from Mexico rose from 15,000 in 1990 to 307,000 in 2012 these removals have apparently not had a significant effect on undocumented population size. According to official estimates, the number of undocumented Mexicans dropped by just 200,000 between 2008 and 2012, despite more than 1.9 million deportations over the period
...
U.S. immigration and border policies have implicitly rested on a neoclassical foundation, seeking to drive up the costs and risks of undocumented border crossing while lowering the odds of unauthorized employment and depressing earnings to reduce the incentives for migration. If Mexican migrants are indeed operating according to the precepts of NE (Neoclassical Economics), then the main issue is whether expected U.S. earnings can be reduced enough to deter migrants from heading northward. If, however, migrants are operating according to the precepts of NELM (New Economics of Labor Migration), then driving up the costs and risks of border crossing could well backfire by curtailing circular migration. Having experienced higher costs and risks at the border, migrants might hunker down and stay north of the border rather than returning home to face those costs and risks again. Border enforcement, therefore, can be expected to play an outsized role in the decision making of undocumented as opposed to documented migrants.
Prior work indicates that until 1986 movement between Mexico and the United States was heavily circular, in keeping with expectations from NELM, suggesting a significant risk of backfire from a policy of intense border enforcement. Massey and Singer (1995) estimated that from 1965 to 1985 around 85% of undocumented entries were offset by departures; and Jasso and Rosenzweig (1982) estimated that 56% of legal immigrants from Mexico who arrived in 1970 had returned by 1979. Although we cannot know for sure how many documented and undocumented migrants moved with motivations assumed by NE versus NELM, it is clear that clear that circulation was common in both groups.
Here is an interview, bolded mine:
“The greatest need now is a path to legal status for the 11 million undocumented residents who are already here, who mostly have been here now for 15 years or more and increasingly have U.S. citizen children,” he said. “If we were to grant these people permanent legal status, many would actually return home, secure in the knowledge they could re-enter whenever they want.”
Reading that, what I get are:
- Migration programs like temporary visitor programs is "pro-outflow"
- Increasing the "cost of border crossing" would definitely be "anti-inflow", but is actually having an "anti-outflow" effect. So any "anti-inflow" effect doesn't matter because any inflow at all is trapped and over time becomes stock.
- path to legalization (pro-stock) is counterintuitively "pro-outflow".
- As @MadMonzer mentions, and the quotes above reinforces, being documented is a "pro-outflow" move.
Other things that I thought about:
- US entities that keep supporting illegal undocumented stock is therefore "pro-inflow" and "anti-outflow". Yet ICE raids surge, but few employers face charges so clearly an avenue of being "anti-inflow" and "pro-outflow" is not being exercised
- "On "anchor baby," in 2024, approximately 250k got their green card as a parent. That's a huge number, but at the point when a 21 year old American sponsor you, would another average American consider them stock or flow? I bet most would say closer to stock than flow.
- Birthright citizenship is undoubtedly "pro-inflow" and "anti-outflow" and increasing the "stock".
- Foreign development that leads to lower fertility rate and makes people less likely to want to leave their country is undoubtedly "anti-inflow" and "pro-outflow" (because those who already came will be attracted to come back).
I think this is a good exercise to think about regarding any immigration policy.
lollol
2d ago
And the smaller number of ships making the passage often belies that these ships are carrying more than previous ships did before them
Yes pretty much. I just couldn't find the youtube link to get the transcript of a shipping analyst working through the math (I think it was a bloomberg podcast) but I will try to recreate it here:
- Strait of Hormuz has about 21 million barrels of crude oil and petroleum liquids transported through it per day for 2020–1H25 (according to data updated/published March 2026 by US Energy Information Administration)
- Very large crude carrier (VLCC): "A VLCC can carry between 1.9 million and 2.2 million barrels of a WTI type crude oil" (article from the US EIA in 2014)
- Ultra-Large Crude Carrier (ULCC): "These massive vessels can carry around 2 million barrels to 3.7 million barrels of crude oil" (same article above)
So we really only need about 9-10 VLCC or 5-6 ULCC to replace Hormuz levels. But we know that oil suppliers found alternative bypasses to get around Hormuz like other ports or pipelines, so the actual number of VLCC or ULCC can be significantly lower than that. So when it comes to oil specifically and the movement of it through the Strait of Hormuz, it's important to report on "barrels of oil/tonnage passing through" not "number of ships passing through".
