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PaperclipPerfector  2mo ago (text post)   32736 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of April 14, 2025

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In non-Trump news, I have some new data on revealed preferences. I live in a pretty leftist place, and my employer recently made a switch for about half of the non-single occupancy bathrooms on each floor to be gender neutral. What's interesting is that this has resulted in women completely abandoning those bathrooms. Shortly after the switch, I even saw a number of women about to go in the former women's rooms, realize that they're now gender neutral, and reverse course to presumably go find an actual women's room. Some female coworkers mentioned to me that they like trans people and "have trans friends", but don't like the bathroom change. I guess I like this change, because it's effectively increased the number of men's rooms, since no women want to use the former women's rooms. So make of this revealed preference data what you will.

One bad aspect of this is that they've covered over the urinals in the former men's rooms. I asked my wife if she would care if there's a urinal in a bathroom she was using, and she said that she wouldn't like it, because she doesn't want to see a guy's dick. I guess women don't know that you can't really see dicks of someone using a urinal unless you specifically look around their body to try to see it.

Years ago my big tech employer did a terrible job at planning restrooms in a new building we moved in. They didn’t accommodate for how male skewed we are and ended with a situation where the ratio of women to fixtures was something like 5:1 and for men it was around 50:1.

Every time I needed a toilet I found myself bouncing to different floors to find an unoccupied stall.

In one corner of one floor we had layout where there was a multi occupant men’s room with a urinal and a stall, and a single occupant ladies room. To try to ease the pain on overcrowded men’s rooms the company made the single occupant women’s room into a gender neutral bathroom.

A number of women raised hell about the message that sends to women. Never mind that women virtually never have to wait for a free toilet while the men constantly do. The women’s feelings on the matter were more important, and the sign was changed back.

I have no idea how much money my former employer wastes on toilet queuing time for men. The endless bouncing around from floor to floor trying to find an open stall. Apparently OSHA requires a certain number of toilets for a given employee count of either sex; when it's in the double digits, it's around 20 employees/toilet, but when it's in the triple, it increases to around 40/toilet.

At least we got to read weekly educational flyers posted in the bathroom about Testing on the Toilet (alongside other flyers asking engineers to remember to flush...)

For a time Google HQ was actually in violation of the toilet rules and had to bring in portable toilets, which is kinda funny for a company which is known for its good working environment. They couldn't even manage to stay in compliance with rules meant to take harsh factory conditions from "dystopian" to "slightly less so".

At least we got to read weekly educational flyers posted in the bathroom about Testing on the Toilet (alongside other flyers asking engineers to remember to flush...)

Is it something about engineers, or just people in general? We had signs plastered everywhere in the bathrooms reminding our engineers "don't flush things down the toilet that aren't toilet paper, you know how often it breaks and that's the cause, what's wrong with you?"

Maybe I've just worked in small-medium, high-trust (engineering, office) workplaces, but most of the signs I've seen in bathrooms are about upcoming blood drives and security policies (beware phishing). If I have seen such signs, they were at least not terribly memorable.

I work in a... medium? (Maybe 1000-ish people per location per city; no building above three or four stories) that's insanely high trust (vetted engineers) and yet...

The flyers, from experience, are both needed and unheeded. And the floors heavier in engineering are worse about it.

In actual-hire-out-of-the-probation-office factories they don’t have signs saying remember to flush(although they do have signs saying not to spit your gum in the toilet, only use the bathroom proper for your sex, etc) or to avoid flushing things other than tp in the men’s room(although they do in the women’s- specifically due to menstrual products). So yeah, possibly engineer specific.

Oh, no, they have “stop flushing the fucking paper towels” in the factories, too. At least it’s a sign they know how to flush it, I guess.

At Facebook our version of this was called The Weekly Push and typically was promoting some new dev tooling.

I miss those days, I don’t think the name would get past our censorious overlords now.

My tech company had the same thing. 20 men and 2 women, one loo for each. The women’s loo used to have ‘men may use in an emergency’ sign but it got taken down.

Some of the many times I've audibly said "Thank God I'm a guy," have been when emerging from a toilet to see my wife still in a very long line of women waiting to enter one.

I guess women don't know that you can't really see dicks of someone using a urinal unless you specifically look around their body to try to see it.

... Never, ever, ever underestimate the skeeviness and boldness of a certain subset of men, if they think they can get away with their exhibitionism or voyeurism fetishes while avoiding consequences. I've read elsewhere that many women are absolutely shocked by the brazenness of a subset of men sharing unsolicited dick pics quite freely online, too.

I think there might be a significant experiential gap here.

We switched to gender neutral bathrooms a couple of years ago. They're all single-occupancy with their own sink and dryer, which is a huge improvement. Some of them have a little mark outside that means they have a urinal (as well as a toilet). The hallway has security cameras and is just a passage to the cubicles. Everyone seems pleased with them; you can actually wash your face or do makeup or get changed or change contact lenses or something in a fully private space now, with a sink and mirror.

Same situation in my workplace. Some time ago TPTB decided to turn some of the gender neutral bathrooms into gendered bathrooms because women were getting the ick from sharing single occupancy rooms with men (we love our PMC women, don't we, folks?), but there was a fairly strong outcry on account of the bathrooms being divided equally between the genders despite there not being anything close to gender parity in the building (it wasn't phrased this way of course) and naturally on account of the trans question. Fortunately this caused management to abandon the plan and I get the great single occupancy experience without the queueing mentioned in other comments. Highly recommend.

I guess women don't know that you can't really see dicks of someone using a urinal unless you specifically look around their body to try to see it.

Either that, or every other guy she's seen naked has been packing so much meat that a draft horse would take one look and say "excuse me but what the fuck?"

nailed it, the whole post was a very subtle humblebrag by OP

Depends on the layout of the toilets; I've walked past men's bathrooms in public spaces where the urinals were visible with the door open and if you wanted to take a good look you could have done 😁 Bad architectural design does happen!

But then again, I also live in a town where in the middle of the day there were men pissing up against a wall in a laneway just off a main street so yeah - sometimes you can see more than you want to see.

I presume this is the type of observation I will be hearing about until the day I die.

Most people seem to have no idea what a trans person is or what trans rights are. So when even the slightest personal inconvenience arises, the good folk will balk at the notion and do their best to shield themselves and their immediate environment from the thing they've been advocating for most of their lives. You could make the same observation for nigh every policy.

With apologies to Conquest, everyone wants to conserve the things they know best.

I think the squeamishness is less about trans people themselves and more about the physical danger of biological males in a women’s restroom or changing room. The current state of trans is that it’s basically on the say so of the male — if a man is in the women’s restroom, he is allowed to be there unless he’s very obviously and blatantly doing something creepy. He’d basically have to openly masterbate, attempt to take pictures, or attempt a rape. Until them, all he has to do is claim to be trans — no supporting documentation required— and nobody can do anything about it. In fact, it’s much more likely that the woman who objects will face punishment for “transphobia” than tge male will.

I think the squeamishness is less about Black people in general and more about the physical danger posed by exposure to a demographic that, on the group level, is ~10x more likely to commit a violent crime than Whites. The current state of civil rights is that it's basically on the say so of the Black - if a Black is in a White space, they are allowed to be there until they actually commit a crime. They would actually have to punch, stab or try to rape someone to be removed. But until then, all they have to do is claim to be a law-abiding citizen - no additional qualifications, White friends to vouch, etc - and no one can do anything about it. In fact, it's much more likely that a White person who objects to sharing spaces with Black people will get in trouble for being "racist" than the Black will.

But in all seriousness - as far as I can tell, the usual arguments for sex-segregated spaces (and anti-trans policies in general) apply pretty much verbatim to race-segregated spaces. Specifically, the idea that if group X is much more likely to do [bad thing] than group Y, society should segregate the 2 groups (and in practice, just prevent group X from interacting with group Y, and have "X spaces" just be for everyone) And even though such a policy hurts the majority of group X who are totally innocent, the physical safety of group Y outweight their wounded ego.

You can just yeschad.jpg and say you want Jim Crow again (and there are probably users on the forum who would), but this does not seem to be the position of the majority of those who oppose transgender ideology (even on this forum) - so I ask, how do you explain such radically different stances on these (seemingly similar to me) issues?

But that's what a trans person is and that's what trans rights are in practice. Anyone who is squeamish about these things is by definition transphobic. As well as being, pardon my French, hysterical and ridiculous. As if your male coworkers suddenly turn into a physical danger as soon as you have to share a porcelain bowl...

There's an entire progressive dialect invented to get past these hurdles. Followed by a ruleset that should allow any well-meaning actor, who is concerned with the rights of trans people, to get along with their day without allowing their transphobia to negatively affect trans people as they try to exist.

Unisex toilets exist all over the world. This is transphobia masquerading as misandry. It should not be allowed to stand in any case if we are holding ourselves to any egalitarian modern standard.

There have always been pervy guys. Even Japan has to have separate cars for women on their trains. And the reason that the cameras on all phones make noise when you take a picture is because of up skirting (taking pictures under the skirts of women without them knowing). It’s a very small subset, and to my knowledge probably even rarer among true-trans people. But on the other hand, restrooms and changing are very private areas where women are vulnerable. I don’t think it’s reasonable to say “this guy just said he was a woman two minutes ago for the first time, so sorry granny, he gets to be in your changing room and see you naked.” With a process that involves time and effort, I get it.

If you think your coworker is a weird pervert then you need to take that issue up with your supervisor. Not wave it around as a hypothetical at the expense of human rights for trans people.

Restrooms aren't just a place of vulnerability for women. They are also a place of vulnerability for trans people. There need to be some pretty strong material arguments made for why trans people should be barred from the bathrooms of their experienced sex that go beyond TERF'ist misandry. That is, if we want to ground our position in reality rather than phobia.

I don’t think it’s reasonable to say “this guy just said he was a woman two minutes ago for the first time, so sorry granny, he gets to be in your changing room and see you naked.” With a process that involves time and effort, I get it.

Gender dysphoria and being trans is not treated with 'two minute' levity anywhere I know of.

  • -10

Gender dysphoria and being trans is not treated with 'two minute' levity anywhere I know of.

The ur-example that kicked off all the trouble in Scotland, a violent rapist who suddenly decided after being convicted that in fact he was a she and that's why she had committed those rapes, it was all the dysphoria and psychic distress you see.

Jonathan/Jessica Yaniv making a nice little earner out of suing immigrant-owned/workers small businesses for transphobia because brown women didn't want to wax a feminine penis and testicles.

The Wi Spa guy (yes, guy) who casually admitted he got his gender notification changed easily but did absolutely nothing else to transition:

Let’s back up a second. Should we be using male or female pronouns with you? How do you identify?

I’m very neutral, like non-binary, although I don’t like that word. I’m legally female. But I have facial hair. I have a penis. I have no breasts. I don’t have a feminine voice. I don’t wear makeup or dress up like a female. So imagine you’re a grocery store [clerk] and you’re bagging my groceries and you say, “Excuse me, sir . . . ” I mean, am I supposed to be offended? That’d be ridiculous. How would this person know? But technically, for legal terms, I am she/her. I put "female" on my driver’s license. But I’ve had to struggle my whole life fitting into traditional society.

And you sleep with women? You’re a female who has heterosexual sex with females?

I have heterosexual sex because my penis fits in a vagina. I don’t tell women I’m with that I’m transgender because that’s not my sex. So I’m not faking anything. Gender is internal, sex is external.

When was the first time you remember hearing about being transgender…when was that presented and by who?

That was a discussion I had right after [a car] accident in April of 2017. Technically, I hadn’t used any facilities for like a year and a half—I hadn’t used bathrooms, pools, or anything. Technically I was considered transgender for a whole year and a half before I used any facilities. And I didn’t even know it was a law. I was ignorant of all of this.

When did you get your driver’s license changed?

The license came in January 2019 [the month that the California Gender Recognition Act took effect]. But there's a discrepancy in California, you can go through your doctor. But it's very easy to get it. You can go in and sign a piece of paper. So I just waited until January to do it. And that was the first month that it was available. Basically, anybody could walk in and get one.

Was that something that was discussed with your therapist? How did you come to the decision to make the appointment to go in to get the driver’s license changed?

Our discussion basically started around April 2017. Between April 2017 and 2019, I had figured that … evaluating how I fit and how I had problems in prison….you come to the conclusion that makes more sense, where you're gonna fit better in life.

And it makes sense, looking back throughout all years of your life. It's not like we're born and people try to indoctrinate you. Once you evaluate your life, it makes a lot of sense. Especially when you’re autistic and things are non-traditional anyway.

But you are a convicted sex offender, aren’t you? Weren’t you once caught without pants and masturbating while peering into the window of an 85-year-old Arcadia woman?

So what happened was this elderly man got up to use the bathroom in the middle of the night, and his bathroom overlooks another yard [and he saw me masturbating]. But even if it was masturbation, I don’t have a problem with that because that’s not illegal. It’s only illegal if you’re masturbating in someone’s face, like George Michael.

The ACLU brought a case the decision of which compelled the prison system to send trans prisoners to the prison of their "experienced sex" (to use your phrasing). Now, that may indeed be a good thing for the human rights of trans people. Except this grifter then took advantage of it, forced his (and I am saying "his" because if you've still got all your working male parts and can get cis women pregnant, I don't believe you are genuinely trans) removal to a female prison, and there we go, two new babies came into the world.

Those cases are out there. The defence of them, along with legitimate trans people, is what causes the trouble. Discard the liars and nutcases, then ordinary people will be more willing to give the benefit of the doubt. Men who, when faced with going to prison, suddenly discover their inner womanhood - they don't get to go to women's prisons (and it is remarkable how many, out of the small transgender prison population, are serving terms for sexual offences). Make it legally enforceable that "guy with working male genitals can too come into a female space just by saying he is now she" and then don't be surprised when people object.

Cases of criminals raping their fellow inmates is not an argument against trans rights any more than interracial rape is an argument against civil rights.

If you want to argue that being raped by penis is worse than something else, you should start by looking at men's prisons. If you want to argue rape in general is the problem, female inmates rape eachother more than male inmates.

Individual cases are irrelevant to the scope of the discussion, which is human rights for trans people. When we are talking about prison populations and criminals the discussion will get dragged into an unsavory quagmire with a lot of negative connotations that transphobic people try to associate with the concept of trans rights. This is a dishonest guilt by association tactic that's not relevant to the actual discussion of the topic. Proven by the fact that people refuse to engage in similar rhetoric regarding race.

I'm not surprised people object when they don't know what trans rights are, nor what transphobia is. The modern prison system is a crime against humanity. It places people in terrible conditions that facilitate further suffering and strife to no one's benefit. Those who choose to argue against trans rights rather than argue in favor of a better prison system betray their transphobic bias and abdicate any moral highground they may have pretended to occupy.

Cases of criminals raping their fellow inmates is not an argument against trans rights any more than interracial rape is an argument against civil rights.

Sure, though I disagree that any rights are being violated by not letting a male go to a women's prison.

female inmates rape eachother more than male inmates.

I'll have to read it, but doesn't pass the smell test given the difference in sex drives.

This is a dishonest guilt by association tactic that's not relevant to the actual discussion of the topic.

It's not dishonest. Trans activists were originally promising none of this situations will ever happen.

I'm not surprised people object when they don't know what trans rights are, nor what transphobia is.

You seem to be assuming that the case for trans rights requires no justification, and any disagreement must stem from lack of knowledge. I disagree, and believe the case for "trans rights" is simply unsupportable.

The modern prison system is a crime against humanity.

Again, I completely disagree, and believe this renders the concept of "crimes against humanity" meaningless.

It places people in terrible conditions that facilitate further suffering and strife to no one's benefit.

You have to look no further than what happened with El Salvador's crime rates to see that the benefit to the rest of society is quite obvious.

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It's not quite clear if it was rape or was consensual with the Real Woman having penis-in-vagina reproductive sex with the two cis women inmates.

However, I do think that if you are putting a person with a functioning set of genitals that demonstrably have met their telos in reproduction into the same place as people who can get pregnant from those functioning genitals, then we're past the point of discussing "transness" and well into "let's blow up all definitions of what is a woman and what is a man and biology and sex and gender and gender roles" territory.

I've seen some attempts at using "seahorses" for "transmen who get pregnant" as an attempt to ground the new gender/sex option in current biological reality (male seahorses carry the offspring! that means males can get pregnant!) but as yet, nothing for "transwomen who knock other women up" since we don't seem to have a biological option for that one (maybe there is, amongst hermaphrodite species like earthworms, but I don't see "worm" being adopted as a popular term).

Since the very argument for "put this person into a woman's prison" is "this is a woman and not a man", then we really do need to decide "can women get women pregnant? can a woman have a penis and testicles and viable sperm?" What is a woman, after all?

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If you think your coworker is a weird pervert then you need to take that issue up with your supervisor. Not wave it around as a hypothetical at the expense of human rights for trans people.

The entire question was turned into a terrifying minefield for employers. This will not be investigated and taken care of in an objective matter, the employer will just give in to the side with the scariest lobby and the most influence on its HR department at the moment (women or trans).

If no documentation of actually being diagnosed with gender disphoria is required, then they don’t need to actually bother with the time or expense. They just go in the women’s room and if challenged, claim that they’re trans. This is rarely challenged, and in fact the few times I know of women complaining were either kicked out or shamed for transphobia.

I'm not seeing the problem.

You don’t see a problem when a man who is physically bigger and stronger can — just based on saying that he’s trans — get full access to women’s intimate spaces over the objections of the women themselves? I’m perfectly fine with doing so with a real process — requiring proof of an actual diagnosis and ongoing treatment, for example. But basically letting any man who wants to to simply walk into women’s restroom or changing room and if challenged, the magic words of “im trans” mean that not only is he allowed to do this, but women are not allowed to complain about it. So basically until such a man is seen by multiple women attempting to photograph women’s bodies, or worse attempting to rape them, there’s nothing to be done. I don’t blame such women from just not going into known “inclusive” restrooms because they are not protected.

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There need to be some pretty strong material arguments made for why trans people should be barred from the bathrooms of their experienced sex that go beyond TERF'ist misandry

I like gender conforming women, I do not like trannies, one interest takes precedence. It’s that simple.

What is the age range in question? I'm on a college campus in a very blue city twice a week and they have lots of gender neutral bathrooms that are primarily used by women/visibly queer coded people. I talked to a conventionally masculine guy friend and he said that he used one once, felt intrusive, and has never used them since.

I will say the only building I visit regularly is a recent construction and the bathrooms were clearly built to be gender neutral. There's no urinals and the walls and doors of the stalls go all the way down to the floor.

I don't know if it's the increased privacy or if you just get a different equilibrium with a younger population. Maybe there's also an effect where students use bathrooms in pulses before and after class so if you predict you're going to be in a group of 3 women and one queer coded man you're more likely to use the bathroom than if you think you'll be in there alone and anyone might come in.

