domain:bracero.substack.com
hanikrummihundursvin
49m ago
Yet they still try.
FCfromSSC
Nuclear levels of sour
50m ago
Or the sneeze gun, the mega sneeze gun, the sneeze gun detector, efforts to develop gasoline cancer...
I recommend Flesh Simulator's MK ULTRA subproject rundown
Botond173
1hr ago
It changes everything. If he's unavailable for long-term commitment, he's no longer a potential catch for women who want that.
ArjinFerman
Tinfoil Gigachad
1hr ago
MKUltra showed this when a couple dozen universities across the country were dosing unknowing participants with psychoactives
Don't forget the brain surgeries.
jake
1hr ago
I think that’s also a very good counter example to all the people who say that there are no conspiracies because they are impossible to keep secret
MKUltra showed this when a couple dozen universities across the country were dosing unknowing participants with psychoactives and it took congress investigating something else to uncover it. People are in fact so good at collectively shutting up one could wonder if a separate conspiracy had anything to do with the appearance in common wisdom of "number of participants" as a weighty variable in the success of plots.
Jiro
1hr ago
"Do not weakman in order to show how bad a group is."
You literally picked some random person from a group you don't like and told a shaggy dog story about her just so you can have a wall of text whose upshot is that this person and "people like" her are bad.
Southkraut
The rain fell gentlier.
1hr ago
"I hate my enemies and want them to suffer" is true, but not what I said.
Really?
The more pain and terror inflicted in the process, the greater the psychic wound sustained on the collective consciousness of these illegals and all others interested in following them, the better.
And it's not even that I disagree with you on the object level. Just - it looks a lot like you did indeed say that.
I'm in a similar position of being glad that he's here providing a differing viewpoint, but come on, a couple of days?
Really, I'm not. Progressives like these actively drag down the standard of discourse in this forum with their shit-flinging (this applies to other people of varying political stripes too, but the OP here seems to be one of the worst and most prolific offenders in this forum as of late).
I'm willing to engage with other left of centre people who participate here and even say I appreciate their participation in spite of our ideological differences, but this ain't it. It's such obvious bait that it barely even warrants attention from me - I basically look at a post of his, roll my eyes and move on. Even Darwin wasn't this consistently terrible, in spite of his penchant for doubling down on transparently incorrect statements. This on the other hand is an utterly vapid waste of time: it's badly-written fanfiction that builds up to the ultimate reveal of "A MAGA said something ick, checkmate rightists".
Southkraut
The rain fell gentlier.
2hr ago
Congratulations, you have succesfully cherry-picked one of the right's worse representatives. Is this supposed to teach anyone anything other than "This Natalie Winters I never herad of before who I will probably never hear of again seems a little vapid."?
madeofmeat
2hr ago
Very late reply, but this sounds uncannily like Tove K's description of her estranged teenage daughter.
functor
2hr ago
It is the ISIS ideology of building a caliphate and invoking the return of Jesus. The idea of commanding god and ordering Jesus back to Earth is an antithesis to what pretty much 99% of Christians throughout history have believed. It is a big part of the rift between Al Qaeda and ISIS in which Al Qaeda considered ISIS to be completely out of control.
FistfullOfCrows
2hr ago
It’s people like Natalie Winters, whose response to the Trump-Musk feud was, “this whole thing is proof of why we shouldn’t vaccinate children.”
I'm just going to candidly and frankly tell you because of the shenanigans by the biotech companies and governments I'm not going to be getting my scheduled age group vaccines that are coming up, there are posters all over my Doc's hall ways that such and such age brackets have their regular scheduled vaccines coming up, I'm just not going to get it, I'm going to delay the whole thing as long as humanly possible and if by some administrative slight of hand the issue is pressed I'm going to go shopping for a doctor who I can slip a 100 and have him fictitiously give me one, noting me down in the app that I had mine given.
ActuallyATleilaxuGhola
Axolotl Tank Class of '24
3hr ago
They've never been super high quality IMHO but recently they seem like almost pure shitflinging.
ActuallyATleilaxuGhola
Axolotl Tank Class of '24
3hr ago
Second, the exact population is irrelevant compared to things like geography, technological levels, military strength and enlistment numbers, and so on.