Caveat though is that there are other goods transported through the strait, not just oil, for example other products like plastics and fertilizer (more on fertilizer), which have different economics and transport cost that I don't know about.
Nearly two years ago, I wrote:
Being pro-immigrant does not mean pro-immigration
After listening to a recent interview of Carlos Odio, a pollster focused on Latino voters, I truly do believe that the stance above represents the message the broadest number of Americans can agree to and/or might tolerate. American politicians, leaders, and statesmen ignore this and they will make mistakes in one of the ever salient topic of US electoral politics. What was really clarifying for me though is the terminology, which unlocks my thinking of what it means to "support immigrants" and "not support immigration", bolded mine:
But I think the best way to simplify to take all these dimensions and narrow it down. It's a framework that comes from a pair of academics is stock versus flow. [Stock] is how people think about immigrants who are in this country, established in this country, already arrived. Versus flow, those who want to come or are coming.
And attitudes across lots of national contexts towards stock versus flow are very different. People tend to be much more sympathetic to people who are already in the country versus allowing large numbers to come in into the future. Those attitudes are very different. Latinos are not unique in that regard. Latino attitudes, [regarding] the border, are, can, or can be, very different from the ones that they have about something like a pathway to citizenship.
So what you have is big big immigration fights in a uh 2008 and uhh 2012, to some extent in 2016 because the conversation Hillary Clinton wanted to have, were really about stock: "What do we do about immigrants who are already here?" you know. In the second Bush term, the focus had been on workplace raids, deporting people who had been working here for a very long time. The fights of this whole period of time tended to be about stock. And on stock, Latinos are very very much on the pro-immigrant side of things. It is a place on which they tend to be more distinctive from the rest of the electorate.
In fact, even amidst everything else we're going to talk about, Latinos have remained very pro pathway to citizenship. Even Trump voters have remained very pathway to citizenship favorable, toward pathway citizenship. That has not changed. They have stayed pro-immigrant when it comes to the stock conversation.
The pair of academics mentioned, based on my research, are Yotam Margalit and Omer Solodoch who wrote on Against the Flow: Differentiating Between Public Opposition to the Immigration Stock and Flow. They are among the first to really separate people's attitudes towards stock vs flow. What Odio mentions about Latino Trump voters supporting pathway to citizenship I think is referring to this poll.
What is especially important, I think, is by looking through the lens of stock vs flow, we can very quickly figure out the problems and mistakes that both the left and right makes on immigration.
Biden's and the left's failure with immigration is because they confused supporting immigration as also supporting immigrants. There was a perception after 2012 and 2016 and 2018 that Latinos was on the side of the Democrats and are a loyal and committed base. And by handwaving the national debate on immigration as a Latino issue, Democrats, especially under Biden, made moves that they think Latino voters would like. But we can see those moves are actually pro-flow instead of pro-stock and that's not what the people wants, bolded mine:
And in fact, a lot of the resentment in the in the Biden era, as people were crossing the border, was saying here are people who are coming today, who are in the perception of these voters receiving permits, work permits, might be getting other additional benefits beyond that. In New York, you get housing benefits. Some other people were getting some sort of cash benefit if you were an asylum seeker. And [voters] saying, "Well, hold on. Not only is my family struggling, but even my undocumented family, right, my undocumented aunt who's been here for decades, hasn't gotten anything and she's been waiting her turn in line". Which by the way, there's actually no line if you've been undocumented for 20 years. There's no way to regularize it at this point. And so there's a resentment towards that actually is not just about like, oh, I'm just anti-immigrant, but is about a feeling of unfairness that's not about where you stand overall in immigration, but rather what's the sequence in which of events in which these [things] should happen. The fight that we then have in 2024 was about the large numbers who were coming into the country.
If the above sounds familiar to you then it's because it echoes the chump effect that has been linked before on this forum.