Yuppies, probably all between 25 and 38. Maybe it's something different about being a kid on a college campus vs being a yuppie in a professional environment.

I feel revealing that they don't like sharing a bathroom with men doesn't have much bearing on whether they would, in a different world, share it with only the subset of men that are socially presenting as women.

You could easily imagine both categories.

Some female coworkers mentioned to me that they like trans people and "have trans friends", but don't like the bathroom change.

FWIW I believe your colleges and think that the preference being revealed is that they prefer not to share a bathroom with male-presenting persons, rather than that they prefer not to share with trans women.

A very similar circumstance has arisen at a venue I and my girlfriend frequent, where all the formerly segregated toilets have for the last couple of years been officially gender-neutral, with signs describing them as such—"with toilets" and "with toilets and urinals".

The preponderance of attendees at the events I frequent nevertheless continue to use the room corresponding to the gender they present as, including a handful of non-passing-but-not-for-want-of-effort trans women.

My girlfriend has nevertheless indicated that she is quite uncomfortable with this arrangement—not so much because trans women use the formerly women's toilets, but because at least a few cis men do too.

This situation, where the toilets continue to be de-jur gender-neutral despite remaining de-facto segregated (except for some boundary-testing by inconsiderate men) seems especially absurd given that there was already a perfectly serviceable single-occupancy gender-neutral toilet available anyway!

It will be interesting to see if the recent court ruling results in any rethinking of thisarrangement but if anything I suspect it will cause the organisation that runs to be even less likely to roll back the change, since as it is they can credibly claim there are no toilets reserved for women, and therefore none that trans women might (as a result of this ruling) be denied the right to use.

I've been tempted to recommend that my company (which makes a very big deal about LGBTQ equality) just go to completely gender-neutral bathrooms all around, but I feel like it'd be stirring up far too much trouble (even if I personally would be unironically in favor of that decision, so it's not entirely a bad-faith recommendation), and I'm not ready for an early retirement.

I guess women don't know that you can't really see dicks of someone using a urinal unless you specifically look around their body to try to see it.

That is entirely reasonable, is it not? Like I don’t know how to put in a tampon.

Well, maybe. But here's how they might know:

  1. They could have entered rooms where men use urinals, whether to change their baby boys, or if it's gender neutral, or if there's no other restroom
  2. They could have a sense of physics, based on knowing how flys work, and envisioning how far men's penises need to stick out of the fly to pee, and picturing the angles you'd need to be at in order to get a glimpse
  3. They could know that many (most?) men have a certain homophobia, and wouldn't use urinals if they felt like they and other men were mutually exposed

Who uses the gender of their baby/toddler to decide what bathroom to take their baby/toddler to change in? I take both daughter and son to the men’s room, provided it has a changing table(and older daughter to use the stall in the men’s) and relegate it to my wife otherwise. We’ve never discussed how I feel about other men seeing my penis and I don’t think she cares as long as it isn’t voyeuristic- the difference between ‘meh’ and ‘I’d rather not’ isn’t worth discussing.

Who uses the gender of their baby/toddler to decide what bathroom to take their baby/toddler to change in?

I do. Or rather, I don't let there only being a women's room available stop me if need to change my daughter.

In slightly related news, I got btfo'd by gender neutral changing rooms at a local pool.

Going by newspapers googled while trying to get to the bottom of this retardation, they were made to be gender neutral in 2012 after they made an internet poll(!). This was somehow fixed because I distinctly remember there having been two doors and no women in the changing room.

After reconstruction, there's only one door to the changing rooms. They naturally segregated - guys are in the back, women are in the front so it's not that bad.

Great pool though. 50m long, has a small hot water pool, there's even a sauna and for €3 you can swim as much as you want. I'll be taking advantage of that.

The term "supply chain attack" has been applied to the world of software (not just pagers in Lebanon) to describe a modern phenomenon that arises because of the way modern software development works. Very little code today is written by an individual (or small group of individuals who are all working for the same company or whatever) in a way that relies only on their efforts to run it all the way down to the bare metal. Dependencies are essentially omnipresent. That is, someone else, somewhere, wrote some other code that the main characters in our story think could be helpful for making their own code work, so they just import it and use it. They often have to trust that it just does what it says it does on the tin. They may have to hope that if something goes wrong with it, that someone else (or their successors) will update it and keep it running correctly. This phenomenon is probably most famously summed up in this XKCD.

As such, it is sometimes possible for someone to get into one of these dependencies, find or insert a flaw, and then exploit it in order to get at some higher-level software package. There have been tons of examples, some very high profile, of this happening. The funniest version that I had heard of to date was "typosquatting". The idea is that, sometimes, just by random chance, some programmer somewhere will misspell a package that they want to import. Typosquatting is used for websites, too, where there is just some chance that some number of people will misspell a website and happen to go to a site controlled by a bad guy (famous example was goggle(dot)com). The idea for package dependencies is the same; some percentage of the time, some programmer may just accidentally type "hugingface" instead of "huggingface"; if the bad guys published a malicious version by that typo-d name and the programmer in question somehow doesn't catch it, big oof.

There is now a funnier version. Of course it would be LLMs that give us a funnier version. "Slopsquatting", they call it. They even created a wikipedia article already for the paper. The idea is that so many coders (and "vibe coders") are now using LLMs to create mountains of new code, some who barely understand what's going on in their newly-created code. The LLM just creates it, and it works! It's magic! Of course, anyone who has spent much time with LLMs know that they do occasionally hallucinate. And, well, hallucinating is close enough to typo-ing that it'll get the job done.

It turns out that LLMs will, some percentage of the time, just randomly hallucinate a package that doesn't exist (or at least, doesn't exist yet). They'll "imagine" that maybe such a package, if it existed, might be helpful to the task they were given to accomplish. And they'll just write code as if it existed and did the thing that they'd kinda like it to do. Of course, just like with typosquatting, if you have an attentive and knowledgeable human watching closely, there's no reason why they couldn't catch it. But again, we're entering the world of "vibe coders"; at least some percentage of them are simply not going to have a clue. "The magic inscrutable matrices gave me this code. I'll try to run it."

So now, what if the bad guys have already figured this out? The bad guys create a package that they think is likely to be hallucinated, and they turn it into a very bad package, indeed. To the "vibe coder", it might even look like it's running correctly! The magic inscrutable matrices came through again; let's ship some product! Utterly brilliant... and utterly devilish.

At least this one is funny.

At least this one is funny.

As someone involved in infosec, my reaction to this is the guy pressed up against the window going "yes ... hahaha ... yes!" sickos meme

From The Onion, oddly enough.

And the solution is the increasingly important SBOM (Software Bill of Materials). There are tools that help generate them and keep track of it as a project grows and I imagine (or rather, foolishly hope) that important software that should be secure will be expected to have one in the near future.

An SBOM is a great thing... for projects that have dependencies. My employer has gone in too hard on trying to have as many stampable "we do X!" as they can to be safe and good and please other businesses, even in cases where it makes no sense. My little division works in a very special environment that has effectively zero available third party libraries. This has been true for over a decade - we are our own special corner. And yet! We must now have a SBOM (it's blank) and do a scan for known third party vulnerabilities (always zero) and pass an license compatibility check (no licenses but the one we put on our own stuff) and so on and so on. It's not that onerous, but it's extremely annoying to know that we are forced to waste some small slice of our time and effort keeping green flags for so many checkmarkables that we could not possibly fail. All this, and the cherry on top is that each component we make (none of which bring in any third party code) has to pass all these individually, and then the final product again has to pass them all - the final product made entirely and exclusively of the components we are already (pointlessly) checking.

Yes, compliance team, I understand the importance of validating third party code and the possibility of security issues! We just don't have any!

How does SOBM prevent you from misspelling a dependency?

you could presumably look at the list of packages that are depended on and see how many installs they have

the package that looks like an important one that only has 10 installs vs the rest that have millions is a good clue

it's way too late to look at the SBOM though. installing a rogue package recommended by an LLM already risks totally compromising development

Your build workflow should hopefully warn you when you are importing a dependency you did not manually approve of, but to do that it needs to keep track of those (hence the SBOM).

Moreover, it protects you from (some) mistakes made upstream. That lone overworked dev whose work on a library is pivotal to many other projects making a typo and importing a backdoored library is now going to be triggering alerts for downstream projects.

Your build workflow should hopefully warn you when you are importing a dependency you did not manually approve of, but to do that it needs to keep track of those (hence the SBOM).

Any serious shop is already reviewing code changes, so the original bogus import should already be reviewed and I don't see this as additional protection. I guess it offers some protection if (as the other commenter suggested) packages with very few users are specially flagged during review. But merely flagging the addition of a new library is not useful, nobody is going to be chasing down new libraries in each code review to see if they are legit or not.

Moreover, it protects you from (some) mistakes made upstream. That lone overworked dev whose work on a library is pivotal to many other projects making a typo and importing a backdoored library is now going to be triggering alerts for downstream projects.

This is a good point, though it doesn't cover the novel library case. It relies on having a list of backdoored libraries to reference, but such libraries could simply be removed from the package manager altogether. Otherwise, I guarantee nobody is going to review the complete transitive dependency list for new slopsquatted libraries, ever.

At least in my shop, the workflow has been to generate a spreadsheet with alphabetized dependencies, marked by version and environment, across all projects, and leads review them once a month. Yes, for internal development this is all stuff that's getting looked over anyway during normal PRs, but a second set of review's not always a bad thing. For external tools, or dependency-of-dependency issues, or where an old library is getting increasingly out-of-date, it can be a first impression matter, and that has highlighted some concerns or vulnerabilities that weren't visible without delving deep into log files.

((That said, b/c we have some python situations, it's also had 'semver, damn near killed him' sorta problems where a 'bugfix' update also broke everything subtly. And a larger number of cases where 'this second library looks like a typo of the first library' that was just QT being QT.))

I've been trying to figure out a way to automate date-of-update fields for at least some of those dependencies, but it's ... been kinda a pain in the ass. I dunno if commercial SBOM tools do that. Most of the ones I've looked at only advertise highlighting 'known risk' versions and 'known good' ones, which I'm less a fan of. It's not fun and it's not hugely effective even at small scales -- I can't really do much more than google a lot of dependencies for server tools, since we're a pretty small shop and that's far out of my field of experience -- but it's not just box-checking either.

I vibecode but I wouldn't just let it import anything it wanted.

Ultimately we have to let people learn things. No, don't leave your API keys open for anyone to see on github...

We've talked a few times about New York's congestion pricing program. On February 19, Secretary of Transportation Duffy revoked authorization for this program based on two defects. One, that cordon pricing where a toll-free route exists is allowed for Interstates, but no other roads -- and in any case no toll-free route exists under New York's program. Second, that the program in fact exists to fund the MTA (state run public transportation, including the subway), not to reduce congestion. By statute any congestion pricing program requires authorization from the Department of Transportation, so this is the end of the program, right?

Wrong. Governor Hochul refused to shut it down by a March 21 deadline, calling instead for "orderly resistance". The US DOT extended the deadline until tomorrow. Hochul still refuses to shut down the program.

Unsurprisingly, there has been nothing said about the flagrant disregard for rule of law by the executive of New York.

To clarify a little more: New York has sued the USDOT in federal court over this termination, claiming that it is arbitrary and capricious. As far as I can see, the lawsuit does not include a request for a preliminary injunction while proceedings are ongoing. Rather, as The_Nybbler states, New York will just refuse to obey it.

I look forwards to the precedent being used by red states under Harris in 2029.

LOL, it doesn't work that way. Defy the feds from the left you get a shrug and you can resist until the feds change their minds. Defy them from the right you get the 101st airborne on your doorstep.

Greg Abbott got away with it- after a disappointing midterm.

Defy the feds from the left you get a shrug and you can resist until the feds change their minds. Defy them from the right you get the 101st airborne on your doorstep.

Have any examples of the latter? The closest I can think of is Eisenhower enforcing school integration.

I mean that is literally the canonical example, yes.

That strikes me much more as FAFO by those to the right of Eisenhower than victimization of those to the right of Eisenhower.

I hope you'll say likewise when leftists start disappearing to Guantanamo

It depends on the details of that hypothetical.

I think you could use this explanation to see the difference here.

The DOT can file for an injunction against the MTA (they have not yet done so) and so far at least Hochul and other leaders have said they would follow such an order if granted by the court. Of course we can't see into the future, it's possible that an order is made by the courts and the MTA still refuses but they at least say they won't defy it currently.

So everything currently happening is well within the legal process. The DOT believes it has the ability to terminate an approval in such a manner, and the MTA contests and claims they don't (the MTA believes there the order violates certain federal regulations) and as such they are seeking answers in a court of law.

If you don't understand how the American legal system works, that's fine. Most citizens don't, there's a reason why we have such high standards for practicing as an attorney or judge. It is a very complex system with a long history of various laws, regulations and court rulings. But you should probably accept you don't understand it.

My understanding is that this is a federal matter because it involves interstate roads which were built with federal funds.

I think that a workaround would be to just charge tolls on non-federal roads. The people driving from and to Manhattan tend not to do so just to enjoy the view of the Hudson from a federal highway. They want to reach a destination in Manhattan, and they need to use local roads to get to it. So just charge them to use the local roads instead.

On the subject itself, I am a bit of two minds. On the one hand, I get that putting prices on things is probably the most efficient way to allocate rare resources. On the other hand, there is something delightfully egalitarian about public roads. It does not matter if your car is worth 500$ or 500k$, when it comes to traffic -- and especially traffic jams -- everyone is equal. Well, somewhat equal. Of course, sitting in a hot, cramped, terrible car waiting for the traffic to move is different than riding in a nice, air-conditioned car with some stop and go traffic assistance system, and that is different from riding in the back of a limousine drinking champagne with an escort and an 8k TV screen while occasionally berating your driver on the intercom. Still, unless you can afford to ride a helicopter to work you are stuck here with the rest of us.

The interstate commerce nexus is pretty strong here, as is the Federal funding. Manhattan gets all sorts of Federal funding for both transit and roads. Even without Wickard v. Fillburn, it isn't practical to avoid it.

On the one hand, I get that putting prices on things is probably the most efficient way to allocate rare resources.

Not when there's a monopoly provider.

The fact that there's a monopoly provider is one part of it, but there's also the part where the service being provided has substantial negative externalities. I don't know what price leads to maximum utility when that's taken into account, but I imagine it's closer to the price in a monopoly market than the price in a competitive market. Heck, it might even be higher than that. Depends on the demand curve, of course.

On the other hand, with something like the public transit system which has much less (though of course not zero) negative externalities, I think what you said applies a lot more. I think there's even an argument for pricing it somewhat below-market because it can pull commuters away from driving, if you don't have something like a congestion charge already.

Claims of externalities are usually a way of putting one's finger on the scale, and this is a perfect example. You've decided driving is bad and transit is good, so you handwave into existence negative externalities for driving which are much greater than those of transit, and set their value to whatever works for your argument.

What specifically about mass transit do you think makes it come anywhere close to private auto transport in terms of negative externalities?

It might have lesser externalities, but it also has much lesser utility. Choosing where I go, and when, is the whole point of having a car. Not being able to choose my destination and being forced to adhere to another's schedule aren't externalities, they're just providing an inferior product. That before you address the issue of sharing space with strangers, which might be acceptable if society were high trust, but becomes intolerable in low-trust cities.

I'd rather have the better option, thank you.

That's perfectly fine, and I totally get why some people choose to drive. What I object to is not some people choosing to drive, but the cost of that driving being borne by people who don't choose to drive -- and even by others who choose to drive. It's like a smoker complaining that not smoking is not as good as the law letting you smoke wherever you want.

I get that a lot of people don't like sharing space with strangers, when crime and harassment are factors. I do think it's something that also really needs addressing on its own, but especially to make non-car transportation more attractive.

I think you don't get the benefit of the default.

Ok, I guess first it's worth establishing what we're comparing driving to. I think it's fair to say some mix of public transport like trains, buses, and subways, as well as walking and cycling. If you take public transport you have to typically walk a little bit, as it won't go directly to your destination.

Also, I'm not trying to argue that driving a car isn't desirable for the occupants. Of course it's convenient, private, and comfortable. And I don't disagree with Urquan that a lot of people choose cars because they prefer the risk of an accident to the risk of being a victim of crime.

So to start, let's compare the space requirements. Every bit of land in a city has a value -- if you use it for something transportation-related, you can't use it for something else. As a thought experiment, if you had to surround every building with a 50ft wide no-mans-land buffer, it would clearly make any city or town larger and therefore add time to every trip through it, without adding any value (with the exception perhaps reducing noise pollution if you live next to a club). Proximity creates value.

Walking often requires sidewalks -- one could imagine a city with no sidewalks, but typically we don't want roads inches away from front doors and storefronts anyway, so it doesn't really take up much extra space. That said, if your roads are narrow enough, you can leave these out (example of random residential Tokyo street).

Buses require depots to store them, as well as stops. Clicking around google maps for any major city with a good bus system shows that these take up minimal space, about as much as a Walmart + parking, if that.

Commuter trains probably require the biggest footprint of any public transport. 860,000 people commute into London on the train daily (2006 figure). If they all drove instead *and carpooled 2 people per car), assuming a 2.4m x 4.8m parking space (old, smaller standard), you'd need 4953600 m^2 of parking, or 2.2 km^2 of just parking spaces. And since a parking lot needs a substantial amount of space for the cars to drive around, it would probably be more like 3 or 4 km^2. For a train station footprint, let's take Waterloo station, (the biggest), which as far as I can estimate would be about 0.25 km across if it were compressed into a square, for 0.0625 km^2. There are 14 terminal train stations in London -- if they were all the same size, they would take up 0.875 km^2. But many are smaller, and a train station is not just bare warehouse for trains, it has shops and places to eat as well. There are also lots of smaller train stations which are just a blip on the train line that barely takes up more space than the train itself.

And finally, a subway takes up very little useful space, of course. For driving, the Big Dig in Boston would be comparable.

Now, when providing car parking, you can build up, or down! But since car parking takes up so much space per-user, parking structures often have to be paid in order for them to make economic sense, or they're subsidized by the city. I have little objection to car parking when the driver pays enough that it doesn't need subsidies. Often, though, planing laws just mandate that each business provides a certain number of parking spaces. We all pay for this both in the form of things being further apart, as discussed above, as well as businesses having to pay taxes on land area only used for cars, that they then pass on to us.

I want to emphasize -- I don't think cars are the devil. I do think that bending over backwards to accommodate driving at the expense of other forms of transportation, and the general livability of cities, is a problem.

