ThenElection
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User ID: 622
ThenElection
15hr ago
Bay Area housing is expensive because its workers tend to be far more economically productive than most areas in the US.
Reason not to be reactionary: it allows me to live in the Bay Area, with the alternative being stuck in the same shithole podunk town where I grew up and the only nightlife after 9PM is hanging out at the local Walmart.
ThenElection
2d ago
To the extent we pay attention to man vs bear (which, it seems, will be with us for the foreseeable future), the relevant thing isn't the statistics of attacks or even that women fear men. It's that pretty much everyone seems to be taking the approach that at least one of the man or bear is a major threat.
The reality is that neither is particularly dangerous. So many takes seem to be something like "one will eat me alive, and the other will abduct and torture me for months before killing me," with slightly varying structure depending on the point the speaker is making. But getting in a car wreck on the way to the park or dying of exposure are both more likely causes of death than encountering either a random bear or a random man. And neither cars nor exposure are likely to kill you either. Use appropriate caution wherever you are, and you'll almost certainly be fine.
The hysterical neuroticism involved in the entire exercise on both sides is just a symptom of expressing feelings becoming the dominant political mode thanks to social media. Which can barely be called politics; it's more fashion and gossip than anything else.
ThenElection
5d ago
I'm taking a more limited definition of assassination: an individual who attempts to change how he is governed by killing an individual or small group who govern him. I'd say this excludes a government killing domestic opponents (governments can kill on a much grander scale, since they are not the governed but the governors) and soldiers killing other soldiers (two governments sending their governed to kill each other to resolve a dispute).
ThenElection
5d ago
I'll have to read up on Gemayel.
As for Alexander II (I think you mean, though I just found out III was the object of an assassination attempt by Aleksandr Ulyanov, elder brother of the most famous Ulyanov), I'm on the fence. The assassin's ideological program seems consistent with Communist revolution: the long temporal gap, conservative reaction, and WW1 being the more immediate cause all point in the opposite direction. Maybe I'd land on a half point?
Court intrigues seem less like history and more like bookkeeping to me, though perhaps that's just distance and time obscuring the historical changes they caused.
ThenElection
6d ago
Putting the “ass” (both of them) in “assassination”.
I like.
I'm not convinced that Teddy changed the trajectory of the regulatory state. This is all speculative, of course, but both Democrats (stagnant in support, admittedly) and a meaningful and growing number of Republicans were anti-corporate in sympathies. Teddy may have been the particular executor of many anti-corporate policies, but had McKinley not been assassinated, would his vision have dominated for the next 20 years? I suspect eventually someone outside of it would have won a Presidential election (perhaps TR himself).
That suggests an interesting speculative question: how often have assassins shifted the course of world history toward something they would have preferred, making the assassination "rational" in some sense?
Most of the time, the effect seems to be neutral at best. Princip did nothing for Serbian nationalism. Goatse provided a founding myth for a secular, not Hindu, state. James Earl Ray didn't kill the Civil Rights Movement but birthed a martyr. Charitably, Brutus may have delayed empire for a decade or so. Who knows what Oswald's political opinions were, but it's almost certain that they didn't come to fruition.
The only effective assassination I can really think of is Booth's. He managed to eliminate a politician who was a genuine driving force toward something the "deep state" wasn't particularly interested in, and it made the Reconstruction stillborn, with a new President not particularly interested in tackling a hard problem anyways. It was going to be a hard slog anyways, but he killed it with a bullet.
Maybe there were some Russian anarchists who maybe helped the serfs a bit?
Explicit note for any insane Motteizans (and lurking Feds): even ignoring morality, most of the time assassination seems useless at best and counterproductive at worst.
ThenElection
13d ago
I'm a vegetarian, and I would kill for a nice porterhouse. Although I probably know a couple of vegetarians/vegans who'd probably be upset that they'd lose the moral justification for the defining part of their personality, the large majority would absolutely start eating steak given the chance.
ThenElection
14d ago
ThenElection
14d ago
Woman or bear: would you rather have to deal with a bear, or a woman who potentially has no water, food, or gear and needs your help to get to safety? I feel like the latter is more likely to ruin my day in the woods.
It's all just signalling, though; at most 1% would take the bear. Plenty of women go on hikes in the woods and regularly share the space with men without issue or note, and the few who encounter a bear would typically throw a fit over it. I read it as low-key trolling of men more than anything else. (And I have to admit, it's at least a little bit funny to see some men seemingly taking the question at face value and getting testy over something that obviously bears no relation to reality.) It's like someone joking they'd rather have a blind person drive them around than someone from California.
