sleepyegg
25d ago
Pretty good theory, makes sense on why GRRM has writer's block. He will probably pass of natural causes before he finishes ASOIAF unfortunately, being obese and physically inactive.
sleepyegg
26d ago
Oppression is coming, I think. Only question is how to best position myself and my family to minimize harm to ourselves. Probably best to delete social media profiles which can be used as evidence of any political leanings one way or another.
On personality, we come back to the old argument on how much of personality is shaped by nature vs nurture. How much of personality is shaped by the enviornment vs genetic determinism. In the past, I was willing to hope that it was at least 20% nature / 80% nurture, but it is nothing even close to that. It's something like 95% nature / 5% nurture.
Unfortunately, according to studies of identical twins raised apart, genetic components of personality consistently prevail over environmental factors:
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0191886922001477
We can hope all we want that a better environment makes better children that instinctively reject cartel violence, but this is a false hope, because the violence is likely due to genetics. So, the foreign aid spent to improve the environment is wasted, and is probably better spent on policing, military action, and/or other soft eugenics policies that improve the genetic pool slowly over time.
sleepyegg
26d ago
May we find the proper balance before we are irreversibly locked into ruin.
To me, it's clear you have a strong belief that poverty causes crime, and that if poverty is reduced enough then crime will also decrease to tolerable levels. I used to have that belief too, but from my personal lived experience I have evolved away from that core belief.
In my view, people usually turn to crime not because they are destitute (stealing bread) but because it has the potential to allow someone to leapfrog to high social status. The cartels offer the promise of high social status, even for the most raw recruits. They look down upon foreign aid unless they are stealing it, because stealing successfully is a demonstration of intelligence and boldness. They look down upon middle class jobs because civilians are like peasants to them, to be taxed for protection and exploited as if they were feudal lords.
Your 8 of 10 men who try to lead middle class lives live in fear of the remaining 2 of 10 men who embrace the cartel life. They try to keep their head down and avoid entanglements, they pay whatever shakedowns are necessary to avoid violence. Maybe 1 in 10 men try to take a principled stand against the cartels, but when the cartels find out they decapitate him and leave his body parts in public so that his friends and family are chastened for his act of insubordination.
You are hoping that the 1 in 10 men eventually becomes 9 in 10 men opposing cartels, so that the cartels crumble naturally from lack of recruits and civilian tolerance. I'm saying the cartels are aware of this risk and the beheadings will continue to prevent this from ever happening.
And on disease prevention like Ebola, I'm all for aid to minimize pandemic outbreak risk. Even if the people getting medical help are too stupid to understand it. I'm even for strict quarantines. But this kind of aid is fundamentally different from attempting to use aid to reduce terrorism and cartel violence.
sleepyegg
27d ago
Even if Mexico was not a shithole, drugs would still flow to the US because it's a lucrative business. No amount of US taxpayer funded pampering and charity will stop the flow of recruits to the drug trade. This is because when there is money laying on the ground, eventually someone will stoop to pick it up, even if they already have all their needs met. Nobody in the cartel grew up so lacking in material comforts that they decided to leave a half dozen severed heads on public roads to intimidate their enemies. It's a predisposition to human dismemberment that no amount of charity will fix.
My point is that anger over lack of material comforts is usually directed at the internal government, not a distant foreign government. Do the people in Brazil's favelas blame China for their poverty? No, they blame the government of Brazil. Do the untouchables in India blame the US for their situation? No, if anything they blame the caste system in India. No terrorists or gangs blame obvious outsiders unless those outsiders are clearly meddling in the internal politics of their country - like the US does with NGOs and various aid programs. Poor people, including poor radicalised extremists, do not necessarily lay blame to wealthy foreigners who are minding their own business in their own country. Normal trade relations are not meddling but "free" aid always comes with strings attached and so people are rightfully suspicious.
And I don't know how to explain it, but soft power isn't gained by just giving things away for free. Maybe someone smarter than me can explain soft power better, but I think it's a form of respect that you can't just buy with resources or money.
sleepyegg
27d ago
The rich already harvest the organs of the poor because the rich already game the system to be prioritized.
https://www.cuimc.columbia.edu/news/study-finds-link-between-income-and-organ-transplant-access
If it's going to happen anyway society at large may as well get some benefit from it while eliminating criminality.
I suspect Soros has no problem getting any transplant he needs, no need to frame anyone when he is going to be the top of the waiting list anyway.
rehabilitative justice
Rehabilitative justice mostly doesn't work, it just allows repeat convicts more time and resources to spread their violent genes in your population. Better to do capital punishment after the n+1 conviction and if your society has the stomach for it, take out their useful organs to help law-abiding productive people live longer. Asset seizures of convicts are of course a given if we're already taking their organs.
Does capital punishment sometimes get the wrong person? Surely it does, but the general population is probably satisfied if police forces can blame and catch the right criminal most of the time (90%? 95%?), perfection is unrealistic. Is organ harvesting a crime against humanity? Maybe it is, but it's only used to mitigate the tax burden of dealing with criminals, so it's not necessary. Harvesting organs of repeat criminal offenders is just a way to force convicts to repay their victims, which includes taxpayers, in the event they have no other resources to give.
I further propose that a convicted Nigerian's organs be given to a law-abiding Nigerian as a priority on the organ recipient wait list. Non-nigerians would only have second priority on the convict organ transplant list. In this way we sustain Nigerians with better genes, and avoid the apperance of Nigerians being harvested purely for the benefit of other ethnicities.
sleepyegg
27d ago
Has a nation-state ever started a war or funded terrorism against another nation-state simply because the richer state was richer and refused to provide charity to the poorer state?
