domain:ymeskhout.substack.com
BreakerofHorsesandMen
13m ago
Very good post. May we all return to a state where we understand that rights best go to the strong, that is, freedom of speech is best utilized and most valuable when used by those who would speak their mind anyways.
Also, this is partially a roundabout way of saying, glad to see you back, hope your break went well!
Tree
13m ago
There is and stubbornly remains some class of people who think the solution to the problem is to intend to one-box, but then to become a two-boxer after Omega has made its prediction.
I do think that strat works for Kavka's toxin puzzle, though. I don’t know about other people, but I am entirely capable of entertaining a single, limited, stupid thought for a moment, without simultaneously considering higher-level contradicting thoughts.
The_Nybbler
In the game of roller derby, women aren't just the opposing team; they're the ball.
16m ago
Or maybe administrations should not try to bind their successors by extralegal means, because the fact that it is difficult is a feature not a bug.
I don't agree that the Trump administration is engaged in unusual thuggishness, but whether they are or they aren't, they shouldn't.
PutAHelmetOn
Recovering Quokka
19m ago
Assuming (for the sake of this question) that the end goal of this administration is to establish a type of authoritarianism where people are kidnapped and disappeared because of vocal opposition to the regime, what should be the response by the opposition that would want to prevent that?
Maybe this is just my biased right-wing brain thinking, but my answer is the 2nd amendment. Government needs the ability to do violence, but it needs the people's overwhelming force to keep it aligned.
Private individuals should arm themselves. Officially, the opposition should expand private militia. If the government doesn't allow this, then the authoritarianism has already been established.
Hadad
19m ago
The harsh consequences are the terror, pain, and distress of the deportation process, ideally aggravated as much as possible by willful right-wing executives. This is what I referred to in my other post as the "psychic wound" -- make being an illegal in the US as traumatic as possible, and many of them will self-deport, while others, not yet in the US, will be scared of the danger and not come at all.
There is no meaningful way for the state to bind its descendants. Laws can be changed or ignored. Personnel will change. Short of a constitutional amendment -- which ain't happening, and even if it did, could theoretically happen again after that to undo it -- there is no way to stop the next admin from fucking everything you did up.
So solutions must be outside the usual bounds of law and state capacity. The solution is to create something that outlasts any one administration. Memories of horror and pain are one such option -- generational wounds, enduring long after Trump's out of office and the next Democrat is once again promising infinity immigration with no brakes and permanent amnesty.
FistfullOfCrows
27m ago
Young Thug the 3rd esquire running from obnoxiously hated 5-0 in his latest hit STRAIGHT OUTA AZTLAN
Totalitarianit
33m ago
It is a safe bet. My response to this is to double down on the optics. I'm mostly onboard with anything the Trump admin does between actually following through with their threats and doing a full scale crackdown all the way to them crafting a convincing illusion (for the uneducated) of mass deportations that drastically decreases illegal immigration and pressures current illegals to fly under the radar, but secretly allows a decent number of them to work because it brings us back to a happy medium from an economic standpoint. There are drawbacks no matter what though. A full crackdown that deports as many people as possible will have immediate negative effects on the economy, but would probably be worth it in the long run. On the other hand, a convincing illusion for illegals and MAGAs keeps border crossings low, maintains the economy in the short-term, but falls into the low scale effect you talk about and it doesn't really help us in the future.
Any scenario in this spectrum is preferable to whatever the Democratic party does with the "No human is illegal" optics they try to portray, which I find to be far more detrimental to our society.
ThomasdelVasto
Κύριε, ποίησόν με ὄργανον τῆς ἀγάπης σου
35m ago
Good points. It's repeated a lot around here, but the post-WW2 global order does seem to have almost fully broken down at this point.
wayfarer
36m ago
In Iran it seems that targeted attacks on leadership and GBAD allowed them extreme freedom of operation.
So far Iran shot down a single drone.
It seems so far to be going as well as Russia wanted its SMO to go.
(it is an open question how well it will go long term and whether they will stop Iran from getting nukes)
ThomasdelVasto
Κύριε, ποίησόν με ὄργανον τῆς ἀγάπης σου
38m ago
Dismantling a tool that could be used for a nefarious purpose isn't proof that a nefarious purpose won't occur, but it's about as good as one can get from inference. Especially given the rather elaborate preparation kabuki sets the Trump administration has demonstrated to date, such as the whole DOGE saga and how it started with the USAID takedown. There was a heck of a lot of choreographing in that, which is about as good an indication of prepatory planning, and the sort of policy-cognizant planning that would recognize tools for a crackdown campaign.
Except because of the makeup of the whole apparatus, it couldn't be used by Trump or the right. It was a left-only set up from the beginning.
