netstack
Texas is freedom land
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User ID: 647
netstack
Texas is freedom land
1yr ago
Today I got a response to an old comment in which I'd argued
I'd credit [the positivity of leftist hobby spaces] not to an evangelist reward cycle, but to evaporative cooling. Leftist spaces are less likely to make people feel uncomfortable enough to leave.
...
A subset of the right wing has staked out "being allowed to use slurs" as their Gadsden flag. That circle is near-completely contained within the circle of users who value "owning the libs." As long as this is true, sane moderation is going to have a left-wing bias. To some degree, this must go out the window in extremist left spaces. I'm not going to claim ChapoTrapHouse was a bastion of reasoned debate. It's the hobbyist Discords and niche interests that live and breathe on niceness, community and civilization.
@desolation objected, noting that leftist activism is fully willing to make people uncomfortable:
Have we forgotten the whole phenomenon of "you can't be racist/sexist/whatever against [disfavoured group]" and every mainstream outlet defending using doxing and slurs against targets so long as they're in a disfavoured group?
In the interest of further discussion, I'm moving my response to the main thread.
I'll stand by the first statement, and emphasize that it refers to hobby-spaces-leaning-left, not extremists. I'm not sure what led you to this month-old post, but it was in response to a theory that "Leftists (especially LGBT-focused) congregate in highly socialized communities where every small action toward The Cause is socially reinforced." The OP had constructed a rather elaborate model of left-affiliated communities which portrayed them as hugboxing evangelists. In addition to being rather uncharitable, this overlooks an alternate theory: if a space is reasonably nice, will it end up full of leftists?
As for the second, yes and no. Yes, quoting Kendi or otherwise engaging in that flavor of anti-*ism is more socially acceptable than just being *ist. That's exactly why it drives away fewer users. It's both harder to deploy (and thus more rare) and less likely to offend leftists, centrists, or even most right-wingers.
If a community bans slurs, they will exclude some free speech absolutists. So long as there are more of those on the right, that will select for leftists. Banning slurs is a much more popular mod policy than banning "you can't be racist against X," probably because slurs are cheap and easy to deploy anywhere. Case study: Xbox Live. Would banning any discussion of critical race theory have had any impact on the population of 13yo gamers? What about banning the word "retard"? Apply the same conclusion to Discord, and we have a mechanism by which a neutral community adopts some "left-wing" norms merely by picking the rules with the most relevance. Repeat over months or years, banning the few who get really upset about censorship, and we end up with a left-leaning community which gets along smoothly.
Maybe every once in a while someone in that community gets away with...I'm actually struggling to think of anti-racist slurs? "Colonizer?" Maybe someone says that and right-wingers feel unwanted, or doxxing threats make them feel unsafe. It's also possible that the community enters a purity spiral and implodes. But this is rare, because we're talking about boring hobby groups, not activists.
Honestly, I don't see where mainstream publications come into this at all. The comments section for NYT op-eds is by no means a tight-knit hobbyist community. And while the media's stance on doxxing ranges from sympathetic to enthusiastic, I'm skeptical that such outlets have endorsed using slurs.
netstack
Texas is freedom land
1yr ago
Following up on a discussion with @drmanhattan16 downthread:
I keep hearing about fascist infiltration or alt-right infiltration into spaces, including themotte, but no one seems to actually be showing examples...
But now I find myself wondering if this has happened in more progressive spaces that were open to debate.
I think the answer is usually going to be "yes."
A couple months ago, during some meta-discussion of disappearing threads, I wrote up my thoughts on conspiracy theories as countersignaling. As long as there's incentive to appear cool, independent, unique, there is incentive to push the boundaries of acceptability. It's called "edgy" for a reason.
One of the common cultural touchstones for edge is forbidden knowledge. As a result, anywhere you find edgy status games, you'll find someone claiming to know whatever it is They don't want you to know. Except...if one can just say it out loud, how cool and secret can it really be? The theorist is incentivized to play up their edge, a rebel who won't be cowed rather than an attention-seeker. As an aside, antisemitism is past its heyday because it's not very good for this. Enough people pattern-match it to "attention-seeker" that it loses its edge. This is the result of decades of memetic immune response to those status games. Of course, given that one very definitely can get banned for it, it retains edgy credentials...sometimes.
