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Texas is freedom land

6 followers   follows 3 users  
joined 2022 September 05 17:27:40 UTC

				

User ID: 647

netstack

Texas is freedom land

6 followers   follows 3 users   joined 2022 September 05 17:27:40 UTC

					

No bio...


					

User ID: 647

No idea where the name came from, but it was/is a scare group for anti-trans activists.

Post all your worst excesses here, etc. etc.

I feel it too.

Perhaps it’s easier to see in others, and easiest to spot in the sort of policy wonk most likely to write an elaborate justification.

But it’s a real, seductive feeling.

I just try and hold on to Occam’s and Hanlon’s razors.

Me.

I’d been mentally calling Ame “Punished Deiseach” for a while before she deleted, but it’s good to have confirmation.

Maybe remove the reference to her active account, though?

Seeing as she was apparently getting harassed across platforms.

I think you might be understating the social acceptance, or at least appeal, of cosmetic surgery.

Not that I’m an expert, but I’d say subtle surgery is tacitly accepted, but obvious or sloppy examples are gauche.

This is probably a class signaling thing where the level tolerated varies—see Jersey shore.

How well does this square with the conventional wisdom that dating sites have huge gender imbalances?

If there are five guys for every girl, the imbalance will be felt even without any polygyny.

The other big question is what fraction of partnerships are actually derived from this culture, be it skewed or monopolized.

I’d like to believe that hookup apps are not our main way of meeting potential spouses.

It seems unlikely that missing out on Tinder dates is the biggest predictor of romantic success.

Of course, I don’t have much in the way of statistics to support these beliefs.

One of the steelmen for diversity initiatives is that groups (racial or otherwise) can have blindspots, different priorities, and so on.

Thus increasing diversity is a hedge against failure modes.

For a corporation, this might be something as mild as failing to support other timezones or as dramatic as marketing pork to Muslims.

For representative organizations, mainly democratic governments, there are other factors at play.

To some degree the government “owes” all its citizens similar opportunities as part of the social contract.

Perhaps more importantly, it derives its power from consent, and relies on fairness or the perception of such.

If citizens don’t believe the government respects their interests...Things get messy.

This latter type has a natural (compromise) target of matching the constituency.

On the other hand, the first case can expand to fill all available space as long as proponents can claim to be silenced.

Obviously such claims may be legitimate (Jim Crow) or realpolitik.

Given that your church isn’t designed as a government, and probably isn’t hitting any of the big risks for blindspots, it’s probably fine.

When someone can point to harm inflicted by its monoculture, then perhaps you should worry.

sure they also had to be killed to feed the cows

Not necessarily?

The energy needed to turn boring grains into steak is energy that came from additional acreage. As efficient as we are at processing the cow in the end, it’s more insects dead.

This doesn’t remove the “constant holocaust” argument entirely, but it’s hard for me to argue that ten acres of grain plus a cow is morally equal to one.

I'm quite a fan of many of these.

Malazan and Second Apocalypse are particularly excellent.

Haven't read a few of the others, and the only one which really left me lukewarm was Thomas Covenant.

I may add my own top-level, but you've covered some chunk of it.

For search purposes, would you be willing to add authors to your listings?

Annihilation is a bit hard to distinguish.

I've been watching a let's play of this game.

Absolutely fascinating, and addresses some of the niches that just aren't served by DF or Rimworld.

Downloaded the demo, too, but I understand it's missing a couple important features about housing.

That's kind of discouraged me from playing too much of it.

FTL Multiverse, a massive expansion of a most excellent roguelite.

It adds an obscene number of events, sectors, species, weapons, strategies, secrets, endings, and ships to fly. Perhaps more impressive is the way it fits into the normal gameplay and world. I also found the writing to be cohesive and funny. Adding blue options that are obviously bad ideas with predictably bad outcomes was a stroke of genius.

Highly recommended for anyone who liked the original FTL.


I've also been trying to get back into Nebulous: Fleet Command. It's a multiplayer space battle sim pitting teams of battleships, destroyers and the like against each other in glorious 3D movement. Fleets, ships, and even missiles are designed by the player in a robust editor.

The catch is that the dev was a Navy EWAR specialist and has strong opinions about naval warfare (in space!). It's the only game I know which bothers to model radar physics, including jammers. Given my day job, that just scratches an itch like nothing else.

I highly recommend that any wargame enthusiasts take a look.

Haha, I'm currently swamped.

Reading an Elric anthology just for some historic value.

After that it's probably Jonathan Strange... since my girlfriend wants book club. Or possible the Locke Lamora sequel, or these Vorkosigan books, or...

I was under the impression that the "Posts" tab would do it, but then I checked and the only responses to my comments are showing up in "All."

Any prospect of getting a signal-boost from Scott in a links post?

I can't recall his exact relationship with the sub post-ACX, but I do seem to remember him linking datasecretslox at some point.

Edit: as mentioned on the other sub, this might be a good tactic after the initial trolls confused individuals have died down.

A mite uncharitable, I think.

“Democracy” is a confused and loaded term, but it’s not so completely diluted to include that outcome. I am confident that American liberals, even neoliberals in power, would be horrified should an 85% vote get ignored. The working definition is something more like “autocracy with accountability”: the government should do its usual Government Things, and if the people are sufficiently upset, they’ll vote some representatives out. 85% is an example of that, and 47% is not.