PutAHelmetOn
Recovering Quokka
39m ago
The right-wing in this case need not be emotionally attached to the language of "good-faith." Put simply, if today's movement quacks like yesterday's movement, then it's yesterday's movement. Today's movement must distinguish themselves from yesterday's movement if they wish the right-wing to compromise with them. An unwillingness to distinguish themselves is an admission that they are, in fact, yesterday's movement. Personally, I think "good-faith" is simply the name given to this concept, since as a show of good faith is the standard English phrase for what I am calling "distinguish."
Mantergeistmann
43m ago
Make 'em collapsible hats, and follow the rules of Naval Warfare: it's fine to be deceptive up until the final moment of the operation/arrest, at which point you must put your hat on immediately beforehand. Failure to do so will, again, automatically lead to harsh penalties so there's no "oh, well, in the heat of the moment I forgot".
Throwaway05
50m ago
I have to imagine that the Dems have gotten very good at knifing each other for perceived thought crimes and insufficient demographic achievement. Only those who have been around long enough manage to avoid this through the accumulation of political power manage to survive in this environment.
Too much eating their own.
I do know a lot of young dems who in other times would be stepping up, but they seem to be too white and/or male and therefore stick with the think tanks or party strategist roles (and lead the elders into unpopular decisions).
MadMonzer
Temporarily embarrassed liberal elite
52m ago
It is partially a useful correction - the real cases which provoked the legislation involved illegal post-viability abortions (legal viability is 24 weeks in the UK, not 20) or reasonable suspicion thereof, so an analogous natural pregnancy loss would be a stillbirth.
But the version of the story being pushed by British feminists is that it is about women suspected of using grey-market online abortion pills (as opposed to abortion pills prescribed by a doctor), so as a description of what was being said in public "miscarriage" is correct.
PutAHelmetOn
Recovering Quokka
52m ago
Surely ICE deporting people is actually just normal? And everyone's overreacting because everyone's emotional setpoint has adjusted to the last administration.
Isn't "martial law" the US-equivalent of your list here?
Hoffmeister25
American Bukelismo Enthusiast
54m ago
GenX is as close to race-blind as an American generation ever got
This is only true of white Gen-Xers. A substantial share of black Americans never stopped caring deeply about race; add in the fact that Harris is the daughter of two leftist academics and her opinions become entirely typical of highly-educated black Americans of pretty much any generation since the 1960’s.
Tenaz
58m ago
Now, I am pro-choice and also one of these much hated Singerians who think that babies do not have more of an intrinsic right to life than other mammals of similar cognitive capabilities.
Do you consider sleeping adults morally valuable? They have arguably worse cognitive capabilities than babies.
Lizzardspawn
59m ago
And as of lately dysfunctional. I think that government systems must rotate every few years to prevent people from learning how to game the system.
I am certain that bringing something else in USA than first past the post will improve the current quality of governing, not because of superiority of the new system but of the shakeup. Same with bringing first past the post 20 years later. For a new shakeup.
I'll go the opposite the other commenters here. I'm started being in an international LD relationship about 6 years ago. I arranged for us to meet for a week within 6 months of starting the relationship. After that, COVID made meeting again difficult, but I arranged for her to come visit me for some months regardless. We were married before she went back home. She moved in permanently with me in 2023.
It's super basic bitch pop-psych but the most important thing to remember is that venting from a woman is not a prompt for you to fix an issue and absolutely not a prompt for you to try and dedramatise the issue. It's a prompt for you to say an "empty platitude" like "oh, that sucks, I hope things gets better". It's hard because your rational brain is telling you the issues can be fixed, or that she just needs a different perspective. Vast majority of the time, this is not helpful.
The empty platitudes might feel empty to you, but if you actually love her then they are not empty if you're saying them to help her feel better.
I'm led to believe it should come naturally if you truly capital-L Love someone?
Hahahaha! No. If I were to ask any man I know in a long-term straight relationship I will get the same lament; "it's like we're talking a different language". It's a miracle humanity managed to pair bond for so long. Marriage (and serious relationships that are indistinguishable from marriages) are hard, it's not a capital L Love issue; it's a two completely different human beings with different lives, histories and wildly different brain chemistry are trying to get on the same page to act as one. Both people need to learn to at least understand the other's language, and ideally talk it at least a bit.
yofuckreddit
1hr ago
I am an LDR vet(unfortunately) and have to echo that getting into meatspace as a goal is key.
How much emotional damage have you all inflicted on you? I ask because my first girlfriend was sourced the same way yours was. I was in the same position. The difference was that I was ~15 years old, so the years I wasted on a sub-optimal relationship could at least be considered "below the line".
In terms of showing affection and truly feeling it, I've found it helpful to actually think about what they do for me and what is awesome about them. You can forget these things when involved with someone for a long time.
