netstack
Texas is freedom land
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User ID: 647
netstack
Texas is freedom land
10mo 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
1yr 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
19d 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
1yr 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.
netstack
Texas is freedom land
5mo 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
10mo 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
11mo 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
1yr 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
1yr 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
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.
netstack
Texas is freedom land
1yr 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
1yr ago
"Do not mess with the flying buses."
Air travel is extremely regulated at the federal level. Obviously some of this was post-9/11 self-preservation instinct, but I can't overstate how much of the whole process is scrutinized for even the most normal of operations.
I've got a friend who trained as an air traffic controller during college. It requires a good chunk of training, a series of aptitude tests, and then the federal government gets to choose where you're stationed. Then they make you retire from the field at 50 for safety reasons. Also, COVID-related hiring freezes basically reset the job market, because the government stopped processing applications and they all timed out.
netstack
Texas is freedom land
1yr ago
@aqouta more or less has the right of it.
Trans communities have a vested interest in avoiding dysphoria. That usually includes a level of politeness which you might describe as “playing along,” just like any other social interaction. I’m not going to tell my cousin that his career choice is stupid, or my friend that her boyfriend is an asshole. Not without an invitation to frank and probably-painful discussion. Trans communities are generally not giving that invitation.
It’s hard to talk about these dynamics without bringing up “triggers” or “safe spaces” and their legitimacy. There’s a reason gender politics has aligned so well with Internet leftism. The steelman, there, is that trans people have the right to associate with those who will accept a certain brand of politeness. (And yes, there is equivocation between lacking the power to extend that space of acceptance and having the right to do so, but that’s kind of beside the point.)
Your observations about edge cases, Chinese robbers, and general motte-and-bailey are downstream of accepting this premise. Like every other social dynamic, politeness invites rationalization, if only to deal with outsiders. And like every sexual dynamic, saying basically anything without dissembling is gauche.
netstack
Texas is freedom land
1yr ago
I suppose “Lock her up” could make a resurgence.
It’s incredibly frustrating. I’d like insider trading to be better regulated, but the last person I expect to make it happen is Donald Trump. The mere fact that he’s mentioned it basically guarantees that Democrats will never sign on.
netstack
Texas is freedom land
7mo ago
Cute thesis, I guess, but sloppy execution. Consider asking for a proofreader, or perhaps just taking your meds.
I was recently reading How I Taught the Iliad to Chinese Teenagers, a fascinating report (with accompanying syllabus). There were a few sections that actually made me think of you:
But most of all I focus on the mystery of their fall, the “Bronze Age Collapse” that littered the Greek isles with Mycenaean ruins, ruins that would have towered over the humble abodes of “Dark Age” Greece.
Homer’s Greeks lived in the ruins of a golden age. They had forgotten how to write and read, but they still remembered a time when the Aegean was full of great cities, wealthy kings, and enormous armies. The Iliad portrayed that golden world as it was imagined hundreds of years later—and explained why this golden age was no more. It is a true piece of post-apocalyptic fiction.
More importantly, it makes an excellent case that, yes, the Greeks had a visceral understanding of human nature.
Before class begins draw on the blackboard a series of concentric circles. Label the outer circle “mankind.” The next circle in, “The Argives.” The next circle in, “Friends-in-arms.” The final circle, “Patroclus and Achilles.” Last of all, in the very center of the circle, leave an unmarked dot.
After the standard round of quizzing and questions, explain that in today’s class we return to Achilles. Achilles is not the same person he once was. In literature departments they would call him a “dynamic character.” …. This is the scene where Achilles refuses to spare the life of Lycaon, the man who he had once taken captive before. In this speech Achilles says once “it warmed my heart a bit to spare some Trojans” but now “not a single Trojan flees his death.” Why? What has happened to Achilles?
The obvious answer: Patroclus is dead. But why would this drive Achilles to barbarity?
