magic9mushroom
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User ID: 1103
magic9mushroom
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1mo ago
This is, yet again, plain defiance of higher court rulings.
I'm curious: does SCOTUS have the power to find lower courts who ignore its rulings (e.g. lower court does X, SCOTUS on appeal says they can't do X and remands for consistent proceedings, lower court does X again) in contempt?
magic9mushroom
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1mo ago
· Edited 1mo ago
(It seems meritocratic university entrance is leading to more women than men in many subjects, but perhaps those women are more masculine?)
To give an example of some of the stuff @TitaniumButterfly is talking about, here's the way the tertiary entrance rank worked in Victoria (where I live) when I was in year 12 (back in the oughties!).
You do four or more subjects, and get a score of 0-50 for each. Languages other than English (LotEs) get a +5 to their score; uni-level subjects get a +5 to their score. Then you add up your top four subjects' scores, and add on 10% of your fifth- and sixth-highest scores. So far, so good.
Except that English is required to be counted as one of your best four, and LotEs can count as one of the top four (and you can do more than one, for a theoretical maximum of +16) while uni-level subjects can't (and you can only do one of them, for a theoretical maximum of +0.5).
Guess what sex does better at English and other languages (my score for English was 15 points lower than the worst of my other six subjects*). Guess what sex is more likely to be doing uni-level science in year 12 (I'd have done two - physics and maths - if I could). Girls' best subjects are prioritised over boys' when calculating the TER, which means yes, you will wind up with more girls than boys qualifying for competitive uni positions, including science courses which have nothing to do with year 12 English (i.e. writing essays about Hamlet or the linguistic differences of Aboriginal English) or LotEs. This is not meritocracy - not, at least, when talking about sex disparities.
*Actually, I'm like 70-80% sure that I failed English outright (which doesn't count as a score at all, and means you can't graduate), but my English teacher fudged the paperwork. Not that it wasn't justified after the complete trainwreck my life was at that point, but this demonstrates even further how wide the gulf was between that and my other subjects.
magic9mushroom
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1mo ago
· Edited 1mo ago
Yeah, what ToaKraka said. It's highly unlikely Amadan would lie about that, after all.
I didn't peg TM as being Hlynka, although I did openly accuse him of bad faith. (The middle paragraph of this was also regarding Hlynka-as-TM; I didn't name him because that's implicit extreme antagonism, but he's banned and a confirmed semi-troll now, so eh.)
magic9mushroom
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1mo ago
(does that ever happen?)
TequilaMockingbird admitted being Hlynka, apparently.
magic9mushroom
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1mo ago
Yeah, but @justawoman isn't actually banned - and has indeed briefly left her self-imposed exile to praise MKC before. She has no need of an alt that's still obviously her.
The only reason to make an obviously-JaW alt would be if one didn't actually have JaW's password, which might be JaW if she forgot it, but could also be an impostor.
In any case, I've just tagged the original, so now we might get a clarification. Or not.
magic9mushroom
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1mo ago
· Edited 1mo ago
You have a tendency to sling gotchas and ad hominems, which is bad for the place not being a giant yelling match.
Examples: 1 2 3 4 5 6 - NB: in some of those cases I'm not so much getting at the linked post as your followups.
You do seem to be doing it a bit less since your (apparently voluntary?) sabbatical, though, which I hadn't noticed, so good job there. I was probably also getting a somewhat-worse view of you than justified due to most (all?) of our interactions being in those threads; sorry.
magic9mushroom
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1mo ago
While obesity rates are similar, general overweightness is, you guessed it, skewed quite a bit more towards men.
Except "overweightness" was badly defined decades ago (and not fixed because of the growing inertia of Western society) such that the "overweight" range is the lowest all-cause mortality range (the elevated cardiovascular risk is more than compensated by reduced infection risk; in the "healthy" range your body is still skimping on the immune system to save calories). I'm in that range (BMI 27.2) as a result of a high-calorie diet, and before you accuse me of making excuses for base urges, I am literally anorexic and was dangerously underweight (I think my BMI was about 15) until I deliberately ate my way up into the "overweight" range on medical advice. I will brook no claims that this is the result of poor impulse control.
magic9mushroom
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1mo ago
TBH, I'm more annoyed with @magicalkittycat than I remember being with Darwin.
