domain:nytimes.com
orangecat
9m ago
Look at how so many people have been talking about white Americans for about a decade now... I'm not saying either is good but are you really surprised?
Identity politics can't only go in one direction forever. :marseyshrug:
TIRM
9m ago
They did that on purpose to state that nothing ever happens. Meme joking.
Rov_Scam
11m ago
You may have had a point if @roche were talking about the internet as it existed in 1993 or so, but somehow I doubt that is the case. In the early days, there were hippies who thought that the ease of communication with like-minded strangers would usher in a new era of peace and understanding, as traditional barriers would come down. The nerds who ran the thing and comprised the bulk of the user base nodded along in agreement. A few years later the internet reached 20% of households and any ideas that this would be the case had vanished almost completely. The early adopters were all hippies and nerds and were basing their predictions on the idea that the general public was largely similar to them. As soon as the internet was being used by 14-year-olds to start flame wars on why Nailz sucked, the idea that the internet was an unalloyed positive force in social interaction went out the window. The "web at large" has been around for 25 years now.
Eupraxia
Of all words spoken, all things read / most true was that which went unsaid
13m ago
· Edited just now
This one from @WhiningCoil. I can see where she(?)'s coming from, I had my own problems with that comment's plausibly deniable undertones, but Coil's a particularly abrasive poster and I don't think the median Mottezen's opinions are necessarily "tainted by racism".
Corvos
17m ago
Let's get pointers - if you know what is pointer you can design a class from first principles - it doesn't take huge jump to create a memory blob, put some header information - congratulations that is struct. but let's put another blob attached to it with pointers to executable code - now we have a class. But i want to modify already existing class - well just play with the blobs values a bit - you have inheritance.
Nicely put, I've been programming for years (though no CS background) and never actually saw it that way. Are there any books you'd recommend that explain things that way round?
VoxelVexillologist
Multidimensional Radical Centrist
19m ago
I'm somewhat surprised I haven't seen anyone develop a miniature-CIWS to counter drones yet. Something like a small phased array radar paired with a 22LR (lol) minigun (you don't want to have to manually cycle it when it misfires) at a price point that allows "slap one on every vehicle larger than a pickup truck". Nothing about the small quadcopter drones has enough redundancy to take much of a hit, it seems (and I doubt drone-dropped explosives do either), so I doubt it would take much firepower. Speed, precision, accuracy, and attentiveness are all problems that can be solved mechanically (see the CIWS). An effective range of even 100m would at least protect a moderate-value mobile asset pretty well.
ControlsFreak
24m ago
infinite resources
Supply curves slope upwards.
Rov_Scam
25m ago
Consider, for a moment, the mechanics of what you're suggesting. Suppose you're a normal guy working a normal job and you don't know anyone particularly important or noteworthy. And then one day I show up at your door wearing a suit accompanied by two guys with the build of John Fetterman and I tell you that you need to commit a high-profile murder for a certain amount of money, possibly with the veiled (or not so veiled) threat that if you don't comply you or your family will be harmed. Do you say "Yes sir" and do it, not knowing if it will work or you'll end up spending the rest of your life in prison? Not knowing if I'm even going to pay the money you're offered? Will you believe me when I tell you that the Department will have your back and make sure the whole thing is covered up? Will you believe that I actually represent Bill Clinton or Mossad or whoever? Or will you go straight to the police, or your supervisor, or the media about how someone you could identify if necessary offered you money to kill Jeffrey Epstein? Now multiply this across the dozens of people necessary to carry this out, from the COs, to the technicians, to the prison staff, to the investigators with the Inspector General, to the medical examiner, to Bill Barr, to the US Marshalls, and practically every other link in the chain. Do you really think that none of these people would say anything? You don't think that anyone would have simply refused to participate, and at least come forward after Epstein's death? For what it's worth, Tova Noel and Michael Thomas don't seem to be living the high life these days. both were prosecuted for falsifying records and fired from the department, and Noel was working as a medical assistant in a care home the last time she was in the news.
But beyond that, what exactly did Epstein's death accomplish? Why go through all of that trouble? The worst case scenario here would be that Epstein makes public statements accusing everyone from Bill Clinton to Donald Trump to The Man in the Moon of bangin underage girls on his private island. But as I mentioned earlier, there would be no motive for him to do so at that point other than spite. If the Powers That Be were so influential as to have corrupted the entire DOJ, they could have easily written off any accusations as the uncorroborated ramblings of a condemned man with an axe to grind, and said they weren't sufficient to be used as evidence in any criminal prosecution, and they would have been right. The only thing he could have offered would have been context and authentication of other evidence. If the goal was just to embarrass these people, then he doesn't need to provide the kind of evidence that can hold up in court, hence it doesn't matter whether he's alive or dead. He could have sworn affidavits and videotaped interviews where he lays out everything in detail. He was meeting with his attorneys nearly every day after he was arrested, yet the assassins didn't plan for this possibility? Why go after Epstein and not go after other target who would be much easier to get to, like:
- The prosecuting attorney. If Epstein's friends have so much power, they could have certainly pressured the prosecutor to drop the indictment.
