magnax1
1yr ago
It is very easy under certain circumstances, but those circumstances have almost nothing to do with your qualifications to be a productive citizen in American society. Immigrating to the US via qualifications can be almost impossible unfortunately.
magnax1
1yr ago
HR should be taken very seriously. It is a small branch of the state forced into business so that the business complies with everything the state demands. That is far more dangerous, although maybe not "serious" than any other part of a business. None of the others can have the cops come down to put you in jail or take away everything you own.
magnax1
1yr ago
It's worth adding that the Soviet casualties in the early and mid parts of the war ranged from 2-4 times as high as the German. Even during the end when the Soviets outnumbered the Germans 4 to 1 with better equipment, more fuel, and total air superiority, the Soviets usually only achieved around 1 to 1 casualty ratios. Not only is it hard to believe the Russians had much faith in their leadership, its hard to actually call Zhukov et al better than what the Russians are putting out now. They were just in a much more favorable situation materially.
magnax1
1yr ago
As a big fan of scifi and an aspiring writer myself, I feel the need to point out that a lot of "classic" scifi that won awards is actually probably much worse than this. A lot of stuff by early guys like Asimov is incredibly dry and has no character development. It was often a vehicle for a concept more than a story. The only modern scifi writer who gets away with that now is the "three body problem" author, Liu Cixin. Outside of his original book, the three body problem, which is a masterpiece, his other books are total dumpster fires. (EDIT:I probably shouldn't have said the only one, but having a good concept and nothing else and finding success is rare now)
So you may be right about this book (I havent read it) but your insinuation that writers couldn't have gotten away with this poor quality in the past is definitely wrong. In the past scifi novels catered to young men with little exposure to good writing, and it showed.
magnax1
1yr ago
Concept is useful but there is no reason not to add solid writing to a concept. It's very hard to care about "crushing historical trends" when you just don't care about any individuals. That's just how people work. Even history is much more interesting through the lense of a Hannibal, Thutmoses III, or Joan of Arc.
magnax1
1yr ago
but then its solution is the platitude of "parental responsibility"
I'm not sure how its really a platitude. Culture is a far more effective weapon against many civilizational threats than state policy making. The state forcing policy from the top has significant costs and limited effectiveness. (See covid) People deciding on their own that something is taboo and shunning it is effective in a way the state just isn't. If you're saying organizing bottom up cultural changes is hard, that's true, but that's kind of why they work. They're not "organized" in any real sense. They just happen so long as the state gets out of the way. Not always, and not necessarily in ideal ways, but that's true of any other method as well.
Edit:And just as a note, calling tiktok a civilizational threat is pretty absurd anyways.
magnax1
1yr ago
Why would gene selection technology be limited to the .01%? I can see a case it would be limited to developed countries, or be limited to the very wealthy in those countries for a short period, bit fundamentally technologies like crispr do not require significant resources to use other than the initial investment required to learn how to use them.
Material conditions of Americans require them to outsource most of the parenting to the State.
Considering how little effect what school you go to has on you and how big of an effect the makeup of your family has on you (how your parents interact with you, divorce, single motherhood, etc) I think this statement is a probably just outright wrong. In terms of time commitment it might be true that the state/schools are a bigger factor (although considering school holidays I'm not sure its actually true) but in terms of effect I don't think the evidence suggests anything like that.
Also, I suspect much less individual care from parents was given to children on average in the past. I actually remember a study that suggested this (IIRC mothers spend about as much time on a child as they did in the past but fathers spend far more) Of course, I didnt save the link.
Really, I don't think there's any evidence for most of your claims. If it is true that children are mainly raised (in terms of effect) by the state, its probably mainly true in cases where social institutions fail (again, mainly divorce and single motherhood)
Edit:also, the claim that mothers work stressful jobs, relative to the past, seems almost entirely the opposite of reality. Almost all women through history worked on small farms toiling at housework day to night. Hunger gatherers societies were ultra violent and incredibly unstable. The current era is by far the lowest stress for anyone, mothers included, excluding the sort of kazcynskian over socialized sense of stress.
magnax1
1yr ago
Indeed, Britain's involvement is what really set it off as a "World War", whereas if they had stayed out it would've probably been a larger repeat of something like the Franco Prussian war. I've felt for a while that their decision to join the war was ultimately the most disastrous foreign policy decision the UK ever made.
magnax1
1yr ago
I don't see an economic reason why cutting edge gene modding would be exclusively catered to the rich. If you want a return on investment you want the broadest market possible. High cost products are usually products that have high cost of physical resources like cars, or high labor costs. Gene modification is essentially selling data. It's market would be more similar to a market for music, books, movies, etc than cars. Therefore its largest problem would be creating excludability and financializing the asset.