(Note that I'm not claiming the antisemites here are just edgy. I understand you're pretty serious about the subject. The motte is a weird place and has other status games; personally, I think that COVID skepticism has a grip on more of the edgelords.)
In the end, some people will find themselves drawn to signal their edge. Those who do so overtly will usually end up banned, unless they signal something really milquetoast, in which case they're probably "cringe." Those with a little more tact, though...they are incentivized to find something under the radar. To maintain that sweet, sweet plausible deniability while still getting a rise out of the opposition. They need something that will prove their status as an independent free-thinker who doesn't fall for the party line.
And they take the black pill.
netstack
Texas is freedom land
1yr ago
The prosecution’s star witness is Michael D. Cohen, Mr. Trump’s former fixer who paid the $130,000 to keep Ms. Daniels quiet. Mr. Cohen has said that Mr. Trump directed him to buy Ms. Daniels’s silence, and that Mr. Trump and his family business, the Trump Organization, helped cover the whole thing up. The company’s internal records falsely identified the reimbursements as legal expenses, which helped conceal the purpose of the payments.
Although the specific charges remain unknown, Mr. Bragg’s prosecutors have zeroed in on that hush money payment and the false records created by Mr. Trump’s company. A conviction is not a sure thing: An attempt to combine a charge relating to the false records with an election violation relating to the payment to Ms. Daniels would be based on a legal theory that has yet to be evaluated by judges, raising the possibility that a court could throw out or limit the charges.
Really looking forward to more detail, because this sounds pretty contrived.
netstack
Texas is freedom land
1yr ago
From /u/gwern (@gwern ?): analysis on China’s semiconductor industry.
Recent export controls are directly targeting the Chinese ability to fabricate cutting-edge chips. The subsequent effect on electronics prices and the much-maligned supply chain won’t be pleasant—especially for China, and especially if their industry is already slumping. Consequences for the rest of the world are left as an exercise to the reader.
Given the forum, it’s not surprising that the focus is on AI. I’m more interested in the geopolitical outlook. This is an incentive to retaliate, perhaps even against the other regional semiconductor fabricator. And it is suggested that the timing is a calculated insult to Chinese leadership, as they are apparently going through a periodic dog-and-pony show of elections. Gwern suggests that China would otherwise be raising hell.
The counterpart in US domestic politics: crunching semiconductor supply will not mix well with inflation. I don’t think adding $50 to the next iPhone will make or break Democrats, but it seems unlikely to help.
I want to place predictions, but I don’t have a good grasp of the metrics involved. Place your bets, I guess, for:
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China taking economic action
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China taking military action
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Consequences on Chinese industry
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Tech policy towards China becoming a wedge issue in American politics
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
1yr ago
Last week, my company released its 3rd annual DEI report. It consists of a laundry list of DEI achievements, some questionable statistics, and inspiring messages from very well-paid executives.
Performance reviews are another feature of this time of year. Conventional wisdom holds that getting a good review depends on meeting your pseudo-self-defined goals for the year—and, by implication, on setting achievable ones. With that in mind, our executives set measurable, sensible goals with every expectation of meeting them.
That was a joke. The goals were 1/2 women and 1/3 people of color. We were reasonably close on the latter, not that this required any particular change. But our goal for gender parity was hilariously out of line with the ~1/4 we currently have. I could propose various reasons why an engineering- and manufacturing-heavy corporation that makes devices for killing people might not employ so many women, but that’s not really the point. No, this is not a serious goal. It’s advertising.
My company is not particularly woke. It repeats some of the phrases and buys into the aesthetic, but it’s clearly not ideologically captured. If there are true believers, they sure aren’t in charge. DEI is valued insofar as it keeps us from alienating potential talent and potential customers—and no more. At the end of the day it’s not going to shoot itself in the foot in service of equality or equity.
I believe this is true of the vast majority of corporations in the US! Identity politics are a small part of the business signaling that goes on every day. It’s directly proportional to how much the product is a cultural symbol rather than a material good. Apple products or Amazon media or Super Bowl ads are more likely to publicly proclaim their diversity because they’re selling an idea. It does not require true believers, though they help with credibility. The idea itself is what benefits from woke signaling.