And MKC's pattern is not an unusual one. There are lots of midwits who think posting sneering gotchas is the height of art. Look at XKCD. Hell, I used to kinda be one due to hanging around with them too much.
So no, I don't think MKC's Darwin, but he/she is certainly causing issues, and that's a problem by itself.
magic9mushroom
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1mo ago
· Edited 1mo ago
Having rewatched the whole scene:
you'd have to have a pretty warped view of the plot to think that the Munchkins were signaling their support of random vigilante killings
Glinda says that Dorothy is the Munchkins' "national heroine" before Dorothy gets around to explaining that she didn't mean to drop a house on the WWotE, and then there are the lines "we thank you very sweetly for doing it so neatly; you've killed her so completely that we thank you very sweetly". So yes, they were, in fact, signalling their support of assassinating* the WWotE. The WWotE is one of the few circumstances in which that is (presumably) Fine Actually because she was a witch tyrant. I think this is just a complete non-example of the point you were trying to make, which doesn't in and of itself mean the point is wrong but does make it not especially useful to bring up.
I do think I'd be mostly behind the "don't celebrate deaths unless you'd have supported bringing them about" principle of etiquette. The case you mention is really a non-central case born out of highly non-consequential edicts, and even then it's considered pretty gauche to publically celebrate.
*I'm not using the term "vigilante" because we don't generally consider killing monarchs to be "vigilantism"; the monarch is the state, not a criminal, so killing her is war or rebellion (and, of course, assassination).
magic9mushroom
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1mo ago
Episode I was almost entirely a waste: it introduces Padme and Anakin, and shows Palpatine gaining power. Nothing else in that movie was important for later films.
There are a couple of other little bits - starting Anakin's apprenticeship under an inauspicious star, with him too old and Obi-Wan barely even a Jedi, and showing that this is The Old Republic and things are expected to End Well. The second of those is very important, and is the big obstacle to any attempt to integrate TPM more closely into the prequels. You could extend the romance, and possibly even some of Anakin's time as a Padawan, into TPM, but the main plot mostly has to be standalone because it has to End Well.
magic9mushroom
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1mo ago
Imagine that someone you really hated was randomly struck down by a freak bolt of lightning. Wouldn't you be pretty giddy? And if someone tried to argue that this made you just as bad as if you were advocating for that guy's murder, wouldn't that seem pretty unfair? Ding Dong The Witch Is Dead from The Wizard of Oz is the canonical anthem for celebrating this sort of "such-and-such celebrity you hate has randomly died" breaking news, and you'd have to have a pretty warped view of the plot to think that the Munchkins were signaling their support of random vigilante killings. Whether out of cowardice or morality, none of them would have been willing to drop a house on the Wicked Witch - that's why it took a freak tornado before they were freed from her tyranny. It just happened. But once it does happen, celebrating this happy turn of events is perfectly wholesome.
I have spent some time thinking about this, and I think I see some very obvious distinctions aside from the "murdered vs. accident" issue.
-
The Wicked Witch of the East had actual power over the Munchkins. She was a tyrant who ruled them and (if remotely comparable to the Wicked Witch of the West) killed and tortured them on a whim. Charlie Kirk had no actual power. He wasn't a government official, let alone a ruler.
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The Wicked Witch of the East's power could only be removed by killing her. There's no political procedure for "getting rid of the witch who fireballs people who disagree with her". Hell, even her ruby slippers specifically only come off once she's dead.
So if Donald Trump pulled a Palpatine and declared himself Emperor, and somehow this didn't result in him simply getting arrested but the US straight-up becoming an empire... then, yes, it would be wholesome to celebrate if he got shot dead. Sic semper tyrannis, and all that. But that's separated by bright lines from the Kirk assassination.
magic9mushroom
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1mo ago
I haven't read the novelisations (I hear the RotS one is actually considerably better than the movie), but the movie exchange goes:
Obi-Wan: I have failed you, Anakin. I have failed you.