Tell the class that the diagram you have put up on the board is one way to conceptualize what has happened to Achilles. At some point in the past—say when Lycaon was taken captive—Achilles had affection for all mankind, respecting even those he fought. But war, by necessity, often forces those who fight it to view their enemies as alien, or somewhat less than human.
Erase the outer circle.
That still left Achilles with a large community of fellow soldiers, the army of the Argives. But his connection with this community was broken when Achilles was humiliated in the council of Book I.
Erase the next circle.
At this point Achilles still felt comradeship with the other commanders and close friends, who fought by his side for many years. But this comradeship now has conditions. Have the class read Book IX.748-750. What would cause Achilles to “hate” these old friends?
Have a student read aloud Book XVI.113-119 (“Oh would to god… you and I alone!”). Note how Achilles puts the Argives on the same plane as the Trojans.
Erase the next circle.
Now the only circle left is the one labeled “Achilles and Patroclus.” And indeed, that is what our passage says (“You and I Alone!”). Achilles’ entire world has been reduced to his relationship with one man, the one comrade to have stayed loyal to him as the Greek ships burn.
And now that man is dead.
Erase the final circle.
Have one of the students turn to page 502 and read lines 498-500 (“I am destined to die here…”). Remind students that this sentiment is the polar opposite of Achilles’ pronouncements in Book IX. The Achilles of Book IX said that nothing at Troy was worth dying for; the Achilles of Book XX says that nothing is worth living for.
It doesn’t matter that the Greeks lived in an alien honor culture, believed in angry sky warlords, and were limited to oral tradition. They knew human nature. The rest—all the linguistics and cultural references—are party tricks by comparison.
netstack
Texas is freedom land
11mo ago
Could this person be the leader of some nonprofit or advocacy group? I’m struggling to imagine how that would be possible.
There are databases of active investigations (server issues?), pending cases, and incidents, but none make the plaintiff’s name public by default. Maybe this database has something? I’m not optimistic—if only a fraction of those 8,000 complaints are founded, they’re not going to be obvious in the active lawsuits.
Why doesn’t the Title IX office disclose this name? For obvious reasons, he or she is unlikely to be personally involved in most, if not all, of the cases. Privacy shouldn’t be an issue. I wonder if this is something that can be FOIA’d.
netstack
Texas is freedom land
1yr ago
I’d be be more inclined to agree if they hadn’t had such research and then removed it. Pretending that data doesn’t exist is worse than mentioning it but concluding the error bars are too wide.
netstack
Texas is freedom land
3mo ago
No bet on mentioning the daughter.
As for the marriage rate, a lot of prominent Republicans are from the South. There are a lot more black people in the South. Case closed?
Today in minor CW news: Naomi Biden’s Secret Service detail takes shots at carjackers thieves breaking in to a USSS vehicle. The vehicle in question was not occupied, so it wasn’t literal self-defense, but I am willing to assume it’s within protocol.
I’m bringing this up here to take predictions on the level and type of attention this will receive. My prediction is that the most vocal coverage will be conservative Twitter/substack trying to make this about Democrat hypocrisy with regards to crime. There’s just not enough material to make it personal about the Biden family. While I don’t doubt that spicy takes will exist, I’m wondering if they’ll make it to cable news.
Edit: immediately after posting, I see the next Twitter link is some guy with triple parentheses talking about how crime is so normal in DC. I swear I hadn’t seen that when I made my prediction.
netstack
Texas is freedom land
10mo ago
Could it be because Twitter is a shithole with next to no incentives for reasonable debate?
I don’t even disagree with your hypothesis. The HBD battle lines have been drawn for vibes-based and sometimes historical reasons. But goodness, number of retweets is an abysmal proxy for valuing academics! Making numbers is not well correlated with making sense. The fact that this guy isn’t getting retweeted says that his commentary isn’t useful as a bludgeon.
Compare COVID discourse, which was dominated by tweets hamming it up for the audience.
netstack
Texas is freedom land
10mo ago
Ever since the ACX guest review of two Jane Jacobs books, I haven’t been able to get the idea out of my head.
