marinuso
9mo ago
Well, I doubt that.
The editors aren't there of their own accord, even the chief editor isn't there on his own behalf. They're people doing jobs. Of course any of them could go rogue and maybe manage to get something published once or twice, but they would be swiftly removed from their positions. If their loyalty was in question they wouldn't have been hired in the first place.
The owners could reposition the paper, but then again, no one doubts that the Sulzbergers are anything but elite.
marinuso
2mo ago
I got one too. I don't even qualify. I'm not an US resident, I have never even been to the US. They could've figured that out automatically from the IP addresses associated with my account that they're no doubt logging, or they could've looked at the subreddits I post in. Yet they didn't even bother with that bit of obvious filtering. They must've sent it to literally everyone.
marinuso
1yr ago
They 'pedestrianized' the area. It's been a few years, I don't recall any reason being given apart from the usual platitudes about safety and livability. The place does get thronged on the weekends - or did, prior to the Covid lockdowns bankrupting half the shops.
Official taxis being exempt is a citywide thing, they also get to go on bus lanes, and it's been that way since forever.
marinuso
10mo ago
After all that programming meetup was hosted in an LGBT space.. which might just answer your question
This would be plenty of reason for me not to attend an event I otherwise might. Not even out of 'hatred' or whatever. Foremost I'd feel like an intruder in another's place.
marinuso
1yr ago
OTOH, owning India or most of Africa doesn't set you ahead in terms of natural resources per person, in the way owning Siberia might.
the guidance and computers are the expensive parts.
Computers aren't at all expensive anymore in the grand scheme of things.
In the 1960s they custom-built a computer to send people to the moon. In the 1980s you could buy a more powerful computer for kids to play games on for a few hundred dollars. By now you can buy a much more powerful computer on a tiny chip for 30-40 cents.
marinuso
1mo ago
I'd say it's less bad that one evil parent hurt his own kids, than that the cogs of bureaucracy chew up countless children who would've had loving homes, all the while the evil parents still hurt their own kids too.
Of course neither is perfect, but you're not getting perfection.
marinuso
4mo ago
It would probably be legit less of an escalation if Trump just had an "accident". At least you're not setting precedent that way. And he certainly wouldn't be the first one either.
marinuso
1yr ago
It's not a surprise to me, which is why I can't but assume that it isn't a surprise to the policymakers either.
Therefore, importing "fungible economic units" can't be the real reason.
marinuso
1yr ago
This causes everyone's cars to rust.
It'd be legitimately better to just dump the salt in a hole, should they really need to waste it.
marinuso
1yr ago
You don't accept the crown in Britain. He was next in line, he got it automatically the moment Queen Elizabeth died. They're never without a monarch. If he wants to give it to his son, he'll have to abdicate.
marinuso
9d ago
A big reason for mass immigration is ease of travel and mass media.
And industrialisation.
Whether you were a peasant in India in 1750 or a peasant in Britain in 1750 didn't matter all that much as far as living standards go. Whether you're a peasant in India in 1980 or even have a minimum wage job in Britain in 1980 however, matters a great deal.
marinuso
1yr ago
A good road diet increases the throughput of human beings going where they want to go because an inefficient use of street space is replaced by a more efficient one.
This is of course a functionally equivalent statement to "good policies have benefits that outweigh the harms". Yes, that's the definition. But that presumes the people who are making the policies are competent and well-meaning, and they never seem to be even one. I would expect a 'road diet' (especially when explicitly named so) to be done by politicians who are at best following a fad, at worst intending to hurt people they think are their enemies.
In the city where I live they banned bicycles out of the (old medieval) city center. Technically cars too, but already nobody drove there (who in their right mind would even try). But the American Democrats are hampering transport so we should also hamper transport, it's cargo cult blue-tribe-ism. To top it all of, official taxis can still go in. So the local hoity-toities can still be ferried to and from their subsidized cultural events in style. To their credit (?) I haven't seen much actual enforcement.
marinuso
15d ago
He'll be 82. There's a very good chance he'll be dead or otherwise incapable. Look at how fast Biden seems to have gone downhill - he seemed completely fine when he was VP during Obama's presidency. It can go quickly at this age.
I wouldn't say the New York Times editor is all that elite as an individual.
