netstack
Texas is freedom land
No bio...
User ID: 647
netstack
Texas is freedom land
3mo ago
Baby, bathwater.
Almost none of our legal system relies on that sort of chicanery. Rewarding any administration for doing more of it is a terrible idea.
netstack
Texas is freedom land
3mo ago
netstack
Texas is freedom land
3mo ago
You might get something out of Annals of a Fortress, a fictional history of one particular site in eastern France. It alternates between fortifying and besieging the fortress. Characters on both sides are usually extremely capable. They’d have to be, to get hundreds or thousands of men in position for a siege!
The author was a renowned architect with a strong historical basis. He was also really bitter about the Franco-Prussian war. Understandable, given that he was involved in organizing the final defense of Paris. The last section of the book lays out his theory of the current (circa 1880) state of the art. It’s basically a manual for the kind of strategies which would lead, inevitably, to trench warfare.
netstack
Texas is freedom land
3mo ago
Not for people who were already pointedly ignoring that narrative, no.
netstack
Texas is freedom land
3mo ago
Funny how these TIL posts always seem to update in favor of Russia, isn’t it? No one ever comments “I revisited my strategic assumptions, and it turns out Putin is a huge bitch. Like, tinpot-dictator paranoia. Now I’m more sympathetic to the Ukrainians.” There’s no alpha in agreeing with the mainstream narrative.
But I digress.
Russia’s actions don’t generally look like existential terror. Pushing Finland into NATO? Withdrawing from the INF treaty? (Possibly Trump’s fault, I guess.) Threatening tactical nukes?! That’s not how you deescalate the situation.
Keeping NATO missiles out of Ukraine is a tiny benefit compared to the other consequences.
netstack
Texas is freedom land
3mo ago
I want to go with “false impression.” It’s hard to see the BLR-era Motte as a bastion of law and order. People were furious about Floyd, Rittenhouse, COVID, etc. On the other hand, I sampled a random thread and was pleasantly surprised. So I don’t really trust my intuition here.
There is one big source of tension for me. I only want to ban people for flagrant offenses, but I also only want to warn them for rare ones. That kind of ties my hands when a user constantly shits out low-grade violations.
netstack
Texas is freedom land
3mo ago
With all the caveats of our discussion a couple days back…I really don’t think this is true? If only because androgen insensitivities and intersex conditions make a really secure motte. They more or less defuse the “is it a choice/contagious?” step of the argument.
See also the confusion over whether Imane Khelif was an icon of trans resistance.
netstack
Texas is freedom land
3mo ago
I think you should be more specific about the subset you have in mind.
My first thought was “Civil Rights era Southern Democrats,” a group which unapologetically grounded their racism in conservative thought. But those people are mostly dead now, and their legacy is a good bit more complicated.
If you’re accusing Bob Jones fundamentalists or scientific racists or based post-Christian vitalists of confusing prejudice for conservatism, you’ve got to do more work to establish it.
netstack
Texas is freedom land
3mo ago
https://www.themotte.org/post/1794/culture-war-roundup-for-the-week/311661?context=8#context
TL;DR we aren’t there yet, but once we are, he’s not going to complain.
netstack
Texas is freedom land
3mo ago
I’m sure you do.
This is still not the place for your Two Minute Hate. Put some more substance into it or keep it to yourself; I don’t care which.
netstack
Texas is freedom land
3mo ago
do you believe false things
Yeah, probably. The important thing is to admit when you’re wrong and change your mind. Easier said than done, especially when any such admission attracts douchebags who want to score Internet points.
bedrock of your beliefs
Don’t worry, I make sure to ground my beliefs on surveys. How else am I supposed to generalize from “very liberal people”?
“No, it cannot happen to me…Ayrabs.”
If you have to resort to scare quotes, consider whether you’re fighting a strawman.
viral
Is that viral agreement or viral outrage? Downsides of a unified measure of engagement. Twitter delenda est.
trusted them all
It sure is a shame. Maybe someone should start a community, try to find people who want to overcome those biases. They might end up wrong less often.
netstack
Texas is freedom land
3mo ago
Empirically, yes.
The number of man-hours put into those categories dwarfs anything related to puberty blockers, or to medical intervention at all.
netstack
Texas is freedom land
3mo ago
I’m glad that you took it as saintly curiosity, because I felt like I was risking Reddit atheism. “That’s a noncentral fallacy, baby!” So…thanks for being a good sport. I wish every terminology debate could go this cleanly.
It’s a difficult subject for me. I have close friends who take their transitions very seriously, who are clearly perceiving something that you or I fundamentally don’t. I refuse to hold that against them. I feel like that’s what the average trans debate demands: condemning my friends wholesale on the basis of the craziest nut someone can pick.
You avoided that entirely, and I think I learned something for it. By all accounts, you were right, and “chemical castration” applies to all uses of both (D)MPA and the GnRH drugs. Cancer, criminal justice, gender. The medical terminology has been around since before gender identity was a flagship issue. Even the distinction between “castration” and “sterilization” probably dates back to the California bill.
