netstack
Texas is freedom land
No bio...
User ID: 647
netstack
Texas is freedom land
1mo ago
Practice.
Someone wrote a good post about it a couple months back, but I couldn’t find it. It basically said you could train the skill efficiently by drawing real objects every day. Sufficient experience lets you move from drawing what you see to drawing what you saw, once, in a different pose and setting.
netstack
Texas is freedom land
1mo ago
How exactly does one “offer the mantle”? I can’t think of any historical examples where one party politely set its opponents’ agenda.
If you’re actually asking why people aren’t blaming Democrats for Trump’s indiscretions, I assure you that they are. On this very board, even! If this is a suggestion that Trump might secure peace in our time by looting a little bit harder, well, you can consider me unconvinced.
I think people—voters—react to situations based on vibes. Losing my job to a financial crisis is bad. Cheap gas is good. Paying for someone’s abortion is bad. Defending democracy is good. Stick enough of these reactions together, draw a rough, inconsistent set of principles around them, and you’ve got yourself a political movement. The agenda of that movement, then, is largely downstream of its members’ reactions to whatever situations are most salient.
When the towers fell, public opinion was firmly in favor of massive retaliation. W was quite willing to oblige, and most of the opposition fell in line. There was never a dignified, first-principles discussion over who got to lead the charge. Even once the public soured on it, Obama picked up the bag and kept at it. Right place, right time.
There’s a bizarro alternate universe where Trump’s foreign and economic policies dovetailed into a strong COVID response. It’s one where the doomsday preppers felt vindicated as suburban liberals insisted that lockdowns are just racism. That possibility faded away as Trump began to downplay the virus. Once relaxing measures was Trump-coded, there was no chance in hell that Democrats would give up on the issue. Wrong place, wrong time.
The only way parties adopt an issue is if they’re in the right place when the vibe shifts. The only way for us to see a vibe shift on entitlements is if they somehow become obsolete. I think that either means mass mortality or mass productivity. I don’t believe the Republican Party can “offer” either.
netstack
Texas is freedom land
1mo ago
Point taken.
But “related to sexuality” isn’t really load-bearing. A big chunk of the politics leans on comparison to paraphilias. If being trans looks statistically different from crossdressing, or BDSM, or whatever else has gotten more popular since 2000, then it makes less sense to assert that it should be treated like those things.
I think the rest of your comment deserves a full response, but for now:
Why wouldn't there be people out there who get off on cross-dressing or whatever;
Okay, but are there enough of them? If most trans people are crossdressing fetishists, then the prevalence of the latter should be a rough ceiling prevalence of trans people.
The first study I found with numbers on crossdressing prevalence was this one. 2.8% of men, 0.4% of women. Here is my choice for trans people, which suggests something like 0.2% of the population. Alright, there’s roughly 16x as many crossdressers as trans people. Sounds compatible with your model.
Except the gender ratios are pretty screwed up. This source talks about a 2:1 ratio. If being transgender is the extreme end of an incredibly skewed paraphilia, why does it show less of that skew?
(wait, this had better not be a regression-to-the-mean thing. I’ll check the math tomorrow.)
More importantly, the trend in that paper became less skewed over the last couple decades. Unless crossdressing has also become more egalitarian, that suggests something else is going on.
netstack
Texas is freedom land
1mo ago
I’m not thrilled about how AT is putting words in your mouth, but this sort of callout helps approximately never.
Be polite or refrain from responding at all. No one will think less of you for it.
netstack
Texas is freedom land
1mo ago
I was going to make fun of that as spherical-cow thinking by a guy who had never seen naval service, but T-Paine actually had a slightly more complete plan.
Some method might be fallen on to keep up a naval force in time of peace, if we should not judge it necessary to support a constant navy. If premiums were to be given to merchants to build and employ in their service ships mounted with 20, 30, 40 or 50 guns (the premiums to be in proportion to the loss of bulk to the merchant) fifty or sixty of those ships, with a few guard-ships on constant duty, would keep up a sufficient navy, and that without burthening ourselves with the evil so loudly complained of in England, of suffering their fleets in time of peace to lie rotting in the docks.
