pusher_robot
PLEASE GO STAND BY THE STAIRS
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User ID: 278
pusher_robot
PLEASE GO STAND BY THE STAIRS
14hr ago
Wouldn't you rather die in a war?
pusher_robot
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6d ago
Despite those restrictions, under the current numbers Biden would be required to use the authority.
Or else what?
pusher_robot
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6d ago
The case of MIT having to delete open-access free knowledge for lack of being able to cost-justify captioning everything soured me greatly on the law, and was probably a major red pill for me in my life as it opened my eyes to the massive amount of ordinary altruistic good-doing that is suppressed by government bureaucracy and regulation, seemingly intentionally.
pusher_robot
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4d ago
In most cases, nobody. Bureaucrats have made obtaining legal remedies so time-consuming that, if you can't make do with private arbitration, it's almost always better to just cut your losses and walk away from a broken deal. But in the business world, reputation matters - if you fail to honor your agreements, you are choosing exile from much of the world of profitable enterprise.
pusher_robot
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5d ago
Last year or so I've it seems like I've had more bronchitis than I've ever had in my life combined, but I also know I'm not alone among my friends, family, and coworkers on this, so I think it's just something going around. And around and around.
pusher_robot
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8d ago
Or you can put them through the wringer so they'll think better next time.
I'm not too sure it works like that.
pusher_robot
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12d ago
We used to be a proper nation.
pusher_robot
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29d ago
The white woman/black man "pairing" as you put it is not, as far as I am aware, a particularly new concept
That this is the most common or ideal pairing is definitely a new concept.
pusher_robot
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11d ago
Sure, but by the same logic the current ban is no big deal either, because if lab meat turns out to be highly demanded, the law will probably be repealed anyways.
pusher_robot
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10d ago
Human tongues are pretty sensitive, they can pick up very tiny differences in texture and taste.
Well aktshually, the sense of taste is rather gross, with the tongue only really being able to detect basic aspects of salt, sweet, bitter, sour, and umami, and the vast majority of what people would consider flavor, including all the subtleties, are from olfactory sensing. That's why if you hold your nose it's difficult to tell the difference between an apple and an onion.
It doesn't affect your point at all. I just thought it was interesting.
pusher_robot
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28d ago
Your use of scare quotes struck me as snarky, and you very much did not understand or failed to address the argument being made, which was entirely about a pattern of behavior and the disproportionate representation. The hostility was, I think, a perception that you rather deliberately missed the point.
pusher_robot
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1mo ago
And "being vulnerable" can, and often does, involve nothing more.
pusher_robot
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5mo ago
I've found the recent imbroglio with Congress v. the University Presidents pretty interesting due to the somewhat conflicting reactions I've had and just wanted to post some thoughts.
For those not aware, the Presidents of Penn, MIT, and Harvard recently appeared before at a Congressional committee on the subject of antisemitism on campus. Somewhat unexpectedly, the video of the hearing went somewhat viral, especially the questioning of Rep. Elise Stefanik, who repeatedly asked point-blank if calling for the genocide of Jews would be a violation of the campus code of conduct, to which all the Presidents gave evasive answers. The entire hearing is actually worth watching, at least on 2x speed.
Some of my thoughts:
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Rep. Stefanik has a trial lawyer's skill for cross-examination. Her questioning was simultaneously obviously loaded and somewhat unfair but also dramatic and effective at making the respondent look bad. However, I wish she would have focused more on the obvious hypocrisy of claiming to only punish speech that effectively is unprotected by the First Amendment, pointing out some of the more obvious cases where they elevated things like misgendering or dog-whistling white supremacy to "abuse" and "harassment" while refusing to do the same for genocide advocacy. In fairness however, other representatives did ask questions along those lines, though not nearly as effectively.