This is compatible with a pro-manager-class interest, if you want to use the Marxist lens. It’s also compatible with good old-fashioned rational self-interest. Going along with a supermajority is good for one’s career. Switching horses midstream, not so much. If Trump had a supermajority, we wouldn’t be having this debate, because bureaucrats would be implementing that agenda—look at the post-9/11 government. It’s the uncertainty that kills.

Which guy is that?

Biggest flounce I remember was iprayiam, but I’m sure I’m forgetting a couple.

What is it about autocracies that’s supposed to be more adaptive?

The 20th century provided some staggering evidence that it’s not the potential for command economy. Nor were the totalitarians particularly resilient against internal struggle; perhaps China has surpassed that issue, if they can ride their demographic transition into continued success? I’m partial to the theory that democracy serves as a release valve for tensions which would otherwise boil into bloody insurrection.

I have to wonder if a similar narrative existed in 400 CE. “It was a precarious military situation that converted Constantine; without such chance, now that the Empire is beset, surely this Christianity will collapse. Real Roman traditions always dominated before, and they will again.”

Uh...did you reply to the right guy? Did he edit?

Oh. Carry on, I guess.

Political stances on AI will not follow from ideology, but from economic and social consequences.

Mind you, I believe most such stances are downstream of consequences, and the principles are more like mnemonics. But this is a particularly strong case, because politicians are not technologists. AI will remains largely unregulated until something becomes prominent enough for action. If that’s racial, the Democrats will probably demand regulation. If it’s economic, I could see a populist angle from either party, depending on who is injured.

Compare early Internet regulation, where the reception wasn’t “does this tech suit our principles” but “oh god people can post *what?*”

I don’t know how likely this is, given how much comms, weapons, and transport tech have changed since the Great War. The relatives economies and outside support also seem categorically different.

But I really like that you’ve given concrete predictions, and I look forward to seeing whether they pan out.

What sort of ways?

Voter protections are still largely left-coded, as far as I know. ID requirements are definitely a right-wing talking point. So were restrictions like poll taxes in the Southern Strategy era.

Representation is more complicated. The popular vote is decidedly left-wing. Approval voting has been proposed by Democrats but not really taken off. Reapportionment is ambiguous: recent cases were split on ideological lines, favoring Republicans but for procedural reasons. Recent legislation has been supported only by Democrats.

What are liberals doing to tie up the populace?

Hmm. What does the counter-training for this look like?

But the incentive of popularity isn't the only reason leaders make shortsighted choices. You could just as easily argue that democracy hedges against autocrats doing short sighted things. A military dictator panders to his cadre even in peacetime; his powerful military is a political tool as much as a diplomatic one.

Who the hell told Hitler to go forward with Operation Barbarossa?

If we assume a Platonic philosopher-king, making only morally and strategically correct decisions, there's no need to tie him down with populism. I'm not convinced that such a king can be created by concentrating power in the hands of mere mortals.

usually met with pats on the back snaps (sensory issues!) and good boys persons.

This is a really condescending way of mocking your outgroup. The rest isn't really better, adding up to a real hand-wringing over how much leftist spaces must suck. Adding a paragraph about how Both Sides^TM of the terminally online have flaws doesn't really make the smears any more charitable.


With the obligatory tone policing taken care of: I think you're making a bit of a homogeneity error. Observing melodrama and overreaction on leftist Twitter is something of a pastime of this sub. The outrage machine is not driven by good vibes and hugs. People have been "literally crying and shaking rn" for years.

You may well be correct to observe that leftist hobby communities are more likely to be positive. I'd credit this not to an evangelist reward cycle, but to evaporative cooling. Leftist spaces are less likely to make people feel uncomfortable enough to leave. Whether this has anything to do with "big tent" politics, inclusive language, microaggressions, pronouns, or the much-maligned hugboxing? I couldn't say.

Free speech absolutism is arguably shooting itself in the foot here. The first message I got upon signing up here was an ALL-CAPS question from an offensive username. As I looked for a report button, I realized, "shit, we don't have a ToS here, do we?" Did I actually have grounds to request deplatforming this guy merely for posting slurs and, I'm told, using a NSFL profile banner? The answer is obviously yes, as he was a walking rule violation, but I wouldn't have even asked myself the question on a more left-wing site.

(If this happens to anyone else, please send a mod message to Zorba. He's confirmed that such accounts will be banned; there's just no report button yet,)

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.

If you want to know what the happy, affirming, not-so-para social group looks like for right wingers, go to a church picnic. Maybe Baptists or Presbyterians, maybe LDS. The Pentecostals get up to some absolutely wild group delusions, but they seem to be having a pretty good time with it. This is the power of community, of cohesion--and it comes with its own set of strictures.

As a final note, while Contrapoints really, really isn't my style, I wouldn't call it vacuous. Not in the same way that I'd label something like a mukbang. I'm under the impression that she puts a lot of effort into the scripting as well as the presentation. It's especially an ironic comparison given that Contrapoints and BreadTube were explicitly designed to drive Peterson-style engagement.