The implication is that if he doesn't even ballpark know how many people live in Iran, there's no way he knows any of that other stuff. And if he did, he could have said something like "well they are enlisting X people per year, and American enlists 2X, so probably roughly half of the American population" and at that point if Tucker said "um ackchually it's not 160 million it's 90 million" people would just think Tucker was being pedantic and wouldn't care. But Cruz didn't try to switch to a statistic that he did know, he just got defensive and butthurt which makes everyone assume (IMO probably correctly) that he really knows next to nothing about Iran.
TIRM
3hr ago
There was a question asked during the 2021 New York City mayoral race: what is the median sale price for a home in Brooklyn?
A few candidates gave answers of varying comical inaccuracy. One candidate was Shaun Donovan who has many years of housing policy experience.
As Wikipedia summarizes Donovan:
served as the 15th United States secretary of housing and urban development from 2009 to 2014, and Director of the US Office of Management and Budget from 2014 to 2017. Prior to that, he was the Commissioner of the New York City Department of Housing Preservation and Development from 2004 to 2009
Many years of directly relevant experience including years working this at the highest level on this topic for New York City. His estimate for the median Brooklyn home sale price in 2021 was $100,000. Wrong order of magnitude. The cheapest listed unit on real estate websites for Brooklyn at that time was $100k for a parking spot. The very cheapest actual homes were many hundreds of thousands of dollars with the median sale price over $900k.
So yeah, somehow the head of multiple relevant agencies for years at the Federal and local level knows fuck all about the basics of his specialty.
I heard the audio from these interviews and interestingly Andrew Yang quickly reasoned that the median would not be significantly offset by the few super expensive homes in Brooklyn and guessed $900k which is within a few percent if the correct answer. Yang has of course never been appointed to be the head of any agency. Nerds may be right, but always be losing.
ActuallyATleilaxuGhola
Axolotl Tank Class of '24
3hr ago
The one thing I have never grasped about Christian Zionism is implication that God is waiting for humanity to gather all 7 dragon balls before Jesus can be summoned. I'm pretty sure the Second Coming is going to happen when God plans it to, and that human efforts to bring it about are at best ridiculous and at worst extremely presumptuous. Jesus clearly says that nobody knows the hour or the day, so what's the point? I'm genuinely curious, do Christian Zionists have some theological justification or rationalization for this?
But over the last couple of days
I'm in a similar position of being glad that he's here providing a differing viewpoint, but come on, a couple of days? His posts were full of bait and snark from the day I first saw him post here. If anything, this one is way more high-effort than his average comment (though sadly most of the effort is going into trolling).
veqq
3hr ago
genuinely sticking to the claim that the average Israeli citizen hates Western civilization more than the average Iranian citizen does?
Yes. I chose my words carefully. N.b. I don't "hate Jews" as someone above assumed. I just see that Israelis and Israeli media doesn't cargocult and follow the West, seeing it as the best thing in the world, as Iranians do. I can easily find statistics (which correspond with my (admittedly probably, but not intentionally motivated) beliefs and first-hand anecdata that Iranians are less religious than Israelis, with demographic trends only accelerating this, considering Hasidic demographics etc. who are not inline with what you call "Western cultural norms". But I oppose these "Western cultural norms" and see them as anti-Western^TM. I believe their pushers hate my people.)
gay sex
Well... Maryam Molkara convinced Khomeini to issue a fatwa in 1987, so that in Iran the government will (forcibly) pay for your sex change, so it's not gay, anymore. Only Thailand "leads". Overall, there's a cottage industry of cosmetic surgeons, with 2.5 million nose jobs per year.
ActuallyATleilaxuGhola
Axolotl Tank Class of '24
3hr ago
I'm just a random poster, so take this for what it's worth. But I appreciate that as an (apparent?) leftist or progressive, you still post here and help prevent The Motte from becoming a complete echo chamber. Before the last week or so, I remembering you posting interesting comments that go against the prevailing opinions here which stimulated discussion. But over the last couple of days it just seems like you're posting snarky one-liners, trying to bait people, and dunk on your enemies. I hope you don't flame out, but instead stick around and poke holes in right-wing thinking to help keep us right-wingers honest. Maybe it would be good to take some time away from this place? I know that even I have to sometimes despite agreeing with a greater proportion of the posters here.
Like seemingly a lot of people, my initial guess was 80 mil.
The thought process was something like this, though less articulate. (Coming up with that number took me less time than it will take you to read this, and much less than it's going to take me to write it.)