Anakin: I should have known the Jedi were plotting to take over!
Obi-Wan: Anakin, Chancellor Palpatine is evil!
Anakin: From my point of view, the Jedi are evil!
Obi-Wan: Well then, you are lost!
magic9mushroom
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1mo ago
"Nazi" might be diluted as an insult, but it's not diluted as an ideology.
This isn't quite true. Jew-exclusionary white supremacists are universally called, and often own, the label "Nazi" whether or not they're fascists.
magic9mushroom
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1mo ago
However, in its current form it does not actually have (although it might claim that it does) fascism's profoundly revolutionary ethos.
TBH, they've kinda already pulled off the revolution and successfully brainwashed the populace. There's no requirement in fascism to continually revamp society after you've turned it into a beehive, the way that SJ lionises activism as a lifestyle and has thus had massive scope creep and a degree of cargo-cult activism untethered from any plausible theory of change.
There's the goal of fighting outsiders, but, uh, they're pursuing that.
Agreed on the rest.
magic9mushroom
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1mo ago
Yeah, I probably should have included "and six-foundationers were winding up raised Marxist and/or hippie liberal and tried to extend these to fill in the missing foundations".
magic9mushroom
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1mo ago
The bailey may be true - you'd have to defend it
I mean, there's this obvious pattern where if you look at the SJ and traditional positions on most cultural issues, the (actual) Marxist position is right in the middle. How did I put it?
Tradition: "Men should be in charge of women", Marxism: "Sex divisions are a distraction and should be ignored", SJ: "Women should be in charge of men".
Tradition: "The white man is the best man", Marxism: "Racial divisions are a distraction from class struggle; be colourblind", SJ: "Whites suck".
Tradition: "White culture is scientifically superior to natives' primitive culture and we should raze the latter", Marxism: "All cultures suck and we should make a new, constructed culture designed by science", SJ: "Indigenous ways of knowing are just as valid as science; traditional Western culture should be razed".
And as others have noted, there is a direct line of descent. The obvious culprit would be the Marxist academic community attempting to out-Marx itself on cultural issues (having adopted a virtue axis of "Marxism good, tradition bad").
You are of course correct that this interesting historical tangent is not dispositive of the question "is SJ good or bad?". Merits are merits; descent is descent.
magic9mushroom
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1mo ago
Stanislav Petrov and Stanislav Petrov alone prevented nuclear war.
No, that's not understanding it correctly. Petrov reporting what he saw faithfully wouldn't necessarily have resulted in nuclear war; it was the Soviet leadership's job to decide whether to launch on that information and it's entirely plausible that they wouldn't have.
Vasily Arhkipov is an obvious but-for case, but not Stanislav Petrov.
magic9mushroom
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1mo ago
Okay, I'm lost.
magic9mushroom
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1mo ago
What parts of a whole one thinks relevant is a subjective question, though, not "completely separate realities". Someone who thinks toast colour is the most important thing in the world can still agree with you on whether the toaster's plugged in.
I'm not going to say there aren't true delusions on that side of the fence, though. I'd argue that the overuse of "fascist" is to some extent a differing definition of the term rather than a disagreement on ground truth... but only to an extent.
magic9mushroom
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1mo ago
I think the one with Scott is referring to the fact that in some of his leaked private correspondence he once said "HBD is probably partially correct or at least very non-provably not-correct". Her wording is stretched to the point of being false, though; "scientist" means "one who does science", not "one who believes science".
magic9mushroom
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1mo ago
I don’t think any of this will actually make currency more useful than ubiquitous payment processors, so I don’t see the need for #3.
...unless you consume things the payment processors don't like.
magic9mushroom
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1mo ago
Well, yes, that's the contractarian view. Certainly, I oppose laws against people behaving cruelly to their own* animals, with a few exceptions for the animals that legitimately are capable of engaging in reciprocity.
