non_radical_centrist
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User ID: 1327
non_radical_centrist
10mo ago
LOTT wouldn't have been harmed if they did some basic fact checking to check if the story was real. The hoax wasn't that elaborate. And good journalistic practice really would be to not publish anything that hasn't been reasonably confirmed, not just not publish anything that has holes in it
non_radical_centrist
1mo ago
My prediction about DOGE from six months ago seems to have come true.
https://www.themotte.org/post/1249/culture-war-roundup-for-the-week/268523?context=8#context
My prediction is that early on Musk will run into the incredibly thick red tape that normally prevents massive cuts in government, try to cut through it anyway because that's what he's used to in the private sector, and it results in some sort of lawsuit or other scandal.
It's particularly sad because this was a great opportunity for real reform. They just needed to focus on doing it through Congress passing laws to reform stuff, or altering overly stringent requirements independent agencies have made. Just trying to fire excess government employees is pointless as long the law says you need to first fire employees with under 2 years of tenure instead of firing based on actual merit. Otherwise you're doing nothing to get rid of layabouts and just get rid of any productive new hires you have.
non_radical_centrist
5mo ago
Putin used that cultural and language similarity as an excuse to invade and kill Ukrainians. I think artificially exaggerating the cultural and language differences so Putin has less of a cassus belli and ends the war, and doesn't pursue future ones, is very valid.
non_radical_centrist
10mo ago
Harris will show how well she can deal with a full volume Trump off-script. She doesn't have to beat him, but she has to perform in an environment and format that she is notoriously bad in. She has to put on her best performance ever for a tie. Again, woe to the campaign staff.
Trump's pretty bad at debate too. People considered him to have lost most of the debates he was in.
I think as long as Kamala keeps tacking to center she'll be fine. People are taking Trump seriously as a threat. There's little sense of "Ugh we're stuck with a centrist when we wanted Bernie" this year because no primary meant Kamala felt inevitable. That means the left wing of the party has less influence, and Kamala's free to appeal to the swing voters who really matter without risking mutiny.
But ultimately I agree, I feel like this debate will be consequential. I'm holding all my prediction market bets until the debate happens.
non_radical_centrist
5mo ago
The language of a single podcast of course isn't the sole hinge on which Putin's justifications turn. But it is a small piece. I think Putin's casus belli is made very slightly more valid if Zelensky speaks Russian. And very slightly less valid if he doesn't. Putin talked about the medieval history of Ukraine and Russia being one country to Tucker for so long because that type of thing does matter to Putin, and to many other Russians.
non_radical_centrist
6mo ago
I looked at this list of records for the Badwater Ultramarathon. The women are fairly competitive with the men. That would never happen in something like powerlifting, or intellectual sports like chess or esports, or sprinting.
non_radical_centrist
6mo ago
Give an inch, they take a mile. If you just let China take Taiwan with no fight because the war would be so costly, why would China stop there? Would you let them conquer every island in the Pacific until they have everything except Hawaii too?
non_radical_centrist
10mo ago
I don't think Trump has an obligation to stick to the planned debate. But I don't think you can say Kamala's the one trying to stay out of the spotlight either. If Republicans want a spotlight on Kamala to put the screws to her, all they'd have to do is stick to the original planned debate.
non_radical_centrist
11mo ago
War is brutal. Israel has done many bad things, perhaps more than necessary, but that's how war goes. America was hardly polite and soft on Japan in WW2.
If Native Americans started randomly suicide bombing American cafes and launched roughly one attack every twenty years that would kill hundreds, how many Native American civilian casualties would you max out at before saying "no, the cost is too high to keep bombing reservations"?
non_radical_centrist
5mo ago
Exactly. I could not ask an Ukrainian to die fighting for NATO. But if they wanted to do so anyway, I'm more than happy to provide them the weapons to do so.
non_radical_centrist
11mo ago
From my half-rigorous polling, about 20% of women are slutty and largely motivated by looks and aren't really that ashamed to admit it. 80% of women are more selective about their partners, and while looks do still play a large role for them, personality/beliefs do play a large role. It's that 20% who are slutty who make up the majority of hook up participants- at 25 they may have had roughly 30 partners where a member of the 80% has had roughly 5(most of whom were long term partners, not hook ups), as estimates.
I think the hypocrisy comes more in that the 80% don't acknowledge/aren't aware of the 20%. So they act like of course a hot man with a terrible personality would have some difficulties getting a girlfriend, since if all women were like them, the hot nazi would have some difficulties. Part of it is just virtue signalling too, a hot nazi would still do better with them than they'd admit, but most of the incredible success of hot nazis would come from the slutty 20%.
non_radical_centrist
8mo ago
Nancy Pelosi's stock market gains are not anything crazy. She just gambled on the tech market going up, and it did. The average congressperson's portfolio doesn't particularly outperform the market.
non_radical_centrist
9mo ago
They want to ban immigration like how the union wants to ban automation. To reduce competition for jobs, at the expense of everyone else who could be benefiting from greater productivity.
non_radical_centrist
10mo ago
There's an argument that people should only publish if multiple unrelated sources for a claim can be identified (again, ignoring Corvus in Trace's hoax), but that's not a convention we hold anyone else toward.
