TIRM
11hr ago
Very roughly: If there is an opportunity to give black people a majority black district, then it is required to do so. The American south has lots of black people. Some of whom packed into gerrymandered districts giving them black congressional representatives. This is “good” gerrymandering required by law.
TIRM
2d ago
Trump very much did not run on nuclear disarmament. The mild respectable Romney types haven’t been in charge for a while. I’m sure Romney would let UCLA get away with discriminating against Asians and Jews. But Trump and his ilk are not hypocrites for punching back.
TIRM
4d ago
Indeed. My employer forbids us from using common LLMs. That would involve giving them our proprietary information. We can only use pre-approved entirely internal LLMs. These are on our hardware.
TIRM
10d ago
I work in an office building. There are a few open office sections with many employees in each one. At least two have pride flags. We design electronics and software for said electronics.
A local restraunt has outdoor seating with a pride banner wrapped around the barrier separating it from the public sidewalk. It must be hundreds of feet of the stuff. I met the owner and as best I can tell he isn't gay. The clientele are the regular mix of people in the area. Not a gay venue by any means. But inexplicably covered in pride.
TIRM
10d ago
But not every cultural reference needs to be explained. You understood his post, except for one reference tacked onto the end. And that's fine.
TIRM
14d ago
Appeal to popularity. America is outlier in many ways. That is not evidence that we are wrong and would benefit by emulating other countries.
TIRM
14d ago
Without the barrel directing it, bullets don't go anywhere. The case will split open and the bullet will not shoot out. There's no viable path to suicide based on holding a hot frying pan to the backs of rounds held against your head.
it's usually a sub/dom sorta thing involving racial stereotypes or slurs at the low end
Okay. Still not that tawdry given the context being pornography. I suppose they had to draw a line somewhere. An erotic literature version of Brown Sugar would be a bit much. And not like they have an objective way of drawing the line that would satisfy my understanding of what is more or less extreme.
TIRM
16d ago
Raceplay
There's an interesting one. Based on the top lists of porn websites you'd think racial fetishism was one of the most common forms of sexual desire. Lists of top porn search terms by state similarly have races as top search terms. Popular and, given the context, rather innocuous.
this man exploits the woman's unawareness of her potential value on the sexual marketplace
But the opposite, right? She is aware of her sexual value. So she doesn't squander it on a 19 year old. He has no money.
Our hypothetical woman is with a financially secure older man with disposable income. Not a penniless 40 year old and not a penniless 19 year old. Call her a gold digger if she seeks marriage. Or chuckle at those charts of Leonardo DiCaprio's age vs his girlfriends' age. But this hypothetical woman has determined her sexual value and found a buyer.
If we are going analogize finding romantic partners to buying and selling, then these women are like me when I sold my last house. I didn't sell it to a penniless college student. I sold it to an older man after he showed me his bank account. He had a million dollars in a checking account. I didn't fail to realize my house's value. I found a buyer and we agreed on a mutually beneficial arrangement.
Not that I endorse comparing dating and marriage to selling yourself, but if we're making the analogy then let's follow it through.
TIRM
21d ago
They explain given the state of his heart he probably won't live to see his 32nd birthday. I interpret that as a real issue.
TIRM
21d ago
Also the main character has a fatal heart condition and says he has a 99% chance of heart failure with a few years. He collapses clutching his chest partway through the film. He is entirely medically unqualified to go on a multiyear space program.
The central point of the film is the opposite of what was intended. They would be right to reject him.
TIRM
21d ago
I'm quite skeptical about an exodus of American academics. I'll believe it when I see it. My prediction is a tiny portion actually leaves.
TIRM
23d ago
Maybe this is too much psychoanalysis
Yes, you are massively overreading a verbal quote and adding information to it in order to make a larger point beyond its actual scope. I don't think Vance was cleverly baiting you. I think he was giving an innocuous speech.
is basically a sneaky way to wage the culture war by sanewashing a lot of very sketchy racist arguments through giving them a very tilted playing field and a sort of "controlled opposition"
But no. Unsupported assertions are easy to make. This one is false.
"Sanewashing"? A thought defeating cliche used against statements for which someone lacks an argument against.
TIRM
23d ago
Now that's interesting. I would have assumed married couples would get a free pass for possible past fornication. Sometimes the first baby comes a bit quicker than normal for some young married couples.
TIRM
23d ago
And people used to fuck before marriage anyways. The puritans commonly had premarital pregnancies. Covered up by rush marriages.
Fornication was indeed a crime. Like smoking weed today. Illegal and popular.
Citizenship is in fact based on ancestry and/or birth location. That is true across the globe. Most countries additionally lack birthright citizenship and require an ancestral justification for citizenship. Vance is stating the most common legal norm regarding this. So I would not portray it as a particularly Vancian/Mottish view.
As a separate matter there are immigrants who apply for citizenship. I suppose some ideological test is valid for them. Not being former SS officers or terrorists or anti-capitalist revolutionaries, etc. But not an ideological test checking for 2025 progressive values. There's no "trans lives matter" loyalty statements in the paperwork or interviews.
Broadly speaking: Vance is correct in this quote.
TIRM
25d ago
Minimize top level comments I don't care about. Fully read the ones I am interested in. Skim others.
TIRM
25d ago
We aren't other countries. Sure Japanese people live long healthy lives with lower medical spending. And if our nation was composed of Japanese people then we would too. But we aren't and won't be, so nevermind.
We are a strangely violent people. Even excluding gun crime we have very high violent crime rates compared to other developed countries. I'm not clear what factors cause this. The good news is we don't have to root cause our problems to get rid of junkie encampments in major cities.
My understanding is that a fairly small number of serial offenders commit a majority of quality of life crimes. I believe a modest increase in the prison population could fix these problems. I don't think it would take extremes like multiplying the prison population.
Doing a bit of googling I see that my state spends 2.2% of its budget on incarceration. I would gladly bear a 2.2% tax increase to fix these problems. Again, not that I think we need to go to the extreme of doubling the prison population. But if we had to it would be very affordable.
Such a good example. In the second most recent Star Wars movie they had a dyed-hair girlboss talking down to a fighter pilot saying the last thing they need are any more “trigger happy fly boys” … in their ongoing ship vs ship combat. The writers repudiating the spacefighter dogfighting aspect of Star Wars. Something that hypes boys much more than a disapproving HR manager talking down to a combat pilot for being too high-T.
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