netstack
Texas is freedom land
No bio...
User ID: 647
netstack
Texas is freedom land
1yr ago
God, I hate to play the “both sides” card, but…who actually does this? Are there center-right Fox News hosts or Shapiro types saying “wow, that thing the libs said five years ago was totally right! Guess we didn’t own them after all.”?
I don’t think so. In most situations, there’s no alpha in public apology. This isn’t partisan; it’s bog-standard tribalism. Few groups want to signal accuracy so badly that they let the outgroup score free points.
netstack
Texas is freedom land
2yr ago
You might be interested in ACoUP’s blogging on military psychology, specifically Total Generalship
morale will get men into uniform, it will sustain them on large marches and cold nights and it will get them to the battle, but it will not get them through the battle. Instead, cohesion gets men through the terror of actual combat, when fear has driven ‘the cause’ far from mind. But of course cohesion isn’t enough on its own either, since it provides no reason to advance or attack or really to do anything at all except stick together.
…
Actual responsiveness to evolving conditions didn’t come from the general at all, but was an emergent property of junior officers empowered to make independent decisions combined with armies that had sufficient training and discipline to act on those decisions in the moment. Such armies could be very effective, but they were also difficult to produce (as were the capable junior officers) and so a relative rarity.
Basically, hunkering down and waiting for a change is a really common historical response, the natural combination of bystander effect and mortal fear. Armies rely on officers and training to try and get around this, and it’s part of the reason a disciplined military tends to steamroll larger ones. The Metro police appear to have had their training and personal initiative kick in, while the Uvalde cops congealed at the perimeter.
netstack
Texas is freedom land
1yr ago
In this thread: users asking why now, what was so bad about recent actions, is there a possibility for leniency.
Also in this thread: users rejoicing like the UK on Thatcher's death.
I'm going to provide a little more context in hopes of reconciling these two extremes. If nothing else, it'll serve as a eulogy for a guy I genuinely respect.
Over the last week, the mod queue saw a lot of action. And after any of us cleared out the obvious warnings and bans, there were always multiple comments from Hlynka left sitting at the bottom. Turds on the doorstep.
- Dripping with disdain for the outgroup.
- Ending an actual response by suggesting his interlocutors are either sockpuppets or stupid.
- Accusing multiple users
He was last banned two months ago for this turd. Before that it was a different driveby. Before that, another. And another. And another.
At the same time, Hlynka reliably generated a lot of actual contributions. I'm not just talking about the quality stuff, though there was plenty of that. (Notice, also, how that last one leads to throwing shade at Nybbler. Some things are eternal.) No, I mean the fact that Hlynka could be relied upon to show up, present his ideas, and poke holes in others--maybe even with some tact. He provided real value to the Motte. He kept doing so up until his ban, so long as you steered clear of the wrong topics. Hell, with the appropriate encouragement, he remained perfectly capable of giving a level-headed defense on those topics, too, once he stripped out the call-outs and persecution complex.
But as time has passed, those topics have gotten more and more attention. I couldn't say whether that represents a shift in the Discourse, in the makeup of our userbase, or in Hlynka himself. At the very least, there is a nasty little feedback loop where his reputation as a partisan strangles productive discussion in the cradle. You could basically guarantee that if he wrote anything about race, half a dozen users would show up to fight, and vice versa.
So here we are. Warnings have done next to nothing. Bans have failed to leave a lasting reminder. They've worked well as a cooldown period, but Hlynka doesn't really need that--he's perfectly capable of switching modes and writing a nice comment about movies or sports or the Fermi paradox or another user's excellent story. That's Hlynka.
I'll miss his work.
netstack
Texas is freedom land
1yr ago
Willingness to trade is not orthogonal to war-waging ability. Exhibit A: this message, written to you using military-grade technology.
Go back 200 years, and it’s gunboat diplomacy. 400, and the European powers are wiping out whole legions of natives to set up their mercantile empire. 600 and we see the early “Free Companies” of roving sellswords, but the concept of mercenaries goes back much further.
Getting closer to the Greeks, Romans didn’t shy away from conquest or trade. They had a bunch of social and economic technology that let them fold ridiculous amounts of territory into their sphere of influence.
The idea that trading civilizations tend to be soft and conflict-averse probably owes a lot to our sense of fair play. (Uncharitably, that means video game balance teams.) But there’s a reason war is called “spending blood and treasure,” and acquiring more of their treasure without spilling your blood is usually a good deal.
netstack
Texas is freedom land
1yr ago
I was surprised by this.