Another externality is accident deaths. Cars kill more than other forms of transportation -- and not just the people in the car. If we take what the DOT estimated for the value of human life in 2023, $13.2 million, times 0.54 deaths per 100,000,000 million passenger miles for passenger vehicles from the previous link, that's $7.128 million per 100m passenger miles. We could cut that in half if we want to say that half the car deaths are due to the own fault of the driver and so shouldn't count as an externality. This is probably over-estimating because there are a lot of pedestrian and cyclist fatalities, but under-estimating in cases where there is more than 1 occupant of the car. (It's easy to get into the weeds quickly) This is $3.064 million per 100m passenger miles, or $0.03 per passenger mile. Every 33 mile trip statistically does around $1 in economic damage solely from the possibility of causing an accident. Just looking at the graph of accidents, the externality from other types of transit is less than 1/10 of that. As for walking and cycling, I'm assuming that deaths caused to others is generally negligible -- it would be hard to kill someone with a bike crash even if you were trying.

Other externalities, such as noise, are messier to compare. Obviously walking and cycling are very quiet, subways are too if you're not actually down near them. Trains and buses can make more noise than cars, but there's the factor that they're not on literally every street, and they're not constantly passing by. Train horns can carry a long way though. Subjectively, I've found cities with lots of cars to be substantially louder than cities that don't prioritize them.

Pollution is similar. For trains and buses, I'm not sure. Trains do probably generate a lot of brake dust, and diesel trains pollute. It may depend on electrification, etc. Electric cars are apparently about as bad as gas ones due to tire wear and braking though, so I imagine buses and trains may be the same, though electric trains aren't heavier than diesel ones since they get their power from overhead lines. Biking and walking create negligible pollution, unless you count the visual pollution of lycra-clad cyclists.

Anyway, that's my impression of the externalities of different modes of transport, back of the envelope. It makes sense to drive everywhere, if you don't count what driving does to everyone else. Just like it makes sense to catch as many fish as you want without considering if the stock can support it.

because it can pull commuters away from driving

I could own a car and go wherever I want, whenever I want. It'll take me 10 minutes to get there and another 10 to get back. I can buy heavy things or more than I can carry on my own. A lot of times public transit doesn't get me to where I want to go (especially if it's another city, and in that case I'd need to get a hotel and hope their own system takes me to where I need to go) and sometimes what I'm transporting is not allowed on public transit. I can open the windows, turn on the A/C, I control the music, and I'll always have a place to sit.

Or I could take public transit, where it'll take me an hour one way (transit + walking + transfers), I'm limited to my physical strength (so no Costco runs), I'm more or less limited to where public transit goes, not even guaranteed a place on the vehicle during rush hour, I can't take certain things with me, and I can't stay out later than the last bus or I'll be stuck walking for multiple hours. Or I could take a taxi, but the cost of doing that particularly often is comparable to car ownership in the first place.

The reason people like cars is that personal vehicles of this nature are Good, Actually. We can argue about the size (though because a great variety of Westerners are landlords compared to those in hyper-dense areas or Europe, we tend to prefer trucks large enough to lend to the land's maintenance) but there's a reason even in extremely poor areas the dominant mode of transportation is not public... it's a 50cc gasoline-powered scooter.

I mean, I guess if you only count people who can afford cars in the first place, then yes. And ignore the fact that because we dedicate so much tax money to roads and not public transit, people who kinda can’t afford cars have to buy them anyway, and it takes up a big chunk of their income compared to more well-off folks. And that poor people often have to live next to the noisy, polluting traffic where rents are cheap, shouldering the brunt of the negative externalities.

I get that you’re not trying to make a rigorous argument here, but I really see it from a different perspective.

Unsurprisingly, there has been nothing said about the flagrant disregard for rule of law by the executive of New York.

Has the actions of New York been ruled against yet in a court of law, and have they continued to keep congestion pricing despite that ruling? That is how these conflicts get legally settled after all.

If so, then Hochul and others should be held in contempt of court. If not then the comparison I assume you're trying to make is not equivalent. From my understanding the relevant lawsuit is still in process

Edit: Better link, not directly to a PDF.

Edit 2: also to add this bit in

While Sec. Duffy has issued threats to NY for noncompliance, and FHWA gave NY an April 20 deadline to turn off the tolls, at the pretrial hearing on Wednesday, counsel for the Federal government indicated that no action is imminent. The plaintiffs in the case made clear there would be “irreparable harm to the MTA, TBTA, and the people of New York if tolling ceased” and that further they don’t intend to turn off the tolling system short of an order from judge directing them to do so.

While it of course remains to be seen in the future, they do not state an intent to disobey the courts. This is par for the course when a legal conflict occurs, disagreements between parties are settled by the judicial branch.

Has the actions of New York been ruled against yet in a court of law, and have they continued to keep congestion pricing despite that ruling?

As far as I am aware: The legal action for New York would be obedience to USDOT's termination until the court grants an injunction against that termination. In its lawsuit, New York requests a permanent injunction, which would go into effect after trial. But it does not appear that New York has bothered to seek a preliminary injunction, which would go into effect immediately, prior to trial. Trial obviously will not take place before USDOT's deadline. So it definitely looks like New York is planning to act illegally, though it has not yet actually done so.

This is a complicated procedural situation and while you're analysis is on the right track, it isn't quite correct and leads you to the wrong conclusion. New York didn't request an injunction in its lawsuit. For the court to issue an injunction, there has to be some kind of action involved (either for the opposing party to take or forbear from), and since the DOT has not engaged in any enforcement or threat of enforcement, such and action does not exist here. In other words, New York can't ask for an injunction, preliminary or permanent, because there isn't anything for the court to tell the Federal government to stop doing. New York is instead requesting declaratory judgment. In this case, New York has taken the position that the Secretary of Transportation does not have the authority to unilaterally rescind the approval, and is asking the court to confirm that position. If New York's position is correct, then they were never under any obligation to comply with the Secretary's request to begin with.

The strategic implications here are that, by filing suit in advance rather than waiting for the DOT to engage in some kind of enforcement action, New York gets is position on the record and throws the ball into the Federal government's court; the reason they went this route to begin with was specifically because it allows them to avoid compliance until a court has ruled on the matter. Strategically, New York's move here is so slick it makes me want to cry. Courts in general don't like to grand preliminary injunctions or TROs, and the standards for getting them are high: You have to demonstrate irreparable harm and a strong chance of prevailing on the merits. Suppose that New York waits until DOT begins enforcement, and also suppose that the case is a tossup on the merits. Now New York has to ask for a preliminary injunction while the case is pending, and they probably aren't going to get one. So now even if they prevail on the merits, they have to pause the program for the entire time the case is pending.

By asking for declaratory judgment in advance, the onus of getting preliminary injunctive relief is now on the Feds. Now that there's a live dispute over their authority, they can't just unilaterally assert it; they have to ask the court. And since the bar for getting this kind of relief is high, they aren't likely to get it. And if they simply don't seek the relief at all but instead try to penalize the state retroactively if they end up prevailing, it's going to be hard for them to do, since if the matter was so important why didn't they file for a preliminary injunction?

While I don't know the specifics of this particular part of law, the MTA's entire argument maintains that the transport secretary does not have the legal authority to overturn it, and any injuction could in fact be requested by the department of transportation which they have not done. https://nyc.streetsblog.org/2025/04/07/in-court-at-least-the-feds-are-not-trying-to-stop-congestion-pricing

Lawyers for the U.S. Department of Transportation are not planning to seek an emergency order to halt congestion pricing if the toll keeps going after April 20, the Trump administration's current deadline for Gov. Hochul to end the toll, according to a new court filing.

In a letter to Judge Lewis Liman, who's overseeing the MTA's lawsuit challenging Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy's bid to withdraw federal approval of the toll, MTA attorney Roberta Kaplan said that federal lawyers said they don't plan on asking for an emergency injunction should the deadline come and go.

"The MTA ... specifically asked whether the federal defendants contemplate taking any unilateral action on or after April 20 that might require plaintiffs to seek expedited injunctive relief," Kaplan wrote. "The federal defendants ... did state that, at present, they do not intend to seek preliminary injunctive relief themselves."

The decision not to seek an injunction when the MTA blows past the double secret probation deadline Duffy announced after the agency ignored his original March 20 deadline means that congestion pricing will be sticking around at least through the summer, based on the filing schedule on which the plaintiffs and defendants agreed, according to Kaplan's letter.

Aside from any legal issues, it drives me kinda nuts that they're trying to shut this program down, because I think our over-dependence on cars and excessive catering to drivers is a horrible thing that ruins our cities. The congestion pricing program in NYC has been a great success story, with the city getting less polluted, quieter, and even easier for drivers if you pay the charge. It's even safer on the subways, because of safety in numbers -- more riders means fewer situations where criminals and predators can find isolated victims. Consider the lives that will be saved due to better air quality for the 8 million people who live in NYC.

So I wish the FHWA would be bending over backwards to find a way to let this program continue and encourage it in more cities, instead of being dicks like this.

As for the legal objections, I'm not a lawyer, so of course take this as you will. But what does Duffy mean by "...the imposition of tolls under the CBDTP pilot project appears to be driven primarily by the need to raise revenue for the Metropolitan Transit Authority (MTA) System as opposed to the need to reduce congestion."? The letter is very vague about why they've concluded that, and I don't see how you couldn't conclude that of ANY congestion pricing program, if you were so inclined. Do they have to avoid talking about how much money it would raise when they're planning? Or would a congestion charge only be allowed if you planned to put all the money in a big pit and burn it?

The "cordon pricing" thing... I read an argument made that all the bridges from New Jersey into New York have tolls. Does that mean that NYC is legally required to build a toll-free bridge, or drop tolls on one of those bridges, as it's effectively cordoned?

I mean, sure, I imagine Trump/the FHWA has the authority to shut this down, if they want to. I don't see what actually requires them to pull this particular interpretation, though, and the whole thing seems like a petty "fuck you" to New York (as well as advanced car-brain virus), for a program that is very effective and pretty darn popular in NYC. It seems like the people who like it least are those who drive in from New Jersey, and even then, a lot of people are more frustrated that there isn't a good public transit option.

I apologize for my irritated tone, I just hate when there are such beneficial policies that have been tried and tested in lots of other places, that get shot down for stupid reasons in the US because they threaten our precious, innocent, angelic cars that have never hurt anybody and never would, how dare you.

I apologize for my irritated tone, I just hate when there are such beneficial policies that have been tried and tested in lots of other places, that get shot down for stupid reasons in the US because they threaten our precious, innocent, angelic cars that have never hurt anybody and never would, how dare you.

I agree with you that, in a vaccum, limited cars in cities would be fantastic. I love the way European villages work. I think, as an ideal, cities with strong public transportation and limited congestion are a great place to live. In theory, I'm rah-rah urbanism.

But no discussion of transportation and suburbanization in the US can happen without a co-equal discussion about crime and safety.

The reason Americans cling to their cars and their commutes is simple: the cities are not safe. I personally know people who lived the urbanist dream, living downtown in a city, and then fled to the suburbs because they watched a man die from a gunshot out their window. I've ridden the train and had to make decisions about how to deal with a clearly psychotic man with no understanding of reality, and thus posed a real danger to himself and the people around him. I've seen and walked by the tent cities. I've seen, with my own eyes, the fentanyl zombies whose presence in our greatest cities can be described only as seriously-discomfiting, as human urban blight, as the broken windows of man that reveals and invites immense public disorder and ugliness. I've read the crime stats.

The right perceives this danger profoundly and seriously, and it shapes many of their political priorities, from gun rights to car rights. They want the ability to live without fear, while still being able to have access to the centers of economic activity that are our cities. Having a car means having a physical, metal, lockable bubble that separates you from exterior threats, while being able to easily and autonomously navigate yourself out of the urban center without having to share a means of transportation with people who may mean you harm.

Your post seems to reveal that your concerns about cars are the mirror image of conservative concerns about crime: you see them as dangerous to public safety, and ugly. And you're not wrong! I have serious and real concerns about the size of our vehicles and the number and behavior of them in cities.

But the American right has judged that the danger to them from automobiles -- which indeed is massive, grave, and serious -- is less important to them than the massive, grave, and serious risk posed to them by urban crime and disorder. They would rather be hurt accidentially by a driver than intentionally by a robber. You can find this wrong, or seriously misguided, or silly, but nevertheless it means that their political views on the issue are shaped by actual concerns about the world rather than "advanced car-brain virus." It means that you might have to engage with their concerns realistically, and maybe make concessions, rather than accusing them of harboring a mental parasite. It's much easier to just handwave them away, just as it's much easier for the right to say that anyone with concerns about the Trump administration has a terminal case of TDS.

The urban problems in the US are mostly US-specific, shaped by US concerns. For that reason, your opponents reject that these are beneficial policies based on being tried and tested in other places. The US is not other places, and has unique problems. The US is not Europe, as my liberal friends delight in reminding me.

Left-wingers want to get the cars out of the city, and right-wingers want to get the crime out of the cities. Both have their ebb and flow, as one side of the argument gains more power, but the Democratic strongholds in most US cities ensures that things flow mostly in one direction.

For that reason, Republicans will cling to their cars as a fundamental part of their identity, because it's the only thing that secures them the ability to participate in the economic activity of society while permitting them and their families to live in the suburbs, where they can have greater security for their possessions and families. And where they can offer to their children a chance at an education in a school where bullies and criminals are disciplined, and children aren't smoking weed in the bathrooms -- a real set of concerns expressed by a family who left Oregon to move to the rural, delapidated town in flyover country where my girlfriend grew up. We're actually at the point where it's safer and better for your children to live in bumfuck nowhere than in our most prominent states.

If liberals want conservatives to be hands-off and support restrictions on car culture, the first thing to do is to clean up the cities and make them temples of safety, security, and prosperity. What is needed is to support policies that arrest, convict, and incarcerate (for long periods) drug addicts, criminals, and other beacons of public disorder. In other words, to stop opposing policies that "threaten our precious, innocent, angelic cars criminals that have never hurt anybody and never would, how dare you." Once we keep people who intentionally do harm out of our cities, then we can talk about keeping machines that accidentially do harm out of them.

But until that day: "haha car go vroom vroom."

I think you've posted this before. I've probably posted a similar answer.

America's love affair with the car started before the cities became wretched hives of scum and villainy and (despite the best efforts of New Urbanists) continued when most of them recovered. Having a car means you can go anywhere the road network can take you, when you want, the way you want. You can change your plans. You can bring your stuff with you. You can listen to your radio/music, converse with your passengers, or go in silence. It's your space, it goes where you want to go. It's also generally faster -- typically much faster -- than public transit, and cheaper per trip given that you need a car for any trip,

For reasons, I've been recently traveling to quite a few cities (I usually live in a suburb environment and have zero commute since I work remotely), mostly large ones on the West Coast. Sometimes I rent a car, sometimes I don't. What I noticed is that not having a car makes everything take way longer and way more complicated.

With a car I know when I have to leave to be at time X at point A, and how much time it'd take me to get to point B afterwards. Yes, even with the traffic, modern online tools are pretty decent at predicting it. And, as you note, I can listen to music, audiobooks, or silently meditate while I'm driving. I can also literally get to any place at any time of my choosing. And If I decide to make a detour to grab a coffee or buy some stuff I forgot, I know up to a minute how long that'd take me.

When I rely on the public transport, I am at the whim of its schedule (which could be extremely inconvenient for me) and it's coverage - if the closest bus stop is a mile from where you need, it's walking time. I'm reasonably fit so walking a mile is not a problem for me, but what if it's raining? What if it's hot as hell and I show up there all sweaty and smelly? And that's the ideal case. So many times the bus that should be on 15 min schedule just didn't show up - who knows why - and I was left guessing should I wait another 15 mins and then be guaranteed to be late if the next one doesn't show up too, or it's time to pay for uber/taxi?

And now safety. I've seen all kinds of crazy on public transport. I am pretty large, somewhat ugly and, again, reasonably fit male, so the chance somebody chooses to mess with me in particular, out of all possible choices, is not that big. Never happened so far. But still being in the presence of obviously psychotic person (who evidently hadn't experienced a shower in this decade) in a closed box is not something I particularly enjoyed. I've also seen and smelled a lot of bodily fluids and solids which I'd prefer not to. It's not always that bad - some routes are quite fine, but there's always a chance.

And of course if you need to bring something with you, it's even more problematic. I mean, if it fits in a backpack, then fine. But if not? With a car, I can pack stuff I'd need for a week there without a problem, and have plenty of space left. I can go to a shopping spree and just put all the stuff in my trunk and forget about it. I can buy a pack of water bottles once, put them in the car and use them for a week. I can have a change of clothes if the weather changes or I get dirty. Etc. etc. A lot of things are so simple when you have a mobile mini-home with you everywhere you go.

In short, car improves your quality of life so much. Sometimes, in some visits, the cost (rent, gas, parking, time to find parking, etc.) may be so high that even that improvement does not cover it, and then I still choose to go car-less. But the love for the car is not baseless at all, there's a lot there to love.

The things with european villages is that they are... villages. Not cities. I live in what I would consider a mid-sized city, which may still be a village for you, and Ive always been confused by these american urbanists - what do you think you need a car for that I dont? I guess the supermarket, but the local supermarket doesnt have that much, so usually I drive anyway. The only public transport that remotely works is the metro, the busses have 15min wait times on the low end even with them running them basically empty. The metro at least is usually 10% full, but still none of this would survive if it wasnt subsidised into the stratosphere. The conflict over cars exists here as well, and the "no cars at all" faction is if anything bigger than is america.

As someone who grew up in the exurbs, they aren't safe either. Our basement was broken into by the neighbor's kids. Our family dog was killed in the backyard & its eyes plucked out. I was shot at by BB guns. My dad was unable or unwilling to protect.

And the worst part? The only way to physically escape was to drive somewhere else. Which meant middle-school me was stuck in a neighborhood of low-key abusers. Cable TV, console gaming, & pulp sci-fi books were the only viable escape. So I used them.

I'm in a city now. There are still problems, much like you describe. But now there's different places my children can go to escape problem families and problem people if they have to - and they don't have to drive to get there.

I don't believe the car is worth killing. But I don't believe it should be depended on as an escape hatch. Too much happens in the years between 6 and 16, before one can more easily flee.

Yeah, you're absolutely right -- I think this is the one reasonable objection to getting cars out of cities, and it's a doozy. I wish that liberals were more on the ball with this (though to be fair, a lot of liberals are perfectly happy with the damage cars do as long as they can virtue signal by buying the right kind of electric car or whatever).

Policing and crime is the other side of the coin.

"Urban crime" is a scoped to make all cities look bad, when the issue is of some neighborhoods in some cities.