- The judge, who could have found that the non-prosecution agreement applied and dismissed the indictment.
- The aforementioned attorneys, who might have incriminating evidence in their possession that would be presumably made pubic upon Epstein's death.
- The accusers who actually provided sworn testimony implicating Bill Clinton and other powerful people.
- Jeffrey Epstein at any time prior to his 2019 arrest, especially after he started getting sued and was being deposed.
- And, this is the big one, Ghislaine Maxwell. She probably had similar evidence to what Epstein himself had, in terms of testimony. She had been missing for years at the time the story blew up in the media. It would have been really easy to make her stay missing. Or just not really look for her. Instead they spend a year tracking her down so they can prosecute her. Why let her live, when it would have been so easy to bump her off?
These people are so powerful that they can make the entire DOJ come to heel, running the gantlet of risk that comes when any one of dozens of links could blow their cover at any time, yet they don't bump off any of the other people who could be gotten rid of more cleanly, or who could have made the story go away with little fanfare?
yofuckreddit
31m ago
I'm a huge supporter of it in moderation and conjunction with sincere appreciation and encouragement. I thank my kids for everything they do to help out, I let them know what teasing is and how to respond to it. If I'm shaming them for lack of ability, it's only because I know they can.
It's far too critical a tool in building a high-trust family to leave behind. Shouldn't a kid be at least a little ashamed of screaming or slamming the door to wake up a sibling? Wasting food they asked for and had someone prepare? Talking over someone telling a story?
I feel like we deal with way less BS than other parents because we are comfortable having calm corrective conversations with young kids. Maybe that's rose-colored glasses, maybe it'll be the wrong play long term, but right now it feels like a cheat code.
oats_son
33m ago
Millions of white Americans are obese, welfare-dependent, high school dropouts who don't hold a candle to a Mexican day laborer, let alone the millions of educated and net-positive tax contributing immigrants whose hard-earned money is used to pay for SNAP so Harold can buy more Doritos.
How do you think this sounds with a different ethnic group? Are you sure you aren't tainted by racism?
If you listen to the progressives, everything is tainted by racism. Everyone except white liberals views everything through a lens of race, and even they do too, they just are polite enough to say that they don't. For black people, it's negative outcomes that they get handed through the system. For Asians and other minorities, it's perceptions about their ability at math or other minor things. I think, as time goes on and the two separate Overton windows continue to get further away from each other, you will see more and more blatant acknowledgement of things from the perspective of race, as this is something that the progressive left and the "dissident right" share a viewpoint on. Racism is, after all, the default state of humanity. It is natural, in that groups with differences will have disparate outcomes simply because they're different, and they are viewed differently because they are different.
Skibboleth
It's never 4D Chess
37m ago
In my home area, Northern Virginia, all the jobs that teens used to do - fast food, lawnmowing, child care - are now done by adult Central American immigrants. It's been that way for thirty years or so!
?
I mean, yes, you will absolutely find immigrants doing this kind of work, but you will also find teenagers. I live in MD rather than VA now, but I go back and forth a lot. It varies from establishment to establishment, but it is extremely common to find teenagers working at short-order restaurants, gas stations, grocery stores, etc...
