DirtyWaterHotDog
No bio...
User ID: 625
DirtyWaterHotDog
8mo ago
“You can't keep snakes in your backyard and expect them only to bite your neighbors. You know, eventually those snakes are going to turn on whoever has them in the backyard.” ― Hillary Dawg Clinton to Pakistan
Trump and his lackeys have fed conspiracy theories for a full decade, which are now coming back to bite them in the ass.
It's a familiar story. The radicalization of Bangladesh and the Maldives are examples from the last two years. You can't give ammunition to the crazies and then be surprised when the crazies start shooting (figuratively and literally).
The deep state isn't some nefarious ingroup. It's a useful umbrella term to capture the emergent ideology of DC's upper-middle-class bureaucracy. But that’s it. It personifies the incompetence inherent in all bureaucracy. It is as faceless as it is boring. However, Trump's rendition of the deep state is akin to a singular eldritch horror that seeks to destroy all that we hold dear. In this narrative, the deep state is held responsible for all of America's problems, and Trump is heralded as the savior.
Of course the crazies ate it up. And given Trump's recent behavior, of course they're turning against him.
It's a uniquely American problem. High trust is usually synonymous with the first world. High trust and civic sense drive efficiencies that help the first world stay ahead. First-world Europeans and East Asians do not have this deep-rooted suspicion towards authority. Even functioning third-world nations have sweeping rations and welfare (low quality as it may be) to help with survival. So, the citizenry retains a base level of goodwill towards institutions.
America, since its inception, may be the only first-world country that's remained low-trust. The Second Amendment and the union-of-states structure start things off with suspicion between smaller organizations and national organizations. As time went on, you got the Wild West, stranger danger, dilapidated inner cities, and more recently, drug addiction-driven homelessness. Can't trust anyone. Usually, this would be unstable. But America has so much money that it brute forces its inefficiencies away. The entire American debt and insurance industry is propped up as a band-aid solution for all the missing trust.
In such a zeitgeist, violent conspiracy nuts become a unique failure mode for American society. Somewhere along the way, these kinds of conspiracy nuts are beaten down into compliant citizens. But not here. The country feeds this distrust, through its scriptures and decentralization. Now the nuts are crazier than ever, they have guns, and they're pointing to the source of their distrust: national leaders. With the disempowerment of pacifying institutions such as mainstream media and traditional churches, the nuts continue spiraling. America is dry tinder, and Trump is a whole-ass blowtorch. For the sake of this nation, I hope he loses and quietly fucks off to Mar-a-Lago for good.
DirtyWaterHotDog
10mo ago
I tell my friends that the first priority as a cyclist is to survive
This is my primary motto as a cyclist. Taking over footpaths, taking the full lane, using industrial parking lots, driving in the wrong direction on a residential street, rather than the right way on the main road.....what have you. If it is illegal, go sue me. My life matters more. I love grade separated bike lanes as much as the next guy. When the system enables it, I am every bit a law abiding (non) citizen. But drawing some ink to separate me and massive cars is not enough. In such a case, I'm going to do what I must to survive.
Half-assed efforts towards bike lanes are more dangerous than not having them. It creates a false sense of security. The scariest are right turns where the bike lane abruptly ends and turns into a lane for cars. I also dislike fake bollards, which are merely cosmetic. If you're going to erect a pole, I want it to be solid metal. This is my experience in SF. Lots of bike lanes, but too exposed to multi-lane traffic. Narrow single lane 25 mph streets are my favorite. Don't need a bike lane. I'll do my normal 12-15 mph and the cars can follow behind. Traffic calming measures work better than bike lanes or helmets.
killed by a drunk driver
More than lack of bikes, this is North America's biggest problem.
Bikers, public transit & pedestrians all suffer equally, as US & Canada coddle car drivers beyond every reasonable limit. Drunk driving is still the best way to kill someone in the US. No punishment. Blind old people get licenses. 17% of the US has substance abuse issues, and all of them are driving 24x7. The US has no way for drunk people to get home other than spend $50 taking an uber back. So instead, people roll the dice.
Speed limits are 65 mph, but family cars can accelerate to in 4 seconds. Why? You can cross 200 mph in family cars. Why ? It's the only country in the world where motor vehicle deaths are going up, even as cars get overwhelmingly safer. Why ? Pedestrian death numbers look like a genocide is going on. WTF ?
The government tries to hide the 2 types of deaths they're most ashamed of (drug abuse and car crashes) into 1 category : "Unintentional injuries". A category that covers more deaths than almost all the other categories COMBINED.
The US spends $400b/yr on heart disease & cancer treatment, just to increase the lifespan of geriatrics by a few years. But, the majority of accidental deaths (I consider drug related deaths to be self inflicted) among the not-old (under age 50) are caused by cars. By far, cars steal the most years of anyone's lives in the US. More than cancer or heart disease, combined.
Now, you could eliminate 50% of those deaths, by just doing a half-as-good job as Europe. Yeah, that's how much safer Europe is than the US.
How much would you need to spend ? Let's start with a sensible number. How about as much as we spend on the next 2 diseases : heart disease and cancer : about $200b/yr. Sounds like a large number. But, you could literally stop treating heart disease and spend all that money on reducing car related deaths.....and more Americans would be alive at the end of the year.
But, before we even spend a single dollar on road safety, can we start with the low hanging fruit ? Things we can get for free. I have 3 suggestions:
Qualifier - My suggestions will make some pure blooded Americans angry, but none of these are in violation of the constitution, so there is that.
Speeding - speeding was a factor in 29% of motor vehicle crash deaths
Why can you drive faster than the speed limit ? You have google auto / car play. They know the speed limit. So does the car. Why allow the person to go faster ? Sure, there might be an emergency that warrants it. But if you don't wear your seatbelt, a loud alarm goes off. Let's start there. If you go above the speed limit, then a massive alarm start blaring. Yeah, if your wife is in labor or gangs are chasing you, you can go faster. Surely, the blaring alarm is the least of your worries in this situation.
