anti_dan
1d ago
As an aside: I never understood the people calling AOC unattractive, and still don't. I find the "Zendaya is ugly" thing easier to understand (not that I consider her unattractive either).
New to the scene AOC was pretty good looking, particularly for a politician. Easily could have qualified as a Shakira back up dancer.
Putting on some lbs AOC was good looking for what people speculated was a pregnant mid 30s woman. Since she was not pregnant this lost all the potential charm.
Current AOC is nothing interesting. She's above average for 37 or whatever her age is, but not hot, certainly seemingly not a good long term girl to court unless you are a pervy old guy who wants to lab inseminate one trophy son. Shes now officially on team catlady even if she always was without us knowing.
anti_dan
1d ago
Kamala was never a moderate trying to go radical. She was a nothing pretending to go left then pretending to go center. Her problem always was that she was a nothing.
anti_dan
1d ago
Hong losing has all the calling cards of Atlanta 2020. The only update I can make (and think anyone should) is that Democratic machines are still super powerful and polished and can manipulate any election that is even kinda close. In a general, that means a Republican needs to win by more than 100k to win any statewide with a major Dem metro. In a primary, the upstart probably needs to win real Dem voters by at least 10k.
We got the marketplace of ideas back.
Parts of it. Yes. A non insignificant amount of that is just Elon Musk. The next Dem president can easily ruin him. Cancel all the spaceX contracts, run some bogus IRS operation, use the latent DOJ lackeys just waiting to file 100 discrimination suits against him, gin up some actual criminal charges if they are really dedicated. We dont have HBD on NFL broadcasts, BLM certainly WAS.
If you want something less abstract, there is now a general consensus among serious people that demographic performance differentials (whether or not they are genetic or environmental in origin) are real. The idea that all measured gaps are artifacts of testing bias or an unjust economic system did not withstand public scrutiny.
I doubt this assertion very much. Stating what you stated here will get you denied tenure at most universities. Chris Rufo is just one man running one place. And universities are just the peak of the iceberg. The public k-12 is still infested with woke and woke adjacent instructors giving woke instructions.
Edit.
IMO we have won a few battles, but the fundamentals look weak to actually win against woke. It is yet to be seen if we are more akin to the Confederacy after Bull Run or the 13 colonies after the surprise attack in Trenton. But either way the other side has far more deploy-able resources right now, and is just temporarily embarrassed from a recent set of high profile losses. But those relatively minor losses need to be followed by dismantling the ability to launch attacks and building of redoubts against the obviously coming future sallies.
anti_dan
2d ago
Calling the current state "winning" is pretty weak. What was won? One professor at Cambridge resigned, not the whole department that gave him the position. BLM "leaders" still have their million dollar mansions financed by donations from Coca Cola, while almost no one got prison time for lighting whole cities on fire. Many qualified white and asian men are still sitting on careers that never launched. Black women are still sitting in their unearned positions in corporations that hired 90%+ minority candidates only for half a decade.
Winning means fixing all these things and making sure woke 2.0's inevitable coming can be easily stopped before it results in rioting, sterilizing kids, etc. The people who did "woke 1.0" are still in position to do the same thing over again if the whims of the day indicate they want to.
anti_dan
6d ago
I rarely downvote, but when I do it is because it is either a personal attack, or an attack on the concept of thought itself.
anti_dan
10d ago
You could, but it would be quite stupid. Even today, with gay marriage sanctioned nationwide, and basically no stigma associated with gays outside of very niche communities 67% of new HIV infections are homosexual men. This is in spite of even the uninfected largely using PREP and the infected using antiretrovirals. And, oh by the way, those arent cheap drugs! They are state of the art medicine. John Schilling, who used to post on SSC, DSL, here, and ASX estimated the cost of 1 year of male buttsex exceeded the cost of refusing a Covid shot for the same year. Buttsex is still really bad and you shouldn't do it!
anti_dan
10d ago
Well Dragonball Super is somewhat new to you. HunterxHunter, Naruto (make sure to look up and skip filler episodes), and Demonslayer are all adventure battle shonen as well. One Piece has too many episodes, and they stretched a lot of the content out too much for me to recommend the anime.
anti_dan
13d ago
Necessary did not always need sufficient. To subjugate Afghanistan also requires understanding that its not really a country. So your governor or proconsul or magistrate will need to be highly skilled in assembling a state from whole cloth.
anti_dan
13d ago
We have some of each. There was one of those useless go getters last summer. I once trusted him to take notes at a minor meeting I didn't have time to attend. The notes were useless, and long. As if he was some sort of court reporter dedicated to the art of censoring useful information.
