urquan
Every one who exalts himself will be humbled, but he who humbles himself will be exalted.
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User ID: 226
urquan
Every one who exalts himself will be humbled, but he who humbles himself will be exalted.
1yr ago
I'm trying to convince my parents (who have decorated their house with huge numbers of lights since I was a kid) to keep the lights up into January. I'm hopeful they'll actually do it this year, that always makes me joyful to go to their house and see the pretty lights.
I hate January.
urquan
Every one who exalts himself will be humbled, but he who humbles himself will be exalted.
2yr ago
· Edited 1yr ago
deleted
urquan
Every one who exalts himself will be humbled, but he who humbles himself will be exalted.
2yr ago
· Edited 1yr ago
deleted
urquan
Every one who exalts himself will be humbled, but he who humbles himself will be exalted.
2yr ago
· Edited 1yr ago
deleted
urquan
Every one who exalts himself will be humbled, but he who humbles himself will be exalted.
5mo ago
This is a total non-sequitur.
My point is simple, and really quite humble. I am not saying that the motte is broadly anti-Jewish; I'm saying that the motte has right-wing antisemitic posters, which indicate that right-wing antisemitism is a real thing that some people in the world believe, that it therefore still exists.
While there are certainly antisemites on the left, like the chanters you mention, most progressives -- even most progressives who are critical of Israel were horrified when such things went down. To say those chanters represent the progressive left is to paint with far too broad a brush, or in other words to make general claims about general groups, not specific claims about specific groups.
Is it really so hard to acknowledge that, despite growing antisemitism on the left, right-wing antisemitism is not dead? There are lots of ways you could argue against my point -- saying that right-wing antisemitism has no power, that it's rejected by a larger sum of the right than left-wing antisemitism is by the left, that left-wing antisemites are more acutely dangerous. You say I made a bad argument, but you're not even making an argument at all: just repeating what you already said in a firmer tone, and acting offended that I pointed out that right-wing antisemitism exists, as evidenced by local posters who are right wing antisemites.
What I think has happened is this: you made a massive overgeneralization, treating all your opponents as one bloc and imputing to them the dreaded term of "anti-Jewish," while denying that anyone remotely on your side of the political spectrum holds similar views. You were treating antisemitism like a moral cancer, that pollutes anyone in the blast radius, even uninvolved but similar parties. In a certain ironic sense you were saying that it poisons the well. "Some left wingers are antisemites, therefore antisemitism is left wing." You should know that the left does the same thing with racism, and are every bit as wrong.
Because you were thinking in terms of overgeneralizations and boo lights, when I suggested the motte provides counterevidence, you became defensive, acting as though I had made a similar general claim: "no, we're not anti-Jewish, we tolerate viewpoints, we're not the heretics, it's them." But I wasn't saying what you thought I was saying. I'm not treating antisemitism as a moral pollutant, just as a factual description of certain views, both left and right -- some of which are present here, indicating that they still exist in the world.
The idea that SS is Muslim is... pretty bizarre, and rather reminds me of Hylinka saying right wing identitarians are simply the same thing as left wing ones, all evidence to the contrary.
We don't have to be opposed here, and I'm not trying to start a fight. I just think you made a shady argument and wanted to point out the counterevidence.
urquan
Every one who exalts himself will be humbled, but he who humbles himself will be exalted.
1yr ago
· Edited 1yr ago
deleted
urquan
Every one who exalts himself will be humbled, but he who humbles himself will be exalted.
2yr ago
· Edited 1yr ago
deleted
urquan
Every one who exalts himself will be humbled, but he who humbles himself will be exalted.
5mo ago
· Edited 5mo ago
Most of the great events in world history happened because people made decisions based on gut, and put personal negotiation above political correctness. It obviously has the possibility of causing instability — but the love of stability over significance and valor is the stuff of the neoliberal consensus, which is collapsing.
All things considered, I would prefer to live in interesting times to boring times, and I’d argue the revealed preferences of human beings are the same. Note the way veterans obsess about their service, or the way pledges go through humiliating rituals only to be bossed around and corralled by half-sober frat brothers, and then remember the situation fondly! And moreover: note how inside Russia there’s immense nostalgia for the rule of Stalin of all people, and note how pumped up the Chinese people are to take Taiwan. People would rather, especially in hindsight, live through a time that will go in the history books than one that will be forgotten. People would rather fly high, and end up too close to the sun, than swing low and drown in the deep. Would you rather be Abraham Lincoln, or James Garfield? Both were shot, but only one was shot because he was historically important.
urquan
Every one who exalts himself will be humbled, but he who humbles himself will be exalted.