Same for the upper limit. The national speed limit is 75 mph. Why allow a car to go faster than 90 mph, ever ?
In 2022, 3,308 people lost their lives in crashes involving distracted drivers, and nearly 290,000 people were injured. NHTSA estimates that in 2017, 91,000 police-reported crashes involved drowsy drivers. These crashes led to an estimated 50,000 people injured and nearly 800 deaths.
Gaze tracking is trivial to implement. Why do we allow distracted driving at all ? A simple gaze tracker than tell when a person has zoned out, is using their phone or almost asleep.
About 32% of all traffic crash fatalities in the United States involve drunk drivers (with BACs of .08 g/dL or higher). In 2022, there were 13,524 people killed in these preventable crashes. In fact, on average over the 10-year period from 2013-2022, about 11,000 people died every year in drunk-driving crashes.
I leave the best for last. Drunk drivers are the biggest nuisance, but they have zero repercussions. Why not take away their driving license for a very long time (~5 years) unless they install expensive tracking. "They are poor and can't afford this. They wouldn't be able to work without a car.".....well, that's better than them killing a person. Let's start with getting their cars installed with a permanent dashcam and breathalyzer. Car doesn't start unless you breathe into it and register sober. A simple dashcam is good enough to make it hard to game.
That's it. With these 3 changes, American roads would already be a lot safer. Not just for cyclists, but also pedestrians, other cars and the drunk drivers themselves.
Bicycle lanes are the lowest of the low hanging fruit for many cities. They are cheap, simple, ways to reduce traffic congestion, promote healthy and active living, and protect the lives of cyclists. It is so incredibly frustrating how much of an uphill battle it is to get them built.
I am fully black (orange?) pilled on the matter. Decent public transit, bike infrastructure & pedestrian safety should be table stakes for a functioning urban society. If the government can't make progress on these amenities, then it is a sign of an unserious society.
sufficiently advanced incompetence is indistinguishable from malice.
To me, that's the US traffic agencies right now.
Zoning out a little bit, the rethinking of urban infrastructure is going to be unifying issue for this generation. NIMBYism and cars will be the 2 sacred goats that the youth will try to slay.
Personally, I welcome it. I hate car brained urban Americans and I hate NIMBYs.
Yes, I mean it as a blanket statement with no qualification.
DirtyWaterHotDog
24d ago
"Don't paint the devil on the wall"
For a while now, the Left has made a past time out of calling Israel every bad name under the sun. In contrast to those accusations, Israel has behaved honorably in victory. Over the last century, Israeli moderates have proposed many 2 state solutions despite overwhelming victories in wars that were started against it. They've withdrawn from territories they've won and prisoners of war were treated in line with the western standard. Despite every war being started by the Arabs, the left labels Israel as the evil ones.
More recently, (Sharon) acted with generosity by withdrawing from Gaza in 05. In return they got rewarded with Hamas. Through the Arab spring, Muslim nations performed the worst acts of violence on each other, as the western left cheered on the revolutionaries. During this period, Israel remained a peaceful place for its resident Arabs. Yet, 2 newly empowered enemies emerged with self-professed genocidal intent (Houthis and Hezbollah). They're armed by Iran, who through proxy, attests to the same genocidal intent. Once Iran starts developing nukes, the west once more, tried to extend an olive branch. JCPoA (Iran Nuclear deal) was signed. And once again, this generosity was rewarded by resumed development of nukes. Yet, in the eyes of the western left, Israel remained the evil one.
This is where the the first domino fell. Netanyahu solidified his power because the Israeli left was left with no political space to maneuver in. Israelis hadn't changed, but the clearly rising antisemitism among the western left and its Islamic neighborhood pushed Israelis to vote for the one cynical hawk in town : Bibi. While politics shifted right, the average Israeli remained a normal person. 2012-2023, Israel greatly expanded labor permits so Gazans could work on the Israeli side. (~200k daily cross border workers). At home, things were stable.
Then you got, Oct 23. Frankly, the reaction to the tragedy was despicable. I was shocked by the complete lack of empathy from elite western institutions and a "they had it coming" undertone. I think this broke the average Israeli for good. Imagine if your daughter got raped and murdered. Then your friend says "she had it coming". I know I'd see red. A century of accusations being called the devil. If you're going to be called evil either way, might as well go scorched earth and solve the problem once and for all.
Think about it:
- If Iran's nuclearization is inevitable, then why stop at precise assassinations? Makes more sense to cripple their nuclear infrastructure for good.
- If a ceasefire with Gaza means another Oct 23 in a decade, then why not raze Hamas for good ?
- If the next generation of politicians are going to be antisemitic, then why not conduct major military actions while the boomers are still alive ?
DirtyWaterHotDog
9mo ago
Football player Tyreek Hill
That's a gross mischaracterization. He was Miami's MVP of 2022. It's like not recognizing Zlatan in Sweden.
which isn’t a given
He was in a mclaren. That's a $400k car. So, the officers should've at least known that he was rich.
In Florida, officers have the right to command you to keep the window low enough for (1) communication and (2) officer safety
The officer asked him to keep his window down. And within the next few seconds, he did. The officer had no reason to escalate, drag him down and cuff him with the aggressiveness that they did. The stats for police officers shot from a McLaren is zero, and will stay zero. He puts his window down, then unlocks the car and is stepping out. The office still drags a clearly cooperating suspect onto the floor for no freaking reason. If the officer's life was at risk, then the suspect (Tyreek) would not have unlocked the car, had both hands up and let them grab him.
He is entitled. Yes. But, he was cooperating.
They would have every reason to treat him with precaution because of his domestic violence and assault record, meaning that a concern for officer safety is legitimate despite the subject’s fame
Officers don't have a person's record available off the top of their head.
We don’t want to do that, right? We should treat everyone the same.
Yeah. We don't want random people to be dragged out of their car if they're cooperating. Why did they double jump on him at minute 2:00 ?
