Jiro
7hr ago
This dovetails with @naraburn's post about the Pokemon Go avatar changes being designed, apparently, to challenge conventional beauty standards- especially the sub-question in that thread regarding a conspiracy to promote ugliness. That conspiracy exists, in its declaration that there is no Noble Physiognomy, and our attractions are just manipulated by White Supremacy.
"Conspiracy to promote ugliness" in that context is mostly about women, so it doesn't apply here.
Jiro
18hr ago
People who are not weird Internet guys think action and inaction have different moral valences.
Jiro
1d ago
"Enshittification" doesn't mean "turned to shit". It means "turned to shit because of user, and later business, lock-in".
Jiro
2d ago
Why wouldn't it apply to all home video sales rather than specifically DVDs and only DVDs?
Jiro
2d ago
Explaining that we're on the edge of the map and can't move any further
This is like complaining that on page 83 of your printed book, there's the number 83 written in the corner and you think that nobody in the book has a reason to say "83" in character.
Even if it's a character who speaks the line (I can't access the link), that's a genre convention and has no bearing on writing quality.
Jiro
6d ago
would rather hole himself up in an embassy for the rest of his life rather than go attend a police interview in god damned Sweden of all places.
That's an inaccurate description. It isn't the police interview in Sweden that he didn't want, it's being thrown into a cell in the US that he didn't want.
Jiro
6d ago
Taking rights away from a mentally ill person should require an adversarial hearing where the person accused of being mentally ill has the right to bring evidence, cross-examine witnesses, etc. If there hasn't been such a hearing, and the law otherwise allows the boy to have a gun (which it sounds like it does), requiring people to keep guns away from the "mentally ill" person is just a roundabout way to circumvent gun rights.
Nobody would accept a ruling that forced the boy into involuntary confinement without a hearing, even if failure to involuntarily confine him meant that he could, and eventually did, kill someone.
Jiro
7d ago
Are you trying to say that the accusations are so shaky that they couldn’t have been anything other than a bad faith attempt by the Swedes to get hold of Assange?
Intelligence agencies are perfectly capable of using their influence to trump up charges that may not stand up in court, but look plausible enough that you can't prove bad faith in advance. Your standard here is a blank check to the intelligence agencies to get anyone they want.
The accusations might have been in good faith, but they also might not, and the possibility that they aren't was substantial.
Jiro
7d ago
The typical holocaust denier has far less interest at stake than, say, the typical online Israeli or Zionist.
Yet the typical online Zionist posts about other things than just Zionism.
Jiro
7d ago
Technically the Japanese were POC, but Asians have a weird place in the oppression stack.
Jiro
8d ago
The term "Holocaust" didn't come into popular use until the late 1950s.
Here's a Churchill reference. Of course it doesn't use the term, but it's about the holocaust.
Jiro
8d ago
I don't know, does he think that Israel is a death cult against Hamas's existence?
Jiro
8d ago
A more charitable interpretation is that Muslims who don't support Hamas are rare enough that they shouldn't be taken into account when forming policy.
Nobody short of the lizardman constant means "literally no such thing" when they say "no such thing" and it's not some kind of science or math problem.
Jiro
8d ago
most adults who go on hormones are happy about that,
Going on hormones and then believing that hormones are bad for you seems like it would be unlikely because of the sunk cost fallacy.
Jiro
9d ago
I have occasionally mused in the last few years that mandatory national service after high school would probably improve national cohesiveness.
This hasn't been how it's worked in Russia.
Also, the usual moral hazard of forcing people to work for you and not letting them quit.
Jiro
9d ago
"I was only following orders" is something we as a society have learned through hard experience is no excuse. People may not relieve themselves of responsibility for doing bad things on the grounds that someone else hired them to do the bad thing; and even if they're hiring you to do it to themselves, it's your responsibility to refuse if they are not of sound mind when they hired you. You don't have the option to say "judging them to be of unsound mind is none of my business"--it informs the propriety of your own actions, for which you bear responsibility, which makes it your business.
Jiro
11d ago
I think it would also be fair to say that the US has moved to the right.
Anything recent that seems to be the US moving to the right is a special case that bypassed the obstacles that keep the right from gaining any power. Supreme Court rulings are the biggest example, but Musk buying Twitter is another. We never see the US move to the right because those obstacles have actually gotten weaker, so I'd say that they are one-offs and don't mean the US is moving to the right.
Jiro
12d ago
When they say they were driven like a slave that's metaphorical. It isn't actually the same thing as being driven like a real slave.
Jiro
13d ago
From a game theoretic perspective China has no incentive to pick a fight over Taiwan.
Just like actual humans don't act like Homo Economicus they don't act like Homo Strategicus either. If China invades Taiwan it will be the result of internal political factions within China competing and exerting pressure, not the result of a logical decision about how best to optimize the chance of winning.
Jiro
13d ago
The implication of "towering over the rest of the world is great" is that it's based on a principle. Any such principle that doesn't outright say "and no Jews" or equivalent would approve of Jews doing the same.
Jiro
13d ago
Because slavery is done for the interests of the slaveowner and at least in theory, authoritarian parents are acting for the long term benefit of the children. And even callous authoritarian parents are not going to be as callous as slaveowners.
Jiro
13d ago
The contradiction is "towering over the rest of the world is great, as long as it's us doing it, but not when it's the hated Jews".
Jiro
13d ago
Spending a lot of recent time with higher class Africans, any benefit of the doubt that they are civilizationally capable faded.
I don't think this conclusion can be justified unless "they" is defined more narrowly than it would normally be defined in this context. I'd suggest that higher class Africans are selected for ability to retain power, which is not competency at ruling to benefit the people.
idpol has an issue with human bodies that it doesn't have with planes.
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