The low-effort rule, as described in the sidebar, seems to be targeting “three-word shitposts.” This does not feel like a shitpost to me. It has a fact (which I had not yet seen) and two legitimate questions—what happens next, and is it likely to shift the Senate one way or another? More importantly, it steers relatively clear of cheap shots.
netstack
Texas is freedom land
2yr ago
It's part of the worldwide strategy to literally eradicate the disease. This has been relatively successful. Before that, it was several times more common, and hit a wider swath of society.
About 9,000 of the 18,000 children [per year, before the vaccine] infected in the first 10 years of life caught the virus from their mother during birth. However, many young children didn't catch the disease from their mother. They caught it from either another family member or someone else who came in contact with the child. Because hepatitis B can be transmitted by relatively casual contact with items contaminated with the blood of an infected person, and because many people who are infected with hepatitis B virus don't know that they have it, it is virtually impossible to be "careful enough" to avoid this infection.
50% of kids weren't getting it from their mothers, and I doubt they were shooting up or having gay sex. They got a little bloody or handled someone's razor. I wouldn't want to go back to those days. Not for the sake of a couple days discomfort.
netstack
Texas is freedom land
2yr ago
My employer recently held a DEI week. One of our Human Resources VPs sent out an email with information about this “dedicated” event. The main course was a series of videos. Managers were expected to replace a normal staff meeting with one of these videos followed by a “conversation.”
Needless to say, this did not occur. Our monthly staff meeting went exactly as planned—brief program updates followed by technical presentations on recent tasks. Not a peep from our manager, who probably had to take some sort of training. This foiled my plans to write a review of our corporate strategy and emphasis, because I’m not watching a video version if I don’t have to. Instead, a few remarks on the framing.
Much emphasis is placed on “employee-driven” culture, putting the onus on managers and employees. At the same time, the initiative is very open about being “CEO action,” a coalition for executives to pledge how much they like DEI. Roughly half the subjects appeared to be advertising actions already taken at the corporate level.
The signaling strategy is obvious. Executives are more coordinated and socially skilled than 99% of the company, so they get to read the room and sign on to initiatives which they think will be well-received. HR departments make that intent into a program. Managers and employees enact it—in proportion to how much they already buy in. And in the end the company gets a few sympathetic stories for the executives to advertise next board meeting.
I want to emphasize how short this falls of the consultant-driven, aggressive approach which gets skewered on social media. No one is asking defense engineers to hold struggle sessions or reflect on whiteness. Twitter would like to show you the most dramatic, offensive version. If your workplace looks more like Twitter than like this…consider moving to Texas.
netstack
Texas is freedom land
2d ago
Congratulations! You’ve advanced from lazy, uncharitable snarling at your enemies to. Uh. Marginally higher-effort snarling at the same people.
It doesn’t look like you are arguing to understand anything. It looks more like you’re picking fights. This is an immense pain in the ass and against various rules.
One week ban.
netstack
Texas is freedom land
3mo ago
Seconding FC.
You are making it very hard to believe that you’re acting in good faith.
But, since another deletion was somewhat predictable:
Is Matt Walsh going to leave The Daily Wire?
For most of his career as a public figure, Matt Walsh was the embodiment of Con Inc.: self-styled "anti-woke", socially conservative (but not in a way that instantly triggered accusations of bigotry), and most importantly, color blind. For him, "America [was] a set of ideas".
Well, something has changed, because Walsh has been steadily creeping rightward over the last several months and the end product of that transformation appears to be here (and here). The impetus for that video was this interaction between Sam Seder and a right wing zoomer.
We're seeing the right splinter in real time among racial lines in a way that it hasn't in many decades. Which side will win out in the end?
For whatever my opinion is worth, I'd like to register that both Seder and the young woman didn't come out looking well. Seder couldn't articulate a response in real time, but his opponent is likewise regurgitating right wing talking points that she doesn't appear to have put a lot of thought into.
Unrelated, but I thought I'd bring it up just because I was going through his Twitter:
Can you imagine if even one Bud Light warehouse was firebombed or even one Bud Light drinker was assaulted during the Bud Light boycott? There would be mass media hysteria and FBI investigations. Yet Tesla facilities and Tesla drivers are being attacked all across the country by leftist militants and the media ignore it entirely. I've noticed this phenomenon among the right (necessary disclaimer: I completely acknowledge that this is true of the left as well, but they're not in power now so it's not as fun to scrutinize them) to boldly assert the truth of easily falsifiable claims. The "media ignore it entirely" is such a claim: CNN, CBS, ABC, and my favorite, an ominous report from the Washington Post. This story is obviously being covered - maybe more than it deserves to be - so why type something out you know to be a lie or something that 5 seconds of research would falsify? As someone who might otherwise be open to Walsh's ideas, I can't help but take him less seriously now.