Let's not pretend like people are going to be treated the same, ever. Old money families have multiple hit-n-run deaths on their hands. The police politely go to their houses and ring bells. So if you're rich, the system clearly treats you better. Set the money aside, and this is still baffling. I was poor and I have been stopped a couple of times for suspected speeding. I am not white, but the police were always nice. They took my license. Did the math. Realized I wasn't really speeding by enough and let me go on a warning. A normal human-human interaction.
Miami is not Baltimore. The police offers are not fighting gangs to death on the daily. Why so much hostility ?
The arrest is fine. That manner of it is, really odd.
that would never be afforded to a white CEO
Are white Americans that blind to how they're treated in the US ? Upper class whites (admittedly coastal) are treated like kings. Their usual attire, demeanor and tone signals authority. And white / coloreds alike fall in line.
I want to avoid making this about race. I'd rather talk about policing at large.
American police aren't dying in the line of action. It is a safe & boring blue collar job; traffic policing in coastal cities is doubly so.
Why so twitchy ?
DirtyWaterHotDog
10mo ago
This is why drivers are resentful of cyclists, at any rate. They're the favoured children at the moment.
Sigh. This is 101 golden-child behavior. If cyclists got 1% of the attention that cars do, you'd have the utopia meme in real life.
separate network of cycle paths
I agree. This + single lane neighborhood streets are the best.
that most people just don't want to arrive at their destination sweaty and/or weather-beaten with helmet hair.
Given the rates of car accidents, helmets are more useful if you're driving than on a bike. I maintain my anti-helmet stance on bikes. Good for kids and long weekend bike-athons. disqualifying for commuting.
want to arrive at their destination sweaty
I bike for a leisurely 5 miles to work everyday. It is no more sweaty than a 1 mile walk. You don't get sweaty unless you live in a swamp. Biking for commutes is interspersed with transit. Even in biking utopias, the majority never bikes more than 5 miles per trip. And I'm not even fit.
This is why drivers are resentful of cyclists, at any rate
Good. I've tried to make drivers see the total win-win that transit + bikes are for drivers and bikers alike. But I'm spent. Our lot are officially at war.
may thy
knifedifferential chip and shatter
America isn't poor. America is expensive. At minimum wage, you're already richer than the median individual in a European country.
Poverty is easier to eradicate than many other social-ills, because poverty is tangible. Food, shelter, and clothing.
At face value, costs for all 3 are relatively consistent across economies with different purchasing powers. The US as fairly cheap groceries1 for a developed economy) and fast fashion costs the same around the world.
Shelter too is cheap. The US has the most abundant land and houses can be purchased pre-assembled from home-depot to mitigate labor costs.
Wait NO. Shelter isn't cheap.......which brings me to what's the central cause of poverty in this nation : Landlords.
Crucially, many wealthy people — including landlords, lobbyists and middle-class homeowners
Hearing people talk causes of poverty is like hearing about medieval crimes of "Raping and Pillaging". Yeah no, if you were raping, then no one really cares if you also pillaged after. Combining them into a phrase, almost makes raping sound acceptable.
Don't run away from the uncomfortable single group to blame for this. Let's stop caring about 'landlords AND'. Instead let's focus on the landlords themselves. Some landlords are also middle-class salary-men and sometimes they are an investment company like Blackrock, but their secondary identity is irrelevant. When they are a landlord, they are all the same. Landlords the worst kind of burden on the economy. They get paid for hoarding and running what's effectively an extortion racket by limiting where you can build in this country : "pay me whatever I charge, or go homeless. No, you can't manufacture the commodity by yourself." Economically-productive renters lose all purchasing power, and landlords are effectively out of the labor force as they sit on top of feudal-dues extracted from their little 2-bedroom colony. Communists have the worst solutions, but no one points out problems quite as well as a Communist.
The housing extortion racket only works when housing is limited. Let people build and you'll see poverty drop like we've never seen before.
Nothing is entirely monocausal, so I'll do a quick rundown of secondary needs of poor people, how they are and aren't met. (or the pillaging section, as I'd call it)
-
Bad infrastructure = highways only = cars are needs = At least $5k+ $400/month-per-person just to live life vs 100$/month for top-tier subway systems. That's a lot of extra money for poor people.
-
Schools - are free
-
Hospitals - This is a big one, but a bigger topic for another day. (tl;dr - Doctors are evil.)
-
Safety - American small towns are remarkably safe. The lack of safety seems localized to certain communities, than tied poverty as a whole.
-
Wifi ? - Wifi is cheap enough
-
Employment - Unemployment is so low in the US, that the fed can't get people to lose jobs even as it tries its hardest.
DirtyWaterHotDog
7mo ago
Speaker of the House Mike Johnson has said that the policy of the House is that women's restrooms are for women, and men's restrooms are for men
Why is this such an issue? Restrooms have stalls. I couldn't tell what gender was in one if I tried.
I hear that women tend to change & reveal more skin in women's locker rooms. In men's restrooms, we pretty much do their business and leave. From that perspective, the men's locker room is more 'gender neutral'.
Yes, it was a woke rallying-cry. But in 2024, it's become a tier-1 losing issue.
I've seen several prominent-ish democrat spokespeople openly blame transgender people for the 2024 presidential loss.
AOC is the democrat's weathervane. She's scarily opportunist and makes radical position changes right before a movement runs out of gas. She broke rank with the squad on Israel right before the campus protests turned ugly. She recently removed pronouns from her twitter bio. It's Joever.
As for people being naked in locker rooms, I'd be happy to see the practice die out. Trans people or not. I don't wanna be looking at random dick and balls. It's the old men who're the worst. Dude, don't spread your legs on the bench to clean your saggy balls, and what the fuck's up with being naked while having socks on !! Please No !
DirtyWaterHotDog
10mo ago
It's not hard. Tim is a guy everyone knows. Almost Forrest Gump-esque in his sincerity. Join the military, teaches at a school, coaches a football team and then runs for office. Minneapolis is one of the few non-coastal American cities with a positive storyline from the last decade. Dude has made no money from politics, loves his kids, is religious and just kinda does his thing.