Perhaps client states or vassal-like relationships could work this way, but they involve political subservience in exchange for material resources.
Alleviating poverty does not prevent anti-Americanism, it just alleviates poverty and creates a culture of dependency.
sleepyegg
28d ago
Ah, well if that's the case then Trump and the US are truely done for unless ground troops are mobilized. There's no way the IRGC will settle for anything less than full nuclearization and financial reparations for the damage they suffered otherwise.
I don't trust their justice system either, but I think Dubai also has concerns with their international business reputation. Seizing assets on the pretense of fraud would surely deter investment and maybe even tourists. That Dubai imprisoned him for four years seems to indicate they had a serious grudge against him or his family in general.
It's a lot of trouble to go through to seize one timber factory, IMO. Might scare off the investment in data centers.
The risk of ineffective warcrimes to induce a favorable peace is probably what keeps Hegseth and Trump from ordering them done. I see no alternative for them unless they are willing to send ground troops Iraq-style, though.
A unilateral withdrawal would save many lives, but it would be politically fatal to Trump.
Timing is everything in war, politics, and more. Just because you have an intractable enemy, it doesn't mean you should cast other priorities aside to immediately eliminate them. Trump started the war because he was convinced by Netanyahu that it was an excellent time to defeat Iran. Clearly, it wasn't.
Trump, the US, and possibly the entire oil-importing world now suffer the consequences of a poorly timed decapitation strike aimed at the IRGC. While Iran should have been dealt with eventually, the US could have waited for a more opportune moment, like a contested transition of leadership for example. It's clear that the US had already waited for a long time, but the status quo was tolerable and there was no immediate threat to US interests from Iran.
The country who benefited the most from this war's timing was Israel, who could use the US as a beat stick against Iran while they still had bipartisan pro-Israel support in US congress. Israel's support among younger republicans and the democrat base is fading, so this war is perfect for them while they can still count on the US military to soften up Iran.
sleepyegg
28d ago
Prediction: At least one rate cut this year. No hikes. High inflation masked by changing the metric used to measure it. Junk food costs like a can of coca cola represent true inflation and can't be hidden easily.
sleepyegg
28d ago
Historically, you have to marry into the local elite and have children recognized as part of the in-group for this to be effective. It doesn't always work but it's the mostly reliable path for outsiders to integrate. YMMV and it may take multiple generations. Doesn't work if you're publically gay, though.
Almost surely won't work in Appalachia if you're out and gay.
sleepyegg
28d ago
Well, the US is a client state to Israel, which is why unilateral withdrawal is impossible. Hence Trump's dilemma with Iran and the strait, and the likely need for bombing warcrimes to obliterate Iran to get himself out of a losing war.
sleepyegg
28d ago
The latin and african guerrillas finance themselves without civilian support through the drug trade. I doubt Shia guerrillas representing the last bastion of Iranian revolutionary struggle would debase themselves to that level, unless they wanted to lose significant legitimacy in the islamic world.
Decentralized cells of IRGC units could certainly survive and threaten the strait. I believe most could be convinced to surrender by remaining IRGC leadership if Tehran and other major cities are flattened by fuel-air bombs, cluster munitions, or whatever the modern equivalent is. Perhaps Trump also shares your doubts about a civilian infra-bombing escalation. To me though, it might be his only way out of the mess.
I want to clarify that I was totally against starting any military conflict with Iran to begin with. However, now that direct hostilities have started, we have to decisively finish any conflict with countries whose official slogan is "Death to America", or we will be leaving yet another problem for future generations to clean up.
sleepyegg
28d ago
Partisans can exist only within a living civilian population. Guerrillas can't exist for very long without civilian support.
Not some civilian infra, it would need to be nearly all of it. Full shutdown of roads, industry, oil, etc. Any building that makes other things. If production is mixed into residential then the residential has to be hit too to hit the production.
This would of course be a genocide but if nobody can move an inch without being cluster bombed with artillery surely Iran would collapse if only to starvation and looting. The strait would probably be open in this case.
Trump hesitates because he fears the inevitable war crimes tribunal this would cause from democrats. He is not confident republicans can hold the executive for the remainder of his lifespan, or that some other republican president would throw him under the bus in an act of bipartisan goodwill.
sleepyegg
28d ago
Thiel only needs Argentina to stay safe for him for another 20 or 30 years. He's gay and his children are adopted, he has no biological skin in the game that incentivizes him to prioritize a country's long term stability. Thiel is an example of why gay elites are worse for society compared to straight elites, all else being equal.
sleepyegg
28d ago
Your example of Dubai imprisoning rich foreigners for no reason is a bad example. Albert Douglas's son Wolfgang had a company that accumulated ~2.5 million pounds of debt in Dubai. So from Dubai's perspective, they were dealing with a clan of criminal fraudsters who stole from their country and then tried to run away.
The numerous english facing websites and articles dedicated to the release of Albert imply to me that the Douglas family could easily pay the debt but chose media pressure on Dubai over human rights as a reasonable strategy to get Albert released. I suspect they just paid the debts owed after 4 years of Albert getting tortured.
In Western countries debt can't be transferred between family members, but obviously Dubai has a different opinion on the matter.
Precook and store your keto meals in the fridge, otherwise you have nothing when the carb thoughts come. The meals should either be edible cold or microwaveable in 90 seconds. I find fatty steak or lamb bits to be always reliable, I eat them cold with solid congealed fat.
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