Rov_Scam
45m ago
If you want something else in the same vein, but even worse, check out Dave Winfield's book Dropping the Ball, where he goes through a laundry lsit of things wrong with professional baseball, from steroids, to unhealthy ballpark food, to high school baseball players getting worse girlfriends than football and basketball players, and then proceeds to blame it on nobody at all, saying that everyone in the game from Bud Selig on down is doing a great job. Anyway, to address your points:
-
You could have made that argument in 2016, when the superdelegate field was stacked against him, but they changed the rules in 2020 specifically for that reason, ran a competitive field, and he still lost. Anyway, Sanders did not win the first three primaries; he won one primary and two caucuses, and in Iowa and New Hampshire the totals were close enough that he was still behind in the delegate count. This may seem like a pedantic distinction, but caucus states always seem to give outsiders a better chance, likely because of the low turnout compared to primaries. And while Biden did abysmally in the first two contests, he finished second in the Nevada caucuses. It made no sense for him to drop out at this point, as his star was rising and he had been consistently leading polls in South Carolina by a wide margin. And he ends up crushing it in South Carolina, moving into the lead in one fell swoop. Mayor Pete, meanwhile, has been trending downward, and it's pretty clear he has no purchase with black voters. It made no sense for him to stay in for Super Tuesday so he could get walloped in the South. It made no sense for Klobuchar to stay in at this point, either, as her campaign never really picked up speed. Had they both stayed in the race, I doubt it would have made much of a difference. Klobuchar wasn't winning any more delegates. Pete may have peeled some off in 5 of the 15 states that were contested on Super Tuesday, plus a few in California and Texas because there are so many of them, but winning anything was unlikely, and he would have bowed out immediately afterwards anyways. Pete was an outsider who debated well and overperformed in early states with low delegate counts. He was never expected to challenge for the nomination, and if it wasn't for a couple of fluke performances in heavily white areas nobody would be talking about any kind of Bernie screwjob. Sanders went head to head with Biden and lost, that's all there is to it.
-
It's identity politics, but not something you can blame them for. Nominees have a history of picking running mates for reasons not entirely related to their qualifications for the office (of which there really aren't any). Bush picked Quayle to shore up his support in the Bible Belt. Trump picked Pence for the same reason. W picked Cheney to counter suspicions that he was a lightweight. Kerry picked Edwards to shore up support among conservative Democrats. Obama picked Biden to compensate for his lack of experience. McCain picked Palin because unexpectedly picking a woman might have provided the miracle his campaign needed to win that race (which backfired, but nonetheless; also see Mondale picking Ferraro). And now we come to 2020, and the Democrats are running an elderly white man in the era of peak woke, four years after they lost a race in part because their candidate wasn't perceived as progressive enough, months after winning a campaign in which the nominee's biggest rival was a self-described socialist. They can be forgiven for wanting to shore up the progressive wing by running a woman of color with progressive tendencies, but not so progressive as to be at odds with the platform. I agree that they should have known at the time that vice president would have been a more important office than it normally is, but I don't see this as a huge blunder. You try to win the election you're running now, not the election you might be running four years from now.
-
Sure, but what else was he supposed to run on? His record? Biden's best chance was to keep the coalition that won him the presidency in 2020, and the best way of doing that was by reminding them of all the bullshit they'd be dealing with if Trump won again. The Democrats warned that something similar to this was going to happen, and Trump managed to exceed even the wildest expectations of Democrats, with talk of a third term, shipping people to Salvadoran prisons, talk of invading Canada, talk of firing Jerome Powell, the Epstein business, DOGE, tariffs, and countless more examples to name. His approval rating dropped like a rock upon taking office, and he's net unfavorable in every category. That there are people out there who are surprised by any of this boggles the mind. The biggest mistake they made was that once Kamala was the nominee, they didn't roll out a whole new agenda. She could have been sold as the way forward for Democrats, but in the end there was nothing but a few lukewarm proposals that didn't get any serious traction. You can blame that on the tight schedule, but I would have thought that by September they would have had a clear policy platform that was different enough from Biden's that Kamal could call it her own.
shoeonfoot
45m ago
Ok, consider this a crash out. The last straw was the how many upvotes the "invasive species" comment got. There's just no way that the opinions on this site aren't tainted by racism. Too bad really, this place could be valuable otherwise.
chooky
48m ago
No, I mean there is a 2-3 bedroom apartment and 2 or even 3 people live in it. Like on Friends!
quiet_NaN
48m ago
Original Sin: President Biden's Decline, Its Cover-up, and His Disastrous Choice to Run Again is a 2025 non-fiction book by the American journalists Jake Tapper and Alex Thompson. It was published by Penguin Random House on May 20, 2025. It details the claims of a cover-up regarding Joe Biden's age and health during his presidency and reelection campaign, leading up to the 2024 presidential election.
shoeonfoot
51m ago
No, Taylor left Japan when he was a teenager and has himself abandoned any claim to be Japanese.
I was fortunate enough to live in Japan for four years in the 90s. I met a white guy who grew up in Japan from a young age and was then in his mid-30s. His parents were French but he attended Japanese public school rather than an international school, which is popular among more affluent foreigners. His Japanese friends considered him Japanese. Obviously the barrier to become Japanese is higher, but Japanese people are more open-minded on this question than most people think.
charlesf
52m ago
This is a good point actually. I've knows a few Chinese American youths who spend a lot of their non-school time working at the restaurant their parents own. None of these kids were on the books as employed at all, and received pay to match.
quiet_NaN
56m ago
Act utilitarianism is not the only kind of utilitarianism there is. There is also rule utilitarianism and Two-level utilitarianism. Utilitarians can be against believing false things in the same way that they can be against child rape: while it is certainly possible to conjure hypothetical scenarios where the thing they are against has the better outcome, in practice these situations do not seem to appear.
