urquan
Blessed is the fall that made you gaze up to heaven
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User ID: 226
urquan
Blessed is the fall that made you gaze up to heaven
2d ago
I wasn't excusing it or disagreeing with you. In fact my point was to emphasize how petty and personal these incidents end up being, and how little they often have to do with the serious issues theoretically presented rather than interpersonal drama.
urquan
Blessed is the fall that made you gaze up to heaven
3d ago
I don’t exactly remember the timeline, but was this after their relationship ended? Can we separate this cleanly from Ozy’s partner simply being a jerk to a flame’s ex-boyfriend?
Come to think of it, this is a good reason to avoid polyamory. Limit your exposure. Works for the clap, too.
urquan
Blessed is the fall that made you gaze up to heaven
5d ago
I think Biden's popularity is lower than Harris's because his weakness and mental frailty has been in the news for a month. Meanwhile, she's been mostly out of the spotlight for years now, which is good, because when she's in the spotlight we're treated to monologues about the significance of the passage of time unburdening us from what has been.
Her favorability will go down once she has to speak extemporaneously and people have to actually evaluate her as a potential president rather than just someone with a pulse.
urquan
Blessed is the fall that made you gaze up to heaven
7d ago
the further a software product is away from "engineering candy", the worse it is.
To get good engineers you need to either pay an outrageous salary or have an interesting product like a video game.
I mean, you could get good engineers with a video game project, but for that you have to be willing to also pay them the outrageous salary. Video game projects are more art than engineering, requiring more designers than engineers. And the brilliant engineers won't work for that much below market rate; if that were their goal they'd go into research or try to get into an early-stage startup, not join a project that's just the application of an existing engine to a new gameplay design. The game projects that appeal to engineers don't sell enough for AAA development, they're nerd games like Factorio or RimWorld (sorry friends).
Not that game companies don't capitalize on the appeal of their projects to talent. They just capitalize by taking lower-tier but motivated engineers/artists/designers and running them into the ground.
Dang, that scenario is gripping. I would watch a film or show about that.
I realize they did, but after being initially interesting it quickly became just another boring political drama trying to be The West Wing but failing. How it got renewed at all, I'll never understand. I'd want a storyline that wallows in the intense and gripping drama of the extreme scenario outlined in that document. It would be an excellent political thriller.
Also, the fact that the senate is more adaptable than the house makes it even more clear to me that the president pro tempore of the senate ought to have outranked the speaker of the house in the order of succession. Or perhaps we could give the senate the ability to select a president in the event of no other officer being able to succeed to the presidency.
urquan
Blessed is the fall that made you gaze up to heaven
12d ago
I looked it up, and Pennsylvania has a closed primary. If he were an anti-Trump centrist, or even a Democrat, it would be sensible for him to have registered as a Republican in order to tactically vote against Trumpy candidates in the primaries. It's not like you have to vote along with your party registration in the general.
But it also seems most likely to me this was indeed a Republican. The motivation isn't particularly clear at this stage, maybe there'll be a manifesto. But I doubt we'll be allowed to read it.
urquan
Blessed is the fall that made you gaze up to heaven
12d ago
I should note that two different baptist friends have told me in recent weeks that based on biblical prophecy their bible study groups think Trump might be the antichrist.
Interesting -- are the evangelical elements of the red tribe shifting against him?
I guess my response is, of course he's the antichrist, have you seen the guy talk about his relationship with the divine and how his most ardent supporters talk about him? But then again, I also think Joe Biden, Vladimir Putin, Joseph Stalin, Adolf Hitler, Henry VIII, Peter the Great, and of course the OG Nero are the antichrist, there are many of them. So that's not a particularly spectacular claim for me to make.
urquan
Blessed is the fall that made you gaze up to heaven
13d ago
I think if you believe a politician is such a profound threat that you’re willing to kill him, you also think people who love him enough to show up to his rally are complicit.
urquan
Blessed is the fall that made you gaze up to heaven
13d ago
Sure. But January 6 also happened and I don't hold Trump responsible for January 6, for precisely the same reason.
urquan
Blessed is the fall that made you gaze up to heaven
13d ago
Butler County DA's office saying the shooter and one bystander are dead.
urquan
Blessed is the fall that made you gaze up to heaven
13d ago
Someone may be. News outlets saying a woman behind him died. She appears to fall during the video and is not seen getting up.
urquan
Blessed is the fall that made you gaze up to heaven
13d ago
I'm in shock. It certainly occurred to me that someone might try to do this, the logic of @Quantumfreakonomics seems like something someone could easily come to follow. The people who have repeatedly described Trump as a "threat to democracy" aren't responsible for this and I don't hold them responsible for this. But you need to be really damn careful throwing around words like that.