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The University presidents were either woefully unskilled or badly coached on how to handle hostile questions like this. They gave repetitive, legalistic non-answers and declined to offer any real explanation of their underlying position or how to reconcile it with other actions taken for apparently viewpoint-related reasons. Stefanik was obviously getting under their skin, and their default response to grin back while answering like Stefanik was a misbehaving child was absolutely the wrong tactic. The Penn President came across so poorly that she felt she had to post a bizarre follow-up video to almost-apologize for not appearing to take it seriously while at the same time implying without really saying that calling for genocide might be harassment.
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Their performance was especially frustrating because they were taking a position that I basically support: that the University will not police opinions, even terribly offensive ones, but will police conduct and harassment. It's not that difficult a position to explain or defend on basic Millian principles, but they couldn't or wouldn't do it. Granted, Stefanik would probably have cut them off if they tried, but they didn't try. They didn't use their time during friendly questioning to do so, and they still haven't. I want to support them in an effort to actually stake out that position. But--
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It's hard not to think that the reason they haven't is because they don't believe it. Actions speak louder than words, and there have been a number of cases of Universities, even these specific ones, taking action against people for harmful "conduct" or "harassment" when the conduct in question is actually just expounding an offensive opinion. "Safety concern" has also been a ready justification for acquiescing to heckler's vetoes against disfavored speakers. I simply don't believe that they believe their policy requires them to allow hateful speech against Jews. I think they are lying, and that makes me want to not support them.
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The episode seems to have especially impacted what I'll call normie Jews, who are reliably blue-tribe but not radically woke. On the one hand, I think they have a legitimate grievance against the hypocrisy of how the code of conduct policies are interpreted for some opinions vs. arguable antisemitism. On the other hand, I think it's bad policy to not be able to make antisemitic arguments ever, even if maintaining civility. I don't actually believe that hate speech is violence, even antisemitism, and I don't support their movement to make antisemitism a per se violation. On the other, other hand, the cause of knocking down the prestige of the Ivies and exposing their rank hypocrisy might be worth allies of convenience. On the other, other, other hand, as a SWM I feel like the prisoner in the gallows in the "First time?" meme. You have a grievance at their hypocrisy, but I have a grievance at your hypocrisy. Most normie Jews have had no complaints at all about woke people saying similar or worse things about "white people." Some of those woke people were themselves Jews, and I suspect that if the universities capitulate, it will be by making Jews a special protected class, which would further from the outcome that I want. I've had a superposition of all these reactions going on.
pusher_robot
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28d ago
Right, but you wouldn't know this from mass media, which misrepresents this reality to a fairly extreme degree.
pusher_robot
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28d ago
Charity is in order, but I think it's fair to say that George's comment is very easy to read as sarcastic and strawmannish, even if that was unintentional.
pusher_robot
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1mo ago
LetsEncrypt only issues domain validation certs. They do not issue code signing certs, and they are not interchangeable.
pusher_robot
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21d ago
Since always. Even in the modern day when a system will easily have 16-32 GB of memory, that's 10% (or 20%) of the entire system! It's not remotely acceptable for a single app to take up that much memory.
Disagree. RAM exists to be used. There are lots of performance reasons for trading off memory utilization with CPU processing and storage IO, and a complex program which is a primary use case for a PC should make those tradeoffs in favor of more RAM utilization unless operating in a memory-constrained environment.
pusher_robot
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5mo ago
People stop thinking 'trans' is a thing and it's illegal to call someone by different pronouns than they were born with?
People stop thinking 'trans' is an identity and instead an unfortunate mental illness. Relatedly, mental illnesses generally are viewed as undesirable, both practically and socially.
We go back to having white men be 70% of characters in all entertainment media, and another 25% are white women with zero character traits beyond 'sexy and horny for the main character'?
I would settle with characters roughly in proportion to population, as opposed to the gross over-representation of minorities we see today. In particular, race-swapping characters and even historical figures would require justification beyond "representation matters". Media that appeals to characteristically male fantasies should be permitted to exist on its own terms without its creators being subject to harassing accusations of sexism.