Oakland or Baltimore are generally violent. Downtown Seattle or SOMA SF have homelessness and nonviolent property crime associated with it. I dont recommend living in these neighborhoods and I am in complete agreement on the dire need for possibly non-compassionate methods for resolving these issues. But these cities/neighborhoods are rarely the subjects of discussion.

Statistically, transit focused American cities are exceedingly safe. NYC & Boston are the nations 2 big transit cities. Both the cities and their transit corridors are quite safe. Hell, you can fall asleep late at night on the subway and wake up in East NY (murdertown).... and it's still safe inside the subway complex. As mentioned before, bad neighborhoods are ofc crime ridden. But connecting them to a common transit doesnt bring crime to your doorstep.

That being said, I'm glad that the YIMBY/Transit crowd has decoupled from the compassionate/pro-homeless crowd.

Strict enforcement of public safety is essential to getting people to use transit. The caltrain (well run) vs Bart (total mess) are great examples while being within a few miles from eachnother.

Aside from any legal issues, it drives me kinda nuts that they're trying to shut this program down, because I think our over-dependence on cars and excessive catering to drivers is a horrible thing that ruins our cities.

Right, we should go back to horses. Except, you know, the whole problem of being buried in manure, which is why NYC originally enthusiastically adopted the automobile.

As for the legal objections, I'm not a lawyer, so of course take this as you will. But what does Duffy mean by "...the imposition of tolls under the CBDTP pilot project appears to be driven primarily by the need to raise revenue for the Metropolitan Transit Authority (MTA) System as opposed to the need to reduce congestion."?

The proponents of this program, including Hochul, have been quite clear about this.

The "cordon pricing" thing... I read an argument made that all the bridges from New Jersey into New York have tolls. Does that mean that NYC is legally required to build a toll-free bridge, or drop tolls on one of those bridges, as it's effectively cordoned?

No, because tolls for bridges have separate statutory authority.

I mean, sure, I imagine Trump/the FHWA has the authority to shut this down, if they want to. I don't see what actually requires them to pull this particular interpretation, though, and the whole thing seems like a petty "fuck you" to New York (as well as advanced car-brain virus), for a program that is very effective and pretty darn popular in NYC. It seems like the people who like it least are those who drive in from New Jersey, and even then, a lot of people are more frustrated that there isn't a good public transit option

Congestion pricing is a big "fuck you" to drivers in the first place. And if it's a "fuck you in particular" to drivers from New Jersey... well, that's actually a legitimate interstate commerce nexus. Neither side's motives are pure here, but the Trump administration has the better statutory justification.

Right, we should go back to horses. Except, you know, the whole problem of being buried in manure, which is why NYC originally enthusiastically adopted the automobile.

This isn't like eliminating cars in Dallas Texas.

NYC has robust subway, railroad, and bike infrastructure. Busses would also be a lot more useful if they weren't stuck behind cars all of the time.

I think you're inflating congestion with all the other problems caused by there being too many cars. If the goal is to reduce traffic, then it shouldn't be called congestion pricing. Congestion pricing is for reducing congestion, which increases traffic because it unclogs the roads.

Reducing traffic beyond the point needed to eliminate congestion because you also want to reduce pollution and noise should be called something else.

I wouldn't object to calling it something else, for example the "fuck cars charge" (kidding!). But also, we do things all the time with names that aren't exactly literal -- and in politics especially. "Sin tax", "Right-to-work laws", the PATRIOT Act, for example. I think "congestion charge" is somewhat accurate, easy to remember, and rolls off the tongue. I'm not sure how you'd capture the full intent of the policy in a concise name... "Private vehicle harm reduction and congestion reduction tax for MTA funding"? People would end up using an abbreviated name anyway. And it's not like you can split this into multiple policies -- the single charge does all these things simultaneously.

Or another way to put it -- I think you need to look at all side benefits when evaluating a policy, just like you need include negative side effects. It doesn't matter if they're intended or not, effects are effects. The minimum wage is well known to cause unemployment--it's still popular with the political left because they ignore that part (or refuse to believe it) and only look at the intended effects.

imposition of tolls under the CBDTP pilot project appears to be driven primarily by the need to raise revenue for the Metropolitan Transit Authority (MTA) System as opposed to the need to reduce congestion

For context. All revenues collected under this program are earmarked for MTA projects.

If it is the primary goal of the program is up to interpretation. And as you said, the state could always throw it into a pile and use it for MTA projects anyways. Earmarked or not.

I'm with you on everything else. For once, I'm a shameless partisan on the issue. I like to think I can empathize with the stance of my ideological opposite. But car brained Americans have to be operating under advanced stupidy or extreme malice. I see no sympathetic position for them.

Even the smallest inconvenience to cars thousands of miles away makes them go into a frenzy. No one is coming for cars in rural America or the suburbs or even godforsaken cities like Atlanta. We're talkimg about vanilla-ass transportation policy in world cities like LA, NYC, SF, Boston, Philly, Miami and DC.

Not even a red vs blue thing. Californian opposition is so comically evil in their demands for an acceptable subway line that I cant help but think there is something I'm missing.

based on two defects

From the document, this came across as an argument rather than a statement of fact (Sec Transp argues that the 1991 exception for congestion pricing was vague so he he's going to interpret it as he sees fit )

Reading between the lines, it's pretty much a 'Biden let you do it. I wont. Fuck you' letter. It even acknowledges the positive reception among the public.

It comes across as another example of Trump pushing the power of the executive to its furthest limits (every executive outdoes their former on this, but Trump 2 is a whole another level)

Congestion pricing is popular. Its in a deep blue state and doesnt have a partisan bent. (Republicans take the subway too). Im not sure why Trump is so appaled by it other than simplistic 'highway good, transit bad' memes.

Unsurprisingly, there has been nothing said about the flagrant disregard for rule of law by the executive of New York.

Executive overreach vs executive overreach. About damn time Democrats started playing politics rather than fumbling around like baboons.

I recognize that FHWA under the prior Administration concluded, when executing the November 21 Agreement, that the CBDTP was eligible for approval under VPPP, and that my determination represents a change in position.

What is the precedent around retroactive change to previous approvals, esp. when the capital expenditure is already done ?

Man, is it hard to get anything done in the US. No wonder the infrastructure is crumbling.

Congestion pricing launched after surviving multiple lawsuits filed on both sides of the Hudson River.

How did stuff ever get built in the US ? The system offers infinite tools for opposition to block every project. How did the interstate system get built ? Was there a clear before-after for when this kind of systemic obstruction became commonplace ?

I'm surprised that Trump fans didnt see the civic disobedience coming. Politics and the balance between the various pillars is a massive grey area, always has been. The boundaries around this area are primarily upheld by expectations of civility and perceptions of what gets you voted out of office. "X is illegal" is never that straightforward.

Trump won by throwing civility out the window, slaughtering every sacred cow and still got the popular vote. Dems are learning the obvious lessions. Trump is about to find out why certain pandoras boxes stay closed. (Assuming the dems are somewhat competent )

From the document, this came across as an argument rather than a statement of fact (Sec Transp argues that the 1991 exception for congestion pricing was vague so he he's going to interpret it as he sees fit )

It's a conclusion, being made by the official in charge of making such conclusions.

Reading between the lines, it's pretty much a 'Biden let you do it. I wont. Fuck you' letter. It even acknowledges the positive reception among the public.

"Biden let you do it even though it was unlawful. I won't. Fuck you."

Congestion pricing is popular. Its in a deep blue state and doesnt have a partisan bent. (Republicans take the subway too). Im not sure why Trump is so appaled by it other than simplistic 'highway good, transit bad' memes.

It's popular in New York City, because many in New York City don't drive so it's a tax on other people. Not so popular outside NYC.

It's popular in New York City, because many in New York City don't drive so it's a tax on other people. Not so popular outside NYC.

Exactly ! Why national outrage over a single bridge in a location where it makes sense ?

Single bridge? This is about most of the roads in Manhattan.

Yes, 1 borough of 1 city containing 1.6 million people. All this outrage over 0.5% of the nation's population ?

60% of commuters use public transport in NYC. 3 types of people drive into NYC : Rich people, Blue collar workers and suburbanites who would who have been forced back by RTO policies. Rich people can pay the toll. RTO suburbanites would be compensated by their companies. Hourly blue collar people would rather save time and make a few more dollars.

I don't know if you've driven into Manhattan before, but it is a total shit show. Tolls or not, I can't imagine anyone wanting to drive into the city by choice. Congestion pricing takes what is a universally miserable experience, and makes it tolerable for some while incentivizing the rest to take the less-painful path (transit). It is a as close to a universally good thing as you can get.

Considering how small potatoes this is compared to the endless scandals coming out of the White House, I’m not surprised this hasn’t become a big story.

Novel Developments on the Online Right

Certain factions of the Twitter dissident right were embroiled in the latest flare-up in a long running drama this week, as history podcaster Darryl Cooper (‘MartyrMade’) published his long awaited, much anticipated opinion on the Jewish Question on his Substack.

To understand what occurred, it is important to define the two broad factions of the general dissident right. That term is itself very vague, but I’ll define it relatively narrowly here as excluding mainstream new right MAGA (Loomer, LibsOfTikTok), tech-rightists and libertarians, heterodox types, WallStreetBets rightists, Rogan/Portnoy bros and the majority of religious traditionalists of the Deneen type, excluding those who specifically engage primarily with dissident right content.

The two groups have a lot of overlap; many follow and engage with both. Nevertheless, they have substantially different ideological poles.

I - Ideological Context

The first are the Groypers, for whom Nick Fuentes is both the central ideological figure and a kind of mascot, in that even people who make fun of him will acknowledge whether they are or aren’t aligned with him. The Fuentes right maintains an absolute focus on Jews as enemy, and opposition to Jewish influence as the primary goal of their movement. All Jews who do not denounce the Jewish race, Jewish behavior and any Jewish identity or culture with extreme fervour (Unz is, as far as I know, the only one to meet Fuentes’ standard) are the enemy. To a lesser extent, the Groyper right is likely also more sexist than other rightists, for whom homoerotic misogyny is more of a joke. Groypers, motivated substantially by hostility to Jews, are part of that more general constellation of Twitter antisemites, including both Islamists and that specific niche where the extremely anti-Zionist third-worldist left meets the right at the center of the Jackson Hinkle / Glenn Greenwald continuum. It would probably be wrong to describe the Fuentesverse as ‘part of’ the Andrew Tate-sphere in which young, third world men trade insults about the OnlyFans girls they jack off to and lament the state of modern women, but it would be fair to say that aspects of it are adjacent to it. They often have either ‘Christ is King’ or a bible verse about Jews in their social profile. They oppose mass immigration but consider it a secondary problem deriving from the Jewish one. The Fuentes and associates faction have genuinely come around to an organic kind of sympathy for Palestinian Arabs, shared victims of their mutual enemy, will show emotion about the plight of Gazan babies etc and are often fans of Islamic views on women and Jews.

The second faction is the BAPists and a constellation of surrounding figures (2CB, drukpa, 0HPLovecraft). They are descended from the ‘classical’ NrX movement of Land and Yarvin, but are concerned primarily with immigration and are much less serious. While the Groypers are predominantly white ethnics, Hispanics and so on, the BAPists are predominantly Jewish and Anglo. They may be performatively antisemitic or criticize some zionist influence on US foreign policy, but have no affection for the Palestinians and are often implicitly supportive of Israeli policy against Gaza (especially shortly after October 7), even if they think Israel has no real future (as the movement’s namesake does). BAPists are overtly concerned with aesthetics, their homoerotic nationalism and misogyny is essentially aesthetic; in person they and Passage press types are closely linked to the Dimes Square / NYC arthoe scene. They are probably more racist than Fuentes posters, who are performatively white nationalist but often in practice conceive of a kind of multi-ethnic antisemitism coalition. They are more likely to be atheist, agnostic or look down on zoomer Christian wignatism. Both BAPists and Fuentes posters are very concerned by demographic change, especially in Europe, but the former is more likely to post charts and the latter is more likely to post Conor McGregor speeches and videos of riots outside of asylum seeker housing. Neither is overly fond of Trump, but on balance BAPists are better connected in the administration and less likely to go full anti-Trump the way Fuentes did before the election.

Fuentes and allies spend their time calling BAPists Jews, BAPists spend their time calling Fuentes supporters brown (often accurately in both cases), and so the world spins for this strange little subculture. Except, of course, when it occasionally interacts with figures of somewhat greater prominence on the right.

II - The Buildup

The stakes were high, as Cooper has a mainstream-ish young male conservative audience, was a guest on Tucker Carlson’s online show, and recently committed himself to a form of WW2 revisionism that - while by no means fully or even mostly aligned with the ‘traditional’ neo-Nazi / Hitlerite narrative - is certainly much more sympathetic to German war aims and grievances than the mainstream postwar telling (essentially a repeating of Pat Buchanan’s Churchill takedown from the early 2000s). More significant than his day job, though, was his posting history on Twitter / X, which involved frequently retweeting innuendo about elites, Epstein, Israel and Jews that strongly indicated he might have Groyper aligned views. He had also hinted on his Tucker appearance that there were things he couldn’t talk about on the show, to which Carlson nodded sagely then changed the topic, which further suggested that he might, in the eyes of that online audience, be based™️. Cooper had engaged heavily with the pro-Palestine segment of the dissident right on Twitter, and was - while opposed to mass immigration to Europe - also relatively sympathetic to the plight both of Arabs during the 20th century and of African Americans in his long series on Jonestown. While both BAPists and Fuentes types are frequently racist against black people, the former is moreso and the sum of these hints, views and productions suggested he was more on the side of the Groypers than the former.

III - The Opinion

Cooper pulls no punches in the piece. While he acknowledges criticism of some Jewish organisations and the zionist lobby in the United States, the majority of his article is a criticism of his own supporters for being, in his opinion, obsessed with hating Jews.

Stop me if you’ve heard this one. Three Jews walk into a bar, and, before they even order a drink an OG troll in the far corner shouts, “Three oven-dodgers in one place? How did Adolf drop the ball so badly?” One of the newcomers wants to fight, and is promptly thrown out by the bouncer. The second huffed and puffed with tears in his eyes before fleeing the place. But, without missing a beat, the third Jew says, “Because Adolf was too busy screwing your grandma before he shot himself like a little bitch.” Some OG like me says, “Ha! Buy this man a drink! Sorry, this bar doesn’t carry the blood of Christian infants.” And the awesome Jew says something like, “That’s OK, you guys have been aborting so many of your babies we’ve had to find alternatives anyway.” I just made this guy up, but I already love him. This is how things worked back in the day.

But then, with furrowed brow, another regular, a younger guy, says, “Don’t buy that Jew a drink!”

“Har har har. He passed your test, leave him be. Don’t be an asshole.”

“Fuck that Jew, and fuck you too if you defend him.”

I say this asshole is a regular because we’ve seen him around, but he actually showed up relatively recently. I look around the bar for support, but I’m met with blank or hostile stares. A lot of my old friends from the bar have moved on. A few told me they left because the younger crowd coming in was hateful and dangerous, so naturally I called them pussies and told them to take a hike. Come to think of it, I don’t recognize most of the faces any more. Anyway, I tell them to give it a rest, he’s cool, but they are not having it. They’re not joking, and things are getting uncomfortable, and so I - and this is the point I’ve come to in real life - I shake the dust from my feet and leave my favorite watering hole for good.

This post is a simple announcement that I’m shaking the dust from my feet and finding another bar where people still get the joke. I’ve blocked over 15,000 people on X by now, and I would say that 70% of them were due to vulgar antisemitism. I don’t block people for saying Jews run the media, or that we live under a Zionist Occupied Government, or that Jews have split loyalties, so those 15,000 are just the nakedly hateful, the-Holocaust-isn’t-real-but-I-wish-it-was people.

If you’re thinking “somebody got to Cooper,” or “he’s controlled opposition,” or some other phrase you once saw someone tweet, or if you’re getting angry that I’m trying to dissuade people from following you into the muck, leave or keep it to yourself. I’m happy to discuss this with anyone, especially hardened antisemites, if they’re willing to engage in good faith, but I’m done indulging or ignoring low-IQ vulgar antisemitism. The goal of these people is to conscript everyone else into their conflict, and they won’t be using me or my platform to do it.

Naturally, the BAPists retweeted this to them very reasonable and intelligent take, and the Groypers duly declared Cooper a traitor, shill, liar, hack, fed and subversive. The actual impetus behind the timing of the post appears to have been an escalation in a long-running series of attacks by Fuentes and his supporters on Dave Smith, a Jewish libertarian comedian strongly critical of Israel and a personal friend of Cooper. Smith wasn’t hostile to Fuentes, in fact he’d had Fuentes on his show, but then there had been some personal falling out, and then Fuentes had set the Groypers against Smith. Less charitably, Cooper had also been the subject of press attention from the New York Times recently, including an upcoming profile. Cooper’s own audience had a mixed response, some agreed, some were very upset, some asked for clarification. In the comments section, he assured his audience that his ‘Hitler was misunderstood’ take was still very much coming.

The posting war continues, with each side claiming the other is retarded and are shills, Jews, brown or feds as applicable.

Ive said this before but i think it bears repeating. Any definition of the "online right" that excludes the various Limbaugh and Brietbart succesors who comprise the core of the Tea-Party/MAGA movement, the Rogan-listening Bar-stool bros, and the crunchy-con/trad-cath homesteaders is excluding the vast majority of the online right by volume and is thus unfit for purpose.

What you are describing is not a "novel development" it is an intra-tribal squabble.

Ive said this before but i think it bears repeating. Any definition of the "online right" that excludes the various Limbaugh and Brietbart succesors who comprise the core of the Tea-Party/MAGA movement, the Rogan-listening Bar-stool bros, and the crunchy-con/trad-cath homesteaders is excluding the vast majority of the online right by volume and is thus unfit for purpose.

It's like writing a history of the "new left" of the 60's and 70's and focusing on the Panthers and Weathermen...i.e., understandable, but myopic.

All Jews who do not denounce the Jewish race, Jewish behavior and any Jewish identity or culture with extreme fervour (Unz is, as far as I know, the only one to meet Fuentes’ standard) are the enemy.

Wow isn't it crazy that somebody would just outright demand that you denounce your racial identity if you want to be considered an ally? That must really be terrible. Jews would never do such a thing to Gentiles. /s

But your post is missing the most important bit of context, which is that both MartyrMade and Dave Smith were on Joe Rogan's show. This might on the surface appear shocking and scandalizing because WWII Revisionism and anti-Zionism are ostensibly being platformed on one of the most important shows in the world. But what Nick Fuentes and many others outside his orbit among the "anti-semitic Dissdent Right" are perceiving is heterodox political perspectives previously monopolized by the DR become appropriated and platformed but stripped of actual criticism of Jews.

