pusher_robot
PLEASE GO STAND BY THE STAIRS
No bio...
User ID: 278
pusher_robot
PLEASE GO STAND BY THE STAIRS
5mo ago
The operational strategy is that of Blitzkrieg: by forgoing careful, methodical advances in favor of moving as quickly as possible, you incur substantial tactical penalties, but this is more than made up for by disrupting the abilities of your opponents to respond effectively. If your advice were followed, it would give the defenders of USAID ample time to challenge every single cut to the maximum ability possible, likely with multiple consecutive injunctions, as well as reorganize and potentially reroute funding to prevent the next most likely targets. Then, when those programs are cut, even if they have not already been rerouted elsewhere already, they will be well-prepared to immediately mount a defense-in-depth. The effort would be halted in a quagmire of legal proceedings and public propaganda for so long with so many challenges that the public would despair of any change and the political support would evaporate. That's why the only effective strategy can possibly be to cut as much as possible as quickly as possible, then give back only where it is tactically prudent to do so.
pusher_robot
PLEASE GO STAND BY THE STAIRS
1yr ago
It should be apparent by now that Garland was not the middle-of-the-road moderate he was painted as in the media. Nothing stopped Obama from nominating someone more palatable to the Senate.
pusher_robot
PLEASE GO STAND BY THE STAIRS
5mo ago
I think what you are missing is that there are parallel developments which call into question whether the high price is actually inherent to the technology in the way we've been led to believe. The most direct parallel here is space launch. Not very long ago, the price per kilogram to orbit was high enough to make satellites prohibitively expensive for anyone but nation states and extremely well-capitalized corporations. Human spaceflight was all but unthinkable for anyone except national astronautics programs. The conventional wisdom was that this is just the nature of the problem: rockets are expensive and expendable, development requires decades of engineering, and there are no real major technological advancements achievable without new fundamental breakthroughs.
But this turned out not to be the case! SpaceX entered the market and proved that using iterations of well-known designs, hiring the right people and compensating them properly, and leadership pushing hard at schedules and milestones while also driving on costs, you actually could dramatically lower the cost to orbit beyond what anyone thought possible, while still being profitable!
So with this context, there's lots of reasons to be skeptical that the cost and feasibility barriers cited for nuclear power are real. As with liquid-fueled rockets, this is a reasonably well-developed and very well-understood technology. The bulk inputs are concrete and steel, inexpensive things we know how to build with. We don't need fundamental breakthroughs. What we need are industry leaders with the drive to engineer better reactors designed for safety and mass production and for the NRC to streamline the permitting process to something with clear, reasonable requirements. Unlike with rockets, we unfortunately also need reform in the building permitting processes that are also used to block or delay every other major infrastructure project, but I don't think that's an impossible dream.
So, your interlocutors may well believe that the cost factor, as real as it is today, not be inherent to the technology, and that we have everything we need to unlock the capability to manufacture and deploy nuclear power facilities as quickly and cheaply as combustion turbines, if only the right combination of leadership and policy falls into place.
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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
PLEASE GO STAND BY THE STAIRS
2yr ago
Given a historically bipartisan-ly corrupt system, how do you begin enforcing the rules without appearing to play favorites?
Easy - you do so in a way that disadvantages yourself voluntarily. If your counterparty continues to defect anyway, you take an L, but that's really the only way to break the cycle. I actually thought the Trump administration coming to power and then legally completely laying off both Hillary and everyone else in the previous administration was a significant de-escalation, given this represented a substantial political climbdown from the election. For better or worse, it wasn't reciprocated.
pusher_robot
PLEASE GO STAND BY THE STAIRS
2yr ago
This is basic game theory. In any iterated model, fairness matters, whether it's sports, trade negotiations, or political hardball.
pusher_robot
PLEASE GO STAND BY THE STAIRS
2yr ago
If we're going to demolish civil rights, why don't we start by reinstating stop-and-frisk, and see what effect that has on the crime rates? Maybe actually lock up felons in possession?
I'm not willing to countenance a massive reduction in rights when lesser reductions are taken off the table purely in the interest of racial balancing.
pusher_robot
PLEASE GO STAND BY THE STAIRS
18d ago
Then who makes money from the food industry.
When margins are low but volume is high you can still make good money. But in a commodity market, economic forces will generally push average profit margin to $0, so it's not surprising that margins are usually low and sometimes negative.
pusher_robot
PLEASE GO STAND BY THE STAIRS
4mo ago
If eating the seed corn causes starvation, why is my belly full?
pusher_robot
PLEASE GO STAND BY THE STAIRS
4mo ago
Charitably, Walsh must be communicating something other than the plain meaning of his words. In this case, he must mean "I don't think the media is covering this enough", or "the media isn't being adequately sympathetic to Tesla".
They are "covering" it in the sense of reporting that it is happening , but not in the same way they would cover it if there was an opposite political valence, e.g. haranguing political leaders to demand accountability or issue groveling condemnatiions, and heavily insinuating wider responsibility to political fellow travelers.
pusher_robot
PLEASE GO STAND BY THE STAIRS
1yr ago
Party in the USA seems like an obvious choice.
