netstack
Texas is freedom land
No bio...
User ID: 647
netstack
Texas is freedom land
10hr ago
God.
Paxton represents everything I dislike about this state. Setting aside his little scandal, he’s a shameless partisan who grandstands whenever he gets the chance. Every AG statement just drips with condescension and/or righteous anger at the opposition. I suppose, given our political climate, that makes him a savvy political operator.
While we have various stupid and offensive laws, I can’t really blame him for enforcing them. But I do not look forward to seeing how he operates with a more deadlocked legislature. Especially if Trump is looking for opportunities to get even.
netstack
Texas is freedom land
11hr ago
Too general.
Communists also have a ‘product’ they want to sell to ‘everybody.’ After decades with half the planet locked behind their ideology, has this co-opted MBAs into a fifth column? No, because there is a competing ideology, and it has a much more credible route to MBA-approved outcomes, like actually having markets or not getting purged.
I actually agree that social justice gains in corporations involve the motives you describe. They’re viewed as money on the sidewalk, better image with little to no downside. I argued such when the Bud Light business demonstrated the downside and when people were reading Super Bowl ads like tea leaves.
The interesting question isn’t “why do MBAs adopt social justice?” It’s “why doesn’t social justice have a credible competitor?”
netstack
Texas is freedom land
7hr ago
My point exactly.
Despite any pope-knifing, AC2 was more controversial for its DRM than for its politics. This was objectively more reasonable than today’s squabbles.
netstack
Texas is freedom land
10hr ago
Okay, but Yasuke kicks ass. He’s a semi-mythical figure from one of Japan’s most famous historical periods. As a result, I’ve seen callouts to him in some weird places.
netstack
Texas is freedom land
12hr ago
You’re coming in a bit too hot, here.
Huh. This is actually your first mod warning at all. I guess that means you definitely know better, and just hate tattoos that much.
netstack
Texas is freedom land
14hr ago
“Why are women so bad at judging distance?”
Gesture with thumb and forefinger.
“They’ve spent half their lives being told that this is six inches.”
netstack
Texas is freedom land
10hr ago
If they’d released AC2 in current year, the same people would be complaining that beating up the Pope was an attack on Western civilization.
I agree that they should just play better games, though.
netstack
Texas is freedom land
14hr ago
I don’t have the bar either. Just the usual iPhone clock/signal/batter indicators.
Tell us a bit more about your phone and browser?
netstack
Texas is freedom land
12hr ago
Who is his audience? Covid warriors?
I predict less success than Johnson. The libertarian bloc surely benefited from running against a populist and a Clinton. A protest vote against the current choices isn’t going to look like RFK.
Seriously, I don’t know anyone IRL who supports him. That’s not true for the libertarians, who apparently adopt streets (?!) near me.
netstack
Texas is freedom land
14hr ago
Does the solar farm actually make things worse than whatever salt flat or scrub was there before? I’m thinking the total energy in has to be the same.
And what’s wrong with wind farms?
netstack
Texas is freedom land
14hr ago
I had a similar reaction to learning about Project Plowshare. Doesn’t seem like they tried creating mountains, sadly.
netstack
Texas is freedom land
13hr ago
Almost finished With the Old Breed. Vivid and chilling. I’d recommend it to anyone interested in war memoirs.
Thank God we don’t have to experience this. I don’t just mean American civilians—I suspect no one on the planet faces such a level of industrialized brutality. Two hundred thousand men crammed into 5 miles of front.
netstack
Texas is freedom land
14hr ago
No, the day job is American enough.
My family has been in the Carolinas since the 1700s. We’re pretty firmly integrated.
netstack
Texas is freedom land
14hr ago
Go for it. Nothing wrong with having the extra data, and I believe it’s actually more important than the (directional) volunteer sorting.
netstack
Texas is freedom land
2d ago
Palestinian casualties have always far exceeded Israeli ones
It’s not for lack of trying, though.
Hamas appears to be limited more by Israeli tech and funding advantages than by its own morality. Israel…it’s less clear. I would argue they are operating further from their maximum capability than Hamas. Whether that’s due to conscience or to realpolitik, I’d still call it “restraint.”