Dave Smith and Douglas Murray argue over Israel, but the only thing they agree on is that antisemitism is the most evil thing in the world and Jews can never be criticized as such. This is significant because it follows the dialectical approach that antisemites allege is used to manufacture consensus. You don't maintain consensus on a topic like anti-semitism by just making the pro-Israel side win the debate. You do it by making sure that both the anti-Israel and pro-Israel positions are aligned on opposition to the Jewish Question. So these figures like Dave Smith coming to represent the "anti-Israel" side of the debate is, by their interpretation, a manifestation of the approach used to build consensus on something like the JQ. It's in other words a false opposition. A true opposition would be an anti-Israel perspective that is likewise critical of Jewish behavior as such, but that won't be represented in the public debate because it's supposed to be beyond debate.

With MartyrMade also renouncing the "JQ" it contextualizes the fact he was platformed. And likewise Curtis Yarvin, himself Jewish, also gets platformed as ostensibly the most edgy intellectual on the Internet. He has said, nearly exactly, "everything about WWII was a lie except the Holocaust." Oh really, everything was a lie except the abusrd story of millions being tricked into walking inside death showers? As a result, whether you are on the "most extreme" end of WWII Revisionism as represented by someone like Yarvin or MartyrMade, or on the most extreme end in the orthodox narrative, both sides agree on the critical aspects of the Holocaust narrative and the imperative to denounce the JQ.

Of course BAP is himself Jewish, and he was not upfront about that fact. He adopted a hyper "Bronze Age" and Aryan aesthetic and notably, as you mentioned, he is also essentially opposed to the JQ. It's reminiscent of the biblical story of Jacob putting on a disguise of hairy fur to trick his blind father Isaac into believing he was Esau. BAP, Jewish, presents as Aryan to acquire a certain audience but then is sure to steer his followers away from antisemitism.

The point being, the backlash against MartyrMade is not simply because some Twitter dude stepped out of line on the JQ, it's people like Fuentes correctly pointing out that these historical and social critiques of the WWII narrative and Zionism are being appropriated but stripped of any critical analysis pertaining to the JQ- so we are witnessing a new "boundary" in the debate on these topics but they remain a false opposition meant to protect a social consensus around the perception of Jews.

But what Nick Fuentes and many others outside his orbit among the "anti-semitic Dissdent Right" are perceiving is heterodox political perspectives previously monopolized by the DR become appropriated and platformed but stripped of actual criticism of Jews.

WW2 revisionism always had anti-american strands as well as anti-jewish ones (perhaps not as prominently in America itself?). BAPists are not taking the serial numbers off your stuff, they are reinterpreting the anti-american versions as being about the blue empire. Being broadly familiar with the european right that sure was what I thought moldbug was doing.

I personally know someone who believes a lot of things about WW2 are lies but not the holocaust, and is also antisemitic.

BAPists are not taking the serial numbers off your stuff, they are reinterpreting the anti-american versions as being about the blue empire.

Yes, but blue empire is not explained by Winston Churchill it's explained by the Holocaust mythos. This is acknowledged by Douglas Murray, who admits that his chief concern with those like Daryl Cooper is not with Winston Churchill per se but it's with young right-wingers rejecting the moral lessons of the Holocaust.

So you have Douglas Murray saying we can't engage in WWII Revisionism because it would threaten to undermine the moral lessons of the Holocaust. Then you have the BAPists and Yarvin who engage in WWII Revisionism but stripped of criticism of the Holocaust mythos. So you have a false opposition, Douglas Murray and Yarvin may as well agree if they both affirm the foundational myth of Blue Empire.

Actually, funnily enough Yarvin just last week on Twitter called himself a Holocaust Denier because he believes Raul Hilberg's estimate of 5.1 million Jews killed in the Holocaust.

It’s not true that I’m not a Holocaust denier. I don’t believe six million died.

I’m a moderate Holocaust denier. I respect Raul Hilberg’s estimate of 5.1M, in his magisterial Destruction of the European Jews. Maybe 5.5M tops

This is reaching levels of "false opposition" on totally unprecedented levels, with Holocaust Believers trying to frame themselves as Deniers on the public stage. It's subversive.

The culpability of Winston Churchill to the outbreak of the conflict is totally irrelevant to the Western Psyche. So engaging in "WWII Revisionism" without critically engaging the Holocaust is a false opposition to the WWII mythos.

I personally know someone who believes a lot of things about WW2 are lies but not the holocaust, and is also antisemitic.

Many such cases, and the function of the "Daryl Cooper vs Douglas Murray" dialectic and the Yarvin "I'm a moderate Holocaust denier because I believe Raul Hilberg" is to keep it that way.

This is reaching levels of "false opposition" on totally unprecedented levels

I think you have an inflated sense of your factions importance. Not all is done to address you specifically. This is obviously-to-everyone not serious and edgy for its own sake, which he has done in many directions.

The culpability of Winston Churchill to the outbreak of the conflict is totally irrelevant to the Western Psyche.

Disagree. The lead-up to WW2 turns into the "warning signs".

the function... is to keep it that way.

Why? Whats the point of someone who believes the holocaust but rejects its moral lesson? It seems to me rather that if its really important to you to deny it, you kind of believe the lesson.

This is obviously-to-everyone not serious and edgy for its own sake, which he has done in many directions.

But it's not edgy at all. "I believe Raul Hilberg" is perfectly mainstream. He's trying to take a perfectly mainstream position and repackage it to pose as edgy when it's not edgy at all. So you have the mainstream position - Raul Hilberg, and what is presented as the edgy by the "moderate Holocaust denier." It's the same picture.

It wouldn't surprise me if Yarvin one day actually does take a "moderate Holocaust Denier" position something like "there was clearly a Genocide, but gas chambers disguised as shower rooms? Come on folks." But Yarvin and BAPs highly selective gullibility on the gas chamber story speaks volumes.

Disagree. The lead-up to WW2 turns into the "warning signs".

It's true that "this is like the lead-up to WWII" is often invoked, but that is always invoked as a nod to the Holocaust and genocide as a terminal impact of not following whatever foreign policy is advocated for by the person invoking this. The "warning sides" leading up to WWII invoked to justify things like the Iraq wars, war with Iran, etc. is always an invocation of the Holocaust mythos to justify aggression against somebody else.

Why? Whats the point of someone who believes the holocaust but rejects its moral lesson? It seems to me rather that if its really important to you to deny it, you kind of believe the lesson.

There are incredibly important lessons in the Holocaust mythos. The lessons surround extremely important topics like means and motives for pscyhological warfare, deception, the art of the Big Lie, the way that a religio-cultural narrative can shape not only the moral narrative of a society but radically change the genetic fabric of a civilization within a single generation. It's a hard lesson about a mode of racial aggression and conflict that is imperceptible to an average person who goes to watch Schindler's List in a theater and becomes profoundly moved.

It's not about rejecting the moral lessons of the Holocaust, which can be rejected independently, it's about the lessons learned from a critical analysis of how this modern-day Exodus myth became the bedrock of Western mythology and its moral compass snowballing into Civil Rights, Zionism, tolerance, racial diversity, mass immigration and genetic replacement, wokeism... Yarvin and BAP, with their highly selective gullibility, are gatekeeping those lessons from their audience.

But it's not edgy at all.

The edgy thing is saying that youre any kind of holocaust denier even when its entirely unnecessary to communicate your position. They are the same picture indeed; I just disagree that anyone is fooled in the way you say, and thats so obvious that it cant have been the intent.

It's true that "this is like the lead-up to WWII" is often invoked, but that is always invoked as a nod to the Holocaust

A tightly coupled package is not "all about" the one piece that you love to talk about. Certainly the uses against Putler recently have no even pretend connection to killing jews.

the way that a religio-cultural narrative can shape not only the moral narrative of a society but radically change the genetic fabric of a civilization within a single generation.

That part at least Im fairly sure can be understood independently. And... look, you have all these smart sounding reasons why its important to talk about holocaust denialism, but youve seen a lot of it, the people writing it and their emotional emphasis etc, and I think you understand why it seems like slave morality to me - so, why isnt it?

I think you understand why it seems like slave morality to me - so, why isnt it?

I don't understand at all why it would seem like slave morality to you, the Holocaust mythos is the bedrock of Western slave morality. Holocaust Revisionism is fundamentally a criticism of hegemonic Western slave morality, which is why it is treated so seriously by the powers that be. Foremost it's true- the Holocaust narrative itself is untenable in the long run. Millions of people were tricked into gas chambers on the pretext of taking a shower, then they were all gassed with an insecticide, cremated, and the ashes scattered so there are no actual remains left to corroborate those claims? And all of this escaped any concrete reference in the enormous body of documentary evidence? It's a ridiculous story that lacks even a remotely reasonable level of physical or documentary evidence to support it. Even Grok takes the Revisionist side of some central issues.

Holocaust Revisionism is necessary foremost because it's true, and because it's true it genuinely undermines the Western Slave morality that is predicated on it. Your notion that disbelieving the ridiculous story of millions murdered inside gas chambers disguised as shower rooms and then magically disappeared is supposed to be "slave morality" couldn't be further from the truth. The Holocaust is a mythos that elevates Jewish concentration camp inmates as the war's greatest victims and history's greatest heroes who demand eternal holy reverence and worship as representing resistance to European empire. The notion that disbelieving that narrative is slave morality is just ridiculous.

the Holocaust mythos is the bedrock of Western slave morality

Slave morality is not the belief that you are guilty, its a standard of good and evil. This is usually communicated together with the holocaust story (as well as elsewhere), not because of a logical dependence but because both are needed functionally to get to the "you are guilty" point.

Now, if someone is very invested in the idea that the germans actually passed that standard, and the jews are the evil oppressive ones, then I think he believes in slave morality. Its certainly possible to be a holocaust denier who considers it important in the purely tactical way you outlines above, but that just isnt the impression I have of them, and yes you do know what I mean. (You personally are far from the worst on that front, but it does still seem to be there)

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I think it speaks to the expansion of the right wing ecosystem that we now have principled antisemitic centrism.

I think it also speaks volumes of how different the landscape is now compared to 10 or 20 years ago. It's very hard to be public on the dissident right and not have some critical caveats on the consequences of jewish representation in America.

I'd be interested to see what the difference would be between the overall reach of something like the National Alliance was and the modern dissident right. Since this might just be history repeating the 90's-00's dissident right.

Not liking jewish behaviour has been a staple of western conservatism for 2000 years. The Bush era wasn't a historical norm, it was an exceptional outlier. Christianity and judaism are not to religions that have gotten along well. The amitions of ADL and AIPAC are difficult to reconcile with right wing America first politics.

I've been trying to learn more about the 50s-90s dissident right for just this reason. I never quite could figure out how much reach Pierce had, because the old metrics are hard to compare against. He had an office, a secretary, and a publisher, but how many people "followed" him in the modern sense?

Pierce was just the edgy 90s equivalent of Nick Fuentes. His predecessor Lincoln Rockwell was probably never actually a nazi, and his plan was to make an initial splash with the shocking imagery and the brownshirt marches and then drop all that and pivot into being a more normal far right party that could actually have mass appeal. Then mysteriously Rockwell’s head explodes, Pierce seizes control of the organization, and spends thirty years trying to make it look as repellant and insane as possible (like his famous lunatic tract about starting Holocaust II before moving on to a world-burning nuclear war). You’ll notice that this is the exact same playbook that was deployed against the left, where politically competent charismatic figures like Dr. King, Fred Hampton and Robert Kennedy mysteriously die to get replaced by plants, agents and idiotic grifters like Jessie Jackson, Eldridge Cleaver and Ted Kennedy.

I’ve blocked over 15,000 people on X by now, and I would say that 70% of them were due to vulgar antisemitism. I don’t block people for saying Jews run the media, or that we live under a Zionist Occupied Government, or that Jews have split loyalties, so those 15,000 are just the nakedly hateful, the-Holocaust-isn’t-real-but-I-wish-it-was people.

In the comments section, he assured his audience that his ‘Hitler was misunderstood’ take was still very much coming.

I don't get it. Is this just a "narcissism of small differences" situation? "Jews are pernicious, they should have been gassed, and Hitler wasn't such a bad dude, but that doesn't mean that you should hate them" doesn't really seem like a stable equilibrium.

"Jews are pernicious, they should have been gassed, and Hitler wasn't such a bad dude, but that doesn't mean that you should hate them"

Whose opinion is this?

The first two are the opinions of people that Cooper doesn't block. Since he is blocking views he finds unacceptable, he must find these acceptable, or at least, not beyond the pale.

The third seems to be Cooper's own view, unless his article on how Hitler was misunderstood turns out to be an article about how Hitler was even worse than people think.

I don't see the reason for the one sentence strawman. To reply with a one sentence steelman of Cooper: 'Here are historical circumstance, here's why they came to be, here's the horrible outcome, here's what could have gone differently. By the way, don't hate people.'

I think the issue rests more with people who are unwilling to let go of a pseudo religious otherizing ahistorical narrative, similar to Douglas Murray on his recent Joe Rogan debate, rather than people forming opinions that exist outside the post war consensus.

I mean, I agree, it sure isn't a stable equilibrium for the church to sit idly by as heresy is spread. But I don't see why anyone should be concerned with the church.

To reply with a one sentence steelman of Cooper: 'Here are historical circumstance, here's why they came to be, here's the horrible outcome, here's what could have gone differently. By the way, don't hate people.'

It's a curious steelman that fully abstracts away all the details of the claims and the facts. Are we talking about the JQ or why a project went over budget?

I mean, I agree, it sure isn't a stable equilibrium for the church to sit idly by as heresy is spread. But I don't see why anyone should be concerned with the church.

And now I've fully lost sight of how this metaphor corresponds to reality at all.

We are talking about Darryll Cooper. I don't see how the steelman is abstracting anything relevant as Cooper, in his own words, describes himself and his viewpoint similarly, though at greater length. What claims and facts you refer to or their relevance, I am missing.

And now I've fully lost sight of how this metaphor corresponds to reality at all.

I'm referring to the paragraph written above, where I note that people like Douglas Murray take issue with the viewpoint of people like Daryll Cooper, who allow themselves to exist outside the post war consensus orthodoxy with regards to WW2. I assumed you were in a similar boat to Murray, and that when you referred to Coopers viewpoint as not being a 'stable equilibrium' you were referring to a similar contention, just relating to the JQ, not WW2. I'm happy to hear where I misread you and what you meant by 'stable equilibrium'.

Cooper, in his own words, describes himself and his viewpoint similarly, though at greater length

How much of that is cognitive dissonance?

By "(un)stable equilibrium", what I meant is that if one, like Cooper seems to, admits that the following may be true, or at least are not obviously wrong:

  • The Holocaust was a good thing
  • Jews run the media (and this is bad)
  • Jews run the government (and this is bad)
  • Jews have split loyalties (and this is bad)
  • Hitler was not that bad

Then I don't see how you can draw the line just there, and go no further to reach the obvious conclusion, which is:

  • Jews are bad
  • Jews are to be hated

And yet he seems to be in this position. I am not saying that he necessarily believes all the things in the first list, but he feels that they are at least understandable or positions that a reasonable person may hold. However, he feels that a reasonable person may not hold the positions that are a natural consequence of those opinions. This doesn't seem tenable to me.

Cooper has never said that the Holocaust was a good thing, or anything even close to that. And he never said that Hitler wasn’t that bad either. It sounds like your knowledge of Cooper’s opinions comes entirely from Bluesky character assassination tweets.

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You're morally framing these things. Cooper, as far as I can tell, wants to factually frame them.

The Holocaust was exaggerated

Jews influence a lot of the media

Jews influence the government

Jews have split loyalties

Hitler was not that bad

From there you don't need to hate jews. I don't know what Cooper thinks beyond that, but I would just demand they don't act like they are above the common courtesy everyone else has to show eachother.

For example, stop promoting the ethnic denigration of the people who allowed you to live in their countries. Stop dropping our bombs on your neighbors and then demand we take them in as refugees. Stop pathologizing and villainizing your hosts. Take an active role in caring for their wellbeing rather than being ambivalent about them and their future. If you want to be jewish and care for your people and culture, with the goal of maintaining both, that's great. But you can't do that at the same time as you undermine other peoples and their culture. That action can only lead to conflict.

I mean, if nigh every western leader can go to the wailing wall and proclaim their undying loyalty and friendship to Israel, surely jewish leaders can return the favor sometimes.

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I don't understand how you can treat Fuentards seriously.

They're a generally very stupid, they're led by homosexuals probably controller by law enforcement.

Their entire shtick is being an antisemitic caricature and crapping up replies with bs.

They're a punchline to an unfunny joke.

EDIT in response to @hanikrum.. whatever : yeah, I should have written it more clearly: they're not 'online right', they're, at best, a disease that has attached itself to the online right. Calling them 'right wing' is even worse than calling MAGA right wing. People seriously supporting a bipolar black singer for president are not conservatives, or right wing in any imaginable way.

I guess it's understandable why @2rafa wrote it- if you go by the wikipedia article. you may think Fuentards /Groypers / AF are 'conservative' but if you look at what they're actually doing, they're anything but.

Right, so I have to deal with this one too.

There are two issues here: (1) the post itself, and (2) your history.

The post itself is just a rather sneering boo-outgroup directed at Nick Fuentes and his supporters. You are certainly allowed to have a negative opinion about any particular group (Fuentes fans, the Alt-Right, Democrats, Neo-Nazis, MAGA, Muslims, blacks, moderators on the Motte, etc.) and you can talk about why you have a negative opinion of them. But the combination of lazy insults ("Fuentards") and assertions without evidence (I have no idea if Fuentes is homosexual or an FBI informant or whatever, but if you want to throw those accusations out there, you should back them up with something beyond repeating Internet memes) is not a good way to criticize a group you dislike. Once again I am making no judgment about the claims themselves or based on what I personally think of Nick Fuentes and his crowd. We just don't want to see people dropping lines like "Fuentards" into conversation; it does nothing but poison the discussion. On rdrama that may be funny, but this isn't rdrama.

Now, regarding you. You are one of our worst posters. You have acquired a rap sheet so long I have to use to the scroll button. Last couple of reports were basically "Last chance." Honestly, I think I should permaban you because you're inevitably going to keep coming back to shit up the place. But I am loathe to permaban someone for what would normally just incur a warning, even taking your history into account. I will probably regret this- this is not an invitation to come back and post something really bad so I can permaban you with prejudice. But I am giving you a one-week ban this time, and if (when) you get modded in the future, it will very likely be your last.

@hanikrummihundursvin, next time report the post, don't whine publicly, and you've been here long enough to know that we are not on call for you 24/7.

Are the mods asleep?

I have no idea, maybe I should have explained but they're considered a particularly tiresome pest on RW twitter. Everyone hates them. They have no RW policies or ideas. They're not RW, they're perhaps a weird homosexual cult dabbling in low-IQ antisemitism.

