zeke5123a
1mo ago
I’ve heard “he is worth 100 or 150” without giving the base but I’ve never heard anyone mention figures while dropping the first six.
zeke5123a
1mo ago
If you asked the average Joe or Jane in early 2000s who Harvey Weinstein was I bet few would know (do ordinary people pay attention to thank you’s in an Oscar speech — do they even pay attention to the Oscar’s?).
If you showed a picture even less would’ve been able to tell you who that was.
If you asked them who Clooney was, a majority would be able to tell you.
zeke5123a
1mo ago
I was puzzled by this. I think he meant deca-millionaire. Maybe it’s a British thing?
zeke5123a
1mo ago
OTOH, Cosby was conservative coded. On the other hand, Diddy. On the gripping hand, Tyson.
zeke5123a
1mo ago
Exactly. I think your point is correct and conflating elite with celebrity misses a key point.
You could’ve also mentioned the UVA scandal.
zeke5123a
1mo ago
But that’s conflating things—elite and celebrity. The two do not always go hand in hand.
zeke5123a
1mo ago
Apple clearly could if they wanted to spend the money to have the chops.
zeke5123a
1mo ago
Not saying you’re wrong but a few explanations:
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Some firms may believe its existential and therefore even if costs are high and odds of success are low the cost of losing is too high.
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Right now, the market is rewarding them for the spending. So even if they internally question the wisdom, stock price goes up and the decision makers get bonuses.
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One tech company has somewhat called bullshit. They sit in Cupertino. Maybe they’ve since changed but my understanding is they still call bullshit.
zeke5123a
1mo ago
I’m skeptical but you may be right. See the market the last week.
But even the market isn’t really where you are.
zeke5123a
1mo ago
Seems like there could be more to the story. How would they have met? Did the relationship begin earlier and they just went “official” after she graduated?
zeke5123a
1mo ago
I think military attacking purely a civilian target is terrorism. I think an irregular force attacking a military target probably isn’t terrorism.
zeke5123a
1mo ago
As I mention below, bright line rules are easy to state but are over and under inclusive. Just because a standard has fuzziness doesn’t mean it’s worse than a bright line rule which isn’t fuzzy but doesn’t get at the nature of what people are asking.
I think there might be two tests I would use.
The vacation test: if you are abroad and a non government person asks “what are you” do you respond American or something else (eg Puerto Rican)
The second is if the U.S. was in a hotly contested war would you strongly take up its defense?
I think the combo of the two are helpful.
zeke5123a
1mo ago
So is citizenship. Take your example except the baby is born across the border. The baby then spends the rest of its life outside the U.S. Based on your view, the person is American despite functionally never living in the U.S. That seems absurd prima facie. Bright line rules are in fact over and under inclusive. Standards are mushy but avoid these edge cases somewhat.
For what it’s worth, I’m largely against mass immigration because they don’t assimilate. But I’m okay with immigration when they do. One of my close friends is an Eastern European immigrant. She married an American and is raising her kids American. But for an accent, you wouldn’t know she wasn’t born here. That’s a success story. Quality learing is the opposite.
zeke5123a
1mo ago
Do you know that Puerto Rico has their own parallel tax system? General federal income tax doesn’t apply to them. You keep harping on this concept that because PR is a territory of the U.S. it is just like any other area of the U.S.
It isn’t. It’s different. It is a possession of the U.S. And the people there have a foreign culture to the central American culture.
zeke5123a
1mo ago
I do not contest he is an American citizen. I contest that he is an any sense part of the American nation.
He doesn’t share American values. He doesn’t share American traditions. He sings in Spanish.
I wouldn’t trust that he’d fight for America if push came to shove. And if the American experiment failed, he be happy to live in PR.
zeke5123a
1mo ago
No. Trans people took a defined word rooted in biology and tried to redefine it.
If you asked someone say 5 years to define an American how many would say:
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Supports PR independence
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Speaks Spanish, not English
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Routinely complains about America.
These are about the exact opposite of what most people would think of when you conjure up an American. In fact, I’d say the one claiming that the people above are American are more like trans folk claiming biological reality is immaterial.
But to really test your point, imagine two U.S. citizens have a baby and live in say Israel. And that baby grows up and married someone who similarly was born to two U.S. citizens yet lived in Israel his or her whole life. That new couple had a baby.
Legally the grandchild could be a U.S. citizen. But the child is in no way American.
This is a bit of a toy example but it is trying to separate out “Americanness” from “legal status.”
Sure people used to watch the Oscars (though still not most people). Someone ruining Weinstein in passing would not create widespread name recognition. Movies perhaps but even then how many people paid attention to that kind of thing?
Walt Disney was some what recognizable as he did shows etc as part of marketing. The other famous people were directors and people would go see movies due to directors. Pretty rare to go see a movie because of a producer.
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