The only way this might not be the case is through significant regulatory capture, which considering the total non-functionality of the FDA is possible. The only problem is the FDA's incentives are not aligned with the wealthy, but with self preservation. This presents itself mostly through absurd overcautiouness and regulatory violence against uncooperative corporations.
magnax1
1yr ago
You massively over estimate the uniformity of American beliefs. If you travel from NYC, to Salt Lake, to Phoenix, the rural Midwest, the values indeed differ massively and always have. The only reason it might seem otherwise is because people self segregate. Most people succeed in seeking out their ingroup where ever they go. If they can't succeed (Like culturally black people in Salt Lake) they generally avoid those spaces.
There is an underpinning of enlightenment (far more than "post enlightenment") values among most of the non hyper urban settings, but I don't think that is built all that much by the schools, but by basic American tradition. Myths are powerful, and the American myth is an exceptionally powerful myth, up there with the Christian and Muslim myths. The American mythos leaves a lot of space for disagreement though.
You seem to believe institutions like schools are far more effective than I do. They're very effective for a certain type of person--mainly the quiet kids who get good grades and follow orders. Those kids are basically selected for by their predecessors in government backed institution. After they are selected they have an outsized voice, but probably not an outsized functional impact. If they had an outsized impact the leftist institutions would likely not have to rely on immigrant votes to eek out a 50% win rate in elections.
magnax1
1yr ago
The serbs shot down one stealth jet (that is an order of magnitude less stealthy than an F35 or F22) out of dozens of bombing runs in the exact same flight path. Not exactly a good track record.
magnax1
1yr ago
Very few to none. Almost all significant jail time for marijuana is for intent to distribute. Most states which haven't made it legal decriminalized it in small quantities or don't actively prosecute cases as of decades ago.
Its common for people with extensive previous records or who are involved in violent crime. I don't think that's what people are thinking about when they hear someone went to jail for Marijuana for years.
magnax1
1yr ago
Intent to distribute/felony possession is different from state to state, but many are in the pounds and few (maybe none) are as low as half an ounce. Federal numbers have been absurdly large for a while since they're mostly interested in international trafficking.
magnax1
1yr ago
White and black Americans have comparable drug use rates, but the black ones are caught more.
This data is self reported, so is very questionable. Even then the self reported rates are pretty significantly different IIRC. Something like 20-30% higher for black people.
The difference in jail time/convictions for drug use is mostly down to a difference in dealing anyways. IE black people aren't actually caught for personal use that much more, but are a disproportionate amount of dealers (or at minimum, dealers who are caught)
magnax1
1yr ago
Black people have a much higher propensity to crime at every income level, but single motherhood alone makes up almost all that difference. The problem is much clearer than people often let on.
The only explanation I can make of this is that Paul Pelosi has dementia, or was so drunk that he couldn't make out what was happening. His 911 call sounds a lot like someone who has dementia. The male prostitute theory makes absolutely no sense--why would a prostitute break in?
Obviously the parent is still alive, the question is if they are contributing to child care in any meaningful way. Just splitting the time between households is probably not meaningfully different than having 1 parent. The benefit of nuclear family is probably mostly in having more child rearing labor at any time. You actually see the same effect in Japan, except with traditional multi generational families having better outcomes vs nuclear families.
Parents don't live together probably because one, or maybe both parents are assholes. These traits are passed to children.
This may have some effect, but given that even significantly heritable factors like height and intelligence aren't that inheritable (I think IQ is roughly 30%?), it really doesn't fit.
Remember, pre Civil-rights era such horrible share of single parent household didn't exist and the crime gap was about the same.
Pre ~1950 data isn't that good in the first place, (EDIT: actually even now I don't think the data is excellent) but there is a pretty huge uptick in crime that fits very well with the adolescence of the first generation of single parent children.
magnax1
1yr ago
It's like work is not fun and workers are in a precarious position and must be on their toes.
I'm not speaking on this particular incident because I don't know enough details, but a lot of these people who get shoved out ceremoniously are in a precarious position for a reason totally unrelated to the incident--workplace feuds, poor performance, being a weirdo in a general undefined sense, etc. Then management or HR will take some arbitrary unsubstantiated claim and kick them out. This is pretty common in the mid and higher ranges of bureaucracies and probably makes up a lot of woke firings IMO.
magnax1
1yr ago
He was successful precisely because he's a new money/guido type not a blue blood type like Romney. He also was willing to say whatever benefited him most, contradicting his previous stated beliefs quite regularly.
magnax1
1yr ago
Public opinion has to have a direct effect
on voting to sway politicians. The American public will never vote for one guy over another because he wants to send 1/1000th less of the yearly budget to Ukraine.
magnax1
1yr ago
The line is far less distinct then you're letting on. What one person sees as too pushy is often times completely effective and other times will make a woman quite uncomfortable or even angry. It's difficult to know which is which until you try, and the threshold is actually far below the aforementioned case of trying to get some women to join what amounts to a harem.
No_one NapoleonBonerpart5 1d
You vastly overestimate China here and vastly underestimate Russia, especially in terms of "dying" countries. China's demographics are the worst on Earth by far, Russia's are the best in Europe outside France.
More options
Context Copy link