sleepyegg
2d ago
Those kids not needing to physically attend school are getting tons of extra time to rest, study, or be tutored in the red queen's race. This has to become the new norm, the time advantage is simply too powerful.
What's next, performance enhancing drugs? Anything for the extra edge.
sleepyegg
2d ago
Yeah, it's just not possible with the current population's beliefs and political environment. More of a fantasy wish list of policies, laws, and norms that would be nice to have.
sleepyegg
2d ago
Those gardens sound pretty nice, something like that with a pleasant sensory environment seems a worthwhile goal. It's essentially a really early retirement home - and it could be pitched to parents as the best choice for the children if it was well-run.
sleepyegg
3d ago
There are some snake oil salesman profiting from the unrealistic hopes of these parents, and in the kind of society I prefer they would be charged with fraud, the schemes exposed to the public, and lashed Singapore-style.
Maybe we can't educate all the children to the ideal, but we can try to protect them and their families from predators.
Interesting bit with the doctor-doctor couples. Doctors should know the risks best with maternal age and major autism risks, I heard about it from a friend in the first year of medical school classes. Apparently it wasn't in the textbooks but the lecturer wanted to emphasize the risks because many doctors delay family to focus on their studies. By the time the subspecialty doctors are established in their careers they are 35+ on the young side.
Then again I have a family member who miscarried during her (now illegal) 100+ hours per week residency, so there's the risk of high stress pregnancies too.
sleepyegg
3d ago
No, sorry I often edit my posts after posting to add new ideas and correct mistakes, I added that political realism part last after you read it the first time.
Yes, birth rates would get crushed more which is undesirable. It wouldn't be the root cause though - that's probably women's education and entry into the workforce. Birth rates would need a different fix if that's even possible.
cough real communism hasn't been tried yet man cough
shoots up
Edit: Sorry, effort incoming
The rebuttal to "actual communist countries have tried..." is often some flavor of "actually that's not a real communist country...". When pressed further, the rebuttal expands to "actual communism has never been tried because it was hijacked by..."
Despite the first two sentences in this comment, I don't actually believe hard drug users are debating the merits of communism on the street while shooting up. I do believe self identified communists have an idealized, unrealistic belief in the ability of communism to mitigate the ugly and selfish parts of human nature. Which is why communism always ends up in some sort of failure state, and why we should carefully critique any social planning recommendations from communists.
sleepyegg
3d ago
Work more? Assuming you are not set for retirement and maybe plan to have kids in the future a bit more money saved never hurts. If you're not lonely or depressed get out there and make some moolah! Unless you feel unmotivated to work for whatever reason - then maybe you are lonely and/or depressed.
sleepyegg
3d ago
Seems like people will pay for the illusion that their child is not special needs, even if they are. Probably would be a better use of resources to save that money in an index fund managed by a trust, but maybe the children already have that and money is no object for some parents.
I guess my proposed tax refund is like the home insurance company telling you - sorry because of (wildfire, flood, etc) risk your home is uninsurable and we are refunding the balance of your policy. I have no doubt many lives will be ruined by the high costs of caring for severely disabled children. But having children comes with risk, and that risk was an individual choice unless a woman was raped and she was unable to access abortion. We spread the increasingly higher cost of special needs children over society instead of the primary responsibility which should be the parents.
I do like the ideal that the opportunity of education is meant to be for everyone. But we lack the resources to sustainably achieve that ideal. When we made that educational promise, it was probably assumed that these children were relatively able-bodied. Children with extreme disabilities simply didn't survive previously as the medical tech and knowledge didn't exist. Children with behavioral problems were easier to separate from the group, because we were willing to enforce prosocial behavioral norms. We made that promise for education, and it is time to break that promise because the commitment is greater than our ability. It's not wrong to admit mistakes (just political suicide).
What the ideal should be changed to is, "education funding will be equally split among everyone". We would be tightening up the meaning of reasonable accommodation to be much stricter. So we can redirect funds spent on special education into job training programs and healthier school lunches. We will have better chances of generating healthier and more productive members of society. Decades later we may even generate a surplus with these early childhood educational investments, and we can reevaluate spending more on special education at that time.
