what_a_maroon
No bio...
User ID: 644
what_a_maroon
11mo ago
A "reign of terror"? Are you deliberately taking the piss? He's not Jack the Ripper (the marine, however, did kill someone).
what_a_maroon
1yr ago
How much freedom do those cars provide to children, anyone with a disability that prevents them from driving, people who are too old to drive safely, or anyone for whom a car is a significant expense? Or even someone who just dislikes driving? Who gets to experience those exit rights when housing is so expensive?
Cars are still entirely dependent on the government decides to do. Where roads go, when roads are closed, how lights and signs are used to direct traffic flow, road maintenance, etc. I'm all for freedom, but heavily-subsidized "freedom" is a contradiction in terms and an illusion. Dense, walkable, urban environments with a mix of things are what people created spontaneously. Car-dependent suburban sprawl is what the top-down planners created over the past 70 years.
Yes, cars provide some benefits. They also have a lot of costs.
what_a_maroon
9mo ago
Yes, at which point their language and culture were brutally suppressed, and they were forcibly assimilated into the WASP culture of whiteness.
But what problems did this actually cause prior to 1914?
No need to wait, just look around you.
Ok, what am I looking at? Is it that the children of those immigrants from the 80s and earlier have started using American names and speaking English? Is it that these 3rd generation immigrants are more likely to describe themselves as American (also more data on language)? What? Or do you not actually have a justification for anything you've written, and are expecting me to just agree because something seems obvious to you?
still carry with them a dagger with which to plunge into the back of the nation that welcomes them
That's a completely wild sort of accusation to make. Do you have any evidence for such a strong claim?
what_a_maroon
9mo ago
No, they were actively proclaiming for assimilation and suppression of foreign cultures and foreign tongues, if not explicitly foreign people.
Some people certainly wanted this, but did it actually happen? Or rather, did it actually happen any faster than it does now, or would have happened anyway? German was actually a very popular language in the US, with German newspapers in many towns, until the world wars. Lots of other diaspora communities persisted as well, like Celtish in the Carolina lowlands. My impression is actually that a lot of nativists did the opposite, and wanted the immigrants to remain separate in their own enclaves indefinitely--"No Irish need apply" doesn't seem like it encourages assimilation.
There were never as many Italians or Irish then as there are Mexicans and assorted CA hispanics now.
Do you have data to support this claim? Raw immigration numbers peaked in 1990, with the second peak being 1900-1920:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_immigration_to_the_United_States#/media/File:Immigration_to_the_United_States_over_time.svg
Adjusting for population, it's clear that we're in a pretty low spot historically (excepting the Depression and WW2)--adjusted for the 4.3x population difference, even the low point in 1900 is equivalent to well over 800,000 today. In fact, even going purely by raw numbers, "the last 60 years" is largely not that high!
Things have changed, and those changes have destroyed the mechanism for the assimilation that you take for granted. Hence the sneering. That machine's broken, it's not going to be rebuilt, and anyone who wants to do so is pilloried.
I don't see much in the way of evidence for any these things. I think people who say this don't sufficiently grapple with the history of assimilation, which I only know a little bit about, but I know enough to know that it's complicated.
This won't happen, because that goose is cooked.
Well, this is a testable prediction, at least. I think it's rather early to conclude it won't happen, when large-scale hispanic immigration is, what, 30 or 40 years old? German language newspapers existed as far back as the Revolution and was quite popular throughout the 1800s, only really declining because of WW1. Do you think that, say, the grandchildren of early hispanic immigrants (so, the children of people born in the US) don't speak substantially more English than their grandparents?
what_a_maroon
11mo ago
It should matter, though. As @Rov_Scam pointed out in a previous thread on this topic, you really do not want to encourage people to be very loose with their standards when it comes to applying violence to another person. It certainly can be difficult to summon lots of sympathy for the average person making a disturbance on the train, but that's missing the point. The kind of person who will aggressively (aggressively as the opposite of "conservatively" here, not in the sense of being the aggressor necessarily) use deadly physical force will likely not limit themselves to people that you personally find distasteful. Offend them on the road by cutting them off? They might take it on themselves to play cop and run you off the road. Take part in a protest they disagree with? Maybe they'll start a fight. Get into an argument at a bar? They might leave to retrieve a weapon, or wait for you outside.
