domain:bracero.substack.com
deadpantroglodytes
1m ago
I agree that it would be interesting to see a detailed analysis like that and I realize you aren't saying large QOL improvements would be exculpatory ... but reading your comment made me think about discussions about progressive indoctrination in US schools.
It's plausible that learning progressive manners and beliefs will give children a substantial leg up, socio-economically. Depending on events, graduates of the Evanston, IL public schools system might be on average, better-positioned than those from, say, the Florida suburbs in the US of 2045. But I don't think many parents resisting leftward changes to their public schools would be impressed by that.
The analogy is quarter-baked, but just contemplating it weakens my openness to arguments that material improvements can justify inter-generational dispossession (for lack of a better term)
No_one
5m ago
I have to agree with Dean, there aren't any real Nazis in Ukraine. You can't be a Nazi and fight for a country run by a Jew.
Hitler could make anyone an Aryan by fiat. He did just that with the Mischlinges Field Marshal Erhard Milch, General der Flieger Helmuth Wilberg, and others who had proved their military value. One photograph of Wilberg shows him resplendent in uniform with no fewer than 12 medals pinned to his proud Aryan, formerly half-Jewish, chest. Nonetheless, despite Wilberg’s altered religious status, he insisted that he fought not for the Fuehrer, but for Fatherland and Volk. The distinction was a common refrain among Hitler’s Jewish military men, and some Aryans as well.
No_one
10m ago
They didn't 'die to the last man'.
~250 defenders of Azovstal surrendered and were exchanged in a prisoner swap mediated by Turkey. Turkey also promised to keep the commanders interned until end of war, but reneged on that promise and returned them..
No_one
14m ago
Bangladeshi migrants are not a common feature of Russian economy, outside of the front line where they've managed to convince a whole bunch of Indians that a 30-40% chance of death for $4k a month is a good deal.
Well, India does have some tens of millions of surplus men, so maybe it is a good deal for everyone involved?
No_one
17m ago
Not Azov, the far right which is far bigger than Azov. The dangers has lessened somewhat because the most zealous people were the most likely to die. A lot of Azov was killed in the futile defense of Azovstal in Mariupol.
George_E_Hale
insufferable blowhard
19m ago
Our neighborhood 自治会 jichikai is a rotation of families or family representatives. My wife was in the first one and it hasn't come back round to us (it's a big neighborhood, or maybe they skipped us). We got them to do Halloween for about 7 years then COVID hit and it was cancelled, then cancelled again, and now the kids who did it are aged out. There are little kids now in newer families but I have doubts that particular American way of celebrating a day that has no real significance here will ever be resumed. Maybe they're afraid collectively that we'll make some other weird suggestion. To answer briefly, no we don't go. They made a rule preventing kids from playing with balls anywhere in the street, however, which I think was idiotic, so maybe it's for the best.
Tenaz
31m ago
Not to spoil too much, but Twelve Angry Men is pretty much the opposite of that.
SteveKirk
33m ago
Finally you've got something proper to wear to the neighborhood meetings lol. (Do you go to those?)
Wake up, post something nostalgic about my own late father on Instagram, watch my wife whisper to my sons who whisper in testy teenage barks back, then wait patiently until one of them (the youngest) unearths a gift and hands it to me (this year a brown *jinbei* which I was immediately told to only wear inside.)
Happy dad day to all the dads.
George_E_Hale
insufferable blowhard
42m ago
Nothing, but I have Donald Kagan's The Peloponnesian War next up, and right there beside my bed. Anybody read it?
George_E_Hale
insufferable blowhard
47m ago
Face tattoos signify a rather fundamental disengagement with the norms of greater society such that I can't imagine becoming great buddies with anyone who has one. This is true to a lesser degree of full sleeves, etc. This is true in or out of Japan.
Sensible shoes or sneakers worn with business attire on commutes suggests a comfort in the wearer with his/her social standing. (Dress shoes on the same commute could suggest the opposite but context is relevant).
Anyone 24 or younger on my early morning commute is going home, not to school or work (unless of course they are in athletic gear in which case it's off to sports practice before school). Exceptions include regulars, or people with large roller bags (small roller bags could still be going home.)