5mo ago
You know who wants to kill the Jews today? It's not right wingers.
I agree that in a raw sense the greatest threat to Jewish lives is Palestinians (and the opposite is also true, of course), but I find it ironic to claim that right-wing antisemitism is dead by posting here, of all places.
urquan
Every one who exalts himself will be humbled, but he who humbles himself will be exalted.
7mo ago
The solution is deregulation. Medical treatments that were perfected 40 years ago should be basically free, and administered (if that’s even necessary) by a low wage technician.
Most of medicine is based on prescribing drugs, for which a person needs to understand drug interactions, risk-benefit ratios, and basic biochemistry. And most of the other part is surgery, which requires an experienced hand. You know, like a doctor.
So who's going to pay for the drugs people need? And who's going to pay for the drug development? And who's going to cut your appendix out when you have appendicitis? A "low wage technician"?
urquan
Every one who exalts himself will be humbled, but he who humbles himself will be exalted.
10mo ago
It's a good reminder that Twitter must be destroyed. This point is so crucial we should repeat it like a prayer, like the kyrie:
Twitter delenda est,
X delenda est,
Twitter delenda est.
No one, literally no one, not even one, comes off well on Twitter. Even people I have profound respect for seem like unhinged lunatics. I barely use it, and have never posted, but every time I open it up and I'm greeted by the firehose of insanity, I realize why our discourse has gone so insane. There's no room for nuance, no room for discussion, no room for tone of voice or personality, it's spicy takes all the way down. There's no value in it.
The only use for it is formal, simple annoucements of objective events, like the posting of an article or video elsewhere. Any other use of microblogging is haram.
urquan
Every one who exalts himself will be humbled, but he who humbles himself will be exalted.
1yr ago
I would also want proportion to the amount of non-violent usefulness for the item, and the amount of necessity for the item in society. No one needs a firearm to get along in society. Yes, it may have usefulness in a law-abiding way, but even the closest thing to a necessity for firearms in society in self-defense -- which involves, inherently, violence. It may be justified violence, but it is violence. Someone who shoots a carjacker is doing the same thing an armed carjacker-gone-wrong does -- using a firearm against a person. And there is no necessity in the 21st century to hunt for food, and certainly no necessity to hunt or shoot for sport.
A car, however -- using a car to run someone over is incorrectly using a car. No one for a lawful or legitimate purpose runs over a person with a car. There is no sense in which a car is supposed to be used to run someone over. There are no sports in which people get run over by cars. There is no such thing as driving through a crash test barrier made of clay for sport. A car, used properly, is not a weapon, it's a means of transport. Firearms are weapons.
And you also kind of need a car to get along in society -- especially in places where public transportation does not exist or is woefully inadequate. It makes a lot more sense to give your depressed teen (with a drivers' license, of course!) access to the family car than to give them a gun. After all, if they can't use the car to go visit their friends, or go to their after-school job, what they'll be doing is moping around the house. And that just sounds like more depression.
Perhaps he could have used the gun at a firing range to let off some stress. But if I were the parents, and actually paid attention to the kid, I wouldn't let him do that without supervision. And I wouldn't even do that, personally. The parents made an active choice to put a weapon in the hands of their depressed, angry son, unsupervised. That's not bad parenting, that's ludicriously harmful parenting. I would even say negligent.
All that being said, it's interesting to me that owning a firearm is a right, but driving a car is a privilege -- yet the former is optional and the latter, for many people, a necessity.
urquan
Every one who exalts himself will be humbled, but he who humbles himself will be exalted.
2yr ago
· Edited 1yr ago
deleted
urquan
Every one who exalts himself will be humbled, but he who humbles himself will be exalted.