Charitably, Walsh must be communicating something other than the plain meaning of his words. In this case, he must mean "I don't think the media is covering this enough", or "the media isn't being adequately sympathetic to Tesla".
netstack
Texas is freedom land
1yr ago
Deus Ex released in May 2000 with memorable writing, interesting choices, and a deliriously complicated setting. Between the cool factor and the memes, it’s remained relevant for decades.
Daikatana also released in May 2000, featuring…none of these things. It’s best known today for its questionable marketing.
I don’t take this as evidence of a trend in game writing or production. Our impressions are formed by outliers rather than the mean or median or even modal game for a year. We still get vivid, cohesive experiences from developers with a vision. Have you played Disco Elysium yet?
Today, as I wait in an enormous line for an off-year election, I figured it was as good a time as any to go through our ballot propositions. There’s a lot of boring stuff on there about bond issuance. But what feels more exotic are the constitutional amendments.
That’s right! We can reenact the California proposition experience right here in our own state. Join me on an adventure through Texas state politics.
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Should we enshrine the right to various outdoors industries—fishing, timber, etc.—in the constitution? Why? Apparently, city growth has led to risk of over regulation. But this is already covered by statute. Putting it in the constitution is one of those overreaches that Scott makes fun of. Frustratingly, none of the comments I found online cared about bloat, instead choosing to fuss about factory farms. I expect it’ll pass, but I’m voting No.
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Should we allow local governments to issue property tax exemptions for child care? This is supposed to be an anti-inflation measure, subsidizing one particular good. Seems like a roundabout way to do it.
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Should we ban wealth and net worth taxes? Texas doesn’t have one, and it remains, as far as I know, wildly unpopular. Sounds like political hay to me. This time, opponents remembered that unnecessary amendments might be a bad thing.
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Should we expand a tax exemption and also boostpubliceducationfunding? Burying the lede, are we? Actually, there’s a complicated relationship between this tax and the public school system. I get the impression of many precariously balanced plates…Regardless, supporters are pretty open about wanting property tax relief. Maybe I’m just biased as a non-home-owner, but it feels like treating a symptom rather than a disease.
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Should we modify the state research fund? Supposedly this is about spreading the wealth to schools that aren’t UT or A&M. I guess I’m fine with that. Except, wait, it also ties that fund to revenue from the state rainy day fund? Is that really how we want to use that money? Is the constitution the way to do it?
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Should we create a fund to manage water projects? This hasn’t been a problem up here in DFW, but maybe has caused trouble elsewhere in the state. Opponents correctly note that we already have a water department. Just fund that instead.
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Should we authorize funding to modernize the electric grid? My first instinct is “please, God, yes, this should have happened years ago.” Which leads me to believe that something is horribly wrong with it. But no, it does what it says on the tin, authorizing investment in backup capacity and infrastructure. Maybe this is a place for free-market solutions…but those really dropped the ball in the last few years. Infrastructure is the central example for public goods. So let’s go for it.
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Should we finance high speed broadband? In theory, I guess this is another form of infrastructure. But proponents keep dropping phrases like “digital divide” that make me wonder if it’s what the kids call FOMO. If we’re only funding it this way because some senator heard the phrase, maybe it shouldn’t go in the constitution. Still, the opposition consists of people worried it will detract from federal funding for broadband. That’s pretty weak as far as complaints go.
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Should we boost teacher pensions? This is literally helicopter money, but for old people. It’ll probably pass. I ask myself how many yes voters feel the same way about federal social security.
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Should we add some medical and biomedical tax exemptions? This sounds boring, but really centers around a broader effort to “regionalize manufacturing.” Texas likes to think it’s an island. In this case, we’re not really unique in trying to lure investment, so…okay, I guess.
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Should we let the state let certain El Paso conservation districts let El Paso county issue bonds? I feel like I’m losing my grip on reality just reading this sentence. I don’t understand how this is a state issue.
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Should we abolish the Galveston County treasurer? Screw that guy, I guess.