Take a city like Detroit. When Detroit’s exports (primarily cars) decrease, Detroit gets no feedback about this, because its currency is the United States dollar, and the United States dollar’s value depends on much more than Detroit. It depends on other cities whose foreign exports might be increasing at the moment. And on rural regions that are selling resources like oil abroad. Also, trade between Detroit and other cities that use the United States dollar — i.e., American cities — is structurally unable to provide any feedback whatsoever. So Detroit doesn’t get the signal that it should buy less stuff from other cities and replace the missing imports with local production. Instead, it just declines.
Jacobs focuses on this “import replacement” as the force of actual quality-of-life improvement. Replacing imports means capital investments pay back into your own city. Otherwise you’re just getting wealth siphoned off to someone else. Someone with a cooler city.
Here we have our analogy to Turchin’s wealth pump. Elites concentrated in the most effective city. A precariat born of those lower-class, fortunate enough to occupy the city regions, who transition to a service economy. And proles populating the rest of the country, unable to share in the proverbial rising tide.
So nations and empires will embark on every possible solution to reverse the decline. All of their solutions will look like good ideas at first, and yet fail at helping the peripheral regions. Worse, these solutions will weaken the cities, thereby destroying the only real wealth of the country and bringing untold hardship for everyone. …
Jacobs calls these false solutions transactions of decline.
Her three categories are military production, specific types of unbalanced trade, and…oh. Welfare. Turchin’s prescription cannot make more successful, growing city regions. It just delays the descent of flyover country into open rebellion. (Wait, now I want to read an application of this theory to the National Socialists.) Jacobs’ outlook is quite grim, and the closest thing she gives to a solution is secession. I guess that beats the mass die-offs hypothesized by Turchin?
There might be a third way. Jacobs notes the importance of “city regions,” hinterlands surrounding a productive city core. These sort of reap the benefits of that city investment, engaging in some form of import replacement. They’re explicitly much better off than the periphery of her model. Can we incentivize development of these regions wherever past nations, with worse transportation and less surplus, might have sucked them dry?
Turchin seems to say—it doesn’t matter. Fill a nation with productive, import-replacing regions, and you’re just going to overproduce elites faster. Human nature ensures the rest. I am very uncomfortable with this conclusion! I don’t want the future to converge on separatist social Darwinism, nations doomed to collapse or fission. Neither does Turchin, I suppose. Maybe he can keep the intelligentsia busy until we work something out.
netstack
Texas is freedom land
11mo ago
You know, every time I see your username, I involuntarily scan ahead to see where you make the turn. Sure, equate a few months of lockdownism to the Holocaust. Remember that time they gassed the antivaxxers?
@The_Nybbler has the right of it. Do you think a Holocaust film is trying to downplay the evil? Pointing out banality is a reminder not to assume something is good, or even okay, just because it is pedestrian. One must engage with the actual merits and flaws. In that sense, there’s no irony to the Guardian’s coverage. They will tell you with a straight face that lockdowns were good.
No, it didn’t.
You are mistaking correlation for causation, here. Look at previous drops in the rate. Was 2002 particularly globalist? Was the mid-80s? Interest rates are raised in times of inflation and slashed after a recession, forming one of the fundamental control systems of the economy. The industries which grow in that space depend on other trends.
If you are correct that woke culture is downstream of globalist and/or narrow-margin products, those are a consequence of our transition from manufacturing to service industries. That’s driven not by the Fed but by comparative advantage with other countries. Back in the 50s we had the edge in tech, raw materials, and not being bombed to hell. Now India and China can compete on price, so we’ve shifted more towards intellectual and interpersonal labor. This would have happened regardless of the interest rates.
I don’t think you’re correct, mind you. Consider Wal-Mart. Narrow margins, global supply chains, and a completely different approach than Silicon Valley tech. It makes money by connecting producers to consumers. The network effects are subject to measurable market forces. In contrast, parts of fintech and all of social media aren’t competing on price, but on brand. You can’t eat Facebook’s lunch by undercutting them. What’s left but weird political signaling?
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.
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