If you're struggling too much to do this, it may have less to do with aspergers and more to do with them not being great. I'd need to know more about her to give more specific help.
BreakerofHorsesandMen
1hr ago
Plus you’re bringing back obnoxiously large hats, the loss of which is directly related to the decline of our civilization.
Make bicornes great again!
Southkraut
The rain fell gentlier.
1hr ago
Fair. But what is the ideal way for a practical egoist to deal with Alzheimer's?
Southkraut
The rain fell gentlier.
1hr ago
The dream of Richard Gatling, realized at last? Maybe to some extent.
Autonomous drones will still be tasked with killing people, will have false positives in identifying targets, will sometimes attack large areas with a high probability of collateral damage. And as @BreakerofHorsesandMen said, they may be used just as well to effectively carry out variably-discriminate mass killings.
OTOH, like precision-guided munitions reduced the usage of carpet bombing campaigns, the ability to use drone strikes precisely tailored to a given target may also work to reduce collateral damage like you say.
We'll see.
Rov_Scam
1hr ago
Amusingly, black people saved NYC by electing Adams who arrested the Floyd crime wave by allowing the NYPD to do their jobs.
I wouldn't give Adams too much credit here. Pittsburgh crime statistics are as follows:
2018: 58 homicides, 103 non-fatal shootings 2019: 38 homicides, 113 non-fatal shootings 2020: 50 homicides, 147 non-fatal shootings 2021: 56 homicides, 170 non-fatal shootings 2022: 71 homicides, 137 non-fatal shootings 2023: 52 homicides, 118 non-fatal shootings 2024: 42 homicides, 83 non-fatal shootings
So far in 2025, as of May 31 there were 11 homicides and 33 non-fatal shootings. I don't want to project that out since crime usually goes up during the summer, but so far it looks like the downward trend is continuing. Of note is that Ed Gainey became mayor in 2022, and was elected largely as a response to perceived heavy-handed police tactics by Bill Peduto during the 2020 protests. He was supported by all the lefties, though his record from his time in the state house suggests he's more of a mainstream Democrat.
In the meantime, the police department has been in complete disarray. One of Gainey's first moves in office was to replace the retiring police chief with a veteran of the Pittsburgh force who had since moved to Florida, chasing a promotion. This lasted exactly 18 months, at which point the chief retired because he wanted to ref NCAA basketball. Compounding the problem was that it came to light that he had made a deal with Gainey upon being hired that he'd be allowed to ref basketball 18 months on the job. As critics pointed out, it would be ridiculous for a full-time police chief to be on the road 100 days a year, and the mayor should have known that. Worse, the 18 months was calculated because that was the point at which he could retire with a chief's pension. Basically, Gainey got played. A new chief from out of town was soon named, but he withdrew his name from consideration shortly thereafter, presumably because he found out how dysfunctional the administration was. There's zero chance a permanent chief will be named before the new administration takes over next year.
Even before the chief left, things weren't exactly going swimmingly. Officer shortages have led to dramatic reductions in service. Police stopped responding to alarms, and reduced their response time to "within 24 hours" for anything that wasn't an active emergency. Precincts are no longer manned overnight. Foot patrols have been increased Downtown and on the South Side, but this is due more to political pressure than any initiative on Gainey's part (crime aside, Gainey's entire modus operandi was to not do anything until a bad news story or complaints from the politically connected forced his hand). His response to criticism has been to publicly call out local journalists he doesn't like for only focusing on the bad things, citing overall crime reductions, and ham-fisted cheerleading. "Who here doesn't think our police are doing a good job? Don't we have a beautiful city! Why don't you guys ever report on how much Downtown has come back since the pandemic?" In other words, stuff that takes about three minutes and zero effort, all of it in the same MLK tone of voice that he uses ad nauseam, wherein he acts like the new road paving schedule is a monumental achievement in civic governance.
I'm not going to blame Gainey for all of the police department's woes, since most of them are downstream of a nationwide officer shortage over which he has no control. But I'm also not going to give him credit for reducing the crime rate, which seem to have also gone down as part of a nationwide trend over which he has no control. To my knowledge, no one has ever done an analysis on whether "tough on crime" mayors have any statistical advantage over "defund the police" mayors when it comes to lowering the crime rate, and it seems like the biggest argument against the defund mayors is that the crime rate didn't go down as much as in other places. So I'm not giving Adams any credit here, and I wouldn't expect a sharp rise in the crime rate if some lefty gets elected.
I agree, it'd be great if they didn't. Unfortunately, we've had multiple administrations fill the nation with illegals, who contribute to the electoral power of the very administrations that do this, and they then dodge (with help) the legal means of deporting them.
It'd be lovely if I could make Democrats stop, but I can't. So instead, I'm going for the fixes that are actually possible.
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