Within Japan, expatriate women from North America (US and Canada) or Europe are either: 1) Divorced 2) married to or the consort of a Japanese man. 1) Will be politically progressive 2) will be neutral, disinterested, or conservative
Women with crewcuts are lesbian.
Guys with little hair but big bushy, Zeus-like beards will eventually annoy the shit out of me.
The likelihood that females with long, really done-up fingernails working at afternoon retail fashion outlets in Umeda are also moonlighting as call girls is non trivial.
The bigger and more expansive the menu the more likely the food is mediocre but probably not terrible. (Depending on your definition of terrible.)
The allure of the smell of ramen shops is inversely related to the hour of day-- meaning in early morning the smell is revolting. Late night, enticing.
The degree to which an American male tends to adhere to modern fashion trends is a reasonable predictor of how politically left he leans.
If I close my eyes before being introduced to your American female cousin visiting Japan, I will predict that she: 1) looks older than her age 2) is overweight by 20 or more pounds 3) leans politically left 4) eats more than I at lunch and dinner.
People who keep their calendars updated and full are higher achievers than those who don't. Not always true of artist types.
Creative, artistic people are creatively artistic in multiple ways.
Guys with houses that are like pig pens do not get laid. Unless they are extremely rich.
The chance that the Rolex watch on the dude riding the train is fake is at least 50%. The Omega is probably real.
New acquaintances who are overly friendly want something from me.
Women who are obsessed with and routinely post on social media about the plight of animals do not themselves have children.
Criticizing a woman directly about anything is a mistake that will not produce favorable results.
Capital_Room
rather dementor-like
1hr ago
On some more-progressive corners of the internet (I saw kerfuffles in threads on RPG.net and SomethingAwful) this made (a minority of) people upset for being a racist idea. Racist against what group, exactly? Well, it wasn't that: it was just that the idea of irreconcilable differences existing between groups that could (apparently) communicate with each other was too dangerous to be entertained at all.
I'm reminded of the thread spawned by this Tumblr post, which begins:
Fantasy races are an uncomfortable concept, because they present a world that literally works the way racists think that it works. The attempts to mitigate this problem often fail to address the core concern, merely making the idea more palatable.
It also addresses sci-fi — specifically Mass Effect — as also problematic for having different alien races be, well, different:
This is something that puts me on edge in Mass Effect, otherwise one of my favorite games. True, the game ultimately lands on condemning the genophage, and it’s not subtle about that. I mean just look at the name… But it’s still considered debatable, morally grey, and Mordin Solus remains one of the most charming and enduring heroes of the series. The setting has bent over backwards to make every racist stereotype and talking point as legitimate as possible. In this setting, it is objectively true, scientifically proven that it is in the DNA of Krogans to naturally be violent, warmongering killing machines whose explosively rapid breeding poses an existential threat to the galaxy. That in turn is meant to make us think that maybe forced sterilization is something worth considering. It’s hard to ignore the parallels to real life racist propaganda. I don’t think it’s malicious, just ungrounded and thoughtless; the result of creators to whom these ideals are abstract thought experiments, rather than reflections of real history.
In short, treating differences between thinking beings as anything other than purely cultural is Problematic.
Closedshop
話說天下大勢，分久必合，合久必分
1hr ago
I had the exact opposite problem as you, but in a similar vain. I thought that because of how limited the MCU cast was at the time, there weren't actually enough characters to fully encapsulate how wide-reaching the storyline was. In the comics, Civil War was a massive event, spanning dozens of characters, including the Avengers, X-Men, The New Warriors, The Fan4stic, etc. And instead of the Airport fight scene, which was pretty cool, the fighting and devastation was much more wide-spread. The storyline also had some pretty hefty short to medium term implications, including playing into the Secret Invasion storyline.
George_E_Hale
insufferable blowhard
1hr ago
Besides the obvious that Kennedy is not yet decrepit or senile, and is not Trump, what would cause people to prefer him? I've read at least one damning review of him from a source I've no reason to distrust.
hanikrummihundursvin
2hr ago
I don't disagree. I just think it's easier to argue the point that there is no stated upper limit given by folks that argue what MaiqTheTrue argues. Since their position, in my experience of arguing against similar ones, is ultimately not based on objective thinking or anything related to the real world but rather moral preference.