"I know it's big. Like I'm positive it's over 50 mil. On the other hand, if it was US tier, much less China/India tier, I'm pretty sure I would know that. I wouldn't be completely shocked to learn it was over 100, if it wasn't by too much, but if you made me choose I'd bet against it. But probably closer to 100 than 50... 80 seems in the right ballpark? Maybe 85? More likely 85 than 75, but probably around there somewhere."
I don't quite count that as a win, but I guess I could have done a lot worse.
pusher_robot
PLEASE GO STAND BY THE STAIRS
3hr ago
👉👌
RandomRanger
Just build nuclear plants!
3hr ago
Helping oneself would logically include knowing one's enemies.
There is stupidity along with evil. Many, many unnecessary mistakes even from an evil-maxxing perspective. It is not an unreasonable expectation for backroom dealmakers in 2020 to foresee that Biden would become a problem and that Kamala would not necessarily be an ideal candidate.
what do you think is going to happen
It's hard to say as I don't know what the extent of the "stimulus" will be. I just want the regime to change, I don't know what kind of push is needed or where it will go.
Iran has significant brain drain as education levels are high and emigration's unrestricted. I see between 3 and 5 million emigrants for a population of 80 million 2010 and ~90 million today. I'd guestimate emigration up a bit, just for Turkey (official numbers in the ...5 digits), which has big communities of Persian speaking shop keepers, lawyers, hostels, restaurants etc. then massive communities of Azeri Iranians, who receive expedited Turkish citizenship. (N.b. much of the Islamic Republic's leadership are Azeri. Azeri Turkish and Turkey Turkish are like British and American English. There are more Azeris in Iran than Azerbaijan.) Particularly in the last few years, international students have stopped going to Turkey, yet the universities catering to them have stronger enrollment than ever, all from Iran. In the case I knew intimately, 1 of 200 foreign students in a department were Iranian Azeris (the other was Persian.) Anyway, the commonality is that most people of means or ability leave.
All things being equal, I'd expect some sort of secular military government, where the army puts down the IRGC. I'm not sure who'd lead it. Because Trump killed the liberal political movement, which spent its capital to push the nuclear deal through. Nowadays, there doesn't seem to be much of a political base, as the youth are depoliticized/have no faith in change. I believe people are less "political" than in Russia on average, where people will at least riff of crazy ideas and conspiracies. Many people try to build identities around pre-Islamic Iran, being totally Western or... But most just don't. There are interesting parties like the technocratic "Executives of Construction" with low electoral support.
Anyway, I'm not sure what precisely would cause the regime to change. I don't believe the current US government is terribly competent or able to nudge things along, but Israel's success is shocking and impressive. Perhaps something can come out of it. Continued airstrikes degrading the security state and ideological forces, but not state forces, could lead to the military or civilian-military forces overthrowing the current regime. However, I've seen a few strikes on army bases, but have no clue who/what was targeted. It could easily devolve into civil war or see the state continue, as is.
re: the liberal movement, Rouhani (though a cleric, with a Scottish PhD with a credible plagiarism claim) campaigned on rebuilding relations with the West, personal rights etc. which saw the civilian administration asserting itself against the IRGC. After that project was destroyed, the regime brought back the morality police etc. Although these days, you still see women walking around without a hijab in Shiraz, Tehran etc. Yet to some extent, the current president Pezeshkian is a moderate (fun fact, he proposed free Turkish education in Iran) relative to his opponent, but nowhere near as much as Rouhani or Khatami, still he (as well as many politicians) opposed the governments reactions to protestors at different points, calling the repression unconstitutional etc. (before backtracking...) He's had women vice presidents (besides many governors etc.), and even a Sunni!
Sometimes the US pays lipservice to the fact that there's a civilian government and state military with a clergy and militia on top, but doesn't actually focus its efforts fighting the ruling clergy.
crushedoranges
3hr ago
I'd rewrite it to... 'that black hole of tastelessness, of which the very fabric of space-time screams in silent surrender to the singularity of vulgarity.'
Was that really the only reply you got?
I'll give you you my favorite argument, skipping all the lesser ones. And please excuse the rambling style; I'm writing in between numerous interruptions. The chiefest argument against immigration, in my view, is that of culture. Americans may scoff at this, but for a German it's obvious that our country worked at all and gained its orderly prosperity entirely due to the culture of the people who inhabit it.