To be clear, I'm not accusing Penny of being this type of person. I have no basis on which to make that particular determination. He might have just made an error in judgement (or he could even have acted in the right--I think this is unlikely, given the witness statements I've read, which don't seem to actually include any actions that Neely took that would constitute a serious threat to human life, but they could be incomplete or wrong). But the use of violence by civilians against other civilians has to be based on high and objective standards, rather than how we feel about the people involved.
what_a_maroon
11mo ago
Restraining a person sometimes causes their death, as it did in this case.
If Perry does get convicted of manslaughter, it is false that it would be for restraining someone. Death is an essential component. There is absolutely no reason to describe the events this way except to make it seem like Perry didn't do anything wrong, without addressing any of the relevant facts.
Our prior for Penny acting violently or in a threatening way on the train should indeed be affected by his previous arrests.
"Our" prior does not justify your claim that he was violent. This is at best extremely weak evidence; the only witness statement I saw claimed he was not violent, which while obviously far from perfect is better evidence.
The question is whether Neely's behavior justified Penny's actions, not whether they justified the result.
This is just bizarre. Are you of the opinion that the consequences (or at least, expected consequences) of an action, have nothing to do with whether they are justified? I suppose this would be consistent with your idea that drivers shouldn't be held responsible for driving recklessly.
what_a_maroon
1yr ago
What does that have to do with anything? Do you actually care about the evidence, or are you just looking for gotchas?
what_a_maroon
1yr ago
Or for instance, when someone writes a short comment purporting to make a point, but is just trying to dismiss anything that might be critical of Trump.
what_a_maroon
9mo ago
https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2020/08/20/key-findings-about-u-s-immigrants/
So we might set a new record soon, but it's only recently (last 10 years) gotten close to the level that was maintained pretty consistently from 1870 to 1920 (although this is also affected by the native reproduction rate--I think "we have more immigrants" may be less useful than "existing residents are having fewer kids"). So it's still not really accurate to say "There were never as many Italians or Irish then as there are Mexicans and assorted CA hispanics now." If this trend continues it might be true at some point in the future.
what_a_maroon
11mo ago
I missed some of these comments from before.
That's ... not a net decrease. That's a 'suboptimal policy'. It's only a net decrease if those resources would be used more efficiently elsewhere absent the highway. Which, I think you would agree when looking at the rest of the city budget, they're not likely to be any time soon.
"Don't tax people as much" is pretty efficient. You can make any project at all seem good by comparing it to something even worse, but this isn't a high standard.
A net decrease would require comparing that 'dealing with additional traffic' to the new jobs or new activities the people the additional traffic brings, or the economic benefits from the businesses employing / serving the additional traffic. And ... I can't see how that comes out net negative. Having your property sized does suck, yeah, and I'm not sure how to factor that cost in - but that's basically a universal cost of development, so it doesn't obviously bring the total negative.
You're not counting any of the money spent as part of the net negative. If we could teleport roads in for free, then yeah, that be a different calculation. But the roads are free to drive on, which means they are being used above the level which is economically efficient, and building more lanes would just exacerbate the problem. This is what I mean by net negative: We're spending more and more money for what is, yes, a fairly marginal benefit. You know what would let a lot more people commute faster, with fewer externalities? A train.
Let me ask you this: Is there any domain where this argument doesn't apply? Should the government supply every good at 0 cost to the consumer? Because I'm pretty sure that communism doesn't work very well.
what_a_maroon
11mo ago
Is this a failure?
If your goal is to reduce congestion, which is typically a major stated goal of these projects, then yes, it's clearly a failure.