Examples of hatred from various RW mid-sized to prominent (captivedreamer) accounts.

Example 1 Example 2 Example 3 Example 4 Example 5 Example 6 Example 7

Their entire oeuvre is

  • calling people Jews: "You are a jew"
  • paper thin arguments

Furthermore: they are believed to be controlled opposition.

  • because of Nick Fuentes never having been charged over his Jan 6th actions
  • because of existence of sex videos of Nick (and not with a girl)
  • because of his association with sketchy homosexuals (Ali Alexander*)

Whose controlled opposition - most believe the FBI.

There are claims it's Hasbara.. Note that WGD is, of course, Jewish himself and not particularly antisemitic. Indeed the claim of AF being an Israeli op is probably the most antisemitic thing he has ever posted.

*to spell it out, Alexander was repeatedly caught trying to sleep with underage boys.

Speaking of noticing things they don't want you to notice, its kind of funny how "patriot front" fell off the map around the same time DOGE and Kash Patel started cleaning house.

I have seen people around RW twitter saying it still exists though so.. ??

They're a faction on RW twitter that is considered a pest by a different factions on RW twitter. I think that's fair to say? However, both of your posts are overtly rule breaking 'boo outgroup'. Which leaves me wondering why they're not modded. Beyond that I have nothing to add.

It's I believe a fair description. They're just plain bad actors.

would you report me if I accurately reported that O9A are a bunch of satanist neo-nazi sadists ? That's what they are.

I'm not a fan of the moderation here in general. But it is here, and I'd prefer if it was applied to others as it's applied to me. To that end I'd already be out the door if I wrote like you did here about certain things I believed to be factually accurate.

If you think a comment deserves punishment, don't forget to report it yourself.

We are not asleep. Sometimes there is discussion, and sometimes one mod would prefer someone else decide what to do about a comment because if that mod (me) takes action it will be a permaban.

You (plural) could always leave a placeholder "punishment under discussion, no need to make further reports" comment.

I have to admit, I'm struggling to feel a lot of sympathy for Cooper here. When you put out a bowl of honey, you don't really get to complain that flies show up. When you put a bird-feeder in your yard, you don't get to complain when it attracts birds. When you leave your food scraps uncovered, you don't get to complain when raccoons find their way to your bin. Likewise when you make a name for yourself sharing edgy anti-semitic views on the internet, you probably shouldn't complain when you get a following of edgy anti-semites. What did you think was going to happen?

(If anybody is inclined to quibble, I am taking Holocaust denial and sympathy for Hitler or the NSDAP as reasonable public signals of anti-semitism - that is, as views that a person would be vanishingly unlikely to voice for non-anti-semitic reasons. Even if you think that Cooper specifically is a disinterested truth-seeker who for some reason is inclined to doubt the reality of extremely well-attested historical events, there's no denying that what is communicated by the views he has shared is sympathy for anti-semitism.)

What should I do here other than point and laugh? Fuentes and the Groypers are ridiculous parodies of human beings. BAP and his crowd are also ridiculous parodies of human beings. Cooper attracted them. Well then. Let them fight.

When you put a bird-feeder in your yard, you don't get to complain when it attracts birds.

People often complain when they get squirrels.

that is, as views that a person would be vanishingly unlikely to voice for non-anti-semitic reasons

I don’t know about Holocaust denial, but sympathy for Hitler on the basis of ‘communism is the literal worse thing in the universe, we erred by going into Berlin instead of Moscow, this is chapter one in democrat’s untrustworthiness on the issue, 6 million Jews would have been a small price to pay to end communism there and then’ is not an opinion that you would never hear from not-otherwise-antisemitic anti communist hardliners.

I feel like the widespread availability of other anti-communist icons means that I would still be quite suspicious of someone who claims to admire Hitler on purely anti-communist grounds.

That is, 1) there are countless other figures you could choose, so the choice of Hitler specifically, given all his other baggage, causes me to wonder about the person's motives, 2) Hitler failed to stop the communists and his tenure ended with a self-inflicted bullet wound to his own head while the hammer and sickle flew over the Reichstag; why not hold up a successful anti-communist instead?, and 3) it seems like most of the obvious reasons why someone would hate communism should also incline one to hate Hitler and Nazism. Do you hate tyrannical governments? Eccentric dictators who kill millions of their own people? Totalitarianism, or rule by terror? The over-centralisation of power and destruction of both political and civic liberty? It seems like most of the convictions that would plausibly make you anti-communist, at least in the 21st century, would make you anti-Nazi as well.

So if I met somebody who was vocally sympathising with Hitler on the basis of anti-communism, I think I would still raise an eyebrow, to say the least.

I think the best case scenario for unironc admirers of Hitler, for me, would be the number of colonial or post-colonial leaders outside the West who've been fond of him. The narrative there is fairly straightforward - he was a nationalist leader of a country defeated by the Western powers who embarked on self-strengthening projects. It does not hurt that postcolonial leaders themselves are often dictators and therefore more inclined to judge another dictator positively. Add in that many such leaders either don't know and don't care about Jews at all (e.g. East Asian leaders), or have some level of anti-semitism themselves (e.g. Arab leaders), and that part isn't decisive for them.

The steelman of the case would be that WWII was, by the USSR’s own admission, a unique opportunity to destroy communism before it spread too far.

I suppose to be fair I've misunderstood you a little - the hypothetical anti-communist here does not have to take the position that Hitler is a maximally effective anti-communist, or even good in any respect.

Reading you again, I think the case would be something like this. Nazi Germany and Soviet Russia were similarly bad. Stalin was around as bad as Hitler if not more so. In OTL, the liberal West allied with the Soviets to defeat the Nazis. Hypothetically, the liberal West could have allied instead with the Nazis to defeat the Soviets. Given that the Nazis and Soviets were similarly bad, this hypothetical world is not obviously worse than the one we actually live in. Even if the result is a Cold War against Nazi Europe rather than against the greater Eastern bloc, is that actually worse?

I don't think I'm convinced by that argument, but I'm open to hearing it. I think I'd want to delve a lot more into what that alternate history would look like, and I have questions regarding how much the Allies moderate hypothetical-alternate-Germany versus how much alternate-Germany influences the Allies, but it would be a real discussion.

I think I'd want to delve a lot more into what that alternate history would look like

There’s an alternate history novel called Fatherland that fits the scenario you described pretty well. In that book the US didn’t ally with Nazi Germany, but Germany did win and the two superpowers are locked in a nuclear Cold War with Germany taking the place of the Soviet Union. It’s 1962 and President (Joseph P.) Kennedy is trying to figure out how much to turn a blind eye toward past atrocities in the name of averting nuclear war and securing global peace. It’s also one of the very few alternate history novels about Nazi Germany winning the war that is even remotely plausible and not Man in the High Castle Wolfenstein style loopiness.

That's the one about a detective uncovering the Holocaust?

One of the questions I would have about that scenario is whether the Holocaust happens at all. The Nazis began it on a large scale only after 1942, and they were aware that the Western Allies would be opposed - that was why they hid it, and why Himmler, purely out of self-preservation, tried to reverse course when it was obvious the war was lost. If Germany is allied with the Western powers, potentially receiving Lend-Lease style aid against the Russians, and is interested in maintaining good relations with the Allies after the war, there's a chance that they're rational enough to not attempt it.

I don't think the Nazis are that rational, but if we're positing a world where the Nazis are allied with the West, we're already positing Nazis significantly more rational and more restrained than the real ones. After the Battle of France there's no very realistic chance, I think, of the UK and US turning around and becoming pro-German, and Hitler was aggressive by disposition. I don't see Hitler restraining his ambitions, either internationally (re: not attacking or conciliating the West) or domestically (re: not attempting to exterminate the Jews). Right up to the beginning of WWII, Hitler's foreign policy was generally to make aggressive demands, daring his enemies to call his bluff, and they rarely did. The Rhineland, Austria, the Sudetenland, etc., all convinced him that making extreme demands paid off, and he continued with that strategy with Poland, France, and then proactively invading Russia in a way that even the highly paranoid Stalin had not expected that early. So an alternate world in which Hitler doesn't pick all these fights is already changing a fair bit.

Of course, you might think an emphasis on Hitler's character is misplaced relative to structural factors - there's the economic case for the war from The Wages of Destruction. But if we follow that case, one of the primary German concerns is dependence on economic networks dominated by Britain and America (and implicitly the Jewish bankers who run them), which seems like it would discourage Nazi Germany from relying too much on their aid. In that situation I'd expect the German aim to be effectively to scam as much resources from the West as possible, use them to conquer the East, and then turn back against the West again - which perhaps gets us back to the 'Cold War with Nazi Europe' scenario.

However, I think the next complicating factor there is Japan. Japan isn't particularly invested in the European front, and the Japanese are probably going to attack the British and the Americans in the Pacific. So we need to posit a timeline in which the Germans junk their alliance with Japan, or potentially one where the Japanese don't attack the British and Americans. So maybe we need another butterfly? The Japanese win at Khalkhin Gol and settle on Strike North?

The argument would rest on communism being worse than Nazism, which is doable from within mainstream history- you'd have to take maximalist death tolls from the great leap forwards etc, but you don't have to pretend the holocaust never happened- and also claim that with the defeat of the soviet union communism wouldn't have expanded to half the world(probably China in particular).

Yes, you don't have to deny the Holocaust to assert that communism was worse than fascism. They - or at least, the Nazi and Leninist/Stalinist incarnations thereof - were both unquestionably genocidal, and killed millions of innocents.

IMO it was reasonable for people at the time to throw their lot in with the Hitlerites in order to stave off the communist takeover of Germany. It seems less reasonable to consider Hitler a model anti-communist nowadays, with the benefit of hindsight. Even entirely without going into counterfactuals, I think it unfair to condemn the Germans of the 1930s for their making a bad choice in a highly uncertain and volatile epistemic environment given insufficient information, especially since the other choice was already very visibly proven to be calamitous.

In the end, we got something that was, I would say, just about as bad as some of the worst communist regimes. I wouldn't even blame it all on Hitler himself or just the hard core of the NSDAP - it was a fast-moving and overall somewhat shitty time for making reasonable political decisions, no matter who you were.

I think you should evaluate this not only in the context of the war. German democracy was deeply unpopular and due to end soon, and the communists and nazis where fighting for who would replace it. In retrospect, it seems clear that the germans are better of with their choice, despite everything. Communism really is that bad that youd rather lose a world war.

Well, I suspect that a Germany that went communist in the 20s or 30s would also end up on the losing side of a world war. A communist Germany, it seems to me, would be likely to feud with Russia over who the de facto leader of European communism is. The Soviets were very invested in that, and they would rather a foreign communist movement fail than turn into a rival to them - as with Spain, for instance, where they prioritised defeating left-wing rivals over defeating the Nationalists. Communist Germany likely either gets absorbed into the Soviet sphere, or it has to fight to prevent it. That's either an earlier GDR, or it's a world war. Neither outcome seems particularly rosy for Germany.

Is either worse than our WWII? I really don't know. It's very difficult to speculate about counterfactuals, especially in a case like WWII where we might have to weigh up competing moral intuitions. Suppose OTL-WWII is on average better for all Germans, but far, far worse for German Jews, whereas AU-communist-Germany is on average worse for all Germans, but German Jews are only a little bit worse than average. A strict calculation of utility favours OTL-WWII, but it's also singled out a small minority for especial suffering. How do you weight that in your calculation? Does it matter? Does it not? I know that to me it feels rather icky to say that I'd prefer the timeline which is slightly better for everyone but which requires throwing a minority group that I'm not in under the bus.

(Maybe it makes a difference that in this alternate history, we, in addition to not having a Holocaust, also probably don't have Israel either. From a Jewish perspective, is it better or worse to never found the state of Israel? Another question that depends a lot on your values.)

A communist Germany, it seems to me, would be likely to feud with Russia over who the de facto leader of European communism is.

You think? German communism was on good terms with and supported by Russia generally. The less-authoritarian socialists who were critical would face the wall anyway. I think the germans expected international cooperation, Stalin didnt have anything but Russia at this point so its not clear why he would turn them down, and then maybe this becomes a political conflict in international communism and eventually a german-soviet split, but actual war seems very unlikely.

Theres some variation in these scenarios but I think they play out pretty similar to "early GDR" anyway - GDR problems are mostly not the fault of the russians, IMO. And I assumed a capitalist coalition does survive and cold war and both german and russian communism eventually collapse like they did, which Im now less sure about - full Germany is much more powerful than the actual GDR territory, and they may have been able to stabilise the russians when their leaders lost faith, and Im pretty vague on what happens to the rest of the Warsaw Pact in all of this. I went with this because I consider it the optimistic scenario for german communism - which is still worse than actual, and thats sufficient for my point.

If there is a worldwar anyway at a similar time, it would have to be France going fascist in response, massively cleaning up its act with the army, and either being attacked late in the process or getting it through and starting it themselves, and Im not sure Roosevelt would have been on their side (though at that point he may be couped).

German communism was on good terms with and supported by Russia generally. The less-authoritarian socialists who were critical would face the wall anyway.

This isn't why they wouldn't feud, it's why they would feud. Communism did indeed turn out to be one of those systems where the people who got into power were the ones ruthless enough to murder the idealists who might object to ruthlessness ... and ideas like "we should stay on good terms with those foreigners" and "we should support those foreigners", if held as terminal values rather than just means to an end, are just another form of idealism. If your leaders are all selected by a process that winnows out the ones foolish enough to not betray their competition before they can be betrayed by them, or even if you just suspect that the other guys' leaders were selected by such a process, your only non-idealistic option is to try to maneuver yourself into a good position to strike first yet again, before they succeed at doing the same. It takes ambition to climb to the top of an authoritarian pyramid, and ambitious authoritarians can only safely collaborate with underlings who are too humble to worry about or rulers who are too strong to challenge, not with other ambitious authoritarians.

I often hammer on FDR and FDR apologetics, but to be fair I do think there's a reasonable argument that can be made that some fraction of the wrecking ball he took to United States and classical-liberal values was actually necessary to avoid even worse. In an atmosphere of uncertainty and panic spawning significant socialist and fascist movements, perhaps the only escape was to adopt some of their less-murderous tenets so that the more-murderous movements could no longer use those to appeal to the populace and win with the whole package. And although it dismays me that FDR was and still remains so popular, the knowledge that his values won out through popularity rather than through war or murder means we never got stuck in that same cycle where nobody can imagine any way out except more war and murder.

Yes, but the russian communists did not fight civil wars among each other, and neither did they fight with the chinese after those left.

In the OTL Russia had a very direct hand in setting up communist governments in places it had effectively conquered post WW2, which gave them a very central position. The communist Germany timeline has a big questionmark to the how, not just the who, of communist international organisation.

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Cooper is not merely angling towards anti-communism (where, as you note, there'd be a number of more successful and less odious icons you could hitch your wagon to). He, as far as I can tell, genuinely favors something fascism-adjacent* and is trying to rehabilitate far-right authoritarianism.

Even extending him the charity of assuming he's merely interested in the hard core right-wing authoritarianism and not the genocide, this is awkward for him in several respects. The first is simply that most of his co-partisans are howling bigots, which is embarrassing when you're trying to come across as serious and respectable. Even if you yourself are immaculately well-behaved, you're going to be tarnished by association. The second is that if you're trying to pitch respectable fascism, the historical record of the Nazis is a big problem. Even people who might be on board for the strict top-down social regulation are liable to balk at the aggressive expansionist wars and industrialized mass murder.

So on the one side, you have him here rebuking other parts of the far-right for being indecorous. On the other side, you have him downplaying Nazi atrocities as a combination of tragic misadventure and "the commies made me do it". The end goal is to move fascism closer to the Overton Window and people like the groypers are an impediment to that goal.

*he seems to be somewhat cagey about his actual preferred political arrangement, but his anti-liberalism combined with some of his other statements plus that very caginess makes me strongly suspect that his actual views are well beyond the pale and he's hiding his power level.

This is going another direction, I suppose, but I also find Hitler an odd choice if your goal is to rehabilitate far-right authoritarianism in a general sense, and if you're not interested specifically in Jews or Germany. There would also seem to be plenty of great examples from the same period - you could always idealise Mussolini or perhaps Dollfuss, but if they're too much of failures for you, there's still Franco or Salazar. If you allow yourself to include thinkers, there are plenty of far-right writers and thinkers in the 20s and 30s who don't have Hitler's baggage.

I recall once knowing someone who identified openly as 'a fascist', but immediately qualified that to explain that she's anti-Hitlerite, and is instead more along Dollfuss' lines, and took heavy inspiration from José Antonio Primo de Rivera. It's possible to adopt a fascist-ish position along those lines, while resolutely condemning anti-semitism.

The problem, I suppose, is that that doesn't get you attention. The moment you say the F-word you are associated with Hitler whether you like it or not, and if you don't say it, well, you're just some weirdo enthusiast for a bunch of obscure thinkers no one's ever heard of. It's optimising for being unique and special in the vast terrain of weird internet politics nerds, rather than for appealing to real people or building any kind of movement.

The problem, I suppose, is that that doesn't get you attention

I don't know how long you've been in hibernation, but no, the problem is that it doesn't work, and gets you called a Nazi regardless of whether or not you use the F-word, or are even anywhere near the ideas you're discussing.

Let me rephrase. Let's consider the possible options here, for someone who is genuinely fascinated by fascist thinkers from the 20s and 30s:

You don't call yourself a fascist. Either: 1) people identify you as a fascist anyway, into the ghetto you go, or 2) people don't identify you as a fascist but you're an obscure weirdo interested in irrelevant niche thinkers from a hundred years ago and get zero attention.

You do call yourself a fascist. Either: 1) people immediately associate you with Hitler and you lose all credibility, or 2) your pseudointellectual protestations of not being that kind of fascist lead to endless obscure hair-splitting that stand in the way of any wide appeal.

The problem is that there is no way forward for this kind of movement. The Hitler/Nazi/fascist brand is completely tainted. It does not work, and no amount of hair-splitting about different kinds of fascism or fascist-adjacent politics suffices to defend you.

The people closest to that space who are most successful - think Marine Le Pen, Giorgia Meloni, and AfD - have gotten there by vocally distancing themselves from any fascist associations and condemning them. Jean-Marie Le Pen was unelectable; Marine broke up his coalition and condemned his positions and allies. Meloni has distanced herself from and condemned the idea of fascism. If you call yourself fascist, or if you can be credibly accused of fascism, you are stuffed. The most successful nationalist right movements, even the ones that have some genealogical links to fascist movements, have needed to powerfully disassociate themselves from fascism and fascist thinkers.