It’s still kind of like paying truckers if they include at least one anti-tank weapon. America would have a heck of a time getting either to stand up against a serious military.
netstack
Texas is freedom land
1mo ago
I was pretty sure it meant right to deny things to black people.
To be clear, I find this particular punt outrageous and unfair. But I don’t think “states’ rights” has been a particularly principled objection since Andrew Jackson, if ever.
netstack
Texas is freedom land
1mo ago
We ask that top-level comments have more meat on the bone.
Since we’ve asked you specifically about this in the last couple months, one day ban.
netstack
Texas is freedom land
1mo ago
More effort and less…sneering? Mockery? Than this, please.
netstack
Texas is freedom land
1mo ago
I’m sure he’s seen the discussion. I know I have. And yet I don’t share your conclusion either. It’s not because I hate Trump, but because I really do believe his administration is more flagrantly corrupt than Biden’s, Obama’s, or the DNC.
I wish you would give a specific comparison on insider trading or nepotism or something. How many politicians are given personal 747s?
netstack
Texas is freedom land
1mo ago
you should already have investigated the claims against the previous administration, and you would have had no choice but to conclude that it at least looks fishy, and therefore you would have investigated it
I feel like I’m having a stroke.
If I’m reading you right, though, I think you’re jumping the gun. How do you know Ben doesn’t have a “bulletproof argument” for whatever it is you’ve got in mind?
netstack
Texas is freedom land
1mo ago
If you define “as many as they can get away with” as “whatever they’re doing right now,” you’re just assuming the conclusion.
Surely Israel could drop a few more bombs without losing its core supporters. Or blockade a little more tightly. Or cut negotiations shorter.
netstack
Texas is freedom land
1mo ago
We ask that top-level posts have a little more substance. Who is this? What’s it got to do with the price of tea in China?
netstack
Texas is freedom land
1mo ago
Post about specific groups, not general groups, whenever possible.
Calling out the general category of government employees does not clear that bar.
netstack
Texas is freedom land
1mo ago
So what was the idea driving Tesla Guy?
feels a bit like trying to make sense of insanity
Pretty much, yeah. I think suicide bombers nearly always are, and have been, nuts. If there’s a trend, I don’t see it.
netstack
Texas is freedom land
1mo ago
On one hand, you’ve got a (former?) Trump enthusiast who blew himself up in front of a Trump property. On the other, a self-proclaimed misandrist and nihilist who went 0-1 against a bunch of babies. There’s a common thread here and it isn’t intellectualism.
Hell, they wouldn't even call it terrorism, when George Floyd extremists went around lighting things on fire in protest of a vibe.
Were they wrong? I think most riots belong in a different category from hostage situations, hijackings, and bombings.
many attacks on universities I regard as quite warranted
Please tell me you mean political attacks rather than terrorist ones.
netstack
Texas is freedom land
2mo ago
That stat doesn’t say anything about the five year trick. Or about Poles. Wait, it’s not even limited to migrants! This is like using the African-American unemployment rate to say that black immigrants are actually planning to quit. That’s not true for the U.S. and I would like to see better data for the U.K.
But let’s assume that 10.7% of Pakistani migrants are in fact arriving, cleaning bedpans for five years, then quitting to live off the King’s largesse. Why aren’t native-born Brits doing the same thing? To me, that suggests it’s not actually a good deal for anyone raised to expect a first-world standard of living. That’s exactly the kind of arbitrage @MadMonzer is talking about.
netstack
Texas is freedom land
2mo ago
Most people don’t do everything “in order to work.” They work in order to live here, or raise their kids, or buy that new car, or whatever. What makes migration special?
netstack
Texas is freedom land
2mo ago
Inflammatory claims require evidence. Drive-by insults at entire categories count.
Given the sheer number of warnings and bans you've accrued over the last six months, you ought to be aware of this. One week ban, again.
netstack
Texas is freedom land
2mo ago
In the interest of avoiding a spiral of "uh-huh"/"nuh-uh"...
More effort than this, please.
How much of a window do these LLMs have? Presumably, as a completely new user, I wouldn’t get much out of this prompt.
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