And the market makes more money!
I don't think this statement means anything, but also there is no "market" here. The state government just wants to build more highway, regardless of costs or benefits.
a separate goal of 'more people getting to where they want to'
I don't know why every time I end up in a discussion about roads on here, all of the car enthusiasts use the same analogy as if I don't understand that more people driving means that more people are going places. That's not the question. The question is how this particular use of space, money, and time compares to alternatives. It's like offering starving people 1,000-dollar truffle mushrooms as food, and then when someone points out that 98% of them are still starving because you could only afford to feed 2%, you pat yourself on the back because, well, you fed some people, right?
Plus, you can't just completely ignore everyone except for the group who benefits. What about the businesses and homes that would be subsumed by the wider freeway? Are they better off? What about people who live in East Austin and would like to be able to get into downtown without driving? What about people who can't or don't want to drive?
what_a_maroon
1yr ago
To me, this seems like one of those things where the disease is worse than the cure, but people don't realize it. Driving is very dangerous; for example, several times more Americans are killed every year in car crashes (including people outside of automobiles being hit). One could certainly argue about all of the relevant costs of crime vs cars, but at the very least it's worth thinking seriously about, and I suspect most Americans don't weigh them anywhere close to what really makes sense.
(I should emphasize, this doesn't mean I think crime doesn't matter, or people should just suck up having to deal with it, or anything like that. A number of American cities have done themselves a great disservice by failing to do anything about crime, homeless encampments, etc. and having lots of these things in your neighborhood is a legitimate concern.)
what_a_maroon
1yr ago
Can you show how what they're doing is worse then what the people who pushed through mask mandates did?
No, such a task is impossible. "People who pushed through mask mandates" is an enormous and varied group. It's almost certainly the case that some of them insisted the evidence is overwhelming, while others were more sanguine.
Otherwise there's nothing interesting about that sentence.
The link posted here wasn't a link to someone claiming that masks are definitely foolproof and should be enforced during COVID outbreaks. If someone makes that post with flimsy evidence (and I see it) I'll call them out too. I oppose bad arguments, regardless of the conclusion.
what_a_maroon
1yr ago
Cochrane's own conclusion says:
The high risk of bias in the trials, variation in outcome measurement, and relatively low adherence with the interventions during the studies hampers drawing firm conclusions.
When you look at the included studies, it's not hard to see why. For one, many of these studies pre-date COVID and focus on ILI. In addition, the ones that I've looked at so far in their summary table are not measuring the effectiveness of masks. They're measuring the effectiveness of trying to get people to wear masks, if they aren't already. For example, the second study listed, Alfelali 2020, notes that the test group had about 25% "daily" mask use and 13% in the control group (it was also a study of ILI, with data gathered from 2013 to 2016). On the flip side, we have MacIntyre 2015 reporting over 50% adherence for both cloth and medical masks (which was on healthcare workers, clearly a different population). Given the obvious issues with both noncompliance and heterogeneity, it's not exactly surprising that they got a null result. It looks to me like only 2 of the included 12 studies were even specific to COVID.
From the point of view of a policymaker, this (arguably) makes sense, although you would still prefer to have separate studies of how people respond to wearing masks, and then how effective they are if you wear them. Both of those things are likely to change based on location and population. From an individual point of view, you should care much more about how effective masks are if you wear them consistently and interact with other people wearing them.
The linked blog post is greatly exaggerating the strength of this evidence, and clearly is trying to push a political agenda by downplaying these limitations and ignoring any nuance.
what_a_maroon
1yr ago
How much would you spend to be able to walk 500 miles? How much would you spend to be able to walk with a ton of load?
I'm not doing either of those things on a regular basis, and 500 miles is by definition outside of my metropolitan area and thus irrelevant to the question of city design. I don't really see why it makes sense to spend thousands of dollars a year on a car if the reason to do so is things that I do maybe once per year, but you do you I guess.