On the other hand, Trump's and the right's failure with the ongoing deportation campaign is because they're confusing attacking immigrants with attacking immigration. Trump best issue is with regards to immigration and securing the border. Trump even went on Univision and talk about immigration in 2024 and laid out his case about criminals and illegals. Latinos shifted for Trump in 2024. Yet once in office, one can see how the mistake Trump makes is the reverse of Biden, where anti-stock moves are being confused as anti-flow, which is also not what people want, bolded mine:
There was a way that the Trump administration could have done immigration that would have retained incredibly high support. If they if they had very narrowly focused in on criminals and they had been trotting out criminals that they were deporting, support would have stayed very high for those policies. It has remained high for the border, right? I mean, it's remained high for the border generally viewed by [people], even despite literally every single area of Trump's presidency policy area falling off a cliff. You ask people: "what about the border?", he still gets either neutral or approval. And when you ask Trump versus Democrats, it's like not even close. If you want to see the stock versus flow in effect, you could see that among Latinos, Trump's best issue area is the border. And one of his worst is when you just ask about immigration that people when they're asked about immigration today are thinking in terms of stock of people in the country now, but when they're thinking about the border, they're thinking about it in a very different plane. Just the border is not very salient.
I think Odio was referring to this poll back in April 2026, where Latinos (and All Voters) highest approval is on Trump's handling of "Border Security" (versus "Crime and Public Safety", "Immigration", "ICE in American Cities", "The Economy"). But anyway, what Trump is running afoul of what's called "Ethics of Proximity" or "Moral Distance" (couldn't find a good link for this). These concepts overlap, and one could imagine there is a spectrum in which one can put individuals closer to stock or close to flow, with higher in stock means closer in moral distance, and therefore rules that might seemed harsh but fair from a distance becomes cruel and unjust up close.
In summary: if the thesis of the Biden era is "pro-flow is pro-stock, we are pro-stock, therefore we must be pro-flow", and the anti-thesis of the Trump era is "anti-stock is anti-flow, we are anti-flow, therefore we must be anti-stock", then hopefully the future (successful) synthesis on the immigration debate is one who is able to say and do "stock is not flow, we are pro-stock but anti-flow, therefore we will do just that".
lollol
7d ago
Let me try to think through this while I write this comment.
The issue at hand is Medical assistance in dying (MAID). Which is not just in Canada but in other countries too. Supporters of this would argue for the freedom of individuals to make their own choice. Opponents of this would argue on the sanctity of life (usually in a religious sense), of how the death would affect others, of never giving up. There might be a narrow group of opponents that doesn't want goverment mandate, fearing overreach or callous decision making.
- My immediate stance is to support MAID. I think suicide is stupid, but in the end it's an individual choice that affects the to-be-dead the most.
- I am not religious so I don't have the same axiom to make life holy, even if I think life is very important and is the foundation for even experiencing.
- I am not convinced of the argument of how suicide would affect others. We allow people to do all kinds of "stupid" things that affect others. People can be stupid drunk or stupid smoker, and now in certain localities even be stupid stoners. People can be stupid gambler. People can sign up for the military (though I am more inclined to say there is a base level of honor and public good and others for joining the military, yet I do think some would consider joining the military, any military, is stupid). People can be a stupid debtor with bills up to the eyeball. And so on. We certainly do our best to limit people's ability to do that but we don't stop people from making their own decisions.
- I am not convinced of never giving up. This just reminds me of the digging for diamond meme. Honestly sometimes it just feels like chance whether not giving up will or not lead to a "better" life. What's the difference to the Jews when they killed themselves on the trains vs at the gas chambers. And if nothing in the world is for free, what has to be traded for instead?
- I am a little unclear of any particular argument against the fear of government mandate. I suppose being forced to die against your will is different from asking to die and it's just a different situation altogether. I do think slippery slope is a thing, but I also believe in the slippery slope fallacy.
- Honestly I was ok with just the argument of individuals should be able to make their own choice (with the usual caveat of not "harming" other individuals, see 3) so I didn't really think too hard about any other arguments in support of MAID.
lollol
11d ago
Yes, it's fair that I am no longer defending @atelier viewpoint. Theirs sounds like "rules got stricter over time and costs increases" while mine is more "rules didn't change but the costs to follow the rule increases". I was thinking about your examples again and maybe the reason is essentially what moved what.
In the suburb example, the supply stayed the same but demand increased. Obviously demand increases prices, but because it's perfectly inelastic supply prices can go as high as long as demand can meet it. We could, theoretically, calculate the economic rent which is the "excess" purely because of the supply constraint of red tape.