You know when people say, "I'd vote for a random dude off the street, rather than a slimy Harvard educated lawyer."........ Tim is the random guy off the street.
In response to riots in Minnesota, Walz partially activated the Minnesota National Guard on May 28, and fully activated it on May 30. President Trump reacted to Walz's actions by saying that he was "very happy" and that he did "fully agree with the way [Walz] handled it … what [the Minnesota National Guard] did in Minneapolis was incredible". Trump called Walz an "excellent guy".
Even Trump seems to like the guy (I know wikipedia is obviously biased, but the events happened)
Kamala is clearly going for a "neapolitan ice cream" sort of campaign. She needed an inoffensive flavor combination. She picked an inoffensive VP candidate.
I feel bad for JD Vance
I don't. You saw it with Bloomberg, and you see it with Vance. The typical executive types are too used to talking to intelligent people. Politics is a craft. Like standup, you need to work your audience. Meet them at their level. Vance is like people I meet in my peer group. The main problem with Vance is he's too smart to work for Trump. He can't play a wise-cracking used car salesman because he isn't one. He was only chosen because of the paypal mafia's outside support. He knew what he was getting into. Should've known better.
DirtyWaterHotDog
1yr ago
Anchor babies, birthright citizenship, all of that must go.
This shows a shallow understanding of the US immigration system.
Here are the common ways you can get a visa -> green card -> citizenship:
- Illegal immigration -> anchor baby -> wait 25 years -> Green card (400k? closest thing to stats)
- Refugees (150k/yr) (relatively low by historic standards)
- Lottery (50k/yr) (constant number since 1995.)
- High skilled visas -> green card (Green card sponsorship is rare unless you're making 6 figures) (300k/year)
- Marriage and minor dependents (600k/yr)
So which of these do you disapprove of, how much lower should each of them be ?
No one likes illegal immigration, so that's a moot point. The rest seem to be more so about identifying legitimate cause (actual marraige, real refugees, real need for immigrant labor) than the nature of the visa itself.
DirtyWaterHotDog
1yr ago
To add to this, the Spanish women's team was already very unhappy with the Spanish federation.
They were in open protest before the world cup, and won by ignoring their coach's instructions and with half the 1st team 'exiled' from the squad.
Vilda and the federation have been under fire for nearly a year over failing to create a professional environment for the team. A group of 15 players sent individual but identical emails in September 2022 asking not to be called up until certain changes were made, including Golden Ball winner Aitana Bonmati. The players' complaints reportedly included insufficient preparation for matches, including travel arrangements and a limited amount of staff, as well as coaches who restricted their freedom during camps.
The federation and players held discussions last winter and spring over improving conditions, which led three of the 15, plus three who publicly supported them but did not send the emails, to eventually be included in the World Cup squad.
The federation continues to back Vilda despite the complaints, with president Luis Rubiales saying on Thursday that the coach has "forgotten the people … who wanted to destroy him." The official account for Spain's women's national team also posted a photo of Vilda kissing the World Cup trophy after Sunday's final with the caption "Vilda in."
They won despite Rubiales (who put his weight behind the coach). He was the villain in the story even before the kiss. (Yes, the team was that absurdly strong. Sort of like a USA NBA team)
The previous post annoyed me. It was written by someone who went looking for a culture war angle, and came out with the least charitable interpretation of the whole thing, just so it looked like SJWs had gone too far.
Some men deserve to cancelled. (or at least fired for gross incompetence)
DirtyWaterHotDog
1yr ago
If you want to drop one kid off at one activity, the other kid off at a different one, get a week's worth of Costco, and then pick them both up, while changing at least one of the activities every six months, you simply can't beat the car.
It's a self-fulfilling prophecy.
Suburban homes have space. Suburban homes have large cars. Suburban homes find groceries to be detour. Costco only exists because large cars & large houses allow families to do groceries in bulk. It's negatives (inability to provide fresh food, fresh bread, 1 day expiry or non-standard items) are also unnoticeable, because you can't get those things in a suburb anyway. You need to drop off kids to school because walking and biking are either unsafe or impossible on suburban roads. The idea of letting kids go to their activities themselves is so impossible to consider, that the car then becomes a solution to a problem of its own creation.
It's like saying that Pandas & superior to Orcas because because they do well in Chinese captivity. Well, the entire Chinese captivity system was an unnatural system created to facilitate the conservation of Pandas. If you are going to compare to animals, then maybe evaluate them outside of a system hand-crafted to benefit one of them.
Why would someone want to solve suburban problems in a city. A city should not have suburban problems at all, emphasis on 'should'.
American suburbs appear great, because honestly, American cities are forced to suck. Even the best ones : 'NYC and Boston' have to be the unrivalled centers of the world to rise above the quicksand that is the American system. Other cities, are straight up terrible. Cities should have city advantages. If the streets are unsafe despite sufficient density and transit, then nothing is going to convince parents to let their kids be independent. If residential and commercial areas are zoned far away from each other, then you can't ever grab groceries 'fresh on the way back'.
What we really talk about when we talk about suburbs is social climbing. the main factor for where people live is the human environment - family, jobs, schools, crime.
Yes-ish. Suburbs are perceived to be higher status because it allowed people to have big families, better schools & lower crime. But, what about suburbs enables any of those 3 things ?
Safety : There is safety in numbers and it hard to commit to the most common crime (car crashes) if you aren't interacting with cars as much. NYC has a lower homicide rate than the median American suburb. American cities are only unsafe because American city police does not enforce crime the same way suburban police would.
Schools : Wealthy places have better schools. When cities are able to self-select for wealthy people like suburbs (Somerville, Newton, Brookline), they have great schools. If anything, cities have access to the best talent and should have better schools as a result. Boston Latin, Stuy High and Bronx Science are 3 of the best schools in the country and they're all in big cities despite much lower property taxes.