We also have had the slackers that expect to be partners at Jones Day in 4 years despite a total lack of work ethic.
anti_dan
14d ago
These kids have zero ambition, awful in-person social skills, no apparent sense that all of life isn't just like school where you show up and slack off and get passed.
IN my line of work lack of ambition does not seem to be an issue with the youth, but a genuine lack of skills is. Writing and reading comprehension (two things youd expect from aspiring or new lawyers) are at 10th grade levels for student in their last year of law school. But by golly are these people ambitious, although perhaps delusionally so.
anti_dan
14d ago
What is the solution? No more peacekeeping missions, anti terrorist actions and special military operations, but retvrn to great wars ending in glorious victories, accomplishments so shining that every young man with motivation and drive would want to wear uniform and be part of winning team.
This, unironically, is just basic sense. If you aren't willing to engage in conflicts that will result in mass casualties, at least to the other side, the evidence shows you do not have the requisite willpower to win that war in any meaningful way.
anti_dan
16d ago
Nah. Just emphasize the Kennedy steal from Nixon. Its a good teaching moment for the rhetorically skilled.
anti_dan
17d ago
I dont think the "who won 2020" is really all that good of a gotcha. The correct answer, is, "Biden won because Democrats stole the election, as they try to do in every election and are only sometimes thwarted. Yes, Americans, you are consistently defrauded by election thieves. Do as you must with your local politician if the are not voting for the SAVE America Act." This is incredibly simple, accurate, and defeats the line of questioning in ways "what is a woman" cannot be responded to.
anti_dan
21d ago
I suppose this is fair, just Hathaway is "40" in a way only enabled by the modern age.
Mostly I feel for most of the timeline Damon is way too old. Sure, in some ways he looks good for 55, ripped and the like. But he honestly strikes me as old for 55 for most of the shots. Its like the RFK problem
anti_dan
21d ago
That is not true in my county courts. At least around here the practical reality is the jury pool is more prosecutor-friendly than the average judge. Thus, most defendants opt for bench trials even in large cases, particularly sex involved cases.
However, once a jury is empaneled and selected, jurors tend to have to show clear and convincing evidence of bias that cannot be overcome to be dismissed. Having to re-do a jury trial is simply too painful a process to do for anything less. We are talking, for just one normal felon in possession of a gun case, 2 whole days of a courtroom's business being put on hold (so probably 40-80 defendants + their attorneys + the new cases that have to be arraigned). For a murder or major sex case you are now at often a week of courtroom business put on hold. That easily 100 + defendants plus their attorneys who just have to come back another day. Repeating such a process for something as trivial as "he hurt my feelings with his conspiracy theories" is not going to make a judge happy. I'm suspicious the appellate court judges may not have had extensive time on the bench in a litigation heavy courtroom.
anti_dan
21d ago
One thing about the casting that I have seen very few people commenting on is just how weird the ages of all the actors are. I understand there are 10 years of war, then 10 more years of travel, but Matt Damon as a 40 year old at the beginning is not plausible, he only seems aptly cast for the end of the movie. Also why is he older than Agamemnon? Why is his wife so much younger than him? Did he have a child bride, knock her up then go off to war?
anti_dan
23d ago
In somewhat related news, Ezra Klein had a climate guy on his podcast recently that also painted a fairly bright picture. Which I agree with not only because I don't think anyone has proven to me global warming is bad, but also because I always expected this trend and that we could reverse CO2 levels with ease if we just cut regulations and grew the economy.
And that is what also saddened me about Ezra's guest. Despite being optimistic, he was delusional. Saying that if only we had followed Jimmy Carter's plan in 1978 we'd already have a full EV fleet and solar powering our grid. My guy, we are talking about technologies that have been heavily subsidized for decades, and as a result were over-invested in, and still were failing. Its only when the rest of tech caught up have these things been economical. Alas this is the way of the environmentalist. Take credit for things not earned, lay blame where you caused the issue. Such is politics I suppose.
