pigeonburger
24d ago
The justification for the hatred she gets fits within the restrictive moral framework of the people Jonathan Haidt identified in The Righteous Mind as WEIRD (Western Educated Industrial Rich and Democratic): she's evil because she's harming trans people. WEIRD pretty much only see the care/harm and fairness/unfairness as far as morality go.
Personally I am/was raised WEIRD, and while I cannot express why specifically, some examples Haidt used to test moral foundations outside of harm and fairness still trigger primitive negative emotion in me even if I cannot find a way within myself to condemn it intellectually. The real, original moral instinct as to why JK Rowlings is so hated might still be because she's undermining the consensus (not going along with the group is an affront to the loyalty moral foundation), or from expressing ideas considered sacrilegeous, but having a negative reaction to someone because of that is not allowed by our universalist mindset, so it has to be laundered as her being harmful.
pigeonburger
24d ago
Without that issue, I can sort of conceive of a war as banding together with your bros for an adventure and your odds of survival turning much more on your individual skills AND your ability to plan and effectively coordinate rather than luck of the draw.
I'm not going to get into the longbow countering the knight thing as others have already, but it's hard to overstate how much of an advantage noble knights had in battle. You were not going to be given a role in battle that would amount to cannon-fodder/bait, you had presumably access to the best training, a horse, the best armor. It was pretty unlikely you'd be killed or seriously wounded on your feet and most importantly, no one was really incentivized in finishing you off if you found yourself surrounded or knocked down/out, as ransoming you was much more lucrative.
I'm not so certain I agree with his framing of the trend as a coherent entity.
I would frame it as nothing more than the result of imposed religious tolerance. In order to stop the religious persecutions that were commonplace in the second half of the last millenium, Europeans and their descendents, and particularly city-dwellers, had to blunt some of their innate moral instincts: those that would chafe at the presence of heretics and apostates. For a few centuries this gave them a big boost, but long term it turns out some of those moral instincts might have been load bearing to civilisation, as we find ourselves atomizing into individualism under a universalist philosophy that forbids us from creating an exclusive shared identity.
pigeonburger
24d ago
The reason I say this is overrated is because, for all his insight, there's nothing universal about anything he says.
This is not surprising, goaltenders have the reputation of being weirdo loners as far as pro athletes go.
That said, I've already wanted to read that book for a while and none of your caveats seem like deal-breakers to me. I'll probably pick it up soon.
pigeonburger
26d ago
The problem of course is that while he's right, this does not give a signal as to whether the funding of the police is adequate or excessive. Which means a police department that adequately reduces crime with little visible action is going to be regularly targeted for budget cuts.
pigeonburger
27d ago
Both these movies are scary because they understand the true nature of horror, what really scares us: powerlessness. Not monsters, danger, pain, violence, death. These are all present in definitely not scary action movies. The extent to which these are scary in horror movies, is the extent to which the characters the viewers identify as are powerless against them. The Exorcist, like Rosemary's Baby, goes straight for the root, not incidentally. The former forces us to confront the horror of a parent being unable to help their child with an ailment. Rosemary's Baby forces us to confront a woman losing all of her social power and agency as she's railroaded into a parental role.
pigeonburger
28d ago
Chotiner is the New Yorker’s resident assassin. Merely being asked to sit down with him is a sign that someone wants to see you politically gutted.
Which honestly was predictable. Right now, for Democrats associated with the Biden administration, the smart move is laying low, not launching books. The party is still looking for excuses for its 2024 performance and its moribundity going into the 2026 midterm season. Peeking your head out, like Harris and now Jean-Pierre did, is just asking to be thrown under the bus.
pigeonburger
29d ago
Even given the collapse in journalism, wouldn't you expect someone pushing that thesis to collect the most persuasive cases, not the most ambiguous?
I guess that speaks to either the weakness of the case or the incompetence of the journalist that these are the best cases he could come up with.
Then we get to the Reno shootout. Woman decides to intervene in some quarrel between a man and a woman. Man starts yelling at woman. Husband of woman intervenes. Man goes back to truck, gets gun, shoots husband. No, this wasn't what was deemed justified -- things continue. Woman pulls out her gun, shoots man. Man shoots woman (and some bystander) too. Then another bystander fatally shoots the man, thinking he's going to kill the woman. The dead man turned out to boozed up, coked up, and high on pot too. If the WSJ writer had his way, presumably the bystander who killed him would be imprisoned for it. Or not shot him and maybe the woman dies instead. How would that improve things?
Its presence in the article is clearly because the journalists needed more meat to try and push his point that stand-your-ground laws are bad, but he knows the facts aren't aligning with that so he just says it's an example of how guns and alcool don't mix.
But then, the story has this important tidbit:
Instead, Wilson retrieved a handgun from his truck
So it's not like the guy who turned this incident deadly had a snap lapse in judgement and the presence of the gun is what turned a likely fistfight into a shootout. The gun was not present, he had to go get it, which means we're dealing with an asshole whose brain was so fried he had murderous intent for several seconds to minutes.
Also
Instead, Wilson retrieved a handgun from his truck and shot Reichert’s husband at arm’s-length.
So why are we focusing on the gun here? He could have just as well stabbed him with a knife, with a broken bottle, concussed him with a baseball bat or tire iron, etc... Would it have been less deadly then? I'm not sure at all; what if the fact he wasn't using a gun made Reichert and the bystander less willing to pull out a gun in self-defense out of fear they'll be convicted of homicide? Would they have been able to stop Wilson before he murdered Reichert and her husband? We don't know and can't know.
pigeonburger
29d ago
Here, online gambling gets away with advertising on TV (which they are not allowed to do) using the stupidest loophole: they advertise a different website (onlinecasino.net) where you can only play with pretend money for free. But if you go to the obvious website (onlinecasino.com) then of course you get into real gambling.
pigeonburger
29d ago
Prime example of the worst argument in the world (non-central fallacy).
When someone says:
It’s easier than ever to kill someone in America and get away with it.
They imply murder, not very justified self-defence.
The article is absolutely rife with that kind of manipulative but technically accurate language. Just under the title
legally sanctioned homicides
Technically true, but has the connotation that it's some "The Purge" shit that's going on.
so-called stand-your-ground laws
They are indeed so called, but the phrasing implies that it's pretense.
The laws are written to protect those who tell authorities they feared for their life.
This one is not even technically accurate: the laws are written to protect innocents who defend themselves. That they incentivize less than innocent people to claim they feared for their life is not the reason they were written. Unless the writer can prove otherwise.
pigeonburger
29d ago
One of the nice things of the technology is that if things get too crowded or expensive on the base chain, you can settle multiple transactions on another smaller and less expensive blockchain and only use the base chain to settle the start and end state of those transactions. From what I understand that's how the Lightning Network works for Bitcoin (I'm more familiar with the Ethereum ecosystem).
When I hear of "migrants dying on rickety boats trying to cross to Europe" I keep wondering if the tally would be positive or negative and by how much if Europeans countries had been sinking the unidentified vessels with unlawful intentions approaching their coasts right from the start. Sometimes, real mercy is harshly disincentivizing bad and dangerous behavior.
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