The reason why you'd want to rehabilitate Hitler (aside from the straightforward reason that you think Hitler had some pretty interesting ideas and gets a bad rap) is that Hitler and the Nazis are by their mere existence are uniquely delegitimizing for the authoritarian right in a way virtually no other part of the ideological spectrum has to contend with.

To take your bowl of honey analogy a step further, Coopers problem isn't necessarily the honey or the bees. It's more the people coming around accusing him of being a beekeeper because there are a lot of bees in his garden.

To that extent I am sympathetic to Cooper since the people complaining about bees seem to have no reasonable cause to do so. They just go around finger wagging at other people who associated with Cooper, telling them: 'Don't you know he's a beekeeper?! Imagine if the bees multiply and start questioning the holocaust?'

To that extent I find the whole thing ridiculous. It seems that on the orthodox right, their only raison d'être is the consecration of the post war consensus.

When you put a bird-feeder in your yard, you don't get to complain when it attracts birds.

I mean, I complain about the starlings. I like most of the birds that show up.

The Nvidia H20 exports ban is back on?

Lets recap. DeepSeek stuns the world by dropping a model almost as good as SOTA models while flexing incredible performance gains through cunning Chinese hacking. It's revealed they used lower end H20 GPUs vs the more decadent A100 / H100 / B100 class chips that fat American programmers use. Thusly, the US moves to ban exports of H20s as well.

Except last week, on April 9th, following the news of Jensen Huang dropping a million bucks at a Mar-a-Lago dinner with Trump, the ban is apparently lifted, stunning all China hawks in the country (and AI safetyists) and demonstrating that Trump will sell out his country to fucking China for a $1 million donation.

But today, Nvidia announces the export ban is on. And ... apparently was never lifted? The market reacts and knocks them down a few points.

What... happened? Checking back, it seems the only source for the news that the H20 ban was lifted was "two unnamed sources" reported by NPR.

Following the Mar-a-Lago dinner, the White House reversed course on H20 chips, putting the plan for additional restrictions on hold, according to two sources with knowledge of the plan who were not authorized to speak publicly.

https://www.npr.org/2025/04/09/nx-s1-5356480/nvidia-china-ai-h20-chips-trump

Weirdly, neither the USG nor Nvidia commented on it.

Can we read into the fact that since neither party commented on it, lifting the H20 ban was actually on the table? Was this leaked by one side to put pressure on the other? Was it a trial balloon? Or do we even trust that NPR actually reached out for comment like they said they did?

I think Jensen actually got the verbal agreement from Trump after, in Trump's terms, kissing his ass at the dinner, and then somebody briefed Trump on what "H20" stands for. We'll probably never know but would be perfectly in style for this administration. I was stunned to see those news, because obviously Trump loves tariffs and export controls and has a thing for CHI-NA, this is one topic where there's a strong bipartisan consensus that China must be denied ML-grade compute, and the ban was already in place. Well, back to normality.

demonstrating that Trump will sell out his country to fucking China for a $1 million donation.

Is trade “selling out”? Is 1 million H20s strategically relevant? More than, say, rare earth ban from China, which could perhaps be negotiated?

I found this Klein-Friedman exchange interesting.

The questions answer themselves. What if you get into a trade war with China and you lose? What if, after infuriating the rest of the world, putting tariffs on them, too, you make China look stronger, more reliable, more farsighted, more strategic in the eyes of all these other countries that are now looking for an exit from the unreliable consequences of U.S. hegemony?

I want to talk about China today. I think one reason the administration felt it was safer to retrench to something that could be described more as a trade war with China is that a bipartisan consensus has hardened around China. Trump set this into motion in his 2016 campaign, but then Democrats embraced it, too: China is a rising power, and we’ve made a terrible mistake in letting them rise. We are in danger of being a falling power. China ripped us off. They took our manufacturing jobs. They addicted us and our allies to their cheap labor and their cheap goods. And China doesn’t just want to be rich. It wants to rule. First Taiwan — then who knows what else?

I’m not going to tell you this story is entirely wrong. It’s not. And I’m not going to tell you that all the Republicans and Democrats who believe it wanted Trump’s trade war specifically. They didn’t.

But I will tell you that I’ve been surprised and alarmed for years now by how this new, much more hawkish and angry consensus has hardened. How hard it has become to question.

This whole AGI race is pretty unfortunate. From my point of view, very similar to Friedman's, the US is in deep shit. It has deluded itself into the belief that it has greater advantage than is actually the case and that Wang Huning's series of ideologies actually lead towards a global hegemony, from that premise invented the self-serving narrative of desperately needing to “contain” or “isolate” China (which has “betrayed American goodwill” by not becoming liberal as expected and even “backsliding” with Xi) at all costs, and then bizarrely procrastinated on doing anything effective (like these tariffs, or seriously arming Taiwan) for next to a decade, then attacked China with extreme vindictiveness, going after Huawei on half-baked pretext and trying to kill their national champion (the US today has no companies or entities held in such esteem by citizens – I don't know, it'd be like Soviets trying to kill Ford or something? Maybe NASA at its zenith?). The Chinese are temperamentally not disposed to total war in times of good trade and improving fortunes, but are capable of waging it, and have taken the clue and for the last 6 or so years have been working on their resilience. So here we are, the US is even more arrogant and delusional about its relative standing, its non-kinetic means of communication are running out, and nobody in either party even dares to raise the point of rapprochement or thaw, because it's a career killer. Literally Soviets were treated with more rationality and caution, and let me tell you, other than warhead count, Soviets had nothing on modern China. In short, when there's a real possibility that you will not secure a decisive win no matter how much more “serious” you get, maybe it's time to reassess the game board.

Anyway, H20s don't matter a great deal now, it's always been a gimped inference-only chip. Huawei can produce 910Cs (partially with those 2 million 910B dies they got from TSMC via shell companies, but domestically too), they're not great but close to H100 level, and Huawei is extremely good at engineering so it can make absolutely insane CloudMatrix 384 servers outclassing Nvidia's newest NVL72 Blackwells, though at the cost of much higher chip count and power draw – but power is one of many resources that China has in abundance, and will have even more in abundance as it takes offline some aluminum overcapacity to fulfill the KPI of “higher value added per Watt”. These are probably already supplied to DeepSeek for training V4/R2, and other businesses are known to run R1 and V3 on them.

As I've said 1 and a half years ago,

Where does this leave us?

It leaves us in the uncomfortable situation where China as a rival superpower will plausibly have to be defeated for real, rather then just sanctioned away or allowed to bog itself down in imperialist adventurism and incompetence. They'll have enough suitable chips, they have passable software, enough talent for 1-3 frontier companies, reams of data and their characteristically awkward ruthlessness applied to refining it (and as we've learned recently, high-quality data can compensate for a great disparity in compute). They are already running a few serious almost-OpenAI-level projects – Baidu's ERNIE, Alibaba's Tongyi Qianwen (maybe I've mentioned it already, but their Qwen-7B/VL are really good; seems like all groups in the race were obligated to release a small model for testing purposes), maybe also Tsinghua's ChatGLM, SenseTime etc.'s InternLM and smaller ones. They – well, those groups, not the red boomer Xi – are well aware of their weaknesses and optimize around them (and borrowing from the open academic culture helps, as can be often seen in the training methods section – thanks to MIT&Meta, Microsoft, Princeton et al). They are preparing for the era of machine labor, which for now is sold as means to take care of the aging population and so on (I particularly like the Fourier Intelligence's trajectory, a near-perfect inversion of Iron Man's plot – start with the medical exoskeleton, proceed to make a full humanoid; but there are other humanoids developed in parallel, eg Unitree H1, and they seem competitive with their American equivalents like Tesla Optimus, X1 Neo and so on); in general, they are not being maximally stupid with their chances.

And this, in turn, means that the culture of the next years will be – as I've predicted in Viewpoint Focus 3 years ago – likely dominated by the standoff, leading up to much more bitter economic decoupling and kinetic war; promoting bipartisan jingoism and leaving less space for «culture war» as understood here; on the upside, it'll diminish the salience of progressive campaigns that demoralize the more traditionally minded population.

It'll also presumably mean less focus on «regulation of AI risks» than some would hope for, denying this topic the uncontested succession to the Current Thing №1.

I failed to anticipate MAGA Juche, but oh well. Also the list of relevant companies from that side has shifted a lot, today I'd say also: ByteDance, DeepSeek, Moonshot…

other than warhead count, Soviets had nothing on modern China.

The warheads counted for a lot.

But I think the Soviets leapfrogged or sidestepped the US on military tech more often than China has – maybe that's just vibes.

I'm not making a "China can't innovate" argument (in fact my understanding is for some period, perhaps continuing to this day, they were building iterative designs of major warships to keep pace with their evolving mastery of technology and technique, which certainly is not blind adherence to formula), but the impression that I have gotten is that China has for the last oh 20ish years focused on building out its tech base, bringing it in-house, and bringing its designs up to a modern standard. Their approach has been good and pragmatic but they have been pushing the limits of American military capability by sheer quantity and by exploiting hideous blind spots in American post-Cold War defense drawdowns, not by cutting edge or even funky designs, with maybe a few exceptions.

Nevertheless I tend to find that I am more impressed and amused by Soviet and later Russian engineering than Chinese engineering – perhaps because I have a tendency towards mild Russophilia, perhaps because I pay less attention to Chinese systems, perhaps because their innovations are still classified, but I find Soviet/Russians designs unusual and capable of solving problems in ways that are elegant even in their brutality.

American designs in my opinion are often overly perfectionistic [which I think is tolerable for some high-end systems but the tendency has begun to wag the dog after the Cold War] and Chinese designs lend themselves towards being calmly pragmatic. They are, I think, just now in the past decade or two beginning to feel increasingly confident in many areas of stepping out of the shadow of Russian engineering, and one of the most interesting things about the recent aircraft reveals from China is the chance to see truly unusual airframes that are likely to be very different from their American, European, or Russian counterparts.

Nevertheless I tend to find that I am more impressed and amused by Soviet and later Russian engineering than Chinese engineering – perhaps because I have a tendency towards mild Russophilia, perhaps because I pay less attention to Chinese systems, perhaps because their innovations are still classified, but I find Soviet/Russians designs unusual and capable of solving problems in ways that are elegant even in their brutality.

I think the problem is that Westerners like gimmicks, and Russians/Soviets are not different. We all love our “no analogues!” Wunderwaffes and clever self-contained breakthroughs. That's just how European brains work I believe. But their brains work differently (see 2nd part and responses), their gimmicks are too large-scale to easily appreciate – supply chains, system integration building out entire cities, that's not just ant-like slave labor, they are just predisposed to logistical autism and a lot of cognitive effort goes into this. Yes, it doesn't result (at least not yet) in magic-looking individual devices, but does it matter much if their ships are half a generation behind when they can build literally orders of magnitude more? That's a whole different dimension of magic. I also suspect that Americans overindex on their triumphs through technological superiority – nukes, Desert Storm… But it probably won't apply to the conventional war with China. They aren't that behind, they have functional radars, they have VTOL cells on their ships, it will be reduced to a matter of quantity, which as you know has a quality of its own. Soviets even at their peak could not approach this degree of production dominance.

Semianalysis has just released a report on this Huawei server and it illustrates the philosophy well:

Huawei is a generation behind in chips, but its scale-up solution is arguably a generation ahead of Nvidia and AMD’s current products on the market. So what would be the specifications for Huawei’s CloudMatrix 384 (CM384)?

The CloudMatrix 384 consists of 384 Ascend 910C chips connected through an all-to-all topology. The tradeoff is simple: having five times as many Ascends more than offsets each GPU being only one-third the performance of an Nvidia Blackwell.

A full CloudMatrix system can now deliver 300 PFLOPs of dense BF16 compute, almost double that of the GB200 NVL72. With more than 3.6x aggregate memory capacity and 2.1x more memory bandwidth, Huawei and China now have AI system capabilities that can beat Nvidia’s.

What’s more, is the CM384 is uniquely suited to China’s strengths, which is domestic networking production, infrastructure software to prevent network failures, and with further yield improvements, an ability to scale up to even larger domains.

The drawback here is that it takes 3.9x the power of a GB200 NVL72, with 2.3x worse power per FLOP, 1.8x worse power per TB/s memory bandwidth, and 1.1x worse power per TB HBM memory capacity.

The deficiencies in power are relevant but not a limiting factor in China.

If you do not have a power constraint because of your relative power abundance, it makes sense to forgo power density and increase scale-up, including optics in the design. The CM384 design considers system-level constraints even outside of the rack, and we believe that it’s not just the relative power availability that constrains China’s AI ambitions. We think that there are multiple ways for continued scaling for Huawei’s solution.

It's truly beautiful in its own way. I am not well versed in military hardware but I think the slight qualitative edge of Western tech doesn't matter as much as production capacity.

I think the problem is that Westerners like gimmicks, and Russians/Soviets are not different.

This is true lol. I just think Russian gimmicks are often very amusing (as well as being original). But the fish doesn't know the water in which he swims.

I also suspect that Americans overindex on their triumphs through technological superiority – nukes, Desert Storm… But it probably won't apply to the conventional war with China. They aren't that behind, they have functional radars, they have VTOL cells on their ships, it will be reduced to a matter of quantity, which as you know has a quality of its own. Soviets even at their peak could not approach this degree of production dominance.

On the one hand, I agree.

On the other, I think technological edges are much more likely to matter in sea combat than in land combat. I've revised my estimation of American tech up (and correspondingly of Chinese countermeasures down) as specifically applies to naval combat after Ukraine.

On the other, I think technological edges are much more likely to matter in sea combat than in land combat

But the war in china will be naval combat for US and land combat for them.

I wouldn't say this. Any confrontation between China and the US will be predominantly by air and by sea. In a Taiwan invasion scenario the US, Taiwan, and Japan will need to sink the Chinese amphibious attack fleet to "win." The Chinese (and US!) land-based forces will be important force-multipliers, particularly the aircraft, but the ships are the vulnerable part.

What's relevant here is that in this time of warfare a single cruise missile or mine that would kill a single tank or even a single person can sink or incapacitate a warship (obviously not necessarily the same system, but the maritime equivalents.) So instead of facing 10,000 targets as you are in a land fight, you're facing a couple hundred.

The reason my analysis of the relative advantage shifted in the Ukraine war is that Russian air defenses - which are generally considered quite good (and have performed a number of impressive deeds) were unable to stop Ukraine from hitting high-value targets with their pocket force of stealthy cruise missiles. The US has a lot of stealthy cruise missiles. Counting decoys, the US can probably deploy more missile "targets" to the Taiwan Strait than the Chinese Navy has VLS cells.

But it's unlikely to need to win a war of missile attrition with China, as sea-based missile interception is notoriously difficult. So my priors have shifted from "Chinese air defense will be relatively effective" to "China is going to have serious problems with leakers" since my guesses are that Chinese air defense is as good or perhaps slightly worse than Russian (I could be persuaded they are better, but I don't see a reason to assume that), but they will perform worse simply because it's harder to do air defense at sea. (Of course this assumption might be wrong, too, because missiles can use terrain masking better at land. The problem with missile defense at sea, as I understand it, is that missiles blend into the churning sea surface very well, but perhaps newer radar systems have solved this).

And that's without even getting into mines, submarines, and simply sinking amphibious ships with artillery, unmanned boats or suicide drones in the last few miles before they hit the beach, all of which will be fundamentally a question of "naval combat" for China.

Western military might is impressive but fragile. Show that you have the capability to sink carriers and US is contained for a couple of years. You don't even have to sink them - 4000 bodies make peace negotiations hard.

You don't even have to sink them - 4000 bodies make peace negotiations hard.

Uh yes but that's not necessarily good for China.

China showing that they can bitch slap US naval power, but choosing not to inflict massive casualties is absolutely good for china. You can destroy as much material as you like and as long as the body count is low it will be shrugged.

Sorry, I misunderstood your comment.

This thinking reminds me a lot of the advice to police and beleaguered homeowners to "just shoot them in the leg." The Chinese have been fielding very large land-based ballistic and air-launched anti-ship missiles, I don't think they intend to tickle a supercarrier as a flex. (Now, it is quite hard to sink a super carrier).

Now, it is quite hard to sink a super carrier

I think this notion will be challenged at some point. Fairly sure that things are more fragile than expected.

Shoot them at the leg is different. If there was strong castle doctrine, killing them would be the best option.

Dealing with another country military is a bit more like trying to kill a made man. Scaring them away is usually the better approach unless you are prepared to wipe their entire organization away.

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You can destroy as much material as you like and as long as the body count is low it will be shrugged.

Admittedly, times have changed a lot, but this was the same calculation Japan made in 1941, which didn't quite work out for them as they had planned.

The body count was not low. And it was unprovoked attack on US state. If the same ships were doing freedom of navigation between manchuria and japan and the japanese sunk them, without too many US casualties do you think that the reaction would have been the same?

China doesn't want japan, if they want korea they just have to wait, so the only possible hot war is over taiwan.

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I think his argument is that they won't destroy a carrier with personnel abroad, if they want to have negotiations. Blowing off some surface features as a show of strength would be good (though obviously not too realistic).

Yeah, I (now) realize that.

I agree with you on the realism.

I am more impressed and amused by Soviet and later Russian engineering than Chinese engineering

The current analyst opinion is that in submarines at least, Russia's are far more capable whereas China's building capacity is unmatched. That may very well simply be a reflection of previous national priorities and decades of experience, though.

My understanding is that Russian and Chinese submarines are intended to operate in very different waters and for different purposes. Chinese subs are intended to operate in the South China Sea and within the first island chain, so it makes sense for them to focus on smaller submarines with much less need for nuclear subs. Could they catch up to Russian capabilities? With time, I'm sure, but they don't really have a need to until they take Taiwan and start playing force projection games.

I think China's manufacturing edge is less than one would think, in submarines.

It looks like since 2010, China has built 4 SSGNs (plus one Qing technology testbed), 4 nuclear attack submarines, and 16 conventional submarines.

The US has built 19 Virginia-class nuclear attack submarines in that period. Those Chinese conventional submarines are about half the tonnage of a Virginia and the nuclear attack submarines are smaller, too, so if I am eyeballing it correctly the US built fewer submarines but more submarine, if that makes sense.

(Sorry, I went off on a tangent: yes, I agree about the submarines. Which is very relevant in a Pacific war, in US doctrine submarines have been the intended ship killers and surface fleets are for ground attack, although I think this may be changing a bit.)

But I think the Soviets leapfrogged or sidestepped the US on military tech more often than China has – maybe that's just vibes.

China has made the supercarrier obsolete. Is that not impressive? You know those Iskander missiles that have never been intercepted yet because they evade and allegedly can also drop countermeasures? Well, China has gliding anti-ship versions deliverable across half the planet. Is that not impressive?