Was everything accessible to a person in medieval city within a 15 minute walk?
Most people did walk, yes. Your average person probably could not afford to take a horse everywhere. But do you think that history jumped straight from the middle ages to 1960? Why not at least try to make the best comparison possible, and look at what cities were like, say, after the invention of trains and street cars?
The point was to show the original argument wasn't good.
The statement I made was true, so I don't know why you think making an incorrect statement shows anything.
what_a_maroon
1yr ago
Oh, I am also officially predicting that Florida will get it's count done (i.e. able to definitely declare victory in all state and federal-level races) on election day or shortly thereafter (before noon the next day), there won't be a need for a recount, and there will be no major voter fraud (defined at 1000 or more 'false' votes in any given county) detected. 90% confidence on all of the above/
They did exactly that in 2020, because they allow counting of mail-in votes early. States which didn't allow such counting took several days. Apparently this was evidence of fraud despite being pointed out by 538 at least a week before the election.
what_a_maroon
1yr ago
Find a thing you want to eliminate (single family homes, meat, cars), attribute everything bad in the world to it (climate change, cancer, inequality, racism, etc), and then work make those things worse (endless bureaucracy and permitting, dysfunctional layouts, taxes) so that eliminating it looks like a viable option.
I find this kind of a bizarre position to hold, because several of the alleged (and, in my opinion, quite possibly real) downsides of all of the 3 things you mention are the exact thing you claim are trying to be achieved.
Car-dependent sprawl and single-family-only zoning means nobody walks or bikes, which causes obesity. It also makes children less independent and capable, both physically and emotionally/psychologically. If someone is trying to make you more dependent on the government and less capable of being independent, then getting you away from a sprawling suburb is mostly counterproductive. Meat is more debatable, but meat with a high fat content is probably not great for you and at the very least we could use fewer agricultural subsidies. Moreover, getting completely rid of cars and single family homes is a weakman of most urbanists; to the extent that anyone is trying to achieve that, they're about as close as conservatives are to taking over academia. Right now, the overwhelming majority of bureaucracy, permitting, and taxes is applied to everything except single family homes and car infrastructure.
what_a_maroon
9mo ago
What pressure are you referring to? And what do you mean by "native" here? Rich old money families descended from Mayflower passengers aside, my point is that the great-grandchildren of Italian immigrants from the late 1800s are not pretty much completely indistinguishable from the grandchildren of Polish immigrants in the 1920s or from the great great grandchildren of a German immigrant from 1850 or from the 5x great grandchildren of English immigrants from the 1700s.
what_a_maroon
10mo ago
This creates a spiral, where the most walking-friendly destinations and infrastructure end up neglected, making them even less attractive, and people who want to drive end up going elsewhere.
Something like this is possible, or even likely. Another point, often made by urbanists, is that having more regular people in spaces makes them safer, and feel safer, because of safety in numbers. However, mainly what I was trying to get at is that the policies that allow lawlessness to continue and spread are orthogonal to policies that favor driving/other modes of transportation, and so it is entirely possible (easy, even, aside from the political constraints that seem to be unique to America) to make walkable places that are nothing like what firmamenti describes.
Yes. People began moving to suburbs almost as soon as they could get cars. Even before, with the "streetcar suburbs" proliferating in the 1920's. Then rising crime and unrest, and safety-hostile urban policies like blockbusting and forced school integration caused mass flight right when the new interstates made it convenient to do so.
Streetcar suburbs are the opposite of a car-dependent development and are not a problem.
I think you should re-check your history. Homicide rates declined from the mid 30s until the mid 60s, which is exactly when American governments started demolishing urban neighborhoods to build highways, subsidizing homeownership, etc.
If you're just going to drop a thinly veiled claim that being near black people is a public safety hazard, you should have some evidence for it. "Controversial claims require evidence" etc.
what_a_maroon
11mo ago
According to this video, to be in the clear in most jurisdictions, you should... just not be there when he comes back.