ThenElection
21d ago
Thanks for the link. And, yes, it did shift my views toward more Ukraine support (never anti-Ukraine, but more concerned with male wellbeing and disposability). As much as I'd love a poll that got into the nitty gritty of what exactly Ukrainian men think of current conscription/mobilization policy, that seems unlikely, and this poll does suggest they're broadly supportive of it, at least in principle, and I can't think of any quibbles that'd reverse the results.
ThenElection
21d ago
It seems like there are three possible states to your knowledge variable: unknown, believed, and disbelieved.
Maybe I'd coin the word "delief" for that.
ThenElection
21d ago
Even on conscription, it's not particularly remarkable: individuals don't necessarily like being conscripted, but can accept/support conscriptions as a legitimate and even necessary component of defense.
Do you have links to this polling? If it shows a majority of draft-age Ukrainian men support conscription as implemented, it would probably shift my view of the conflict.
ThenElection
24d ago
IIRC, most of the interviews were the same for front end SWEs, but they swapped out the system design interview for a frontend interview.
As a 5'3" guy... yes, it is a major impediment. It doesn't preclude relationships or even casual hookups, but it substantially increases search time and costs.
Back in my online dating days, I did some experiments, and every two inch increase roughly doubled my match rate, with diminishing returns starting around 5'10" (typical results for my profile: one match per week at real height, 3-5 matches per day at 5'10, with me swiping right on about half of profiles). That said, results in the real world are much less bleak, though it still acts as an impediment.
ThenElection
26d ago
that young man who killed young women
Are you referring to Elliot Rodger? He killed four men and two women.
He was at least as much misandric as misogynistic.
ThenElection
26d ago
Scalia would have been 70 in 2006. Scalia was very important between 2006 and his death. His impact in general has been almost immeasurably huge on American jurisprudence, even the court's liberals owe a lot to Scalia in their opinions. He achieved this mostly by sheer force of will and intellect,
If Sotomayor is as strong a justice as Scalia, then yes, your argument holds and Democrats should keep her on the court. Scalia had a high VORP.
ThenElection
27d ago
Hapa, though white passing.
Echoing the other respondents, this is just how people react to travelers/tourists; I'm nowhere near as attractive as him and have similar experiences. On my last trip to Mexico City, I made friends with an abuela who treated me to a family dinner in her small one room apartment. She even accommodated my dietary preferences: after telling her I was a vegetarian and didn't eat meat, she happily made a bunch of fish for us to eat (which I did anyway without complaint, because who turns down a delicious home cooked meal?)
ThenElection
28d ago
You could also tax different products at different rates, depending on the income range that purchases them. Used clothes, lower rate; Teslas, higher rate; organic produce, higher rate; frozen veggies, lower rate. In theory you could kind of approximate the same effect. The biggest issue would be all the jockeying different industries would go for to be classified into the lower rate (why, of course this Hermes bag is purchased mostly by lower income people!)
ThenElection
28d ago
All taxes are distortionary.
Hate to be that guy, but land value taxation (or really taxes on anything that's inelastic in supply) doesn't have that problem. Probably the most compelling argument for it (plenty of arguments against it, as well).
ThenElection
28d ago
VoA is, surprisingly, a lot more balanced than most mainstream media (although of course it reflects US priorities). It serves an actual purpose, and to achieve that it can't just be American Pravda.
ThenElection
28d ago
For better or worse, DEI identity slop is now considered left wing, and NPR has oodles of that, regardless of whatever other establishment propaganda it peddles.
ThenElection
29d ago
Suppose military service were entirely voluntary. Do you expect there would be a substantial drop in the number of military recruits? If conscription doesn't conscript many people who don't want to fight on the front, why is Ukraine strengthening penalties for evasion and expanding conscription operations?
ThenElection
29d ago
Ukrainian women are doing nothing wrong. If I were one, my immediate response would be to GTFO of Ukraine as quickly as possible. As it became clear that the war will last a long time and even once resolved will leave Ukraine a ruined place, I'd then look to settle down in whatever safe country I could find, ideally a relatively well-off one, which would likely involve finding a partner from that country. Maybe I'd use Tinder, if I were foolish. Regardless, in general it's not something I'd begrudge them, and given the option, I'd expect most would rather have stayed in a peaceful Ukraine and married a Ukrainian man. Unfortunately that option's not on the table, so they make do with the options that they're actually presented with.
The central issue is that men are being prevented from doing the exact same thing.
Just gotta know the right people and right sketchy warehouses to go to.
The point, though, was about the complete lack of anything to do in most parts of the US, not about how Bay Area nightlife compares to NYC and LA.
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