He's part of a powerful group, certainly, but the only power he exercises is on behalf of the group and in conjunction with the rest of the group. He has little individual decision making power and is not a mover or shaker in his own right. If he goes against the group, he's out. And he's unlikely to have significant pull within the group on his own either. He may have DoJ officials on speed dial, but he certainly can't call in favours on his own personal behalf and he will be in trouble if he attempts. He's a cog in a machine.
This is in fact reflected in their income which is ~$76k a year on average. That's certainly not nothing, but it certainly isn't fuck-you money either. It's enough to live comfortably, but it's not going to allow you to build a serious buffer so you can pick fights later.
The car dealer may be further removed from national power in a 'six degrees of Kevin Bacon' sense, but he has more money. If he, as an individual, wants to try and get something done, he has more money to try it with. If someone picks a fight with him, he has more money to defend himself. As an individual, he is in a better position than the NYT editor.
On a national scale neither is elite, their individual influence can both be rounded down to zero. But don't forget that in small towns, people like this successful car dealer are often the ones who rule the roost. The car dealer's words will have measurable weight there, if he wants them to.
marinuso
10mo ago
Ukraine is not generally valuable in-and-of-itself to ANYONE but the Ukrainians. Neither the U.S. nor Russia stands to achieve much economic gains from merely controlling the territory, so in that sense broad destruction of Ukrainian infrastructure is acceptable to both parties.
They found a bunch of large natural gas deposits in Eastern Ukraine and in the sea off Crimea, in the early 2010s right before everything kicked off.
marinuso
1yr ago
I'm sure that rich people will still be allowed to drive. So in some picky technical sense it will not be a outright ban
It's even a little more nuanced than that, as with electric vehicles you have to pay more for more range.
The masses will go on buses. Managers may be able to buy a car that fits their commute, but the range and charging limitations mean it's only good for the commute, you can't do anything else besides. So you've bought a more comfortable commute, but no freedom.
Upper management can get 50km range on top of that. A little freedom. And so on, and for the real rich we'll keep ICE vehicles that can just go wherever, whenever.
They got a bunch of Vietnamese, whose descendants are still there today. The equivalent of the Turks in West Germany, though fewer and better-behaved, which is why you don't hear about them much. The same is true of some other ex-Eastern Bloc countries like Czechia.
But no, individuals couldn't just go and move of their own accord. (The exception to that was Yugoslavia, at least at some times, but given the choice, they'd rather go to West Germany obviously.)
marinuso
9d ago
Historically, Christianity presided over the most unequal period in European history.
Is that so? Medieval Europe at least did not have slavery in any great amount. That is actually fairly unique for the time period and for the kind of societies they had. The Roman Empire had chattel slavery of pretty much the same kind that would later be re-introduced to the European colonies in the Americas. It seems to have been an old pan-Mediterranean institution, that died out in Christian Europe and was reintroduced basically by cribbing from the Arabs, who had kept it.
marinuso
1yr ago
I don't know how we do that either.
That'll happen by itself when anyone can create a fake scandal with little effort. "That's fake" won't just be a believable excuse, but everyone's default assumption.
marinuso
1yr ago
Critical theory and postmodernism are products of France and Germany,
Kind of, but not really.
They got their start in France and Germany, but were further developed in the US, gained traction in the US, are now being exported from the US, and by the time it gets back to France and Germany they don't recognize it. When you see any critical theory or postmodernism pushed in Europe, it's the US version. Often even using the English words for the concepts, either directly or as literal, mechanical translations.
marinuso
1yr ago
A hospital might have huge margins because competitors are barred by law from entering the marketplace.
It's even called a CON.
marinuso
6mo ago
Well, how about Native American reservations? And as for those: you can't, in general, move there, only the tribe that owns it can; but you can drive through and even stop at a restaurant. Any 'realistic' (for whatever value of that...) Ida-White would need to follow a similar model.
It wouldn't be in their interest to block or harass people who pass through.
You don't want that anyway.
Someone's got to clean the toilets, and it would be better if that person weren't an 150 IQ would-be rocket surgeon who only isn't a rocket surgeon because he lost a politics game. After all, only so many people can be rocket surgeons, and if everyone is smart then the losers will have to lose for a different reason.
It wouldn't even be a good reason. Then you have a mass of 150-IQ angry losers on your hands, all of them applying their smarts to remedying the problem of not being on top. You think it's bad now, you just wait.
More options
Context Copy link