Big families : This one is tricky. In an era when most people won't be having more than 2 kids, I can't see why a house needs to be bigger than a 4 bedroom apartment. If anything, a safe city allows your kids to be independent and therefore allows the parents to have more kids without a proportional increase in required work. It is also much easier to setup babysitting when your kids can hang out in a large apartment lounge area or a neighbors house in the same building.
And those points are precisely why Americans live in suburbs. All of these benefits of cities are badly realized in most American cities. People would rather live in good suburbs than bad cities.
horror stories from Canadians
I've posted about this extensively on TheMotte. But here it goes again.
Since the 70s, Canada has imported India's lowest-skilled. While Indians were considered model immigrants everywhere else, Canadian-Indians were busy committing 9/11-level terrorist acts. Canadian-Indian bad actors are part of a large web of criminal gangs, human trafficking rings, and drug distribution cartels. Trudeau turbocharged this problem by opening the floodgates. In India, the flight of uneducated and unskilled migrants to Canada was rampant enough to become a meme. Many among us (governments included) warned Canada that these channels were being exploited to facilitate crime. Trudeau did not heed our advice. The outcomes are a result of Canada's stubbornness.
Indian immigrants in other nations do not have the same demographics. They're well-integrated, peaceful, and high-earning versus conservative, uneducated, and of flexible morality. Of course, #NOTMOSTCANADIANS, but you get my point. Projecting Canada's problems with ethnic Indians onto other nations makes no sense, and the statistical differences prove my point (crime, earnings, education).
50% of the extant population in my county was supplemented with Indians like Canada has seen.
Ethnic Indians are 5% of Canada's population.
If the stories of off-the-boat Indians shitting in bodies of water like it's just what you do are true, it's fucked.
You're scared of the bogeyman. These people don't exist.
I have never met an Indian who shits in bodies of water. I've never seen it among people I know in India, let alone outside the country. The kind of Indian who does it can't speak one sentence in English, let alone get a passport or a visa to ever exit the nation. I don't want to laugh at their misfortune. Street-shitters are a desperate and downtrodden class of people. They're barely tolerated in AC restaurants in India, let alone a foreign nation.
"You can't make me go back! Anything but that!" attitude of second-generation Indian-Americans is profound.
Ah, I'll leave this for another day. The ABC vs. Chinese or ABCD vs. Indians conversation is strongly colored by insecurity, ungroundedness, and colonial mindsets. For now, I'll say that it has little to do with their dislike of India. India (and developing nations in general) run on survivalist mentalities based around class systems. Second-generation Indians are insecure about their place at the top of the survivalist-Indian hierarchy. Their actions should always be viewed with that fact in mind.
And then there is the shameless nepotism and scamming. It's more or less known that if you make the mistake of putting an Indian in charge of hiring, suddenly your company is hiring only Indians. That most resumes from Indians and credentials from institutions that service mostly Indians are completely fake and can't be trusted. I've seen repeated stories out of Canada that local education institutions, which have leaned into servicing Indians, have become so overrun with fraud that employers have begun just chucking applications from those institutions in the garbage. Been burned too many times.
You have causality backward. White people are unwilling to work for wages that desperate Indians agree to. This makes it so that the only people who meet the hiring bar and are willing to accept the wages are Indian immigrants. Similarly, Tier 3 Canadian institutions start cash-cow programs with little educational, career, or prestige value. The only kind of person who sees value in such a program is someone with ulterior motives. The program gets fraud-friendly candidates because it’s structured to only draw fraud-friendly candidates.
Detached from the outcome attitude.
While we're exchanging anecdotes, my experience has been the opposite. Doctors back in India are caring, invested, and treat you like a human. I've found American doctors to be cold and impatient.
I've never had an experience where an Indian went one millimeter outside of the minimum of their job description to service a customer.
My experience couldn't be more different. My Indian (and first-gen Chinese) coworkers clearly work harder and produce higher-quality outcomes than the natives. But the natives keep getting rewarded because the company can't afford to lose citizens.
The Viveks of the world speak in broad terms that these Indian workers are just better than me.
Yeah, Vivek felt resentful and hurt in his comments. I don't agree with his comments, but I can see how your average white person would feel attacked by it. Fair enough.
My way of life is disappearing, my culture is being squeezed out, my history is being erased, my co-ethnics aren't reproducing.
Yeah, it has to do with your co-ethnics. Indians (among other first-gen immigrants) are more spiritual, family-oriented, and 90s-American-like than native 2025 Americans. Your complaints are rooted in Gen Z Americans rejecting classically American values. Don’t point to us immigrants. This is all you. If it is any solace, this seems to be a global problem. Everywhere, urban kids of the next generation are rejecting ideas that their 'elders' held close to their hearts. Time is ruthless.
I've seen very little self-awareness from Indians about what they are really fleeing from or what makes them different.
I see your point. For every Indian who seeks integration, there are smart and educated Indians who ghettoize. It's how immigration works. Jews, Italians, Cubans, etc.—they all ghettoized in their first generation. In time, they integrate.
I don’t agree with your Japan analogy, though. America exported every part of its culture for a whole century. It forcefully molded workers at other English-speaking corporations into pseudo-Americans. America is a 'global' phenomenon. Irrespective of the truth, that’s the image it portrays and sells. If immigrants drink the Kool-Aid, then that’s on America for shoving it down our throats. You might argue that this was the doing of the filthy globalists, and it isn’t the will of 'true' Americans. But to me, that just sounds like you saying that you're a powerless normie who is angry about being powerless in their country. If you didn’t want to be flag bearers of globalism for 50 years, then you should've found your way to power and reversed the trend. Even in 2025, Trump may cosplay as a nativist, but he's as global coastal elite as they come.
DirtyWaterHotDog
4mo ago
We need to have a discussion some day about what was the actual bad thing about the Nazis.
It is their preference for out-group-misery over in-group flourishing.
For all their faults, previous govts have never taken this much joy in hurting their outgroup. Bannon doesn't care about the flourishing of white people. He cares that America doesn't facilitate the flourishing of non-whites (non-natives?). Elon clearly cares about empowering his lackeys and winning, more than facilitating a good life for Americans at large.