This has implications for the trajectory of DEI. Debating whether woke ads are going to increase or alienate support is missing the point. That sort of identity politics is downstream of the culture war, and should not be used to make predictions about “peak woke.” It represents corporate ability to score points off the prevailing winds, not ideologues’ level of infiltration into corporations.
Defense contractors are wildly biased towards veterans. Our hiring is more likely to involve some sort of aggressive patriotism; their scruples are more likely to support selling drones and bombs. Sometimes this even has an advantage of rapport with customers. But this is an end, not a means. It would be a mistake to predict growing evangelism for veterans due to our obvious ideological capture. Likewise, reading DEI reports as a foothold in the culture wars is missing the point. They are a specific form of advertising, and follow the popularity of idpol rather than driving it.
netstack
Texas is freedom land
9mo ago
Scott: Highlights from the comments on British economic decline.
Britain is suffering a decline in productivity and income which isn’t fully reflected in nominal GDP statistics.
This could be because it’s expressed in a declining pound, rather than in declining nominal wages/profits. I don’t know enough economics to feel like I have good intuitions about declining currency values.
It could also be partly because post-recession economic growth happened more in new employment than in higher wages for the already-employed.
Potential causes are Brexit, a dysfunctional real estate market, and underinvestment in R&D - but low confidence in all of these.
I’m interested particularly as a follow up to my discussion with @FirmWeird. Here we have an economy that struggles, where the citizens recognize it struggles, but the standard indicators look normal. I wanted to see if this would show up in the energy metrics we were discussing, but this data stops too early to say.
I really expect to see its energy per capita tank. Wealth getting swallowed up in housing has to push down energy consumption, at least compared to capital investment. I don’t think the UK has had anything like the shale boom distorting its cost per BTU, either.
netstack
Texas is freedom land
1yr ago
I don’t think it has to be very big. That subset gets to be very loud.
It only takes one “KKKILL_ALL_*******” or fedposter to make a lot of people nope out. Not dealing with that, going to hang out somewhere with fewer witches, etc.
Meanwhile, Twitter and Reddit and the like end up cultivating that image of non-witchiness as they attempt to catch the fleeing users. That means alienating the free speech absolutists, but not the garden-variety authoritarians.
netstack
Texas is freedom land
8mo ago
Hooooooo boy.
It took way longer than it should have to answer the question: “by whom?”
This is federal, and not another New York charge.
netstack
Texas is freedom land
5mo ago
Disclaimer: @some has blocked me, and won’t be responding to anything I say here.
Can someone remind me what the “2S” is supposed to stand for? I’ve seen LGBTQ+, and I’ve seen QILTBAG, so those are no mystery. Likewise with the occasional culture warrior trying to sneak in an M or P.
I agree that the analogy to various American policies is obvious. At least some of those had the fig leaf—no pun intended—of banning sexually explicit material, while these photographs only appear to reference drag. Presumably the unnamed “far-right Hungarian lawmaker” who filed this complaint is merely picking low-hanging fruit.
What makes you so confident that this is a particularly shitty cohort?
“X only happened because today’s youth are stupid/immoral/lazy/...” is a perennial favorite. I’m not sure that the SAT change is obviously responsible for this outcry.
In my undergrad, there were a few classes with this sort of reputation. They were junior or senior level courses core to the degree—not electives—like Electromagnetic Fields. The good students complained that it was brutal. The bad students just failed. And there was a constant undercurrent of how it was the professor’s fault, how he was too inexperienced, or had been doing it too long, or had ridiculous expectations, pro was just an asshole. These complaints originated from across the class.
Now, not much ever came of them. Fields was expected to be hard, we were learning something, there was trauma-bonding, the curve meant GPAs were reasonable. A dozen tiny factors leading to the conclusion that it was alright, we supposed, and no further action would be taken. I’m sure a few people would have signed on to a complaint. The advanced circuits professor always started out his class by reading enraged reviews, which had the added effect of enhancing the reputation!
Organic chemistry is, as far as I know, firmly in this category of challenging junior classes. I’ve seen it considered anywhere from a “weed-out” class to unfair. I would expect to see lots of complaints, lots of failures, a big curve for the survivors, and a professor encouraged to play the hardass.
So it’s not hard for me to imagine those factors crystallizing a bit differently. A sufficiently sympathetic student rallying enough of the underperformers to sign a petition. I’ve had bad professors, some of whom had extensive experience, and wished for more competent ones. That’s despite our SAT-qualified student body. Complaining enough that the professor gets pushed out is entitlement, but it isn’t necessarily a sign of a worse cohort.