7mo ago
· Edited 7mo ago
Let me apologize for the tone of my recent posts on this topic, which were really dumb Twitter-tier reactions and don't reflect either my values or the standards of this place.
the only reason for affordability is due to the taxpayer shouldering the costs
Yes, and I'm saying this is a good thing, and the percentage should be higher. It's a fair point that the public option is unlikely to increase efficiency, but increasing efficiency isn't really the goal for me. I like the idea of a public option because it means giving money to the government that is constrained by the Constitution, the courts, administrative procedure, etc... while giving money to a private insurer, while they absolutely are regulated to death, means giving money to a party whose entire purpose is to take as much of your money as it can legally get away with while giving you as little in return as they can legally get away with. It's the alignment of incentives I find disconcerting, not the level of efficiency.
I don't agree with the "healthcare is a human right" thing, but I do believe that it's right for society as a whole to shoulder the burden to take care of people who are vulnerable, struggling, chronically ill, etc. I put social welfare policies, particularly surrounding healthcare, in the same basket of public goods as roads, bridges, police officers, defense -- it's part of the fundamental social fabric that enables people to live at all, and shouldn't be subject to the whims of the market.
To be clear, my view on the Republican party on this issue is not that conservative voters examined the evidence closely and made a cost-benefit analysis, it's that conservative voters hate the idea of the public option because it's the government doing stuff, and there's an axiomatic belief among Republicans that the public sector is inherently inferior that is just as dogmatic as the belief among Democrats that the private sector is always exploitative.
Despite what my strong feelings on healthcare may suggest, I'm not actually particularly dogmatic on economic issues: except to say that I believe what should be done is the option that empowers ordinary people to live the best and most fulfilling lives as is possible. There are some areas where giving people more choices and the freedom to make decisions in a free market gives them the most power -- but likewise there are other areas where the amount of knowledge and wisdom a person would have to accumulate to make a judicious choice is so ludicrously high that people do need government officials to regulate away bad choices and build a system where people have the legal right to be treated fairly.
If that means trickle-down in one case, fine, if that means government monopoly in another, great, if that means single payer in one context, sure, if that means tax breaks at one point, I'm all for it. I'm apparently being an economic progressive today, so I'll throw some meat to the fiscal conservatives in the audience and say I think most concerns about corporate greed are silly, and price increases usually reflect underlying economic variables. Price fixing in particular is the worst possible solution to any economic problem.
I'm happy to agree with the more libertarian side of the fence that our current system is regulated to death and has the worst aspects of both private and government-run healthcare, but I don't see the solution being deregulation and turning healthcare into a McDonald's menu where people have to price-match and pay for add-ons in times of extreme time-pressure, information asymmetry, and profound emotional and physical stress. If there's any time whatsoever where we can be absolutely sure people aren't Homo economicus, it's when they have to make serious decisions that affect the life, death, and serious suffering of themselves or a loved one.
urquan
Every one who exalts himself will be humbled, but he who humbles himself will be exalted.
1yr ago
· Edited 1yr ago
deleted
urquan
Every one who exalts himself will be humbled, but he who humbles himself will be exalted.
2yr ago
· Edited 1yr ago
deleted
urquan
Every one who exalts himself will be humbled, but he who humbles himself will be exalted.
5mo ago
Any @TIRM's point isn't that we live in the counterfactual world, but that the counterfactual world indicates that the promiscuous sex practices of gay men are the cause of the problem: but for their existence, HIV would not be a major issue, as you've just agreed. Earlier you stated that "Even if one somehow got rid of those things... the deadliest diseases in human history were not caused by either promiscuous sex or drug use", and by agreeing to his counterfactual, you've just denied that very statement.
urquan
Every one who exalts himself will be humbled, but he who humbles himself will be exalted.
6mo ago
If you find yourself in a room with 11 people who are voting to convict after several days of deliberation, then it's unlikely that they're doing so purely for political reasons. If you haven't turned at least a few members around in that time, then you're probably wrong, and unless you're a total moron, you'll probably come around yourself. In a high-profile case such as this, there is going to be a lot of pressure for a verdict, and the judge isn't going to send everyone home just because you say you're deadlocked; the system is willing to keep you there a lot longer than you think they will.
How democratic!
You can make any choice as a juror, so long as you make the one everyone else is making. And if you don’t make the decision everyone else wants you to, the state will use force to intimidate you into changing your mind.
We might as well just use Nazi ballots, if the whole point of juries is to use social and economic pressure to force people to vote the same way, and using confinement and isolation to overcome conscientious disagreement. These are totalitarian tactics, incompatible with freedom.
urquan
Every one who exalts himself will be humbled, but he who humbles himself will be exalted.