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Should we raise the retirement age for judges? Something tells me there’s a particular guy behind this one. I don’t know who, but I don’t like it. Personally, I think 75 is already too high.
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Should we create a Centennial Parks Conservation Fund? This is the one I didn’t have time to read before making it to the front of the line, much to my chagrin. Thus…No comment.
Edit: Apparently everything passed except for raising the judge retirement age. Sorry, Hon. Nathan Hecht. You’ll have to maintain your grip on our reproductive organs from the shadows.
In all seriousness, he seems like a competent judge, and I don’t actually have a personal distaste for him. When I saw the text of the amendment, I immediately thought “this must benefit one guy in particular,” and voted against making exceptions. I wonder how many other Texans had the same gut reaction.
netstack
Texas is freedom land
2yr ago
Uh, no. Someone getting on the hood of your car is not an inconvenience, it's a threat.
Maybe they have a good reason to come up to your window--it's a public sidewalk, after all. I'd consider it defensible, but not injurious, to block traffic. Getting on the car is worse than trying the goddamn handles. At least then you can floor it.
If someone is on your hood, you can either wait politely for them to leave, or you can apply potentially lethal force.
USSS Director Cheatle Resigns. Looking forward to watching some of her testimony once I’m off mobile, because apparently it was pretty damning.
I expected this. The government does not move fast, and those who took her continued employment as proof of conspiracy were…premature.
Odds that the Secret Service needs meaningful reform have gone way up. Odds that it gets dramatic reform have increased a bit. I think the ideal outcome would be a quiet panic and restructuring with minimal input from Congress; the more loudly public it gets, the more Democrats will try to sandbag something that they ought to support.
netstack
Texas is freedom land
1yr ago
MIT no longer requires diversity statements for faculty hires.
Allegedly. The only sources I’ve seen covering this are not exactly paragons of journalism, citing emails rather than anything public. MIT’s own website still describes the practice in glowing terms. I am curious whether the general population of MIT staff—the ones maintaining their websites—is in favor of this change, or if any of them were consulted.
Assuming this is credible, let’s make some predictions.
- social media backlash: guaranteed.
- news backlash, a la NYT: high. This is red meat for opinion columns, as evidenced by the fact that conservative outlets are already crowing about it. But maybe I’ve misjudged, and no one in the mainstream actually cares?
- policy reverted: low. I predict a whole lot of nothing. The people who most care about this are less likely to have leverage over MIT. If it does get rolled back, I predict it’ll be downstream of administrative drama within the school.
- policy spreads to other elite universities: medium? I have no idea which way the wind is blowing. Outlets are trumpeting their preferred conclusion. But I suspect this is going to be localized.
netstack
Texas is freedom land
1yr ago
Middle management: Command economy edition.
Like one of those supply chain games, except everyone’s always lying about quotas, and you don’t know exactly what’s even possible. A new steel process is invented and factories which roll it out are lagging behind. Is it just growing pains? A flawed process that isn’t actually more efficient? Or perhaps the old numbers were just fake? Make it about trying to cope with this imperfect information.
netstack
Texas is freedom land
2yr ago
Wow, it sure is convenient that your outgroup fucking sucks. I mean they are some real assholes. Some irredeemable excuses for human beings. How dare they converge on different solutions than you? And to do so while being both stupid and unattractive?
Seriously, you’re engaging in the lowest form of complaining. Why not ask one of the more interesting questions, like:
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What would it take for me to empathize with these guys?
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Cui bono? Whose incentives got us into this situation?
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What might right-thinking people do to fix the mess?
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Why am I anywhere near Cook County?
Edit: oh, right. I like my superfluous rifle collection. It’s a nice luxury with, in my case, no practical value. If you haven’t been shooting, you should try it at least once, especially if you have any affection for machinery.
netstack
Texas is freedom land
2yr ago
This weekend, I visited my friendly local gun store, idly browsing for shotguns and learning about interstate purchases. Then I drove to my parents and spent the evening playing board games. It was a nice night with good food, drink and company.
Meanwhile, five minutes up the highway, some lunatic was murdering random strangers at a local shopping mall.
No one I know was killed. No one I know personally was present—though a friend of a friend was. I didn’t hear about it until the next morning. Big nothingburger, right? And yet I’ve been to that mall. I’ve been to the bar across the street with my coworkers. If I’d had an errand or three to run, instead of visiting my family, I might have been cowering in a storeroom or staring at a splatter of brains on the sidewalk.
