netstack
Texas is freedom land
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User ID: 647
netstack
Texas is freedom land
20hr ago
I’ve seen plenty of them, but I don’t actually know how it got started.
netstack
Texas is freedom land
20hr ago
Nah, it’s been around. It only shows up if we ban from the comment’s context menu, though. If we go through the user page (say, to compare recent comments), I don’t think it shows up.
netstack
Texas is freedom land
20hr ago
I, uh, don’t think that’s a very good model.
First: the historical limit on an empire wasn’t ambition. It was logistics. You sprawled out until you hit a natural barrier (steppe, jungle, ocean) that was wider than your baggage trains could handle. Or until you made eye contact with a neighbor strong enough to stake out its own borders. Transport tech changes that first limit; military and economic tech pushes the second.
Second: it’s not like having those phases ever taught any nation anything! Look at 19th century France. Look at the interwar period. Look at today’s Russia. If the logistics and industrial fundamentals aren’t present, the best you’re gonna get is one generation. Then the revanchists will wrangle enough support for another round.
Third: what do you mean, a smaller library of experiences? There’s no Dune-style genetic memory. Institutional inertia is a joke and a political liability. Our President has more information available than anyone in history, and this is what he chose to do with it.
netstack
Texas is freedom land
1d ago
Look, I've been complaining about shit like this for a decade. I've bitched about Trump's strongman act and his allergy to existing policy and all sorts of who-whom. I complained about our little warm-up exercise. At times like these, I'm not sure I've ever convinced a single person. Some might call this "tiresome."
I can check in to the motte, clean out the queue, ban a couple people for failing to maintain the normal level of decorum. Some people still have to follow rules, after all.
Maybe I can add a comment emphasizing my disappointment. Maybe I can snark about how many users were ride-or-die for American exceptionalism (courtesy of El Presidente) until they got the chance to blame Jews.
Or I can go back to my fucking job selling fucking munitions to fuckers who will surely use them wisely. Or at least lethally. Then I can go home, play another round of Slay the Spire, and try not to think about it.
netstack
Texas is freedom land
2d ago
Oh. Oh, duh. Yeah, I didn’t even think of that as advance. To me, it’s the end of the interaction.
netstack
Texas is freedom land
2d ago
I don’t think I’ve ever seen someone tip in advance.
But if that were the case, yeah, it’s a race to the bottom the other way.
netstack
Texas is freedom land
2d ago
Has it shifted?
I personally see a lot more concerns about our communities, our kids. Maybe it’s metastasized, but the idea started out with parents.
I’m obviously biased: my cohort is old enough to have kids, but young enough that most of them aren’t in school. Peak iPad risk.
netstack
Texas is freedom land
2d ago
netstack
Texas is freedom land
2d ago
I can’t imagine that they score the same on overall level of violence.
More importantly for public perception, though, none of the Woodstock deaths happened in the front row. On camera.
netstack
Texas is freedom land
2d ago
“Late” can be used like “mature,” I think. Stable in its development. Perhaps ossified or stagnant, even.
I agree that most people using the term are more interested in prophesying the end of capitalist systems. They’ve been doing so since before Marx himself. He framed it as “tendency of rate of profit to fall”; under that metric, “late stage” would mean “relatively low rate of profit.”
netstack
Texas is freedom land
2d ago
If only!
When only some people tip, they get to play a little prisoner’s dilemma. Those who pay the surcharge reduce the cost of labor to the employer, and thus the cost to any free riders. In turn, the non-tippers benefit themselves (and harm the employee) more than they inconvenience the employer.
From each according to “how much do I want to be (seen as) an asshole, today?”
netstack
Texas is freedom land
3d ago
Huh. That wasn’t how I remembered Salesman at all. The parts that stuck with me were
- Tying one’s self-image to a job means that when you become obsolete, you’re doubly screwed.
- Old people shouldn’t be allowed to drive.
Which makes it more of a counter-cultural paean than a revenge fantasy. I fit it into the canon as part of the general AP Lit introduction to the cynical. I should do a post, sometime, on how that fits into a broader schema of critique and novelty in media.
At the same time, your reading makes obvious sense. Incentive for teachers, at least.
netstack
Texas is freedom land
3d ago
That book sounds awesome.
I’ll repeat my recommendation for Thunder Below!, a sub captain’s insane account of combat patrols in the west and North Pacific. Like many memoirs, it’s more concerned with the tactical than the strategic, but that’s a bit different for the commander of a boat. Spoilers: When they run out of ships to sink, they land a party on Japan and blow up a train.
I also greatly enjoyed Massie’s Castles of Steel. It’s much more concerned with British and German procurement and doctrine, but in the second half, it gives a great explanation of the politics of “unrestricted submarine warfare.” America was really the elephant in the room. There’s a quote from Teddy Roosevelt saying if Wilson doesn’t stand up for shipping, he’d flay him alive. I believe him.
I have a couple of Civil War stories in my queue. Planning to cover any of those?
netstack
Texas is freedom land
3d ago
Damn you. Now that that secret is out, I have to ban both of them.
netstack
Texas is freedom land
4d ago
After Canticle, I wanted something less bleak, so I tried Will Cuppy’s The Decline and Fall of Practically Everybody. It’s a series of pop-history biographical vignettes written in the 40s. Honestly not as funny or as bizarre as I was expecting. The authorial voice is something like a washed-out Terry Pratchett, with footnotes and asides that just aren’t landing. I thought it might have been my familiarity with the subjects, but he’s gotten to Russians I don’t know, and I’m still not feeling it. Still, the book isn’t all that long, so I’ll probably stick it out.
netstack
Texas is freedom land
7d ago
Nice work!
Though…what’s the deal with the United States box east of Crete?
netstack
Texas is freedom land
8d ago
Really? The precise limits of duty have been explored by Western canon for at least as long. Even if you don’t count Achilles, surely Job demonstrated the importance of understanding one’s role.
netstack
Texas is freedom land
9d ago
the bulk of Jewish intellect
the bulk of their community
80% to MAGA
I dunno, it sure doesn’t sound like he was talking about the good ol’ boys.
time telling bundle of sticks from the UK
Ironically, I can’t seem to find it. Who are you hinting at?
netstack
Texas is freedom land
9d ago
If only he had a company dedicated to underground mining operations…
netstack
Texas is freedom land
9d ago
Chemical rockets do a lot better in the worst case scenario for a rocket launch.
I agree that they’re too weak for the real extrasolar timelines.
If there was a bunch of fissile material sitting around in the asteroid belt, maybe that would be a good reason to get up there. Unfortunately, a cursory search tells me that it only got concentrated on Earth by some sort of geological distillation. Probably not available outside of gravity wells.
netstack
Texas is freedom land
9d ago
I mean, you can watch the same guy wishing for this deal turn around and accuse Jews of running their own blood libel. I could see how that would be a deal-breaker.
Okay, that’s enough name-calling for one day.
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