In the oil example, the market is already in equilibrium where supply is very flexible to demand, allowing prices to stay stable as supply is turned on and off (essentially the reverse of "if [oil] prices are going lower, why drill more?"). The war reduced supply and that's the biggest or initial constraint, demand has still remained the same, red tape didn't create the situation because without the war there would be no price shock, so that's why arguments for red tape here is meaningless and/or misleading.
lollol
12d ago
What is the meaning of life in at most 3 sentences?
what you decide the meaning of life to be. it doesn't really matter. But it will really matter to you.
I think the more interesting question for mottizens would be: What is your meaning of life?
Indeed, it's worth pointing out that your interpretation could be applied to just about every increase in price of any good or service anywhere in the United States.
Yes. let's take the hypothetical example that somehow there is a law that the US President must wait X numbers of days before the release of the petroleum reserve. Or let's take your example and add on: the President can't "relax various regulations regarding the production and distribution of gasoline" until Congress has been notified for X number of days. I can reasonably say Trump would have truthed on day 2: "We have got it all worked out and FUEL PRICES WOULD HAVE STAYED LOW, but it's CONGRESS fault for BLOCKING the PRESIDENT with all this RED TAPE. CONGRESS FAILED TO SUPPORT THE TROOPS".
It's why decrying about "red tape" is a really good line to throw in any political election. And honestly, there is a lot of bad laws on the books. Much has already been said about Jones Act or how Jefferson foresaw this and had a letter to Madison discussing having laws that expire every 19 years.
lollol
12d ago
Hmmmm, I will take the example of your suburb to illuminate my point.
To me, looks like there is increased housing demand in your area. Yet, the same rule for minimum lot size being unchanged means supply can't keep up. Like let's take the viewpoint of the builder. They have to buy a lot at more expensive prices. Only one house is allowed to be put on it. Thankfully there is a lot of demand so there must be at least one big catch in the sea. But those big catches won't buy older houses, so you gotta build. So the builder makes that one house more expensive (bigger house/better amenities/more expensive construction details/HOA/etc.).
The red tape hasn't changed, but the cost of the red tape certainly increased. Nothing here says that "more red tape has been added throughout the years leading to higher costs", but merely "existing red tape going unchanged and not responding to new dynamics of the given locality leading to higher costs".
lollol
13d ago
Around this time last year (maybe June 2025), my dad started telling me about how Xi Jinping was actually losing power/influence and that the party elders were going to depose him. My dad told me that I should look into the Beidaihe meeting and then he says "mark my words, by this time next year Xi Jinping won't be in power". I did look into this Beidaihe thing and found it less impressive than what I've been told, I gave my dad the link, but essentially had a mental note on it since. Well it's been a year and Xi Jinping is still in power. I think Xi Jinping will dominate the 21st Congress (in 2027) as well. But who knows, maybe my dad is getting the vibes from somewhere and I am holding myself back from saying "heheheh, remember when...." in the miniscule chance that he is right and only off by 1 year.
Your thread reminds me of my dad.
I think there is a lot here to be convinced by, yet I am not sure the story has yet played out for us to come to a conclusion. History takes a long time. Democracy was tried in Athens and Rome, yet it slumbered for millennia before it was attempted again in the West with the US. Even more convincingly won wars, like let's say the American Civil War still has echoes way past the surrender (Jim Crow, Civil Rights, etc.).
I hope America wins, and I hope America wins convincingly, and the regime in Iran dies its deserved death. Yet there is a lot to fear as well, and all I see is the fog of war.
lollol
13d ago
Of course, whether this is good public policy is a separate question
Well yes, this is a value judgment. Young people might appreciate the ability to buy these cheaper (but smaller houses). Older homeowners might not appreciate the riff raffs. But maybe in a few years they will appreciate the economic boom from the population growth. For what it's worth, I do think Austin politicians are saying they are one of the few that has successfully tackle housing affordability in the country.
And it doesn't seem like an efficient cause of the explosion in prices for single family houses.
Well, I did want to point out that when Austin had the old (larger) minimum lot size, that is an example of red tape increasing cost of house. If 3x houses can be sold from the same square footage, it goes to show that before only 1 house can be sold, and the developer would have to make it a pretty expensive house (I don't know if it would have been 3x but certainly 1.5x to 2.5x).
lollol
13d ago
One thing Austin did was cut the minimum lot size for single family home. Less lawn but you can build 3 times the number of homes. Makes sense that supply increases and prices decreases.