In theory this isn't incompatible with immigration - immigrants come, adopt our culture, great, we're still just as orderly and even more productive! But that's not what happens, unless you set the bar for "cultural assimilation" about as low as "speaks some pidgin German when forced to, does not commit brazen rape and robbery, works and pays taxes, and might own a German passport.". Whick you can do, of course! If you see the whole issue purely through the lens of economy and you ignore any effects and dynamics that occur outside of economics, then you can stop at that point, see that immigration just means more workforce, checkmate nativists. If you want to go outside of economics, then the first stop is humanitarian concerns and you can even pat yourself on the back for being a good guy who saves the poor huddled masses of the world by letting them into the infinitely expandable first-world economic zone and human rights preservation area that makes everyone better off and even more so when there's more people inside. You did the right thing. And I suppose that for atomized, globalized urbanites, that's just the world as it is. Ground-level reality right there. Who cares what language your neighbors speak or what color the cashier's skin is? You don't want to talk to them or look at them anyways, you have your phone right here. So long as the economy keeps going and public welfare picks up the slack, everyone can do their own thing to nobody's harm.
But if I might invite you to step outside of your axiomatic comfort zone and enter mine for a spell, here's the countervailing world-view. Let's get back to my opening statement: Prosperity and social peace are mainly downstream of culture, and not the other way around. To someone on the right, this is as obviously true as the opposite might be to someone on the left. Where you might see that obviously people become peaceful and productive once their material and legal circumstances are agreeable to them, I would see instead that obviously a cooperative, high-trust society will be peaceful and productive. Maybe both are true to some extent, but I would give far greater weight to the latter. Can you lean slightly to the right for a moment so as to take a brief look through this lens together with me?
For a society to be thus - cooperative, trusting, mutually supportive - some conditions need to be fulfilled. A shared language is strictly necessary. And not some assortment of crude pidgins that are barely mutually intelligible, but an actual mature language that can convey subtleties with a high degree of fidelity, information with a high signal-to-noise ratio. And especially, dear God, not several mutually unintelligible languages from different language families that are spoken only by disjoint subsets of the population that each self-segregate into separate communities.
Beyond language, and less clear-cut: Shared commitments. If I consider myself a long-term inhabitant of a local community and responsible for its well-being, but my neighbor is only a transient dweller of opportunity, then what reason does each of us have to do the hard work of getting to know the other? What reason has he to contribute to the community, or I to welcome him? He'll just move on anyways, and if not, will very likely surround himself with others of his background instead of mingling with the natives, and work for the benefit of his relatives in his home country instead of his neighbors here. And this is not some self-fulfilling prophecy of social exclusion, but the plain fact of what one sees happen with solid regularity. An immigrant has numerous incentives to cohere more strongly with his co-immigrants than with the natives of his new country of residence; to take from the host country and give to his personal associates. Tragedy of the commons. And with each additional community-member-in-name-only (which includes asocial natives, of course), you have a defector who weakens the body social as a whole and shifts norms away from cooperation.
And then there's the big pitfall of public welfare. You've already pointed out that immigrants cannot simultaneously be net job-takers and net welfare-leeches. I don't know how this works in America, but here in Germany the issue of welfare parasitism is certainly not exclusively to immigrants - plenty of natives take more than they give. But this is still a perverse incentive that hits immigrants even harder because of their inherently greater difficulty in finding well-paid work that's actually worth doing instead of relying on gibs.
If we could and would force immigrants to assimilate, to become natives in all ways but their family history, to communicate with us like we do with each other and reliably commit to the common good, to cut ties with their former country and nation, then all these problems would probably be feasible to solve. But this is not the case. Instead Germany is absorbed by a cultural self-hatred and a refusal to see cultural differences between natives and immigrants. The immigrants themselves in turn see the floundering, self-effacing culture of the Germans and naturally stick to what they know instead. And funnily enough, native kids pick up on this, and so we get the "migrantisch" culture that many young people buy into regardless of whether they even have any recent immigrants in their family trees. And so we end up with a growing parallel society of immigrants and their hangers-on who have ample incentives to be game-theoretic defectors, and who instead of adopting more cooperative native norms end up weakening those norms across the country.
And I ramble and ramble and can't keep a train of thought for how frequently I need to go and do other things. Let me know if this makes the remotest lick of sense to you; if not I'll try again in a quieter hour.
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