Go and find some utility improving lie as an example
Hey, I am not the one who claims that there is such a thing as a false belief which improves utility. You seem to claim that such things exist, so you should come up with examples.
One example comes from Pratchett:
"For example, there was the Raddles' privy. Miss Level had explained carefully to Mr. and Mrs. Raddle several times that it was far too close to the well, and so the drinking water was full of tiny, tiny creatures that were making their children sick. They'd listen very carefully, every time they heard the lecture, and still they'd never move the privy. But Mistress Weatherwax told them it was caused by goblins who were attracted to the smell, and by the time they left that cottage, Mr. Raddle and three of his friends were already digging a new well at the other end of the garden."
There are several defenses of Granny Weatherwaxes behavior possible: 0. Operating on simulacrum level 2 is fine, truth does not matter. Obviously I reject this.
- It could be argued that she wanted to transport the true belief that the distance between well and privy was to small (but I do not find that very convincing).
- It could be argued that this was the closest thing to the truth the Raddles could grasp. Consider:
Medieval peasant: "Where do you come from?"
Literally-truthtelling alien: "To understand the answer to that question, you first have to understand that your cosmology is all wrong. While you believe that your world is planar, it is actually a sphere, strike that, a roughly sphere-shaped body. You do not fall off from that sphere because there is a force called gravity which pulls you towards the center of that body, even though calling it a force is an oversimplification as in reality it is more accurately described as bent space-time. Gravity is also causing your world to rotate around ..."
Conceptionally-truthtelling alien: "We come from the stars."
Literally-truthelling alien: "We most certainly do not. The surface temperature of stellar bodies is much too high to support life." I would be rather sympathetic to the second alien here, because while he lies in a very technical sense, he is trying to answer in the most truthful way the peasant will understand.
- One might argue that both the Raddles and my peasant are not so much suffering from a false belief, but trapped in a whole world-view full of falsehoods. Where normally spreading false beliefs is like salting the fertile earth, replacing one falsehood with another one in an endless sea of falsehoods is like dumping salt into the ocean, so the lie is not morally wrong.
However, none of these arguments apply to believing falsehoods yourself or your epistemic peer community. The peasant who tries to understand general relativity, fails and ends up believing that in a vague way, the aliens come from the stars, but not exactly is more virtuous than the peasant who just goes "sure, you come from the stars. whatever."
shoeonfoot
59m ago
Are you sure they are as loyal to you, as you are to them?
Yes? The vast majority of second and third generation Mexican-Americans are never going to fly a Mexican flag in their life. This is a strawman.
Their views are just as legitimate as yours.
Wanting to deport non-white citizens is a suicidal political position because it foments civil war.
birb_cromble
1hr ago
There is very little in the way of actual policy outcomes that is easily traced to Biden’s senescence.
How much of that is due to small changes in policy positions, and how much of that is due to the entire liberal establishment utterly stonewalling anybeffort to find out?
shoeonfoot
1hr ago
I'll never understand this nostalgic mewling. Millions of white Americans are obese, welfare-dependent, high school dropouts who don't hold a candle to a Mexican day laborer, let alone the millions of educated and net-positive tax contributing immigrants whose hard-earned money is used to pay for SNAP so Harold can buy more Doritos.
ThomasdelVasto
Κύριε, ποίησόν με ὄργανον τῆς ἀγάπης σου
1hr ago
I'm not saying they have discovered anything. I'm saying the techniques are more salient in the Buddhist tradition and easier for the modern mind to understand. Prayer and meditative prayer is an extremely confusing concept comparatively, in my opinion. It's also not nearly as popular in Christian circles.
dr_analog
top 1% of underdog fetishists
1hr ago
Russian (or maybe Irish) proverb: nothing is as good or as bad as it seems.
Also, do you think any country is doing better? Which?
We're always going to have problems. Problems can be solved though, and the ones that don't get solved are maybe not as bad as in our imagination.
One example: the debt problem is bad but it's still decades out before it becomes catastrophic, and it could still be ameliorated or turned into a soft default (e.g. a few bouts of massive inflation) in the meantime. Also if we default on our debt everyone else is also feeling serious pain as well.
How can you abandon the non-racists to be devoured by those nazis? Without your help, we are surely lost. We’ll be forced down the alt-right pipeline, and it’ll be all your fault when we come out brown on the other side.
More options
Context Copy link