China has made the supercarrier obsolete

This is a really common sentiment in internet military discussions that is incorrect. Things don't become obsolete in the military because they can get blown up (or blown up easier), they become obsolete when something does their job better than they do.

Tanks aren't obsolete because drones 1/1000th of their cost can make them explode. They are more vulnerable, but they are still useful. Having a giant gun that is armored and can move fast is still useful in 2025.

Human infantry can be killed in ever more creative, precise, and cheap ways. Are human infantry obsolete? No, because we have nothing that can replace what they do.

Carriers are more vulnerable now, the Chinese have a very impressive array of anti ship missiles and sensors to take them out. Does that make the capability of having a floating and mobile airstrip less useful? No. Is there anything that can replace a floating and mobile airstrip? No.

There's also a benefit to having a weapons system even if your enemy can blow it up. It forces them to direct resources into making things that can blow it up, instead of making other things they'd rather make instead.

If militaries stopped using weapons systems every time someone else invented a way to blow them up, militaries wouldn't have any gear, because if you try hard enough you can blow anything up.

On the other hand, battleships can perform a function (armored mobile very large gun batteries) that is both useful and not directly replaced by other capabilities, but they were deemed obsolete anyways. It could also be the case that something is obsolete because the special capabilities they do bring are just not worth the enormous cost.

My initial response was going to be "no, they were replaced by carrier launched airplanes and guided missiles, both of whom could make things over there explode better than a BB"

But I don't have a good argument for why that doesn't apply to tanks. So good point, I'll have to think about that.

Things don't become obsolete in the military because they can get blown up (or blown up easier), they become obsolete when something does their job better than they do.

The proper term is Senile. A senile weapons system can still do the job, but a steadily-increasing cost that can grow by orders of magnitude.

I think Ian McCollum would use the term "obsolescent." E.g., the M1911 and M1 Garand are incredibly out-of-date designs, but they absolutely cream revolvers and bolt-actions for combat practicality. The latter are obsolete, the former are obsolescent.

I think "Senile" comes into its own when you're talking about more complex weapons systems. A senile weapons system might work just fine, and in fact it might be the best system available for the job it does. The problem is that to do the job, the system requires ever-greater expenditure of effort and resources. As long as the effort and resources can be provided, it keeps working, but at the cost of cannibalizing a greater and greater portion of the procurement budget. And of course, the more resources a system and its auxiliaries consume, the more valuable they are, and the greater the need to protect them, so the more spending on additional complexity and auxiliaries is justified...

Yeah, I suppose this probably does describe, say, the A-10.

(And now to wait for the shitstorm to hit...)

they become obsolete when something does their job better than they do.

They are obsolete for what matters most: peer warfare.

China has made the supercarrier obsolete.

No they have not.

Iskander missiles that have never been intercepted

I probably would not take either side of this bet.

China has gliding anti-ship versions deliverable across half the planet. Is that not impressive?

I think the most impressive part of ballistic missiles (which are fairly simple) is the glide vehicle (as you mention) and also getting the guidance systems necessary for an anti-ship version to withstand the stress and heat of high-speed travel. Definitely very impressive, but essentially just pairing an antiship seeker with a ballistic missile. I tend to find the P-700 (fielded in the 1980s by the Soviet Union, designed to operate as part of a swarm targeting carriers) more conceptually interesting, although Dase may very well be correct that it is too clever by half.

Personally, I think more about torpedoes. Some are very long range, with impressively hard to defeat terminal guidance, and they are absolutely ship-killers in terms of payload/mechanism, rather than just mission-killers.

Yes, apparently wake homing torpedoes keep the US Navy up at night long enough that they tried to field anti-torpedo torpedoes onto our carriers before withdrawing them because checks notes they couldn't get them to work.

I am not sure how effective they are, but I also like supercavitating torpedoes because I have not put my inner eight-year-old to death.

However, I am not sure China has gotten their submarine force in good enough shape for it to be a solid option for them.

I also like supercavitating torpedoes because I have not put my inner eight-year-old to death.

The trick is to age up to an inner 18-year-old, and enjoy Arpeggio of Blue Steel.

However, I am not sure China has gotten their submarine force in good enough shape for it to be a solid option for them.

Which, I think, is a big part of why the USN is more concerned with Russian submarines, and why they're still confident the death of the carrier is yet again over-predicted: as long as they can avoid being torpedoed, everything else they can figure out some way to deal with, even if that's just limping back to port after taking a hit.

Yeah. I wouldn't be surprised if they actually keep the carriers out of a Taiwan Strait scenario, though, and detail them to doing interdiction/blockade work outside of DF-26 range. Although the Navy has a lot of pride and a long time to work on the problem, so maybe they feel pretty confident by now.

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I probably would not take either side of this bet.

Few modern Iranian missiles were intercepted in the last attack. Almost none. And these aren't as flat flying or as evasive as Iskander. Jamming satellites might work perhaps but it has inertial guidance so who knows how well..

No they have not.

That's your supposition, yank. Ask yourself what is a carrier group going to do when 128 maneuvering hypersonic glide vehicles appear over it.

Ask yourself how the carrier group is going to fare when it has what, 200 anti missiles. Even with perfect interception rates that's only 100 intercepted inbound missiles. Chinese LOVE large number production and they dug 1000kms of tunnels in mountains north of beijing.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Underground_Great_Wall_of_China

They can shoot a lot of missiles out from China.

an anti-ship version to withstand the stress and heat of high-speed travel.

The earlier version solved this elegantly, the missiles just delivered guided bombs with a speed of 1000 m/s high up, maybe terminal 800 m/s. You can have seekers then no problem. It'd still probably work because 100 of these would be very tough to intercept and even 5-10 hits would seriously degrade operations from a carrier. Ships are hard to sink but the internal operations aren't very redundant for reasons of space.

I'm not sure how the later version solve this, the HGV ones.

That's your supposition, yank.

I mean - the DF-series has limited range, and carriers give a fleet a huge advantage over hostile fleets even if they are forced to stay out of it. Having a floating airfield is pretty neat, and forcing them away from shore does not make them obsolete, it makes them less

Ask yourself what is a carrier group going to do when 128 maneuvering hypersonic glide vehicles appear over it.

Well this sort of assumes some things - I think you're smart enough to know about the kill chain problems with anti-ship ballistic missiles. The US has the same (perhaps better) apparatus to kill Chinese missile launchers that China does to kill carriers, does that make ASBMs obsolete? (The answer is no). I don't think this makes ASBMs useless or carriers invulnerable, it just means that they aren't some sort of magic invincible weapon.

Ask yourself how the carrier group is going to fare when it has what, 200 anti missiles

Are you asking realistically, or at full capacity? At full capacity a single Burke can carry nearly 400 surface-to-air missiles if it is simply going for quantity by quad-packing ESSMs. Most likely it will be carrying a mix of anti-air and possibly anti-surface stand-off, and any carrier will likely be escorted by a Tico and two Burkes, maybe more. That's about 314 cells. So even if they don't have full cells because US industrial capacity sucks and some other cells are full of Tomahawks and ASROCs, I think you can guess something like 300 anti-air missiles conservatively (50 x cells dedicated to ESSM, 100 x dedicated to Standard, 100x Tomahawk, 50x empty or ASROC) before getting to SeaRAM/CIWS, and of course the carrier itself can carry hundreds of AMRAAMs and the new AIM-174 which can likely intercept anti-ship missiles.

Now, I don't rate the ESSM as much against ballistic missiles (although they might be useful in terminal defense, I suppose, apparently they can pull 30gs - but I would not count on them) - you're really looking to the Standards to provide you with air defense. Of course, if the Navy really intends to get dirty and play with ballistic missiles, they would know this and so, at the cost of a great deal of time, you might see them send two CBGs with something like two Ticos and a dozen Burkes (the Navy has more than 70). Both the SM-3 (of which the US has probably a couple hundred) and the SM-6 (of which the US probably has four-figures) have ABM capability in theory, so you could in theory put let's say 600 ABM-capable missiles on such a fleet easily.

And, since the carrier can generate strike packages outside of the known range of the DF-21 (albeit with great difficulty due to Dick Cheney canning the A-12 and advanced F-14 variants) the BIG question is if 500 Standards can intercept the DF-26s in the Chinese arsenal, assuming we want to split the difference with the carrier group and let it operate at extreme range rather than risk the more numerous DF-21. Assuming also that the Chinese haven't burned all of their DF-26s on Guam (which frankly is probably a better idea than trying to shoot at a carrier if China can catch the planes there on the ground) they have, what, 200 missiles to shoot at the carrier group realistically (launcher was revealed in 2015, I found a 2021 .mil source that said 100 missiles or so, so let's assume they've doubled that and ignore the question of how many of those are earmarked for nuclear warheads by assuming zero.)

Now in a "shoot shoot look shoot" doctrine the US can "shoot shoot look shoot" all 200 missiles.

I think intercepting ballistic missiles is hard and would personally prefer never to be in a situation where I was trusting my ABMs to intercept ballistic missiles. Even if you make optimistic assumptions (50% inception rate, for instance) you can still run into bad situations where leakers get through just due to bad "rolls" and contra your suggestion that 5-10 hits would seriously degrade operations from a carrier I am going to courageously suggest that even a single ballistic missile warhead will absolutely ruin a carrier's day unless it is very lucky.

Fortunately, the US Navy doesn't just have to rely on interceptors - the missiles will be using radar, most likely, for terminal targeting. [ETA: it looks like they are also believed to have optical sensors, which have both advantages and disadvantages over radar. I'd say this makes me slightly more bullish on the DF-series if true, but it's not as if optical systems are invincible either.] And radar sucks, modern ships could employ barrage or seduction jamming as well as decoys and chaff. My intuition is that this is especially true if they are actually going to descend on a glide profile rather than a straight-down profile, there are a lot of soft-kill options.

Now, you can sort of "adjust the sliders" to make the assumptions you want here - if you assume US softkill systems work reliably, then you barely need to worry. If you assume Chinese long-range sensors are neutralized early in the conflict, you barely need to worry. If you assume that the Standards will work poorly, or that the Chinese have say 300 or 500 DF-26s they are willing to launch at ships (neither of which seem implausible to me), then it starts to look much worse for the carriers.

All that being said: I would not want to be on a CBG that was going into DF-26 range. There are too many things that can go wrong, and ships don't have a lot of room for error. (This is...worse for China than for the United States in a Taiwan scenario). It's possible the US has Secret Sauce Technology that makes them much more confident in their carrier defense; the same is plausible for Chinese missiles. My main point in writing this up is simply to say - the situation is much more complex than simply "I have a missile with a 3000 mile range and an anti-ship guidance system, checkmate."

(As an aside, I found out while researching this long reply that the Chinese are latecomers to the ASBM game: the Soviets fired the first anti-ship ballistic missile in 1973.)

The US has the same (perhaps better) apparatus to kill Chinese missile launchers that China does to kill carriers, do

  1. Ok I'm going to reply in depth later but you shuold familiarize yourself with how well the 'Scud hunt' went during Gulf war
  2. the estimates for breaking through into an static, decades prepare air-defense grid (it's weeks in case of Russia)
  3. the multiple methods for detecting stealth planes (multilateration, undoubtedly networked parabolic microphones and more!

Also that China does have satellite dazzlers ready. In short US wouldn't be likely to acquire these launchers, wouldn't have much to hit them with - cruise missiles aren't great at following moving targets and also planes wouldn't be able to get near.

Ok I'm going to reply in depth later but you shuold familiarize yourself with how well the 'Scud hunt' went during Gulf war

I am familiar with the SCUD hunt. I also know what SENTIENT is. Are you familiar with Soviet attempts to find carrier battle groups?

the estimates for breaking through into an static, decades prepare air-defense grid (it's weeks in case of Russia)

To establish air supremacy or superiority, yes. Obviously it did not take the Ukrainians weeks to penetrate the Russian air-defense grid once they got the right capabilities, nor would it take the US weeks to penetrate it if they wanted to.

the multiple methods for detecting stealth planes (multilateration, undoubtedly networked parabolic microphones and more!

I do not necessarily think stealth aircraft are the best assets the US has against mobile ballistic missile launchers. Nevertheless we've learned that modern air defense systems do not render even non-stealthy aircraft incapable.

Now frankly I think it would likely be stupid to waste munitions on something the size of a ballistic missile launcher that might move at any moment. (And my understanding is that US doctrine was actually to avoid striking Chinese launchers anyway.) But my point is that the US having the theoretical capability does not make the missile useless! I agree with you that there are countermeasures against targeting mobile ballistic missile launchers! It's hard to do!

Also that China does have satellite dazzlers ready.

And the US has ways of operating despite dazzlers - stealth satellites, [likely] high-altitude hypersonic recon/(strike?) aircraft, maneuvering spacecraft, non-optical recon satellites, some dude with a quadcopter, SIGINT, etc.

In short US wouldn't be likely to acquire these launchers, wouldn't have much to hit them with - cruise missiles aren't great at following moving targets and also planes wouldn't be able to get near.

Moving the launchers around constantly is unlikely (although moving them consistently is). (And, for the record, at least some modern cruise missiles are capable of hitting moving targets, although I agree with you that the moving complicates matters.) But as I said above, I think it would be a dumb use of munitions. Which, again, goes to my point: having the theoretical ability to destroy something does not mean that such a course is easy, or even a good idea.

Really, everything you've said about hunting missile launchers is also true of hunting carriers, although carriers are much larger and more valuable targets, making them much more reasonable to target than a single ballistic missile launcher.

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The lack of named sources coupled with lack of comment from both the USG and Nvidia would seem to hint that the story was false from the start.

Personally, NPR's presentation of themselves as a bastion for "serious people" also doesn't help the story's credibility.

The real question is wether this pressumed fabulism stemmed from "orange man bad" or some beltway-bandit trying to pull a pump and dump on Nvidia's stock.

The lack of named sources coupled with lack of comment from both the USG and Nvidia would seem to hint that the story was false from the start.

Why wouldn't the USG have just denied it with a statement like "lol fake news, more made up trash from NPR"?

Because as soon as you declare one story to be lies, it's assumed that you confirm any story you don't explicity denounce. It's the old sitcom trope of guessing a surprise: after you've said "nope, wrong" a few times, as soon as you switch to "I'm not saying" you've given everything away.

Hence the Glomar Response (We can neither confirm nor deny....).

$1 million donation is chump change at those levels. Possibly the donation was to secure the sit down dinner where they talked, not actually a promise for any kind of outcome. That seems way more in line with that amount of money.

Yeah, "pay for a face-to-face" is political standard, it doesn't promise anything more than that. If we believe that Burisma paying Hunter big bucks didn't get them anything more than maybe the hope of a phone call with Joe, then same here.

So two anonymous sources, whom they don't seem to have checked were legit, made them run a story that had everyone believing something to be true that wasn't. Or might be. Or could be true, or maybe it's false.

Do we call this fake news or not? I'm a lot more angry about the lack of fact-checking than any political manoeuvring here, I'm not going to say NPR is anti-Trump because I don't know one way or the other. But this kind of rumour-mongering is not helping any of us trust the media, or find reliable sources of factual information.

So right now we don't know if 'millionaire businessman pays bribe to get government policy reversed' is true or false or somewhere in Schrodinger's middle where it might be true until it got found out, or maybe it was false because two chancers fooled a news outlet.

At this stage, I think the media should put the kibosh on stories relying on "sources who can't be named", because they're only tabloid-fodder level reliable the same way you see stories about "close friends of Harry and Meghan say that Camilla tried to poison her with ricin at the last family dinner" trash clickbait.

I'm not going to say NPR is anti-Trump because I don't know one way or the other

I would say that NPR leans strongly anti-Trump, and is willing to perform standard journalism misrepresentation/spin/story selection in line with that. Outright falsehood creation using fake sources? Probably not.

Creating fake sources is generally out of style, but using fake sources- which is to say, giving attention, focus, and treating suspect sources as credible is on-brand.

At this stage, I think the media should put the kibosh on stories relying on "sources who can't be named"

I'd be okay still relying on "sources who can't be named unless their info is falsified in which case we'll shout their names to the sky", but in practical terms that's probably about the same as your proposal. In this case, for example, there's still no way to tell whether the sources were lying; they could have been, or they could have overheard a change that was legitimately planned but for which the plan wasn't executed. "Trump changes his mind about changing his mind" isn't implausible.

(Or if you want to go all 5D-chess, the sources could have overheard a change that wasn't legitimately planned. Trump hates disloyalty, so perhaps he leaks different false stories to different underlings every now and then, so that the stories which make it to the news identify the underlings he should stop trusting. Not likely but not impossible.)

If it's a tabloid running a gossip story about celebrities, I automatically discount "close friend of the above parties hinted at" as the paper making it all up but using the phrasing for plausible deniability, or a scammer sold them the story which they don't care whether it's true or not, it'll sell more copies if they run it.

For media with pretensions to being serious real journalism, I expect better. Again, most times I see "unattributed sources/sources in the government who will only speak off the record", I assume it's a leak and being drip-fed to the media for ulterior motives.

So this could have been a leak, I suppose, as a trial balloon to see what reaction would be like if Trump reversed his decision. Or it could be hot air. I wish NPR and other media would be a little more picky about their sources backing up their claims, but that may be too much to expect nowadays.

Quite a few possible explanations.

  1. NPR fucked up and was talking to people who wouldn't realistically have knowledge of the plans.

  2. The officials they used as sources were normally fine but they were making up shit for some reason. Maybe they weren't privy to the particular details or saying stuff on purpose to make trump look bad/make NPR look bad, hard to tell intent there. Hell it could have been said just because it appears some people within the Trump admin are taking advantage of insider knowledge for the stock market.

  3. There was an internal plan to move against the ban and that got leaked before anything finalized. Perhaps the sources went to NPR precisely because they wanted to pressure against it.

The problem with anonymous sources being the standard is that it's really hard to tell the difference between a journalist fuck-up, the source being a lying piece of shit, or just internal plans that were decided against.

You missed #4: the journalist is a lying piece of shit and the sources do not exist. This wouldn't be my first pick, but it is a possibility.

Claas Relotius did the Atlanticist media no favors.

Generally, "sources close to who can't be named" are leaking on behalf of the government, either pro- or anti-something. The thing to figure out here is who is leaking and for what purpose.

To make Trump look bad? Maybe some of those federal workers under the threat of the DOGE axe, or otherwise unhappy with what is going on there, who want to throw a spanner in the works?

The problem with anonymous sources like this is that there is all the possibility of whatever conspiracy theory your little heart desires, but no hard information.

As someone with a lot of networth in Nvidia I'm happy about this and if it were put up to a vote of the shareholders I'd vote to not sell these chips to China. We absolutely don't need to hand them the rope that the intend to hang us with.


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