The_Nybbler
If you win the rat race you're still a rat. But you're also still a winner.
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User ID: 174
The_Nybbler
If you win the rat race you're still a rat. But you're also still a winner.
53m ago
Oh no, of course not. Gen X is 45-60 now; millennials are 30-45. The Internet graduated from being the domain of the specialist to general usefulness in the late '90s, so "just in time for" is still broadly accurate. At that point, Gen X was half past 35
The midpoint of generation X didn't reach 35 until 2007.
The Internet graduated from being the domain of the specialist to general usefulness in the late '90s, so "just in time for" is still broadly accurate.
The first commercial ISP was 1989. The original Eternal September was September 1993. And services such as AOL, Genie, Compu$erve, Fidonet, and standalone dialup BBSs were older, some much older.
The_Nybbler
If you win the rat race you're still a rat. But you're also still a winner.
1hr ago
This is also just the natural result of Gen X aging into the Moral Majority position. They're not digital natives
LOL. The internet was not, in fact, invented just in time for the millennials. And digital networks existed before the Internet was generally available.
The_Nybbler
If you win the rat race you're still a rat. But you're also still a winner.
9hr ago
I would rather be an enemy of the US than an ally of Iran.
And the result of this situation is that the US now has two more enemies (Spain and France)
The_Nybbler
If you win the rat race you're still a rat. But you're also still a winner.
21hr ago
But we can still talk about how low a randomly-chosen individual can expect to get if they wind up penniless and friendless.
We can talk about it, but not in any meaningful way. The metric isn't available. And it wouldn't be a floor.
The_Nybbler
If you win the rat race you're still a rat. But you're also still a winner.
21hr ago
So the question here is this: Why is prejudice based on sex tolerable, but prejudice based on race & religion, not?
You can look for, and even find, logical reasons. But they aren't the true reason, which is plain old who/whom politics. Which becomes clear when you dig a little deeper and realize it's not true that prejudice based on sex is tolerable; rather, prejudice against men is tolerable and prejudice against women is intolerable. Nor is prejudice based on race always intolerable; prejudice against white people (especially white men) is acceptable. The old liberal order of "no prejudice based on those things" was never really implemented, and what part of it was has fallen apart in the Culture War.
The_Nybbler
If you win the rat race you're still a rat. But you're also still a winner.
1d ago
Trump's North Korea negotiations were a failure that left the status quo in place. Iran looks to be turning out to worse than that -- status quo except Iran has new leadership and effectively controls the Strait of Hormuz. The only way around that seems to be for the US to actually invade, and it doesn't look like they will. As long as Iran thinks they've won, they'll give up nothing (including the Strait) and the only way to make them think otherwise is invasion.
The_Nybbler
If you win the rat race you're still a rat. But you're also still a winner.
1d ago
They can continue to be a theocracy for all we really care, they can’t bomb Israel if they don’t have any missiles. They can’t threaten the strait if they don’t have a Navy. They can’t fund transnational militias if we keep killing their leaders.
Except it turns out they have effectively infinity missiles. Or they can produce them faster than we can destroy them. And they can close the strait as long as Lloyds thinks they can fire one drone. They haven't been actually destroyed, only knocked down from having 1000x when they need to maybe 10x. And that's not sufficient.
The_Nybbler
If you win the rat race you're still a rat. But you're also still a winner.
1d ago
Because the US lost. The Islamic Republic survived the worst we could do without invading, and closed the strait too. And the US isn't willing to invade to force the strait. So now the US has to give up something to get the strait back open. And Iran rebuilds everything including its navy and nuclear program in a few months, because without California-inspired regulation, that can actually be done very quickly.
Or, at least, that's how it will be if Iran gets its 10-point program.
The_Nybbler
If you win the rat race you're still a rat. But you're also still a winner.
1d ago
I don't think we're using "the floor" in the same sense - I mean "the floor" in the sense of how badly off the least fortunate members of society can get, and that can clearly be altered.
It can be altered in that it can be made worse that the natural floor by instituting torture camps or something similar. But as many cities have demonstrated, some people are bottomless pits of need, and cannot be raised above that natural floor.
The_Nybbler
If you win the rat race you're still a rat. But you're also still a winner.
1d ago
Don't most rights imply a corresponding duty?