We all agree that actually women and minorities are genetically more stupid and incapable than white men, and stop giving them jobs that earn more than a subsistence wage?
We agree that differences exist and that unequal outcome is not itself proof of discrimination. We explicitly reject equal outcomes as a reasonable policy goal.
pusher_robot
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3mo ago
If they're telling the truth, I've seen no explanation for why they've refused to cooperate with election authorities.
One possible explanation is that they don't believe the election authorities wish to cooperate with them in good faith. For example, look at what cooperation with the FBI got John Paul Mac Isaac: they sandbagged the case, seized his property and refused to give it back, tried to deny claims that he was cooperating with them, and tried to intimidate him into silence.
pusher_robot
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2mo ago
This already exists in the form of, e.g., Unitarian Universalism. It has not been hugely popular. I think there are a couple of reasons for this that similar proposals generally run into as well.
First, its teachings aren't different enough from intuitive "be nice" ethics to have any point. People who even think about the idea of ethical living generally do not need such basic levels of guidance, which makes the enterprise little more than a social club. But demanding more is too exclusionary or too "irrational", and therefore left to the other churches. I think that being exclusionary in at least some ways is critical to fostering a bond and creating a sense of actual belonging.
Related to this, the entire idea of religiosity without contradicting material existence is oxymoronic and counterproductive. The thing that people with a religious void feel they are missing is mystery, an insistence that there are some things that are beyond our comprehension, that are above and beyond us, forever. The peace that religion offers is from knowing that you don't have to think about it or justify it, you know and believe it without thinking. You cannot replicate the things that religion offers without offering undoubtable truth, but this is something that materialists cannot really bring themselves to do.
Another problem is that organizations without an unshakable grounding in text or canon will be highly vulnerable to entryism and taken over by activists. We saw this precise thing play out already in the Atheism movement, which tore itself apart when activists started trying to add political planks to the Atheism belief framework. Wishy-washy "be excellent to each other" churches will quickly succumb to the exact same issues simply because activists are more motivated than people who are there to sing hymns and pat each other on the back about how moral and ethical they are.
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The size of the Supreme Court shall be permanently fixed at 9 members. All Presidents are guaranteed one appointment per term. If there is no vacancy during the term, then the President may vacate any single judge to create a vacancy at the conclusion of the Presidential term. If there is more than one vacancy, the President may appoint additional interim justices who will automatically be vacated at the start of the next Presidential term. [EDIT] The Senate may veto permanent appointments by a two-thirds majority. Interim appointments may not be vetoed.
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The House of Representatives shall be expanded to 1,000 members, with additional districts being added proportionally. The House of Representatives must conduct its business in a way that allows members to participate without being present in the chamber. Members shall be required to maintain residency in their district, spending no less then 50% of the calendar days per year there.
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Birthright citizenship shall be granted only to children where at least one biological parent is a citizen or resident having legally remained in the country continuously for a period of at least 3 years. Children may have no greater than two biological parents.
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The non-state district of Washington, D.C. shall be formally dissolved and the land de-annexed to the original states from which it was obtained. Congress may designate property within the current district to remain federal enclaves immune to state jurisdiction.
pusher_robot
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2mo ago
But a lot of similarly brainless beat-em-up action movies have been released with women leads over the years, often with better objective craft and quality overall, and male audiences have generally rejected all of them.
Like what?
There are a lot of misses, but I'd guess that most of them are due to a dynamic where the producers start out with the goal of making an action movie that women will be interested in watching. They then start my casting a lead woman and usually other supporting women, but also change it in other ways such as making these women hypercompetent, degrading the other male characters, or focusing on themes and topics that would be of particular interest to women specifically. It's not really a surprise when men turn out to be less interested in these movies that are after all not for them.
pusher_robot
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27d ago
Even if that would mean a Russian victory?
pusher_robot
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3mo ago
He's funny
I think that a higher court could issue a Writ of Mandamus requiring them to apply the law as directed. Defiance of that would lead to contempt of court and jail time.
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