My suggestion would have the families shoulder the cost, likely very high, of taking care of their own special-needs children. Will one parent need to quit their job to become a full time caretaker? Yes, that is likely unless their job pays more than enough to hire a caretaker in their place. Is that harsh? Yes, but only from the perspective of a currently-unachievable ideal, which is free public education for all no matter the cost. Perhaps those families should have a federal tax break as a refund of their taxes they paid into education that excludes them from the public system. Essentially a forced public education system opt-out with refund.
Is this politically realistic - no way it's just not happening. But I'm just tossing some ideas up on how we should approach this to maximize educational outcomes (as a society, unfortunately not on an individual basis) in a sustainable way. The result of my exclusion-approach would be that we would have more functionally illiterate, barely hanging to life children. But they were probably going to be a net drain of society anyway, even though we hired multiple full-time servants (special needs educators) to keep them minimally educated.
sleepyegg
3d ago
This is going to sound messed up, but can we (if we update laws) reasonably not educate these children? As medical advances in life saving technology improve, we are investing more on a slim minority of children, instead of the education of all children as a whole. I have no idea about how this would be implemented, maybe a child would have to take a basic test of some sort to prove worthy of educational investment, I suppose. We are not a post scarcity society that can infinitely provide health care at taxpayer expense when our national debt is constantly increasing. It's just leaving a debt to future generations, kicking the can down the road.
sleepyegg
4d ago
An irresistible smile would fall upon JD Vance's face. A weight hitherto unknown would be lifted from his shoulders. A dream realized.
Nah, Trump is an exceptional candidate (in hindsight of course), the GOP will have trouble filling his shoes. It's just also true that the democrats fielded 3 terrible national candidates in a row. So if the trifecta is maintained despite no terrible democrat on the ballot (and the usual midterms reversals), then the republicans are still in good shape, so long as that wasn't dependent on Trump's charisma.
sleepyegg
5d ago
At least in the US, I wonder if cultural anti-intellectualism causes the intellectual Christians to stay quieter than they would otherwise be. As if it was something shameful, that they couldn't accept their beliefs on pure faith and needed to waste energy on unimportant theological nuances.
I don't follow intellectual Christian media, so from the outside it mostly looks like pure faith infernalism and/or some distasteful (to me) prosperity theology. Infernalism's dominance repels people like me who would be interested in learning more but hesitate because of the crowd it attracts.
sleepyegg
5d ago
As an non religious guy (cultural Christian?) that enjoys reading about nuances in Christian teaching, I liked this! Sadly, this type of discussion seems pretty rare.
I didn't even know the terms universalism and infernalism but I knew the concepts - nice to put a name to a concept. On the popularity of infernalism, I guess it's because fear of hell is an easy to apply, reasonably powerful motivator that can be taught to children with low effort.
sleepyegg
5d ago
Trump beat a nearly senile Biden (2024 edition), Hillary Clinton, and Kamala Harris. Putting forth bad national candidates has a lot of downstream effect during a presidential election year. If the Republican party maintains the trifecta after 26' midterms it would be a sign of continued broad public support.
sleepyegg
6d ago
Hey, that's a interesting nuance I wasn't aware of, about protecting the Jews from persecution. What branch of Christianity did this develop from? Was it promoted by Zionists after WW2, or was it something older? Did it exist in Germany during Hitler's rise?
Knowing this, I'm mystified why Israel even attempts to court red tribe support if it's already a common attitude and religiously ordained. Israel should be courting the blue tribe to make sure they control both parties..
Apologies.
The US is probably in a state of strategic failure on oil flow through Hormuz unless one of two undesirable options is chosen.