7mo ago
Yes, precisely this. Anyone who doesn’t think there’s already a large cohort of late millennial and gen-Z women with no interest in realistic romantic relationships is either wildly out of touch or willfully blind.
urquan
Every one who exalts himself will be humbled, but he who humbles himself will be exalted.
7mo ago
· Edited 7mo ago
We should encourage understanding; that is, a rational understanding of the physical and social causes that make people think as they think and do as they do. But such understanding is distinct from empathy and compassion as emotional affects.
Compassion isn't a social affect: it's an act of the will.
When I suggested to you that compassion is better than understanding, my point was not that you need to get all teary-eyed and emotional about everyone's problems, though I won't knock that. My point is that it's far greater and more important to earnestly will and desire the best for everyone. That doesn't mean being emotional about it, and it certainly doesn't mean affirming the desires of every single person, especially when they go against their best interests. It can often mean telling people to their face that the path they're on ends up in disaster and they need to stop, now. "Admonishing the sinner" is considered a work of mercy very much for that reason.
But it certainly means caring about what happens to people, even if only abstractly. It means seeing the bad places and needless suffering that people end up in, and earnestly wishing that it were not so. It even includes taking steps to prevent bad outcomes, if only in a very small way.
Understanding can help, insofar as it can help you see where people have ended up with the needs that they have. But it's more important simply to wish for the best, even if you don't fully understand what that looks like, even if the only thing you can muster is the earnest desire that all should end well.
If I understand @dovetailing and @SubstantialFrivolity correctly when they talk about empathy and compassion, I think this is what they're saying. The antonym isn't emotional impassivity, but malice. Dovetailing is arguing that what people often feel towards trans people is malice: "the cruelty is the point."
urquan
Every one who exalts himself will be humbled, but he who humbles himself will be exalted.
10mo ago
· Edited 10mo ago
The primary demographic I'm referring to are PMC Males who have pride flags next to their twitter handle, a COEXIST bumps sticker on their subaru, and have never been part of an organized sport in their lives. These are men who gain sexual access to women by hyper flattering their cultural and social biases. They often get friend zoned. They make awful husbands and say things like, "My wife's boyfriend drives a truck life that!"
We agree about a lot of things, even on this issue, but this is just intense boo outgroup without any useful content. "The men who disagree with me are liars, cheaters, and weaklings who women hate, they have to play pretend to get laid, they make awful husbands and they're cucks," is barely distinct from "The men who disagree with me are liars, cheaters, and weaklings who women hate, they have to play pretend to get laid, they make awful husbands and they're misogynists," which is precisely the way that the left talks about incels.
I don't disagree that there are some lefty men who dissemble or exaggerate their progressive opinions to appeal to progressive women. But there are, of course, righty men who dissemble or exaggerate their religiosity to appeal to devout women. That was particularly true when religion was more important in society, as wokeness is now.
Playing the game of "find new and creative ways to call the opposition sexually-revolting losers" is particularly ironic when the topic of discussion is the demonization of lonely men, as it is with the incel policies.
urquan
Every one who exalts himself will be humbled, but he who humbles himself will be exalted.
1yr ago
· Edited 1yr ago
deleted
urquan
Every one who exalts himself will be humbled, but he who humbles himself will be exalted.
2yr ago
· Edited 1yr ago
deleted
urquan
Every one who exalts himself will be humbled, but he who humbles himself will be exalted.
3d ago
I'm often startled at how culturally significant the Matrix has been. The sequels weren't all that good, the plot of the original was strange and confusing, and the concept of "the world is revealed to be an illusion" has been done better -- but the concept of the colored pills, bullet time, and Laurence Fishburne's performance as Morpheus just made the movie hard to forget. The strange aesthetic made it both confusing and memorable. (Sometimes I think the flaws of Star Wars did the same -- both the OT and the prequels have diehard fans precisely because they were tacky and disjointed. The sequels are so polished, but they're polished like a turd.)
The Matrix definitely sticks out in my memory, but personally I'd rather everyone take the Christpill from Catholic Morpheus.
Oh, if only my parents were like that. They go on a frenzy to remove Christmas decorations at their house starting December 26, and it's usually gone by New Years'.
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