Seeing a major political candidate shot at on live TV in front of a crowd of people is so raw and real that it's hard to comprehend. I wasn't alive for any of the other attempted political assasinations.
Three weeks ago, there didn't even seem to be an election. Now, the President is incompetent and his opponent is being shot at. I fear for my country if Trump wins. Will people keep trying to shoot at him? Will they start trying to shoot at anyone else?
And the Trump political ads write themselves. "They hate you and our movement so much they tried to silence me. First they attacked me with phony prosecutions. Now they've pulled out the guns. Our enemies are lawless and violent. Vote Trump for democracy and order."
"the devil makes work for idle hands", a phrase often quoted in Western contexts as part of an argument against allowing the masses significant leisure
I mean, maybe that's how it's used. But I've heard the similar phrase "idle hands are the devil's playthings" used by the masses to each other to argue against inactivity because it can lead to filling that idle time in ways that are wasteful, useless, and destructive; the attraction of the gacha game was foreseen by pre-modernity and heavily criticized.
Not disagreeing with your overall point. I think you're correct that one of the major features of modernity in China is wasting time on gacha games. But the same is true for the West as well, which is why we will never see major political revolution in the near future even if people like doomposting about it. The attention of the masses is pulled toward ever-more-addictive processed food, media, and video games. We're literally talking about bread and circuses here.
I'm not sure we know what causes repressive regimes to fall to free ones. We've tried lots of strategies. "Make them rich" hasn't worked in China. "Make them poor" hasn't worked in Cuba or North Korea. "Point guns at them and make them cargo-cult democracy" didn't work in Afghanistan. "Let them give it a go" didn't work in the Arab Spring, which replaced one set of repressive regimes for another.
My dark intuition is that a people has to have an intrinsic cultural drive towards freedom to ever want to establish it. The American Revolution would never have happened without the English Civil War setting up a background. And the cultures that had no strong drive or cultural history of freedom could not suddenly establish it: Russia went from repressive Tsarism to repressive Leninism, China went from repressive Confucian Imperial rule to repressive Communist Party rule. And the Middle East sees Islamic republicanism as its own kind of freedom, even if the West sees it as horrifying.
The exceptions are the Western friends in East Asia. South Koreans and Japanese have remained within the democratic orbit because the material blessings of modernity were offered to them under conditions of democracy. Perhaps this served to lock them into a democratic system with the same features that lock mainland China into the party's system. And who knows about Taiwan, except that what happened is the most gung-ho pro-Westerners were quite literally placed on an island exiled from the others, which certainly does a lot to define the political culture of a people in that direction.
I don't know. Much smarter people than me have pondered this question and come up empty. Maybe the reality is, we don't know what makes people value the West's standard of freedom except being a Westerner.
I'd add to your number 4 that it's not just a majority that has to find him incompetent -- it's a 2/3 supermajority in both houses, a stricter requirement than impeachment. If he needs to go and he won't choose to go, the easier path is to impeach and remove him that way -- no need for cabinet drama.
But I also posted my own take on the 25th idea in a subthread but it got buried. Here's my take:
Invoking the 25th would make Democrats look weak and their administration look incompetent. Because it would be a declaration that its headman is incompetent, in the literal meaning of the term. Invoking the 25th also normally requires the consent of the President -- that's the only way it has been used in the past -- and to do it over his refusal would require a whole rigamarole where the Cabinet tries to argue with the Congress and Biden attempts to convince them he's actually competent.
It would be an absolute shitshow of constitutional and political maneuvering that would make even the most insane Brexit deliberations across the pond look like normal legislative operations, with the executive fighting against itself and the Congress held up from all other activity while members get prime time TV slots grandstanding about the administration. In the worst case, this would lead to the nuclear football being tossed back and forth between Biden and Harris like an actual football.
If they have Biden's consent, he can just do the normal, expected thing and resign. Which would also put Harris at the top of the ticket, but at least without the insane constitutional boogaloo that the 25th Amendment process would require. But the 25th Amendment process is pretty involved, to prevent coups. Harris can't just up and declare herself the Big Cheese.
The 25th invocation suggestions aren't a serious threat to Biden.
urquan
Blessed is the fall that made you gaze up to heaven
15d ago
Yeah, I really don't understand what all the discussion about Biden somehow being removed from the ticket is coming from. It can't happen. The rules are designed to make that impossible. Are the Democratic leaders/influencers calling for it trying to set themselves up to appeal to a hypothetical future nominee for 2028? Biden's already made it clear he won't step down voluntarily.