First is the complete surrender of the IRGC. Trump attempted this, but was not as successful as in Venezuela with the capture of Maduro. The Iranian state was more resilient and decentralized than anticipated. Iran is effectively 99% militarly crushed, but the threat of the 1% coming out of hiding is what keeps insurance rates high for oil tankers. These insurance rates and possible risk of loss of a tanker keep oil prices high, so Hormuz is de facto closed. If Iran can be 100% crushed, this is desirable, but unlikely without ground troop intervention.
The second option is massive concessions to Iran in return for peace. Allowing them to develop nuclear weapons and monetary reparations of some sort, like a toll. Trump is probably headed this way, unless he wants to preside over a defeat in midterms and a new oil price shock. The oil shock may be unavoidable, but the duration and severity can be mitigated if the oil starts flowing sooner rather than later.
Some of Trump's supporters believe that he has a plan for this situation, which cannot be disclosed to the public due to national security concerns. It is true that Trump has usually managed to extricate himself out of politically difficult situations. Other critics, like @quiet_NaN and myself, are a bit more skeptical that there is a good offramp with Hormuz that both prevents Iran from having further nuclear development, and also manages to open Hormuz in a way that shipping is mostly back to normal. Trump also has a time limit to resolve this situation - midterms and the end of his presidency. In less than 6 months, if gas prices stay elevated or push even higher, the republican party is likely going to suffer higher than expected congressional losses from typical midterm reversals. In 2.5 years at the end of Trump's term, if Hormuz is still closed, we might see the democratic socialists take power in the US.
sleepyegg
6d ago
If the FLDS hadn't abused it with their own stores and letting their families go hungry, it would have been perfectly legitimate. Nothing illegal about the plural wives claiming welfare otherwise.
The chef's spraying spittle could be flavoring the dough! Let him cook, he has a process, we don't have insight into his secret recipe as outsiders. The fire alarm gets the line chefs motivated, he has an unorthodox management style. I have every confidence that his pizza will be delicious and that he will be remembered as one of the greatest chefs of our country, up there with Guy Fieri and Bobby Flay. He took a long piss in the last pepperoni pizza I ordered and let me tell you, my extended family thought it elevated the whole experience.
In fact, I got together with some other enthusiasts and we booked a reservation to have him defecate directly into our mouths. It's a bit pricey but I'm pretty sure it's going to be worth it. My wife had some unkind words about it, paraphrased "emasculating", but I think it's actually very manly to receive man stuff from another man.
sleepyegg
6d ago
Oct 7th must have triggered the policy of "never let a good crisis go to waste".
I think the worst that happens to Israel from the US is that some aid gets cut, so they have buy more weapons out of pocket. I don't think an arms embargo is on the table because there are too many senators still beholden to AIPAC, for now.
American public can still change their mind and become indifferent over Palestinians, especially if Islamic terrorism gets newsworthy again. In fact, I expect at least one sizable left-leaning media outlet to be bought to support Israel, like how Politico was purchased by Axel Springer. It would emphasize shared struggle against terrorism to try to divide the left flank of democrats.
Ruy Lopez is the way my dad taught me to play. It's my opening as white far too much, to the point it's a crutch and probably weakens me severely playing black.
Never heard about Yagiz until now, but being so young there's no way he doesn't get better unless he has a mental breakdown or something.
May be worth noting HereAndGone2 is a woman because - women as a group tend make poor friends per your definition (which I agree with). In all the women I've known in my life in school or work, they were all just acquaintances despite me putting in work on a platonic level, at least I think so. From my observation of all of my male friends, none of them have any female friends either (unless their wives count), and some of them are very social butterflies not posting on the Motte.
Almost all of the women who have put work in for me are mom and female relatives. I do come from a clannish family so that's probably not surprising. But no unrelated women, except maybe the wife of one of my social friends has ever given me any advice or help. I did not get a chance to befriend that woman unfortunately, as I ended up moving away from the area. I'm still friends with the husband, but we're too busy to socialize now.
Being a woman, I suspect it's difficult to make friends as other women are generally poor friendship material. Men might be difficult to approach as they would see friendship gestures as sexual interest.
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