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
What’s up with Tyler v. Hennepin County?
Next week, SCOTUS is hearing a case from Minnesota. The county foreclosed on a home with $15,000 in tax debt. It made $40,000 from the sale and kept all of it as a windfall in accordance with state law. The 94-year-old owner sued on takings clause (and due process, and 8th amendment) grounds.
The district court dismissed all claims. The circuit court affirmed. What gives?
It feels like there should be protections against the state profiting off the difference from tax debt and market value. Is this just one of those situations where it turns out there are no rights? Am I missing something?
netstack
Texas is freedom land
1yr ago
So the man has no intention of a relationship, and it’s the woman’s fault? How does that work?
netstack
Texas is freedom land
1yr ago
What do you do when caught with top secret documents? Deflect:
[He] didn’t know the documents were there, and didn’t become aware they were there, until his personal lawyers informed the White House counsel’s office, one source familiar with the matter told CNN.
Of course, this time it’s Joe Biden, not Donald Trump. The President’s staff has handed over several documents, including TS//SCI, leftover from his time as VP. His personal attorneys found the documents on November 2nd while clearing out a closet in his former Penn Biden center office, immediately notified NARA, and handed off the hot potato the next day. Since then the DoJ has appointed an attorney to figure out who’s responsible for the illegally handled files. Other than that, most everyone involved has refused to comment unless they represent one of the parties in court.
Now for the obvious comparisons:
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The type of documents seem similar to those kept in Mar-A-Lago, and were haphazardly filed in a similar manner
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NARA didn’t know about (or request) the missing files
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If Biden’s team is concealing more documents, they’re doing a much better job
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The FBI is watching but not serving any warrants
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Perhaps most importantly, the President is deflecting and denying rather than crying “witch hunt”
This leads, naturally, to two movies on one screen. Either the President is taking all the right actions after some staffer’s fuckup, or the security state is shamelessly giving him a slap on the wrist. What few outlets are writing on the subject fall into these two narratives. Democrats can’t help but compare the “scope and scale” of the violations, while Republicans emphasize the lack of door-kicking.
Neither stance addresses the real deciding factor of a smoking gun. This is going to be a Hillary situation. Like her infamous server, responsibility is diluted enough that no charges will be brought. (Note that I’ve made the same prediction about Mar-A-Lago.) Both narratives will try to spin epistemic uncertainty into iron-clad assurance, thus adding no value.
The only real conclusion is that you or I wouldn’t get off nearly so easily. If you’re going to store classified documents for your job, you’d better talk softly and hire a big staff.
Said what from the start? There's quite a bit of nonsense in that category, most of which is still not backed up by these press releases.
The people who were relatively level-headed at the start, saying things like "kids under 16 really have no reason to use up doses," have been reasonably validated. Those paranoid about microchips and 5G and injecting bleach disinfectant have not. Keep that in mind before trying to encourage people to follow the independent free-thinkers. I still don't believe their success will generalize.
netstack
Texas is freedom land
1yr ago
You forgot the bits about gerrymandering!
"We had a vote to rewrite the ballot rules at 3 in the morning the day before the election with no public consultation, that means it's legit :^)"
When did this happen? A casual google has failed me.
netstack
Texas is freedom land
1yr ago
That’s where the evaporative cooling comes in. Trimming off the few most vocal is liable to shift the norms and to discourage others.
So long as the few most vocal are either principled libertarians or lost channers, moderation is going to have a pseudo-leftwards bias.
Here on Motte we’ve seen similar effects. Certain high-profile commenters get banned for being inflammatory, and then a few others announce dissatisfaction, followed by flouncing or suicide-by-mod. I want to say the reasoning is usually “Mod X is a partisan hack.” @HlynkaCG, I’m struggling to remember names, have you got anything?
netstack
Texas is freedom land
5mo ago
I assume you’re talking about the Netflix Escaping Twin Flames, rather than the slightly older Amazon Escaping Twin Flames Universe. Kind of weird that they were produced so closely; I doubt they have much difference in content or messaging.
With that out of the way.