I’m not linking to any articles. Partly for the thinnest veneer of opsec, partly because media coverage is predictably terrible. All sympathetic pictures and, as we’d say here, recruiting for a cause. Nothing good will come of this. Either we’ll force through a knee-jerk bill with symbolic limits on firearms, or we’ll (correctly) dismiss that as posturing and (incorrectly) do abso-fucking-lutely nothing.
It’s not like I can do anything about it. I don’t know what I would actually expect to work, and if I did, how could it be brought about? State, even local politics is as tribal as it gets. Enjoy your a la carte selection of two options, and one of them is out of stock.
Meanwhile, I guess the best I can do is pick up some CCW training and a good holster. Fuck.
netstack
Texas is freedom land
8d ago
It was a neat article. I do think you’ve kind of missed the point. The twin studies are aren’t “wrong.” They replicate, their math works. But they don’t line up with these other studies which are supposed to measure the same thing. That could mean they’re wrong, or it could mean they aren’t actually measuring that thing.
materialism / genetic determinism
For example, these are not the same. Materialism supports models with irreducible randomness. We do not control enough of the inputs to be sure of every output. For the hard sciences, we’ve gotten reasonably certain in our models, but for genetics, there’s still plenty unexplained. The error bars are large.
beyond the mechanistic model
Into what? How could accepting dualism possibly improve this model?
netstack
Texas is freedom land
2yr ago
I consider saying “he didn’t do it” to be an important part of treating him as innocent. It’s not fair to add a permanent caveat when the accusation turns out to be non-credible.
If my daughter is ever in such a position, I’ll keep in mind the cringe to which he admitted. No more, no less.
netstack
Texas is freedom land
2yr ago
Best of luck to you.
The traditional exit post spends more time complaining about witches, so this is kind of an inspiring change of pace. I've been avoiding the Wellness threads for similar reasons; if I notice that I'm not getting anything valuable out of the others, I suppose I'll do the same. It's nice to imagine that, when I leave, it'll be a pull instead of a push.
Do you play an instrument? Learning the banjo has been remarkably satisfying, despite my complete incompetence. It doesn't speak to the "check my phone" niche. For that I can only suggest fanfiction. I'd shill /r/rational, but I'm pretty sure I've seen you around there before.
netstack
Texas is freedom land
2yr ago
I’m back to the usual refrain of every year since about 2015:
“How is this becoming partisan?”
Someone breaks in and makes a probably-political, certifiably-insane attack on a public figure. This is obviously bad. Stochastic terrorism is bad. Defending the actions is (or should be?) basically off the table.
That leaves deflection. First responses in last week’s thread: “gosh those wacky Green Party members” followed by a squabble over whether or not DePape’s emphatic support for QAnon and Trump meant he counted as Republican. Now: one of the most powerful men in America memeing about how the attacker might have been a gay escort, and thus...it’s a Democrat own-goal? What?
I’m reminded of any number of events in summer 2020 in which people tried to rationalize rioting. “Yeah, I get that XYZ was unjust, but I’d like to step back to the part where y’all decided to start burning stuff.” When the bad thing is indefensible, we are more likely to see deflection.
Presumably the motivation is getting out ahead of the Other Team abusing their actual, legitimate criticism. Even if Democrats somehow resisted the lure of equating DePape with mainstream Republicans—which he clearly was not—, there’s still hay to be made of the extremists. It’s the traditional setup for a little “something has to be done.” But is throwing out bullshit theories really the best way to counter it?
I suspect that the answer is no, and that the mainstream GOP response is a more measured rejection. I don’t have evidence for this at the moment; if anyone has examples of GOP officials making public statements on the matter, I’d like to see them. But my theory is that when the official policy is silence, in the era of social media, that’s effectively handing a megaphone to the fringe.
netstack
Texas is freedom land
1yr ago
Quite.
Between the backseat moderation and the general antagonism, you've made it very clear that you'd rather wage political battles than understand them. You've done so by breaking a number of rules, but more importantly, you're missing the point of this forum. Do you think you'll convince anyone by sniping away instead of defending your bold statements? Do you think you or anyone else will learn something from it?
Take a day to cool off.
netstack
Texas is freedom land
2yr ago
I think this “sensitive reader” gimmick is dumb and ugly.
Sorry: it’s an inelegant solution to your problem. Applying Gaussian blur to text is aesthetically unappealing on the object level, which I realize is intentional. It’s also unpleasant on the meta level, representing a middle finger to the community ethos.
You don’t need GPT to write with some tact.
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