When you push motivated egalitarians far enough they will simply resort to impossible to prove theories and assumptions, be that prenatal environment, systemic racism or whatever else. It's much quicker to simply ask them why they expect all of their confounding factors that can never be tested to only be able to affect black people. It helps highlight how the proposition that we could possibly increase IQ doesn't do much for equality.
EdenicFaithful
Dark Wizard of Ravenclaw
2hr ago
So, what are you reading?
I’m reading Greenwood’s The Shakespeare Problem Restated, an old book positing that the man from Stratford didn’t write the plays, without suggesting a candidate of its own. It is remarkable how little the conversation has changed. Skeptics are still being called crazy reactionary snobs, and orthodox scholars are still being told that they’re appealing to authority, inertia and speculation.
Also going through Clifford’s The Ethics of Belief and James’ The Will to Believe, both short works. So far Clifford’s essay, which posits that one has a moral duty to base his beliefs on verified evidence (or something like that), is beautiful in its initial purity but gets a little confused when it has to make a framework for ethically believing in what others (like experts) say. Well worth reading in light of squabbles over conspiracy theorists.
coffee_enjoyer
☕️
2hr ago
What has been the academic progress on utilitarians in the past five years? What are the hot button contentions?
Ben___Garrison
Voltaire's Viceroy
2hr ago
Good post. It's crazy to me how disorganized and fragmented France can be sometimes. On the one hand this could be the sign of a healthy democracy, on the other hand this level of fragmentation is part of what led France to being shattered so easily by the Germans in WW2.
Leon Blum that instituted paid leave, the 40h work week and led France into its WW2 capitulation.
Small correction, it was Reynaud that led France at the time of its capitulation.
ToZanarkand
2hr ago
and whether the US will be less committed to defending the current Saudi regime.
Presumably they would? My loose understanding is that the Saudis would likely start developing their own nuclear deterrent without the US defending them, and the US is pretty keen on avoiding nuclear proliferation.
vpn
2hr ago
Do you have any interesting/unusual heuristics to share?
I'm sure this isn't original, but I think I derived it independently--the social status of pedestrians in the outdoors public is inverse to the amount of possessions they carry with them. Someone dragging a luggage is homeless while a backpack means low income. Highly contextual with lots of exceptions of course, but if you're walking/jogging on a trail in an affluent area, chances are people not carrying anything are less a threat than people lugging large bags and backpacks.
faceh
2hr ago
The amusing irony, to me, is that the more blatantly bad and stupid they make the red tribe look, the more incompetent and feckless the protags look.
They even lampshade it in Episode 1 of Se4. "How have you guys gotten WORSE at your jobs?"
Starlight is supposedly one of the more effective do-gooders but she can't even make a dent in Homelander's popularity, can't do any material damage to Vought, and can't even shift political outcomes in her side's favor.
If homelander's fanbase is as weak-willed and dumb as the show wants to portray them, then the protags should be able to outsmart them and possibly manipulate them to their ends. But nah.
And the only guy who seems to be somewhat effective is Butcher, who is about as problematic as can be even if his heart is seemingly in the right place.
I am not even sure who a liberal viewer is supposed to root for.
ToZanarkand
3hr ago
It's hard to imagine such an effect, if it exists, could be observed between any but significantly phonologically distinct languages. It sounds like a stretch to imagine it could play a role in why some British-English speakers might look different from American-English speakers.
Hoffmeister25
American Bukelismo Enthusiast
3hr ago
I’m not seeing it at all, and I think any speculation about the effect of accents on facial musculature development is probably pseudoscientific cope.
It'd be completely unsurprising if the war ends, Ukrainians find out they've lost half a million dead for nothing and then one night every prominent neocon in the D.C. area gets a thermobaric RPG warhead* delivered into his bedroom at 3 am.
It's like how good is anti-FPV surveillance? FBI seems interested in chasing politics. And you would only need some guys to smuggle in a ~50 RPGs and a bunch of drones. They could be flown over the internet easily.
*that's how the leaders of the Donbass uprisings were killed. It's the most powerful and compact 'bang per buck' out there. Unclear whether they were killed by SBU or Kremlin.
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