- https://austinmonitor.com/stories/2024/05/austin-cuts-minimum-lot-size-by-more-than-a-third-requiring-less-land-to-build-a-home/
- I first learnt about it when the mayor talked to Bloomberg news: https://youtube.com/watch?v=gNwx1Z_8vHw?is=Qpk96aObhARYtV63
lollol
15d ago
The loss of the sheer breadth and depth of beauty that could and would have been created by the immense amounts of resources and talent in the video game industry but for the choices we're talking about is hard to fathom. What truly are the limits of beauty that we could have created in this medium if the standard were such that the minimum acceptable standard for the least-attractive female character was "man walking into traffic while distracted by woman" level of beauty, then what would the median female protagonist of a AAA game look like right now? What about the most beautiful one? Like, we can appreciate the Eves and 2Bs of the industry for being beautiful, but we don't know what we're missing out on compared to a world where a character with Eve's looks is considered the "kinda homely NPC that hands you the occasional side quest" instead of "outlier sex symbol." All not for any good purpose, but only to feed some ideological delusions that were never on solid ground to begin with and which has been utterly discredited by reality.
...
That these are the video games to point to, and that the standard is "top 5% pretty" for a medium aren't constrained by human biology or human existence (i.e. neither the theoretical genetic limits of human beauty nor the true real limit of real adult women who really came into existence IRL apply here) is what I think reflects the negative direction the video game industry went towards. If the basic minimum had been "top 5% pretty" with the median protagonist being "literally no human on Earth has ever looked this pretty," the world would have been a much more beautiful place.
I'm not sure if this is not also just an ideological commitment to "beauty" that goes the other way and therefore also kinda extreme.
Also, I'm not sure if the general perception of beauty in video game is skewed. I started getting ads for video games recently and I thought to myself if these female characters were transported to the real world and made more "real" a bit, they would instantly become the most attractive person around. Like even Aloy from Horizon Zero Dawn who I think is the poster child for the outcry, she's fit, redhead, bright demeanor, instant top 10-5% if transported inside a train carriage in NYC during commute time.
There's gritty and there's gritty. Video games, until recently (and arguably still now) couldn't do true photorealism, so "gritty" tended to mean "more photorealistic." But we have an example of a photorealistic medium where people tend(ed) to have top 5% beauty - Hollywood. Often, even grittier films like, e.g. Oldboy or No Country for Old Men tend to feature actresses (and actors) who are at the very top end of the beauty spectrum. A video game like TLOU or Horizon Zero Dawn could easily feel quite believable while still having characters with, e.g. Eve-level beauty. They'd just have to also be dirtied-up, with appropriately messy clothes and such.
Actors and actresses bring more than just to fill in a character. They bring their own fan base, they do press tours, they had to get hired, TV/Movies are a particular experience where it's asked that viewers don't do anything, can't interact, just fed. And in fact, even in the movies you mentioned there are critical characters that are not top end in beauty. I didn't see Oldboy (both versions) but in No Country for Old Man, I can think of the old man at the gas station with Chigurh and the coin flip, and all the way the end where the wife of Llewelyn was killed by Chigurh, there is definitely an attempt at dressing them down to be more homey, realistic level of beauty/non-beauty. Chigurh himself, yes played by the attractive Javier Bardem, but with a deliberately ugly and terrifying haircut ("When he first saw the offending cut, Bardem is said to have complained that he wouldn't get laid for two months"). There are other movies where beautifully attractive actors transform themselves into being ugly to play a role (Charlize Theron in Monster, Tom Cruise in Tropic Thunder) and are beloved for it.
Games are more than just a plot and some characters, there is gameplay, there is emergent properties from game mechanics and player interactions. Not many says Minecraft characters are sexy and that's why they play it. Maybe we can think of it that attractiveness of characters is, like other aspects of any work of a video game, can also be a bar and once cleared, it's good enough and can move on to other things. TLOU definitely didn't need the characters to be top 5% pretty to sell itself in video games. TBF, I don't know, Joel is probably top 10% in terms of attractiveness as a man yeah? but his attractiveness doesn't come from just his physical appearance. I suppose attractiveness is fluid and anime/catgirl/2B "shape" is not the only way for someone to be "attractive".
Howabout the others?
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