One source that's trusted is fine. One source who's just some random email isn't. If CNN published a controversial story, and their only source was one person who emailed in with vague details, I absolutely would consider that that was a major deriliction of journalistic duty.
non_radical_centrist
11mo ago
What's your point?
non_radical_centrist
6mo ago
I did mean men are more competitive on average, I know there are lots of very competitive women out there. And I'd assume a lot of the athletic and most competitive women would go into fields they're at minimum roughly equal biologically to men in, like long distance running or gymnastics. But I expect at the very highest levels of competition, like Olympic-tier athletics, the best men are putting in more hours/more intensity than the best women. But I do know there are vast numbers of women who put in more hours and intensity than I do at anything.
non_radical_centrist
8mo ago
Issue is, your formulation I think describes Israeli Gaza operation pretty well, but they are a 'legitimate military force'.
Israel does not kill civilians for the sake of killing civilians. They take out military targets that unfortunately have civilians nearby, because civilians are nearby everything in Gaza.
There's a debate to be had about how many civilians it's justifiable to kill when taking out an enemy leader or military installation. What Hamas does is different, they kill civilians that are nowhere near any military personnel or installations.
I really wish this sort of labeling would be backed up by videos of something resembling a Roman triumph. But I'm guessing you are referring to the non-naked corpse of a woman on the back of the truck clip? I don't think female Israeli corpses are special, and the amount of attention that is being demanded for them and other Israeli victims (in broad Israeli astroturfing) is disproportional, at times downright deranged.
That's a disgusting video. Even more disgusting is that that sort of thing isn't clearly and unconditionally condemned by Palestinian leadership. All people have some members who are disgusting. But good groups will have their leaders disavow disgusting members.
non_radical_centrist
10mo ago
There seem to be different related concepts here that can lead to different methods based on exactly what you mean by "hate". Do you want B to feel maximally unsafe, do you just want them to understand you hate them maximally without them necessarily feeling bad, do you want everyone else watching to think you just got an insane dunk off on them?
Option 1: Probably something that's toeing the line as much as possible to doxxing their information. Like replying to all their tweets with instructions on how to find a celebrity's address or something like that.
Option 2: Figure out some sort of organization that directly opposes their values, like a political thinktank/campaign or even a business they hate, and donate to them a large sum of money, then send this person a picture of the receipt
Option 3: This happens on Twitter all the time.
non_radical_centrist
10mo ago
George wrote the back story for the world, and there's clearly a lot of consistent world building. It's not a very detailed plot, but there are lots of fun small details about stuff like Rot and Madness that make the world feel real.
non_radical_centrist
11mo ago
Tracing Woodgrains.
non_radical_centrist
11mo ago
Saudi military is incompetent. It doesn't matter what the tech you have is of you can't fight. It's how the RPF beat the French supported government of Uganda in the 90s, because the government forces were just that pathetic and ill led.
non_radical_centrist
10mo ago
LOTT's whole job basically is editorial overview. If someone just wanted to see lots of cringe lib stuff they could browse the subreddits for it. If they want the privileges and respect from conservatives that comes with being a conservative journalist, they have the responsibility to do fact checking.
The whole reason the hoax tarnished their reputation is that it shows they don't fact check. How do you know other cases LOTT highlighted as real weren't fake, but faked by someone who hid their steps a bit more carefully?
non_radical_centrist
11mo ago
I'm somewhat sympathetic to blackpill ideas, but I think the context it's missing is men will often be even worse. A 6'6 guy with a swastika tattoo might get lots of dates- but not as many as a skinny girl with D cups who has a swastika tattoo. You can condemn women for being superficial and horny, but you should be condemning men 100x as much. Us men are much more likely to look past horrible personality defects just to get laid by someone hot.
non_radical_centrist
6mo ago
If the gap between the best women and the best men in soccer is smaller than the gap between the best women and best at basketball, that is evidence for the biological advantage men have over women in soccer is smaller than it is for at least one other sport. To see if women have an actual biological advantage and not just a smaller disadvantage, it'd have to be compared to competitions where you knew there was no phsyical biological gender differences, just mental biological differences.
I believe men are innately vastly more competitive than women. A man who trains for 50 000 hours will probably beat a woman who's trained for 5 000, even if she has a biological advantage.
The fact that women show up in the top ranks of ultra-endurance competitions at all, where as for the vast majority of other competitive events the top ranked woman will often be ranked like #203 or somewhere thereabouts, I think is strong evidence they have a real biological advantage.
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