- It has USA in the title
- It's at least somewhat positive about the USA in the lyrics
- It's singable and upbeat
- The other major theme is parties, which are also popular
pusher_robot
PLEASE GO STAND BY THE STAIRS
2yr ago
The first can be disregarded, as it was an obvious joke. If he had actually intended to ask a foreign enemy for political help, he would have done it secretly, they way Ted Kennedy did with the Soviet Union in 1984. As for the second, I dispute that "avoid calling elections rigged" has ever been a norm, as you can easily dig up counterexample throughout history. Hillary Clinton herself has repeatedly suggested that Trump's victory was rigged by the Russians, and as was pointed out to you, both of Bush's elections had their authenticity repeatedly and vigorously called into question. Stacy Abrams has practically made a cottage industry out of challenging the legitimacy of her gubernatorial loss, to widespread acclaim and media adulation. So, if one were to posit that such a norm did exist, it would have to be heavily gerrymandered to exclude all these examples.
The actual norm is that losing candidates do not challenge the transition of power with force, but of course Trump didn't do that, so that's not helpful to criticizing him.
pusher_robot
PLEASE GO STAND BY THE STAIRS
2yr ago
(c) requires a "disaster area" declaration in connection with a national emergency, which is a different thing with different consequences.
pusher_robot
PLEASE GO STAND BY THE STAIRS
2yr ago
I know what anti-racism is, and Tolkien saying “I have the hatred of Apartheid in my bones” fits.
No, that's being "not racist." Totally different than anti-racist. A "not racist" person believes in color blindness and treating people equally and putting the responsibility for differential outcomes on the individual. An anti-racist person believes in structural racism and fighting it by treating people differently in order to compensate. Where is the evidence that Tolkien acknowledged the existence of structural racism? Where is the evidence that he ever advocated or personally gave special dispensation to URM in order to counteract the effects of structural racism?
I think it's reasonably plausible that Tolkien was not racist, but I don't see much evidence that he was anti-racist.
pusher_robot
PLEASE GO STAND BY THE STAIRS
4mo ago
You're just dealing with a catastrophic loss of trust, driven by I think mostly Covid and woke ideological excess. That puts this stuff in the same category as public restrooms and park benches: it sure was nice when we lived in a society where we could have these things without them being abused and ruined for everyone.
pusher_robot
PLEASE GO STAND BY THE STAIRS
7mo ago
Isn't the through-line that connects these things together just good, old-fashioned Gnosticism? The religious view that the material world is evil and that the subjective relgious experience is primary is all that is needed for to connect propensity to suicide, disgust with the material world, obsession with purity and disease, and antinatalism.
There might be some psychological root to that as well, given that it seems to pop up many times through history, or some kind of philosophical prion that warps the perception of reality of anyone who comprehends it.
pusher_robot
PLEASE GO STAND BY THE STAIRS
8mo ago
This is the wages of identity politics, unfortunately.
pusher_robot
PLEASE GO STAND BY THE STAIRS
1yr ago
Despite those restrictions, under the current numbers Biden would be required to use the authority.
Or else what?
pusher_robot
PLEASE GO STAND BY THE STAIRS
1yr 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
PLEASE GO STAND BY THE STAIRS
1yr ago
I think the writing overall was better enough that it made for a satisfying watch even if you disagreed with the messaging. I think often about the TNG episode First Contact. In this episode, the crew is making covert overtures to an alien world with no prior knowledge of the existence of aliens about joining the Federation, which is fanatically opposed by Krola, an alien minister who is a clear conservative stand-in: suspicious, paranoid, religious, xenophobic, cruel, and fanatical. We the viewers know he is wrong in everything: we have prior knowledge that the Federation is benevolent, peaceful, and altruistic and that his concerns are groundless. But at the end of the episode, the leader decides that he has a point: the Federation were actually infiltrating them, and the changes they are offering may actually be destructive to the society they have. He rejects their offer, at least for a while, and they leave.
The intended message is clear: unfortunately, less-progressive attitudes have cost this society a chance to join the glorious future, and this is an parable about how conservative attitudes in contemporary society hold back the glorious future depicted in the show. But the writing is intelligent enough to see that there are both benefits and costs to any change, and actually gives their villains an in-episode win while still promoting their message. That's good writing. That makes an episode enjoyable to watch, even if you think the intended message is wrong or not a good parable.
pusher_robot
PLEASE GO STAND BY THE STAIRS
1yr ago
We talk a lot on this board about dangerous precedent. Letting an interest group invalidate an election by storming the legislature is particularly bad.
We allow protestors to storm government buildings and interfere with proceedings all the time with little or no legal response. This seems like special pleading to me.
pusher_robot
PLEASE GO STAND BY THE STAIRS
2yr ago
If they had wanted to be maximally aggressive, they would have done so 2 years ago, not given him so many chances to make the problem go away.
That completely ignores the political benefits of the timing. I just can't take seriously any strictly legal analysis that ignores the political impacts.
pusher_robot
PLEASE GO STAND BY THE STAIRS
25d ago
I don't think they are especially angry, but older liberal women especially seem to have an unfortunate tendency to speak publicly as though they are talking to children and struggling to make themselves understood, rather than struggling to persuade. Maybe this is a factor of mistake theory vs. conflict theory, but I think it really annoys people, like trying to make yourself understood to a foreigner by speaking English, louder and slower.
pusher_robot
PLEASE GO STAND BY THE STAIRS
3mo ago
Well now they have the option of becoming women.
This is completely missing the point. Most people who are not academics do not live in a world of intellectual imagination, they live in a world full of practical concerns, and these questions need to be boiled down into yes/no policies, procedures, and judgment calls. When a teenager with a penis demands to use the girls locker room, you cannot handwave the issue and appeal to imagination! Do Democrats understand that they are running for control of the government, and not the English studies department?
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