I agree that Bannon isn't a Nazi. But, I have yet to hear him recommend policies that would facilitate positive change.
- Silicon valley has too many immigrants ? How does he recommend replacing a million of top percentile people America has stolen from the rest of the world ? China managed to keep a few hundred of its geniuses around, and within a few years, they had DeepSeek. If anything, the more productive a team, the more Indian, Russian and Chinese it becomes.
- You're a nativist ? How do you recommend bringing cost-competitive manufacturing back to the US ? Tariffs are clearly making it worse rather than better.
- You're an isolationist ? Why would our allies go along with unilateral sanctions placed by the US on its enemies (China, Iran).
- America is full ? How do you continue growing domestic consumerist demand if fertility rate is below replacement ?
He can point out problems all day. No solutions. No appeal to positive change. No optimism. Just finger pointing and loud gestures.
That's Nazi mentality. Germany can't flourish until the jews are genocided. What fiscal policy will enable a pure-Aryan Germany to flourish ? Who cares. We need to get the jews out first. We'll figure out the big solutions later. Ofc, this mentality horse-shoes quite hard. Bernie, AOC, Stalin & Mao have similar traits, with different outgroups. (with varying degrees of severity)
Centrists look incompetent because nothing happens. But, gridlock can be feature too. Decision by committee means that no one group gets a raw-deal. In a functioning nation like the US (richest country), the govts job is to preserve processes, not uproot them. Drastic actions make more sense in completely broken systems like Ecuador, Argentina or places with no systems like newly independent Singapore.
Now America isn't perfect. Many of its systems are broken and deserve to be disrupted. Healthcare billing is broken. Border enforcement is broken. Accountability for military spending is missing entirely. The zoning and urban planning setups are broken. I have yet to see Elon do anything towards disrupting [1] any of these truly broken American systems. Leads to me suspect that disruptions are chosen with the goal of hurting enemies rather than fixing systems.
[1] I have heard whispers of LVT. That would be a welcome change. I have yet to see anything substantial on it. Until then, my point stands.
When everything is a priority, nothing is a priority. Pick your 2 priorities. 1 short term, 1 long term. Dump everything else. Then pick which matter more. Short or long term. and roll with it.
How I'm thinking about it:
- short term - YIMBY. Build more & clean up cities. (Dems win)
- long term - Freedom of expression. (Dems lose narrowly)
With the supreme court stable & a post-woke zeitgeist, Dems can't move the needle on strongly enshrined freedoms. This will be a 1 term president, with a half-term before mid-terms to get anything done. It won't affect long term change. YIMBYism has finally gained momentum and can have quick impact. So short term it is.
For national elections, I wouldn't waste my breath on a 3rd candidate. Pick a tent. Everything else is theater.
I'd reluctantly vote for Dems in nationals. And then vote for the YIMBYiest (pro housing, clean streets) local candidate, irrespective of their leaning. Couple of years ago, Ann Davidson in Seattle was the right candidate despite being Republican. But in SF, don't think there are any good right leaning candidates.
DirtyWaterHotDog
2mo ago
Temporary victory, but I'll take it. Nice to see pro-transit efforts can't be unilaterally blocked by Trump.
I did only use it to get a list of points that add up to a first world QOL.
The actual value add (the strike throughs) and the core point (Luigi's assassination as major anecdote for America's low-trust-society-ness, America feeling like a developing country) are all mine.
But point taken. Not a lot of 'human' places left on the internet. No point in turning this one into a vanilla slop-fest.
PS: and before I get accused for using Chatgpt, this is the first time I've done that. My point-wise markdown writing style is my own. That chat gpt uses the same style is coincidence.
DirtyWaterHotDog
7mo ago
People hurt themselves with cars, knives, and guns all the time but we allow people to buy those in part because cars, knives, and guns are useful
Exactly, this is a bad idea.
Knives are safe enough, but guns and cars can lead to unintentional harm for both the user and onlookers. They should be regulated.
There can be 3 tiers: over-the-counter (free for all), needs based and testing based.
Pepper ball guns, tazers, and lowest caliber pistols can be over-the-counter. Wilderness communities can get needs-based allocation for larger guns. And hobbyists would have to take demanding tests to qualify for the wider selection.
Cars would come with speed limiters (80mph), limited acceleration (0-60mph 5 secs) and sales be limited to low-ground clearance vehicles of limited size. Tall vehicles like pickup trucks would be approved for those who need them. And those that want to go faster, must qualify for harder driving tests.
It seems excessive, but if you look at road & gun deaths in the US and it makes sense.
DirtyWaterHotDog
10mo ago
This one is Kamala's to lose.
The biggest sign was how quickly the Trump assassination story died down. The second Biden stepped down, he overwhelmed the media cycle and wiped the slate clean on both sides. Ofc, getting the support of everyone other than the crazies really helps. Every institution (left and right) is aligned on putting her in power. Look at Trump's new twitter, it has fully morphed into the caricature that Hillary claimed it was in 2016. (https://x.com/realDonaldTrump).
Kamala has picked a golden retriever of a VP candidate and has managed to be in public life for decades without expressing a substantial opinion. This is useful. It allows a vibes based campaign to flourish. If you have said nothing, they can't attack you. One big scandal from Kamala or Tim can potentially turn the tides, but so far she's been doing well.
Trump camp seems clueless too. Kamala is happy to fight in the dirt with Trump, because she too can have a full debate without saying anything substantial. So much energy was expended painting Hillary, Biden and Obama as evil, that Trump doesn't have much novel angles of attack. On top of that, JD Vance is clearly a terrible VP candidate (as much as us Rationalist types might agree with him). Kamala has avoided the obvious landmines too. She has steered clear of supporting Palestine and immediately stopped talking about the new capital-gains-tax before it could turn scandalous. She was a harsh prosecutor, so the crime angle doesn't work. Kamala has lucked into a pretty defensible position, because she is an uninspiring candidate for democratic primaries. But, her track record is pretty centrist for the generals.