Congratulations! You’ve successfully invoked the Worst Argument in the World, and now I feel obligated to defend the motte’s favorite punching bag. First: I do not think child transition is a good thing. I do not support people or charities endorsing it, implementing it, or making it school policy. Same goes for drag queen story hour, which gives me the same uncomfortable feeling as most Americans. The broader umbrella of “gender-affirming care” is something that I think is oversold, even a fad, but I would not deny it to consenting adults. I understand that you think the whole edifice is literally fake and gay. That’s no excuse for the Worst Argument.
The best of your comparisons between transgender advocacy and Twin Flames is the final ritual/medical practice. I have some objections there, mostly due to selection bias, but let’s call it a good comparison. Sure, pushing someone to undertake surgery is an extremely suspect way to shore up one’s own power.
Everything else gets shakier. Where’s the equivalent to cult control of income? To struggle sessions? Hey, sometimes people get therapy, which is kind of like being convinced to be doing something, which is kind of like what a cult would do. Or worse—sometimes they imitate their friends. Clearly, that must be further evidence of cult behavior.
One of the signature features of cults, one you mention yourself, is control of information. I agree that kids in public schools are relatively controlled. The cult of George Washington has held power for too long, and our kids are indoctrinated that lying about cherry trees is bad. Yes, schools teach things to children. Your legitimate objections to what they’re teaching is not evidence of a cult.
It’s almost a moot point, given that the youngest generation has more access to information than any before. They can go on their smartphones and find traditional gender roles. Why don’t they? How did teachers suddenly gain mythical powers of narrative control for this one subject?
The common thread, here, is that there is more than one explanation for what you’re noticing. Kids do copy their friends and take adults at their word, just as they do for everything else. Adults in positions of power are using this to promote politics or aesthetics, just as they do for everything else. You might have seen such phenomena in a cult documentary, or you might have seen it in a chess club, on a BBS, in a small 1800s town. It’s not unique to cults.
But the key piece, the one most conspicuous in its absence, is the leader. Cui bono? Who is the Jeff Divine, the Marshall Applewhite, the Jim Jones? That’s not to say a cult has to have a charismatic leader. It’s just the first thing people think about. The central example, as it were. Hence my accusations of Worst Argument.
You have one interesting piece of evidence: both this cult and these people pushed members towards invasive, extreme surgery. You have a smattering of weak evidence: trans advocates do a bunch of stuff which sort of, if you squint, looks like cult behavior instead of regular social dynamics. And you ignore any missing pieces because you’ve already made up your mind. Trans bad, cultists bad, therefore trans cultists.
And everyone clapped.
netstack
Texas is freedom land
1yr ago
Scott has posted a short article: You Don’t Want a Purely Biological, Apolitical Taxonomy of Mental Disorders.
Takeaway:
if “political correctness” sounds too dismissive, we can rephrase it as: “they want something that doesn’t think about ethics and practicality at all, but which is simultaneously more ethically correct and pragmatically correct than other taxonomies”.
Some of Scott’s best work comes from the tension between categories-as-descriptive and categories-as-prescriptive, so I’m pleased to see him tackling this subject.
He has a couple potentially spicy sentences which have been interspersed with extra letters to ward off journalists. Legends say they aren’t able to remove text without an invitation, preventing context-removal. A handful of commenters immediately proceed to demonstrate why this will do nothing to keep some people from thinking Scott is literally Hitler, but perhaps it will keep them from publishing that? I’m not optimistic this will keep an opportunistic editor from stripping out letters with no direct relevance unless they’re legally required to put “…” in their place.
netstack
Texas is freedom land
1yr ago
Because the atheists are right. /thread.
It took me longer than I'd like to realize this wasn't a copy of @Goodguy's post, and I still can't tell how sincere it is. So I guess I'm left resorting to honest engagement.
I think the analogy falls apart when you pick examples. Atheist shoes aren't exactly the central claim. Sure, '00s atheism built up a bunch of weird cruft, universalized arguments, etc. But Goodguy wasn't attacking the cruft. He was clumsily mocking the big, central point of doctrine that Christians agree on. That allows dodging your version by saying "yeah, that whole shoes thing is weird, isn't it?" Or, in my case, "what? shoes?"