*Cruella de Vil is still not okay, as while I don't see the puppies as having inherent value and being ends-in-themselves, they're valuable to the Dearlys/Radcliffes in both economic and sentimental ways, and she conspired to steal and destroy them.
magic9mushroom
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1mo ago
More that if someone doesn't have the requisite cognitive wiring to consider children a particularly 'special' class in terms of moral weight (that is, they are genuinely 'innocent' and have a heightened need for protection) it ups the odds, in my eyes, that they have other sociopathic traits that make them an overall undesirable neighbor, whatever their other values. Wouldn't want them around my kids, for sure.
Okay, I'll elaborate.
Like 10 years ago, I was living rurally, and as sometimes happens rurally, a wild mouse snuck into the house and started eating our food (in particular, my Weet-Bix). My aunt put out poison for it, as she'd done many times before. However, I didn't much relish the idea of having to find the corpse by the horrible stench of putrefying mouse. So, when I spotted it one night, I got a pair of tongs, grabbed it (I think it was slowing down from the poison), crushed it to death, and then chucked it in our wood heater to be incinerated. Perfectly logical and justifiable action.
But lots of the urban West has grown up... shall we say, sheltered. They're not up to the job of killing an animal in that kind of personal fashion, even when there's good reason to do it. I grew up sheltered too, but for whatever reason that psychological block didn't take root. Probably something to do with me being high-functioning autistic and/or borderline.
So the instant half the Blue Tribe hears this story, of course, they start doing the Body Snatchers scream. I don't think like them, so I'm not one of them, so I'm dangerous, so I'm to be destroyed or at least contained. Xenophobia. It doesn't matter that there's nothing ethically wrong with what I did (unless you're Ziz, I suppose); the thought process wasn't the same, so the hardware's not the same, so I'm pattern-matched to a serial killer.
I really, really don't want to legitimise the Body Snatchers scream. I know my face looks exceptionally tasty, so I'm not going to vote for the Leopards Eating Faces Party.
(Admittedly, I'm willing to make the "no, being sapient doesn't mean having anything remotely like human morality" argument with regard to AI. Combination of being essential to understanding the danger and the bright line of "not human".)
magic9mushroom
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1mo ago
Can we at least demand the left match Trump's behavior of condemning political violence before dunking on their political opponents?
I will note for the record that the Democratic Party's best equivalents to Trump did, in fact, match his behaviour in the Charlie Kirk instance.
Top-ranking Democrats also expressed their sadness and comdemnation for political violence.
Before the announcement of Kirk's death, former Vice President Kamala Harris wrote on X that she was "deeply disturbed by the shooting in Utah."
"Let me be clear: Political violence has no place in America. I condemn this act, and we all must work together to ensure this does not lead to more violence," Harris posted.
Rep. Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., the former House speaker, wrote on X: "The horrific shooting today at Utah Valley University is reprehensible. Political violence has absolutely no place in our nation."
Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., wrote: "Political violence has no place in America. This shooting is horrifying."
House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, D-N.Y., posted on social media: "Political violence is NEVER acceptable."
Democratic California Gov. Gavin Newsom posted: “The attack on Charlie Kirk is disgusting, vile and reprehensible. In the United States of America, we must reject political violence in EVERY form.”
So that's their last presidential candidate, their ranking Congressmen, their probable next presidential candidate, and WP says Biden (their last President) condemned it too though I haven't found the source. Oh, and I remember seeing Bernie Sanders condemn it in the stream that got Destiny demonetised.
There are lots of people on "the left" who did not match this behaviour, of course (including the aforementioned Destiny), but the Democratic top brass did. A cynic would, of course, note that the top brass has a very personal motivation to want less political assassinations (i.e. they are very high on the target list and don't want to be assassinated). But, hey, that argument does apply to Trump as well.
I mean, certainly there exists some amount of funding at which you've got to say "you are not giving us enough funding to have enough public defenders actually live in the Bay Area to deal with this caseload; if you don't give us more, you're not fulfilling your constitutional duties because N lawyers cannot actually defend 300N cases at a time".
Whether SF's caseload is actually at that point, I have no idea.
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