All that being said, the electoral college is surely going to make this one a lot closer than it actually is. (ofc a lot can change between now and nov)
DirtyWaterHotDog
2yr ago
some of these anti-car people could just spend a month actually living in the "car free"
I do, it is amazing. I haven't driven a car once in 2023. I used to have to drive a car everyday on the west coast. I can confidently proclaim that at least all NYC boroughs, Boston (until 2022 MBTA collapse), Mumbai, Madrid, Singapore & Paris can be lived in completely car free.
Note: I have nothing against cars. I literally have an automobile-engineering degree and spent a past life building cars at a big-car co. I love cars, I love road trips and I don't drink just so I can be the happy designated driver. It's just ....... Cars just make no sense as the primary mode of transport in an urban environment. Yeah you can have a car. A fast, spacious and small car. VW Gold R, Model 3 & the Mazda 3 Turbo are better SUVs than SUVs. You just don't need to drive it 99% of the time. Guess what ? The roads are still packed with cars. But now those who NEED to drive can drive, and the rest of us get convenient options.
This can be achieved in smaller towns too. There is high car ownership in college towns (Amherst, Ithaca) and small town New England (Portland Maine), but people still walk around or take transit for most occasions. The car comes out when it's needed.
I can bike, but if I bike I have to carry a 20lb chain with me to lock it
Many major cities now have bike sharing systems around the city which completely eliminates the need to carry your own bike around.
I can walk, but homeless shelters and drug injection sites.
Sounds like Portland, Seattle, SF..... west coast cities are not walkable. They are not even cities. They are dystopian examples of human deterioration. West coast cities are exactly what happens when car culture is unwilling to cede any ground. Not a single wealthy boomer lives in the city core, because highways drop you in the middle of the city core anyway. All 3 of these cities are designed with meeting the needs of car based visitors more than the needs of the residents. And it shows.
The parks are de facto homeless encampments, meaning if I want to take my kids to play, guess where I go? 30 minutes out into the suburbs.
I fully agree with you here. Progressives are idiots. Stringent enforcement of public-safety is first step towards convincing people to move out of cars.
This idea that "boomers like cars and ruined everything by making car centric cities" is absurd and I can only assume is parroted by people who never leave their goon caves.
It is true. They did ruin everything. It's just that it is a self-fulfilling prophecy now. Boomers created the wound and cars were the bandage. So if you ever suggest removal of bandage it gets met with obvious anger. But if you ask for funding to treat the wound itself, it gets treated with confusion and dismissal.
DirtyWaterHotDog
4mo ago
Americans think other nations can read their minds.
After Trump's tantrums, every nation is is questioning their goodwill with America.
Among nations, anti-immigration rhetoric is perceived as xenophobic rhetoric.
America first is seen as an acknowledgement of American transactionality in every partnership.
Philippines is our little brown brothers
This is infantilizing. It has a population and GDP equivalent to Vietnam, a nation to whom America lost its most recent war in the Indo-pacific.
Non-western nations understand that white lives matter more. That's why Ukraine was important. If America is okay with letting whites die in Ukraine, then there are going to be objectively fewer fucks to give when brown nations are in crisis. America's strongest military alliance (NATO) is Trump's hobby horse to beat on. Why would a non-NATO nation be treated any better ?
If China is the to be the next global superpower, it makes sense for Philippines to ally with a natural trading partner next door, rather than their colonial ex-masters on the other side of the world.
DirtyWaterHotDog
10mo ago
The most miserable cities to get around are also the ones with the most car infrastructure (LA, Houston, Atlanta).
This isn't rocket science. Transit is a win-win for car lovers and transit lovers alike.
Cities have finite amount of people. These people have to get to places. Cars occupy the most space per person and transit is more compact. If those people use bikes, buses, trains and footpaths, then they occupy less space. So yes, when car lanes are converted to transit/bike corridors, traffic still goes down. No one benefits from transit as much as those who 'need' to use cars. We have the numbers to prove it. The bike-pilled Dutch happen to have a great driving experience.
Now, transit & biking in most American cities sucks balls. If that's your experience with it, I can understand why it feels horrible.
But, isn't it even a little bit curious that North America is the place where this car-only idea has any uptake ? Everyone else agrees that transit and bikes are good.
It's a bad list, and it keeps getting worse as you go on.
It is an American list meant to make American sports and sportspeople look great. Ah yes, 56/100 are American and 17/100 are from Baseball, a sport that is played by Americans and Dominicans, and the 30x smaller country is somehow better.
From a competitiveness perspective, Tennis and Swimming are nowhere close to (real) Football. Messi is by far the greatest player to have every played football, and also the greatest sportsperson of all time. (not just the 21st century). Unlike every other sports person, Messi was the best player in the world when most players start their careers (~20) and stayed the very best for the next 15 years. Messi (not unlike Gretsky) could be 2 players, and they would be the #1 and #2 greatest players of all time.
When one nation uniformly dominates a sport, then you know that it isn't THAT competitive. Swimming is one such example. I can speak about swimming because I personally know family members who were nationally (one of them was in the US) ranked top-10 swimmers for their age. Either my family is uniquely suited for swimming. Or, they have the 1 trait all my family members share, which is ruthless ladder climbing (Tier 0 tiger moms in my family). Swimming as a sport uniquely rewards hard-work. Which tells you that it is not competitive enough. You can't work hard at soccer and get good. You need to be insanely gifted, then work hard, and that gets you into the 4th tier of English football. Now Phelps' dominance of swimming was large enough, that I'd still give him #2. But, Messi is #1. Speaking of swimming, Ledecky deserves as shoutout for the top 20.
Djokovic - Federer & Nadal having close head-to-heads helps none of them. I wouldn't put any of them on the top 10.
Sports I think shouldn't qualify for more than 1 name:
- F1 & Golf - Billionaires sports. It's like when the Ashes (Cricket) used to be played between lords in England and Australia.