Or to put it another way: if Hamas wanted to cause more casualties among Israeli civilians, what would it do differently? Because I get the impression it’s taking all the opportunities it can. The scarcity of such opportunities, and the horrific penalties it pays in return, doesn’t excuse much.
netstack
Texas is freedom land
11hr ago
Maybe it’s down to maintenance?
How long does the conventional rental serve before getting sold off as a used car? I know when I was car shopping, you could pretty low-mileage examples which had that history.
The insurance for rentals has already got to be crazy, so I could see fuel/maint costs making the difference.
netstack
Texas is freedom land
11hr ago
There are lots of reasons to oppose Russia/push back on (perceived) Russia partisans even if one thinks Ukraine is doomed. But you may be right if I’m typical-minding.
Interesting that you blame corruption. My intuition at the start was Russia rolling in and destroying major C&C. Maybe not on Desert Storm level, but something relatively fast. In that case, the industry of either side wouldn’t matter too much. Frankly, I assume that’s what Russia expected, too. If they’d known how much money and experience they’d lose to get this far, I would like to think it wouldn’t have happened.
But given that Ukraine didn’t shatter, and instead got this awful slog—now the production is key. And they sure can’t do it on their own dime. As critics have observed, we dumped most of our old and cheap munitions, and are struggling to spin up new production. So is this failure because of corrupt or incompetent procurement? Or were we just not expecting it to come to this?
I realize this sounds like I’m saying “nah, we’d totally win if we weren’t holding back.” Hubristic, right? But there really is a lack of political will. Our politicians even fought over sending the old stuff to this small, faraway, non-NATO country. If that level of intervention was unpopular, is it so surprising that we haven’t kept up in shell production?
netstack
Texas is freedom land
4d ago
What was the law that made this a temporary exception? Your link only shows the removal.
Anyway, you missed a couple options.
- Support for protestors concealing their identity while behaving correctly. I.e. honest-to-god peaceful speech as protected under the 1st amendment.
- Support for the actual, as-written exemption. No loophole, simply the belief that “physical health and safety” protections are still worth privileging.
- Distrust that right-leaning leaders will assume intent to conceal identity even when there are other plausible reasons.
- Objection to the pure chilling effect, regardless of any actual abuse.
Now, I agree with your prediction. At least the strict form, where you mean people committing crimes other than mask-wearing. I do not expect the law to be used against sympathetic chemo patients. I think it would quite likely be applied to the mythical peaceful (but still masked) protest. As in—near 100% that, if a protest were shut down with arrests, some of the perps would only be charged under this statute. It’s just too easy to insist that they were aiming for intimidation and thus must have been concealing identity. Ask @gattsuru if it’s a good idea, generally speaking, to rely on police discretion.
Of course, I don’t really expect such arrests, because I expect the law to have its intended chilling effect.
Again, I’m not asking you to agree with objectors. You probably have a very different level of trust in the police, and you certainly have a different evaluation of health risks. I’m simply imagining the alternate universe where this has the complete opposite valence. Where it’s seen as legal chicanery comparable to NY handgun law, or a state power grab along the lines of wiretapping. Where the same users who cry foul about liberal bias ask why this time, the ambiguity is okay.
netstack
Texas is freedom land
4d ago
Yeah.
Hell, we saw it with Queen Elizabeth, who’s got a much better reputation in the U.S. than either of those.
I’ve got a theory that one of the signs of a…good? healthy? site is people willing to say the boring thing. Small talk. Socially acceptable responses. Stuff that real humans would say to other real humans’ faces. Those make it more like a community and less like performance art.
Sometimes we do a good job of it. I like that.
netstack
Texas is freedom land
5d ago
Agreed. There are two core constituencies to the Motte: culture-war connoisseurs and policy wonks.
The former are interested in understanding the culture war, predicting it, if not outright waging it. Topics are valued accordingly. This group tends to like sweeping theories, too. There is a lot of demand for sensemaking. Here’s how ivermectin got right-coded. Here’s why such-and-such is memetically fit.
On the other hand, wonks put a narrow topic first. Any CW angle is secondary. A lot of our most narrative authors in this category, even if they don’t care about a specific policy, because the style is so different. You get a long narrative about life in Japan or a Civil War battle without any expectation of, I dunno, solving TFR.
Law, especially political law, bridges the gap, so it’s usually good stuff.
Okay, that's the kind of thing where you have to make your case.
You were warned for this exact behavior a while back. One day ban this time.
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