If the Democratic party loses in November, he's going down with the ship. And I guess we'll find Harris laying on a door frame in the middle of the ocean.
urquan
Blessed is the fall that made you gaze up to heaven
15d ago
many times it's just a preference for people with a deep ancestry in the country (which is just as bad for meritocracy!)
If this is your standard for meritocracy, then approximately 0 countries in the entire history of the world have been meritocratic and approximately 0 ever will be.
Invoking the 25th would make it look to me like the Dems are reforming which will massively help them in Senate and House races.
I don't agree with this. Invoking the 25th would make Democrats look weak and their administration look incompetent. Because it would be a declaration that its headman is incompetent, in the literal meaning of the term. Invoking the 25th also normally requires the consent of the President -- that's the only way it has been used in the past -- and to do it over his refusal would require a whole rigamarole where the Cabinet tries to argue with the Congress and Biden attempts to convince them he's actually competent. It would be an absolute shitshow of constitutional and political maneuvering that would make even the most insane Brexit deliberations across the pond look like normal legislative operations, with the executive fighting against itself and the Congress held up from all other activity while members get prime time TV slots grandstanding about the administration. In the worst case, this would lead to the nuclear football being tossed back and forth between Biden and Harris like an actual football.
Meanwhile Republicans look on uproariously laughing at the magnificent incompetence and Trump gives rallies where he talks about the Democrats as unstable and so fractured they can't even get a senile old man to step aside without causing chaos. Expect numerous comparisons to the impeachments, and if Biden were actually confirmed as unable to discharge his duties as President by the Congress, expect Trump to use it to wash his hands of the entire impeachment proceedings -- after all, the other guy actually got removed.
Although, to be clear, it would be different, in the 25th procedure Biden would still technically be the President, just one without the powers and duties of the President. What that means is little understood. The 25th was designed for a president in a coma, not a living president vigorously (well, as vigorously as Biden is capable of nowadays) defending his ability to exercise his office.
It would also make Kamala Harris the acting president. And she is unpopular, moreso than Biden. Presumably it would put her at the top of the ticket too -- there's no precedent, but it would be suicidal to run as candidate for President of the United States a man who has been unprecedentedly removed from the powers and duties of the Presidency for incompetence as a candidate for President of the United States! And even then, I could easily see the convention being fractured, giving Republicans another incredibly massive win in the months leading up to the election.
If they have Biden's consent, he can just do the normal, expected thing and resign. Which would also put Harris at the top of the ticket, but at least without the insane constitutional boogaloo that the 25th Amendment process would require. But the 25th Amendment process is pretty involved, to prevent coups. Harris can't just up and declare herself the Big Cheese.
The 25th invocation suggestions aren't serious to anyone who has taken even a cursory glance at the actual text. No senior Democrat would ever call for it. It would be the biggest unforced error in the history of the American republic.
urquan
Blessed is the fall that made you gaze up to heaven
15d ago
notlikeothergirls.jpeg/pickme
Still don't understand these two memes. I see them everywhere and I still just don't get it.
urquan
Blessed is the fall that made you gaze up to heaven
15d ago
Ok, but I'm even more confused now than I was before.
urquan
Blessed is the fall that made you gaze up to heaven
16d ago
Eh, I think he's just extremely agreeable. I actually like that about him. I appreciate that he likes to advocate for people he thinks are being unfairly stamped on. He seems to honestly have the attitude that a lot of the wokesters pretend to have, where taking the side of the underdog is just important to him. He gets some stuff wrong, but I like his earnestness. I think you have to take the rationalists for what they are not for all the high-minded stuff about revolutionizing epistemology.
He's an earnest liberal making an earnest liberal argument about homelessness. We don't have to dig on his physiogonomy to understand what he's saying or make counterarguments.
urquan
Blessed is the fall that made you gaze up to heaven
16d ago
It’s funny, people talk a lot about men not being valued for who they are but that doesn’t describe my own experience. I get the logic of it, but I don’t know how to explain the discordance between the view and my experience.
But I guess I’m just lucky. My family, friends, and partners have always seemed clearly to value me for who I am. I haven’t had many partners but the ones I’ve had have been lightyears beyond the descriptions of wives and girlfriends I hear online.