Likewise, you're off base with "acknowledging the history" of atheism -> progressive politics. I assume the social-justice framing is intentional, but it's also absent from last week's post. There's also a gap in the causal chain, since a lot of old-school atheists got really uncomfortable about "atheism+" or "New Atheism", and those are the steps that really defined the transition. I could also argue that this confuses correlation and causation if 2010s atheism was really just a corpse piloted by SJWs.
netstack
Texas is freedom land
1yr ago
What sort of precedents?
Christianity doesn't exactly address the question of playing sports between the sexes. That makes it a poor fit for freedom-of-religion. It's not establishing one religion over another, either. I'd assume it fails to harm any particular religion, and that there are secular sports teams making similar protests.
Texas is 100% playing politics with the border. Well, maybe 90%; we've got to leave some room for Florida, which is apparently so overwhelmed that they have to use Texan migrants for their publicity stunts.
First, what's the cost of living in rural Texas or California? How about NYC? We already have a method for evaluating how much someone is willing to live in a particular location. It's curious that Republican lawmakers have chosen this particular cause to intervene in the market. There is a symmetrical argument for job markets; the demand for cheap agricultural labor in NYC does not compare to that in a commensurate area of west Texas or SoCal. Martha's Vineyard was a particularly extreme case--dumping migrants somewhere with no jobs and a high opportunity cost suggests that efficiency is a low priority indeed.
Second,
75k/yr is probably NYC's fair share (as 1/35 the US population)
How many illegal migrants do you think we get in a year? Because that rate suggests 75K * 35 = 2.6M/yr. Actually, I'm seeing a NYC population more like 1/39th of the US, which would suggest a total intake of 2.9M/yr. Given that the total illegal population has been stable or declining since 2007, at something like 10-12M, I find this rather unlikely. Source 1, source 2.
I don't have estimates for how many illegal immigrants are already in NYC, but Table 3 from source 2 estimates 520-630K in New York state. the city has 8.38M of the state's 19.5M people. Using the low end, since cost of living and agricultural labor likely pull migrants away from NYC, a rough estimate suggests 220K illegal immigrants already in NYC. That's somewhere between 1/44 and 1/36 of the total illegal population.
If the total illegal population is mostly stable, and NYC already has, to a first approximation, its "fair share" of that population...what's the justification for shipping them more migrants?
Looks like @KulakRevolt got a shoutout from Scott for his (her? Whence the catgirl branding?) review of a certain novel. Putting it in a Twitter thread was kind of weird, but I thought the piece was fascinating. The comparisons to Tolstoy and Tolkien are not only viscerally upsetting but also remarkably accurate. There are a couple points I wanted to address, but first, a little background.
The year was 20XX. I was a broke 19-year-old, fresh out of my freshman year, scrounging for scholarship opportunities. My mother ran across one held by some sort of Ayn Rand fan club. Read Atlas Shrugged, write an essay, and receive a decent one-off award. My memory suggests it was guaranteed, but a quick search only finds the more sane framing of a contest. They do apparently provide the book, though. In the end, I didn't bother with the contest, since I got an actual job for the summer, thus avoiding any creative output. How ironic.
This brings me to my first point: Atlas Shrugged in schools. A book which inspires diehard followers to spend their time and money bringing its insights to the unenlightened masses. A book which, simultaneously, people must be paid to read. That contrast is enough to make Atlas Shrugged useless in the eyes of public schools; it would be enough even if elites were united in their admiration for Rand's morality. In a vacuum, the book is Objectively a train wreck. But its true potential is revealed only under a certain sort of engagement, one which is anathema to public-school demands for measurable outcomes.
I'm talking about immersion. It is the same flavor of suspension-of-disbelief which lets humans devour hundreds or thousands of pages about hobbits. He who delves wholeheartedly into the book, populates its barren vistas and soulless boardrooms with art-deco trappings or noir atmosphere, fills in the caricatures with the look and feel and essence distilled from decades of American cultural mythology--yea, he shall be rewarded. And when he comes up for air, it is not the clumsy plotting or the inhuman dialogue which comes with him. Verisimilitude has been outsourced to his own mind.
No matter the flesh in which the well-immersed reader clothes it, though, the philosophy of Rand's heroes remains unambiguous. It is the one area where she leaves no room for improvisation. When the converts gather for book club, they are envisioning different Roarks and Tooheys, different Taggarts and Stadlers and Galts. But they know Objectivism when they see it.
Her works are remembered not for their style but for their steel spine.
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.
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