netstack
Texas is freedom land
No bio...
User ID: 647
netstack
Texas is freedom land
18hr ago
The U.S. military had (has??) great taste in coats.
Shout out to the Navy peacoats from the Korean War.
netstack
Texas is freedom land
19hr ago
Come on, it should at least be one of the Reagan westerns.
netstack
Texas is freedom land
21hr ago
My fiancee would say her liter canteen. She gets great mileage out of it.
netstack
Texas is freedom land
21hr ago
Sloot, sarcasm is unbecoming.
@Quantumfreakonomics, that's not an excuse to start sneering...or to drag in other users.
@RococoBasilica, same goes for you, in turn.
netstack
Texas is freedom land
22hr ago
I would take that bet if I could find any way to formalize it.
netstack
Texas is freedom land
1d ago
Immigrants Georg is an outlier who should not be counted.
netstack
Texas is freedom land
1d ago
Those import taxes were more like a combination of tariff policy and bailouts, propping up British tea and coffee growers using the American colonies. They were part of a broader pattern of extractive rule. Whether or not it was a good deal, British policy had a way of trampling the colonial ego.
I’m curious about those 1-2% numbers. Are they something like percent of household income? I think the impact was concentrated on shipping interests, which played a much larger part in the pre-industrial economy.
netstack
Texas is freedom land
1d ago
Do a partial exit strategy where you sell off any gains?
I’m saying this as someone who lacks such a hoard. I imagine I’d feel different in your position.
netstack
Texas is freedom land
1d ago
5% isn’t little. It’s 10x the prison population. It’s an entire state’s worth of taxpayers. Yeah, the IRS would lose its shit.
But that’s kind of beside the point. I really do believe there would be fewer and smaller protests if this wasn’t treated as a referendum on Donald Trump. People turn out to signal their tribal loyalty in a way they don’t do for abstract, bureaucratic causes. Every incident gets him a nice headline for his base and half a dozen headlines claiming he’s a fascist. That’s good for his personal brand, but it does nothing for effective governance.
netstack
Texas is freedom land
2d ago
Can’t speak for the OP, but this is more or less my position.
I would like government policy to align with its stated goals. I also prefer the stated goal, enforcing America’s borders, to most of the plausible alternatives. And I would most definitely like our law enforcement agencies to be “more lawful” in exercising their goals. Laws are what separate us from animals and dictators.
We ask the government to do all sorts of nasty things in service of a more perfect Union. Then we soften the blow by adding constraints. This turns imprisonment, conscription, taxation into routine and predictable processes. Border control ought to be routine and predictable, too.
Trump doesn’t play that game. Routines and constraints are means to an end. It makes him less effective, and it gives his enemies more ammunition. I wish he wouldn’t.
netstack
Texas is freedom land
8d ago
So I read Blade Itself and the follow up, but not the third book. The only bit I remember as a huge red flag was
netstack
Texas is freedom land
8d ago
If the criterion is leaving a lasting historical impression, then I don’t think most early Americans qualify. If it’s merely contributing, just about everybody is going to clear the bar. Any intermediate threshold is going to filter out descendants faster than immigrants.
I’ll admit I’m thinking about my dad’s side of the family. Where does ~300 years of subsistence farming put us? Plenty of 1800s or 1900s immigrants have contributed more to American culture, not to mention the economy. The wealthiest American immigrated in 2002. Does he get precedence?
netstack
Texas is freedom land
8d ago
netstack
Texas is freedom land
8d ago
The Democratic Party is setting up its own daytime TV arc. Oprah 2028!
In all seriousness, stuff like this is good evidence against larger-scale conspiracy theories. The establishment can’t even overcome this internal drama; it’s not going to do any better at playing kingmaker.
netstack
Texas is freedom land
9d ago
Okay, this is the second subthread today that makes me think about a certain scottpost.
Wanting to make history is not limited to narcissists. Every kid who thought about being an astronaut has been there. Trump just never had to give up the dream.
I don’t think this actually explains his attitude towards NATO, which is not a new obsession. He’s harped on it since the first term, but it’s always taken a backseat to domestic politics. So I guess I still prefer my model:
Trump makes brand decisions, not strategic ones.
That’s it. There’s no other criteria. Trump wants Greenland because superpowers do stuff like that. He dislikes NATO because he’s convinced it’s a bad deal.
He does not play the long game. He does not eat a loss. He does not implement a strategy. People come to him with proposals, and if they’re aligned with his brand, he gives them whatever they need. If not, he fires them. Trump I was ineffective because he didn’t have the roster depth needed to survive this style. After eight years of setting expectations, the current administration has much more momentum.
netstack
Texas is freedom land
9d ago
I’ve been thinking about regular credit scores a lot, recently. I am 100% willing to believe that lenders would love to expand it.
netstack
Texas is freedom land
9d ago
Who exactly do you have in mind?
Graft and identity-based handouts are still more likely, but that’s because they are definitionally cheaper than universal handouts.
netstack
Texas is freedom land
9d ago
Or the converse: AI gets just strong enough to keep the resulting bunch of purposeless, humiliated humans under control.
netstack
Texas is freedom land
9d ago
use those as an excuse to harass others while feeling morally superior in doing so.
Humans spending surplus time and money on social games is not the spiciest of takes.
use [political causes] as an excuse
Claiming that any specific cause is somehow insincere…that’s harder to swallow, especially if you aren’t even guessing at numbers. The epistemics are terrible; it’s an excuse to write off anything.
netstack
Texas is freedom land
12d ago
Old World Blues is a Fallout mod for Hearts of Iron IV. Compared to the base game or many of its flagship mods, it’s more about diving into the setting.
My current playthrough is multiplayer with an old friend. He’s got a vault nation up in Colorado, stomping out the neighboring raiders and negotiating an alliance with the New California Republic. My faction, though, is a loose warlord state which trades off leadership according to regular wrestling matches. Its mutant luchadors are happy to lose gracefully and bide their time for the next match. In the meantime, they like to lead volunteer troops to other nations. This has been difficult, lately, since their closest neighbor is the Sinaloa cartel. After years of suffering raids, they’ve formed an alliance to wipe those bastards off the face of the planet.
netstack
Texas is freedom land
14d ago
I don’t believe any nation could quell revolt by appealing to food and fashion. Not without some clever metaphors!
You’re looking for something more civic-minded. Something like Washington’s Newburgh address. What an absolute legend.
Thing is, that’s not a speech to a mob. Rioters aren’t usually good listeners. Do you have any examples in mind?
Is gold behaving more reasonably? Been looking at some rings and I’m wondering if this is the worst possible time.
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