No. This idea is generally a way for tyrants to vitiate rights, with the formula "You have the right to X, you have the duty to only employ X in the way I tell you to"
The_Nybbler
If you win the rat race you're still a rat. But you're also still a winner.
1d ago
Next link is Mattia Ferraresi, an Italian journalist. After that it vanishes into unnamed sources. Since the Avignon Papacy is something that would be a much bigger thing at the Vatican than in the US, I rather suspect it was fabricated there.
The_Nybbler
If you win the rat race you're still a rat. But you're also still a winner.
1d ago
Interesting if true
Yeah, and the "if true" is the important part. This has all the credibility of a Catholic Steele Dossier.
The_Nybbler
If you win the rat race you're still a rat. But you're also still a winner.
1d ago
The problem isn't TheMotte. The problem is the information environment is atrocious generally. Not only are the terms to the ceasefire not known and agreed on, the parties to them aren't either. The French are sure Israel broke the ceasefire by bombing Hezbollah in Lebanon. The Israelis deny this... and so do the Lebanese. Or so it seems. And that's pretty much how every bit of factual information is.
The_Nybbler
If you win the rat race you're still a rat. But you're also still a winner.
1d ago
And since the floor never changes, this means the left-wing view results in everyone in poverty forever.
The_Nybbler
If you win the rat race you're still a rat. But you're also still a winner.
2d ago
As I said, it isn't any better on that side.
The_Nybbler
If you win the rat race you're still a rat. But you're also still a winner.
2d ago
If the Iranian people could revolt, they would have. The regime has taken all their weapons and killed all their leaders, over the past 47 years; they are utterly defanged. The diaspora has been hanging out in nice countries enjoying themselves, not training up for military action in third-world shitholes. The dissidents are waiting for the West to save them. Spoiler: we won't.
The_Nybbler
If you win the rat race you're still a rat. But you're also still a winner.
2d ago
If either party could stop being idiotic and start actually dealing with our domestic crises like adults, that would be great.
The adults in the room on the Republican side are Mitt Romney, Robert Dole and John McCain, and the latter two are starting to smell a bit. The adults in the room on the Democratic side are Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders, which isn't any better.
The_Nybbler
If you win the rat race you're still a rat. But you're also still a winner.
2d ago
It's a 2-week ceasefire. Don't get ahead of yourself.
The_Nybbler
If you win the rat race you're still a rat. But you're also still a winner.
3d ago
Democrats are currently polling worse than anyone except Iran itself.
Well, either the pollsters are delusional or the Democrats are, because they're already counting the money from the wealth tax and all the other taxes they're going to put in after their landslide.
Also, Iran seems to be winning if you read the NYT, Economist, Free Press, etc.
The_Nybbler
If you win the rat race you're still a rat. But you're also still a winner.
3d ago
They are two entirely different entities.
The_Nybbler
If you win the rat race you're still a rat. But you're also still a winner.
3d ago
Ideally, perhaps. But in practice if I give out a lever -- for example, suppose I say I'd change my mind if Trump used nuclear weapons -- that lever will be used to abuse me. For what should be a silly example but is actually similar a discussion I've been part of, someone will say I SHOULD change my mind or be foresworn because depleted uranium penetrators were used.
The_Nybbler
If you win the rat race you're still a rat. But you're also still a winner.
3d ago
And for something like reverse engineering firmware, I'd venture a guess that somewhere in the range of 50 to 75 percent of the qualified candidates are catboys (or aesthetically similar).
Doubt it; I've known quite a few people good at that kind of thing (including myself) and none of them have been catboys or anything similar. Even SREs, who seem to have more than their share, don't reach 50% catboy. Maybe if you include bronies, but you can't tell all of them by looking.
The_Nybbler
If you win the rat race you're still a rat. But you're also still a winner.
3d ago
No, if you want to change my mind it's your job to convince me, not my job to hand you levers with which do to so.
The_Nybbler
If you win the rat race you're still a rat. But you're also still a winner.
3d ago
It wasn't Twitter, it was Truth Social. Which is where Trump rants.
On Bluesky and Mastodon but not on X? Sorry, that's a damned good indication they're completely on the wrong side of the Culture War now; they've gotten their last dime from me.
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