Alas, I do thing we could probably already be able to suck carbon from the air for essentially free (if needed, which I dont think is proven) if we just eliminated the EPA and most state equivalents.
anti_dan
27d ago
Im sure many people of clout like congressmen and news media entities called Charlie all sorts of names and that didnt have a nonzero effect on his killer. But the evidence that I have seen is that his radicalization what mainly conducted in small forums, discord servers, etc.
anti_dan
27d ago
Opposed, assuming it's the formula program I'm thinking of. While every welfare program will have success story outliers, one can not support self licking ice cream cones as a general principle.
anti_dan
27d ago
I'm open to being convinced, but I have not seen evidence connecting his actions to actual people of clout. Instead I've seen lots of evidence of a niche community of abnormals that radicalized him.
anti_dan
28d ago
The triumvirate of childcare, housing, and healthcare is the problem. This is pretty clear to me. These are all affected by genuine Baumol effects, but they are also severely compounded by government intervention.
Welfare makes everything more expensive for everyone who isn't getting welfare. Not only do we pay taxes (or inflation) for it, but also people who previously wouldnt have competed for a good, mainly those three + food, now compete and bid up the price of those goods. Heck, unemployed people now often have new SUVs via some magic. The working poor is basically extinct. They simply dont work. The stockers at my local grocery store make enough money to afford everything a person needs. A trustable babysitter for me to go see a movie with my wife is either several hundred dollars or its my in laws doing a favor. People who should be doing childcare and other trusty work now do crappy work because the crappy people just leech off the system and dont work at all. And we subsidize that, heavily.
Immigration also changed housing, of course. Along with your social trust points.
Crime changed things. Crime is now statistically quite low, but its more random. I have had my car burgled twice for, in absolute terms, basically nothing. They stole my quarters and my kids car candy. But, it feels unsafe to have kids in a place where people break into cars. So I had to move. Now my housing is more expensive and all my neighbors have ring cameras, I might pony up for one if it happens in the new place.
And I think affirmative action (and related, student VISAs/H1B) changed a lot of this too. In a world prior to it, me and all my siblings probably all get good deals to go to local universities. I certainly should have been offered a full ride scholarship to the flagship state school instead of having to forum shop the whole country given the fact I had a crazy good ACT and SAT and won the state chemistry competition. Instead they insisted I pay full freight. Same happened to my siblings, so now we live in 3 different states, because we went to schools in 3 separate states. My parents moved to where my sister lives(did she is moving). In a less manipulated world we probably stay together, at least in part. Perhaps one of us gets into an Ivy and takes a decade to move back to the area, or maybe never, but its still probably the one who left staying where their partner's home base is. A familial home base is awesome and now increasingly rare.
Lastly, for me, for now, is the just dumb things. I can populate this section with many things I think are just dumb, like most humanitarian aid (which I feel many people here are in favor of and will defend my position if questioned). But again its a tax. I will respond to any random program you think is good and tell you if I think it is also good or why I think it is not.
Norms also exist because the law is often too rigid to deal with a certain problem and/or trying to be precise with the law results in many injustices. To harp on an adjacent topic to your "slut shaming" we look to ancient norms and laws about sex out of wedlock. It is frowned upon in a vast majority of pre-industrial societies. However, it wasn't always outlawed. A fairly common legal setup in Christian nations was that there was a strong social norm against fornication, with many unwritten rules and enforcement mechanisms, but there was a legal prohibition against adultery. In practice this meant that if two 18 year olds had some sex, and she got pregnant there were only a few things to practically do. They could get married, this was typically preferred. If they didn't, generally the girl was expelled from polite society (of course aristocrats were not subject in the same ways and they could cover up such scandals and were expected to do so, such as having their daughter fall severely ill for a year only for a magical baby appear to a 50 year old "mother"). But generally the girl is now a whore, and the impregnator is now subject to extrajudicial punishment from the girls family that the courts will not intervene on. On the other hand, if a married woman committed adultery she'd be hanged by the state, and generally so would the man, particularly if he was also married.
Informal systems are often preferred when the specific facts and circumstances of a case are important. Laws and rules simply do not work in such situations, as we have seen with "affirmative consent" rules on campus and sometimes laws to such an extent. "You got my daughter drunk and raped her" is almost never a justiciable accusation, if you make the process fair. It is something that often makes sense for the law to look the other way when the girls dad and brothers beat the piss out of ole Boozy Bobby.
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