The way I understand it is that if you want to be as sure as you can in all jurisdictions then yes. It doesn't mean you'll definitely be found guilty if you don't leave. But if you can't leave, as in the subway car, I'm not sure how relevant it is?
In the case of Neely... did he have a history of causing grave bodily harm to anyone?
I don't think his criminal history can generally be admitted as evidence unless Penny or someone else involved knew it. The really relevant facts are "what was he doing in the moment?"
This doctrine seems to let you do a lot of dickery before anyone is actually permitted 'deadly force'.
I mean, yes? I have to admit I'm confused by the statement. We're talking about killing a person, regardless of whether some people think that being mentally hill or on drugs or a petty criminal means you're subhuman. This is very much something we as a society should be taking seriously, and not permitting for minor annoyances or slights.
what_a_maroon
1yr ago
Accusations of unfair elections have always been around, but the politicians themselves are supposed to accept defeat. Consider the 2000 presidential election: Al Gore disputed 1 legitimately very close state with sketch election practices, and when he lost the court challenges, that was it. There weren't dozens of lawsuits filed against every state and election official where he lost, alleging far-flung conspiracies. There wasn't a riot at the Capitol. There was definitely a lot of double-think and crappy opinionating from the peanut gallery (e.g. is it a question for Florida state courts or SCOTUS; depends on who everyone thinks they'll side with) but I think overall I think he had a much better case than Trump for losing unfairly and managed to handle it more gracefully.
what_a_maroon
1yr ago
Rationalists are almost all atheists, because the evidence for God is so incredibly weak, especially compared to the magnitude of the hypothesis (extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence, etc.). And it lacks explanatory or predictve power (video if you prefer that format).
To expand on this: a religious person asks the question "what if there is no god" and spends a life exploring it. An atheist asks that question when they're a teenager (usually), figures that they know the answer, and then refuses to explore further.
I'm going to suggest that you don't understand atheists (or at least, atheist rationalists) very well. You have already skewed the discussion by asking "what if there is no god", which presumes we have any prior reason to think there is a god. "God" does not actually answer any questions we might have about the universe--it is the believer who can use it as an answer for any question, without investigating further. Hence, for example, Lord Kelvin's assertion that many mysteries of life, which we have since explained with science, are completely unexplainable by science.
what_a_maroon
1yr ago
I did oppose mask mandates, but I could also just be saying that now because this entire forum isn't that old.
Anyway, I don't get the sense you're acting in good faith, so this is probably where I bow out of this conversation.
what_a_maroon
1yr ago
Did the GOP hurt their own election chances by downplaying COVID?
This tweet claims that Lauren Boebert may lose her race by less than 100 votes, in a district with over 2,500 covid deaths. While one can certainly argue over the effectiveness of various measures, I think a combination of masking, distancing, and (of course) vaccinating could easily be worth plus or minus 8% deaths (the vote is roughly evenly split, so if there would otherwise be about 1250 dead from each group, then we have 100/1250 = about 8%). And the elderly, who were disproportionately affected by COVID, tend to vote Republican.
Note, the original tweet is now out of date; https://elections.denverpost.com/ has Boebert ahead by just over 1,000 votes. The closest House race where the Dem is currently ahead, coincidentally also in CO, unfortunately does not appear in https://geographicinsights.iq.harvard.edu/coviduscongress because it's a new district (CO 8). CA District 13 is also very close, with the Republican ahead by 267 (according to https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2022/11/10/us/elections/results-house-seats-elections-congress.html, at time of writing) in a district with 945 covid deaths. If this race does flip, it could easily be by just a few hundred votes (currently only 58% counted though).
Since I was asked to elaborate: Just about every part of this comment is extremely low quality.
Excuse me? A 15 minute chokehold resulting in a dead person is "restraining"?
This is not in evidence. Unless you mean his prior assault arrests, which were not known to anyone on the train and thus irrelevant.
Neither of these remotely justifies death.
More options
Context Copy link