I want to believe true things. This isn’t the first time you’ve convinced me that my reflexive reaction was wrong. I really appreciate that.
netstack
Texas is freedom land
3mo ago
I’m confident they have one. I’d guess Teams.
Still no bueno for classified information, but if what Gabbard says is true, this chat was perfectly innocent on that front. :)
netstack
Texas is freedom land
3mo ago
We take it seriously because we’d get absolutely reamed for fucking it up. Even if it were something mild/unintentional enough to avoid criminal charges, if I triggered some sort of audit, I wouldn’t expect to keep my job.
That’s the other thing about the various “improper storage” scandals. Responsibility was diluted. Sure, the government could find out who dumped files in Joe’s garage, but they elected not to spend the money. Not when there was no actual leak involved. This case doesn’t have that excuse.
netstack
Texas is freedom land
3mo ago
As I understand it, yeah, severance pay is for "involuntary separation."
I'm not sure how that interacts with the administrative leave applied to the probationary hires, though.
netstack
Texas is freedom land
3mo ago
At my company, there were rumors of a date but no confirmation. When the date came around, they were walking people out one at a time all morning. So there was enough window for speculation.
I agree that it is intentionally slapdash. The uncertainty helps a strategic goal. Everyone who quits is one that doesn’t get severance.
netstack
Texas is freedom land
3mo ago
Confirmed. It doesn’t surprise me. A honeypot this elaborate, and with no obvious enforcement mechanism, would have made even less sense.
Sharing classified information is not generally a crime. Not unless you’ve signed the corresponding SF-312 and accepted the obligation to protect it. What are the odds that anyone in this chat had done so?
In any other administration, this would be a perfectly respectable scandal. Perhaps a little higher up than usual. It’s normally staffers who mishandle communications. Today, though, I don’t expect anything to come of it. Let me make a quick check of which step we’re on in the narcissist’s prayer. Yup, we’re still on “…and if I did, it wasn’t that bad.”
20% that anyone from the group chat faces a criminal charge.
netstack
Texas is freedom land
3mo ago
I have a family member working in HHS. From February:
well as of right now, I have not been fired. So it could be worse
However, yesterday they fired probationary [Agency A] employees, and today was [Agency B]’s turn. We are expecting the same for [our Agency C] next week. I've been told I am not probationary (typically a 1y period) but I am still "conditional", not "permanent" on my employee docs, so I will be first on the chopping block if they continue after removing all probationary ppl
Lots of us know people at [Agency A] who were fired - they got no severance and were fired because of "performance" and because they were "not needed". Surely illegal, but that hasn't stopped Musk/Trump yet
The prediction was correct, and they put all their probationary employees on admin leave for a month. Apparently switching from a contractor to an FTE spot still confers probationary status, so this included some 10+ year former postdocs who are now being asked to come back.
These probationary firings may or may not have been legal depending on the statutory requirements of firing “for cause.” Some of them have been reversed. Others are still in court. I don’t expect you’ll find good numbers about the number of people fired, because even the government doesn’t seem to be sure.
Either way, supervisors were immediately required to draw up a RIF plan which presumably allows smiting the rest of the workforce. Here is the OPM directive. Plans must be designed to finish by September 30th, though I notice the example plan could be done in June.
This was all before the “5 things” email, which has apparently become a weekly thing now. I assume it’s an attempt to identify “cause” since that’s been a sticking point in the lawsuits. Whether or not it collects any useful information, it’s definitely reminding employees what they have to look forward to.
I don’t know if you’ve ever worked for a company which did a RIF. It’s not fun. Even when you know the date, you still aren’t told any details—even when the next few rungs above you are feeling just as frustrated. The plans are approved at a higher, less personal level.
That’s where almost all federal employees are standing. Anyone hired in the last year has been ambiguously cut, so everyone knows a few. By September 30th, some fraction of the rest will go, too. And that’s if the top management doesn’t think of some other way to move fast and break things.
netstack
Texas is freedom land
3mo ago
I mistakenly thought that when states chemically castrate sex offenders, they use the progestogens, but when oncologists chemically castrate cancer patients, they use the GnRH drugs. Then the fact that gender clinics recommend GnRH would suggest their protocols are more like cancer treatment than criminal justice.
As @Fruck pointed out, this isn’t the case if Lupron was used for judicial castration in Australia. I’ll assume he’s correct, and I share his frustration proving it. This was the best I could find. It says that CPA, another progestogen, is the only currently approved option, but cites studies on Lupron and a couple others. Obviously, they saw some use in criminal justice.
“Political leverage” was just a joke about the stereotypical eunuch. In poor taste, perhaps.
I doubt that I can find credible sources for long-term reversibility, since I assume it’s permanent at some point. Maybe 2-3 years, since that’s what the oncology websites cite when they feel defensive about gender politics. I’m not trying to push a political line.
I don’t have a specific recommendation, but you could consider gun range bags? The ones designed for multiple pistols. They’re vaguely cubic (if you can remove the dividers) and tend to have more padding.
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