I feel bad for feeling this way, but I have a weird feeling about Narcan for precisely this reason. It's pretty clear there's a large group of opioid users who hate their lives, hate their existence, find extreme painkillers and euphoriants necessary to carry on, and find absolutely no reason in living a life free from their drug addiction. They become a burden to themselves and their families, sometimes resorting to theft or even killing for pennies to buy fentanyl. After years -- years! -- of desensitization, they can take even large quantities of the hyper-potent fentanyl. And then you find them lying on the floor in a mall bathroom after years of this self-destruction, overdosed on their powder of joy and headed straight for escape from this quintessence of dust.
I think we need to do what we can to prevent people becoming opioid addicts and to help people who aren't too far gone. But more and more I see these stories of people who obviously don't want to live being brought back to the life they don't want with Narcan, and I feel bad for them. Their behavior has pretty clearly demonstrated what they want and yet we insist on holding them to the life they so profoundly despise.
I don't know why Americans love drugs so much. No other country deals with this like we do. But on this issue I'd say the moment Narcan becomes involved we've already failed many times. We've got to fix the reasons why people come to hate their lives so much they want to escape by any means necessary.
But once they've decided they hate existence so much they'll risk death to feel relief, maybe they're too far gone to save them and what we're saving is a shell of a person filled to the tippy-top with white powder.
I have a different theory for why feminist men often have wild sexual histories.
Feminists by definition progressives. Feminists are generally sex-positive. Feminists, in mainstream feminism, see casual sex as perfectly acceptable and even empowering for women.
This means that, all things considered, if you showed me a variation on that classic question on Linda the bank teller, and asked me whether a specific unknown person who had and approved of casual sex (regardless of gender) was either a feminist or opposed to feminism, I would say they were more likely to be a feminist.
Feminist men, being true believers in feminism, believe the same things about sexuality that feminist women do. They believe casual sex is perfectly acceptable and empowering for women, with there being no reason for anyone to judge a woman for having it or for the woman in question to feel ashamed.
Thus, feminist men believe a lot of things about society, sexuality, and women, that encourage them to engage in casual sex with them. It's not surprising that feminist men are more likely to have casual sex, and therefore more likely to have casual-sex-related scandals!
I don't believe that most male feminists are lying, or using feminism as cover for their misdeeds. I think most are sincere. And their sincerity is actually damaging, because the belief system they're sincere about is false!
I also think this has to do with a lot of male feminists — the ones who are explicitly described that way, not normie dudes who endorse feminism like Chris Evans — being nerds, part of nerd culture.
Nerd culture, if you’re at all familiar with it, is filled with horny sex freaks. It’s also filled with a lot of awkward introverted weirdos who don’t communicate well. And many of these people are the same people. This is a good recipe for misunderstandings and miscommunications around sex. As well as crazy, out of the norm sex choices that people end up regretting.
Edit: It occurs to me that I wasn't clear enough in what I said here. My point is not that we should be conducting shame festivals against promiscuous women or strapping scarlet letters on people, that's not what I'm talking about. My point is that there are real and enduring sex differences in how the sexes experience, desire, and remember casual sexual encounters. I believe casual sex is destructive for men as well as women. But it's clear to me that women desire it much less, enjoy it much less, and often recall it with intense negative emotion, even if they don't believe they were taken advantage of. They don't like it as well as men. They see its destructive power in a way men tend not to. The big lie, the false belief of feminism that I'm criticizing here, is the idea that it's empowering for women and the only reason why people don't think so is patriarchal social customs that can be destroyed through ideology. That's simply not true. This stuff is dug deep down in the sex differences between men and women.
The women in my life are even more interested than I am. My mother has gone from hating politics and "not being able to look at that man" to watching the RNC each night and watching most of Trump's speech while reading aloud twitter theories about Biden almost dying, while my girlfriend went from saying she won't vote in November to wondering aloud whether she should vote for Trump. She also says repeatedly that she hates Kamala Harris and she hopes this is not who we end up with for our first female president. And both are pretty upset about the Biden situation.
I'm not sure that bullet changed Trump, but from my bubble it sure seems like it changed some moderates and conservative never-Trumpers into Trump-boosters.
I also think a lot of discussions about Democratic attacks against Trump being applied to any Republican, while true, miss that Trump himself has a polarizing effect with conservative women and moderates above and beyond whatever Democratic messaging says about him. Democrats will say any Republican is Hitler, and Democrats will always believe them. The problem is with not repelling swing voters and conservative women. The hoes that need to not be scared are voters who would go for Mitt Romney or Ron DeSantis (my girlfriend sent me repeated messages about Ron DeSantis being well-spoken and successful before he flailed out of the primaries, and my mother says she really likes Vivek Ramaswamy) but don't like Trump because he's a philanderer who insults people. If he can stick to not being overly insulting, he can win in November.
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