- Winter sports - sorry, it doesn't snow in most of the world or most of the year.
tldr:
- Messi is #1
- Ronaldo in top 10
- Brady, Phelps, Bolt in top 5
- Biles in top 10, Serena wasn't anywhere close to dominating her sport
- Magnus Carlsen should be in top 10, and Chess should be counted as a sport
- WNBA is a joke and shouldn't have a single name.
- Andy Murray is a good lad, but he ain't in the top 100 discussion. Come on
- Heavy weight MMA is likely the hardest sport to stay at the top of. Fedor deserves a top 50 just for that.
DirtyWaterHotDog
1yr ago
Do individuals relations need to be so strongly hyphenated with the zeitgeist. With individual relations, everything is negotiable.
Just talk to them. Make your boundaries known without having an explosion. Tell them in clear words that this behavior is not acceptable. Be ready to erect boundaries if need be. Talk to your wife before you do anything. Ideally, she will take care of it for you.
get his family into heaven
That being said, I struggle to make sense of people who are logical about everything except religion. Not so much about the existence of God or the social technology that is religion. I mean religion as the arbitrary yet oddly specific rituals that can make or break your entry into heaven.
It is one thing to delude yourself for comfort or to believe in the social value of religion. But, to live in a world of Science in 2023 and to think that the specific sub-set of rules outlined by your pastor will get you into "Christian heaven" is some proper hypocrisy. By definition, if these people believe in the power of these specific rituals to get you into heaven, then don't 99% of all living humans go to not-heaven. (hell?). Even if these in-laws are right, then surely a place where 99% of people go after death, can't be THAT bad.
I know, "2005 called, they want their Christopher Hitchens rants back". But still, do these people never reflect on what they believe in ? Even for a moment ?
DirtyWaterHotDog
2yr ago
Fair enough.
landlords have uniform behavior
At this point every new-urbanist has made so many videos about this, that I thought the point was obvious enough. 1 2
"Show me the incentives and I will show you the outcome."
The current incentives force landlords to behave the way they do. If I was a landlord, I'd be a selfish dick too. Afterall, the system actively promotes it.
Doctors are evil
Full disclosure, I am still working on this thought right how. Not entirely sure if I believe it myself or I am trying to be transgressive for the sake of being transgressive.
But my underdeveloped argument goes as follows:
-
Programmers are idiots
-
Status and wealth of a profession is tied to limiting access
-
Doctors by and large populate all medically relevant structures - from hospitals, to NIH, to Medical university depts, to Govt. health secretary roles
-
They have made no effort to make it easier to be a doctor
-
Introducing AI / tech / new ideas / pathways to be a doctor are limited, not because it keeps medicine safer, but because it keeps doctors a rare commodity
-
GPT-4 is already a better doctor than most
-
Lawyers are very similar, but they conceded control on the university side of things, and their profession has lost a lot of prestige and wealth since
-
Programmers are idiots, we make ourselves obsolete, we make it easy to access our profession, we don't gatekeep and then wonder why it is so competitive
-
Doctors are evil, doctors are effective at extracting all value from their profession, even if it means worse healthcare
-
Be like doctors.
-
Selfless people are idiots
White power
/s
Happy Diwali to my man J.D. Vance. In which, a Colored pagan gives white people more reasons to feel superior. Now with conclusive genetic data to back it.
In Scott's 'links for November' he shares:
Curious pattern matchers will find another identical graph in the paper. The intelligence graph coincides perfectly with....drum roll please...... yes, it's white skin and hair color.
Conclusive proof tying whiteness to intelligence! Nazis --> elated, Data --> supported, immigrants --> deported. Don't @ me bro
I thought I was cherry picking. But nope. No other graph superimposes this nicely with intelligence. (other graphs)
I'm surprised white supremacists didn't pounce on this immediately. I don't expect them to read. But still.....
Now what, 2000 more words about a stupid graph ? Yes ! But I'm more interested in trends within the intelligence graph over time, rather than what it means for white faces and blonde hair. The intelligence graph has inflection points which leads me to divide European history into distinct eras based around these points. Let's talk about these eras instead.
Reverse engineering history from kinks in intelligence genomic graphs :
The intelligence graph has a few distinct trend reversals. Those key reversals / phases eye balled with 250 yr tolerance on either side are:
What (spurious?) co-relations can we draw ?
7000 - 4500 BC:
The sharp rise corresponds to the Neolithic expansion. Agriculture spread and Near-East farmers started replacing native hunter gatherers.
3500- 3000 BC:
Sharp drop coincides with the Yamnaya expansion. It is in full swing, going deep into Europe. Big L for Skin heads. Aryans made them stupider.
1500BC - 500 BC:
Steady rise coincides with Bronze age collapse. But, not major genetic changes. This makes sense in context of the white-skin preference graph. It doesn't reflect any major change during that time. Might have been a purely cultural change or noisy data.
500BC - 1200AD steady decline:
I like this one. The Greek and Romans did not perform much population replacement, so the steadiness in genetics is to be expected. Germanic, Viking, Slavic & Celtic people performed some 'population replacement', but there isn’t one inciting genetic factor. On the other hand, This steady decline coincides with the continent’s biggest cultural phenomenon : Christianity. Another L for the skin heads.
1200AD++ steady increase:
Turns out, there's minimal lasting genetic impact owing to mongols or black death. So, I'll discard them. This increase appears cultural. Renaissance happens in 12th century, the technology hockey-stick begins and with it what I expect was positive selection for IQ.
If my (potentially spurious) correlations are to be believed, ancestral pillars of white identity (Yamnaya Aryans and early Christians) suppressed intelligence than promoting it. I'd love to see a global intelligence graph over the same period,. That way I can view relative impact instead of absolutes.
"There are 3 kind of lies : Lies, Damn lies and Statistics"
In closing, was whiteness good for European intelligence ? Idk, I remain confused.
P.S: Yes, I am extrapolating from one paper and drawing correlations over correlations. Don't take this as gospel. Please.
More options
Context Copy link