domain:drmanhattan16.substack.com
RoyGBivensAction
Zensunni Scientologist
8hr ago
But there's one simple phrase that makes me doubt that "causing mass death without inherently presenting yourself as a target of investigation" is simply as easy as "practicing even rudimentary opsec" — and that's "parallel construction."
There are parts of the Mangione story that I doubt for this reason.
I see parallel construction on a semi-regular basis in mundane drug stops. Boy, it's remarkably convenient that a local cop happened to stop this particular 18-wheeler for a traffic violation, had a drug dog ready and got a positive alert, and immediately measured the inside length of the trailer that revealed the hidden compartment in the front of the fully-loaded trailer. Incredible odds on that one.
So there is zero question in my mind it's happening on a much larger basis, and the only question is just how much of it is going on.
It also makes it quite remarkable that the person who planted the pipe bombs on Jan 5 has never been caught. So remarkable that it some might say it glows.
self_made_human
amaratvaṃ prāpnuhi, athavā yatamāno mṛtyum āpnuhi
8hr ago
Everyone is at liberty to value truth and internal coherence as much as they care to, or not at all.
At the end of the day, the cost-benefit analysis is your own. I can only lay out the reasons I faced what seems like a very similar choice, down to the church and cutesy missionary girls ambushing me on a bridge back from work, and still turned them down.
The costs are honestly not awful, at least the material ones. Giving up drinking? That's just plain healthy for you. Coffee and tea? Stupid to rule out really, but not that big a deal. 10% of your money? It also buys you a strong social-safety net.
My last driving instructor was a Mormon. Very pleasant person, hardworking, open-minded and patient with my foibles. I was a bit concerned when I learned that he didn't believe in health or home insurance, trusting the church would have his back, but that seems to work out for him. Honestly, Mormons seem decent enough, even if I sincerely believe they're crazy, more so for believing in a religion that is even more of an obvious fraud than the rest. You could do much worse by becoming a Scientologist or joining the Nation of Islam.
You’ve both expressed horror and consternation at the thought that at some point I might actually convince myself that it’s true. As if this would be some catastrophic loss for me. But I honestly have to ask both of you: why would this be bad? What actual bad effects would that have on my life? I wouldn’t get to win any more arguments against sincerely-believing Christians/Mormons? Okay, what am I actually getting out of participating in those arguments now? I’ll have a flawed/incomplete model of the cosmos? Okay, how is that actually going to negatively impact my actions? Like, I agree that epistemic hygiene is a virtue, and that reducing cognitive dissonance is good, but clearly these things are not the only terminal values a person can have. What other concerns do you actually have about this decision? Do you just find it yucky? What would you have me do instead?
No, really, that's about it. I wouldn't do what you're doing precisely because I value epistemic hygiene that strongly. I am a big fan of having true beliefs about the world, as true as I can make them as imperfect, computationally bounded entity in an uncertain world. Truth doesn't have to comfortable, and it often isn't. It is hardly the only thing I value myself, but the primary reason I see little appeal in Mormonism or any other religion is because they're false.
That's enough for me.
I suppose it is easier if you're on the fence, epistemically speaking. I have no idea how you got there, and honestly, there's no point talking about it. We know how debates about religion end on the margin. As I've said, you could do worse. You're selling your soul for a relatively low price, and getting quite a lot for it.
Your beliefs are the map by which you navigate the territory of reality. Willfully accepting a major inaccuracy in one part of the map, even a part that seems purely metaphysical, creates a kind of intellectual vulnerability. It sets a precedent that comfort, community, or spiritual fulfillment can override the process of evidence-based reasoning. The problem is not that believing ancient Jews built boats and sailed to America will cause you to miscalculate your taxes. The problem is that it requires you to build and maintain a cognitive partition, a special zone where different rules of evidence apply. Over time, it becomes very difficult to keep that partition perfectly sealed. It creates a pressure to harmonize your other beliefs with the core tenets you've accepted, which can lead to further distortions down the line.
You might not win arguments against Christians anymore, which you correctly identify as a low-stakes loss. But you might be asked to make decisions about your children's education, about medical care, or about political issues based on principles derived from a flawed foundation. A worldview is not a collection of independent propositions; it is an interconnected system. Introducing a known falsehood is like introducing a single line of buggy code into a complex operating system. It might not cause a crash today, but you have created a systemic instability that may manifest in unexpected ways later.
Unfortunately, as your nod to your future status as paterfamilias suggests, you're not just selling your soul. You're selling those of your future children.
That? Beyond the pale for me. I think religion is bad enough as is, but it's even harder to shake off when it's drilled into you from birth, and just about all of your social status and community hinges on staying within its framework. My understanding is that while Mormons aren't as hard on apostates as, for example, Muslims beheading heathens, it's still social death to deconvert. If your children wanted to leave, they'd likely lose you. And then you'd face the choice of being with them, or keeping your own standing.
Every incentive, from the Young Single Adults ward to the social pressure against apostasy, is optimized to keep people within the fold. From a systems-design perspective, it's a very neat trick.
By raising children in this environment, you are choosing to place them in a system where leaving the faith often means losing their entire social world, and potentially their family. You are trading their future intellectual autonomy for their present (and likely future) social stability and happiness. This might even be a good trade. But it is a trade you are making on their behalf.
What would I have you do instead? The honest answer is that the alternative is much harder. It involves the difficult, atomized work of building a community from scratch, of navigating a dating market full of misaligned incentives, and of finding meaning without a prefabricated script. It offers no guarantees. It is easy for me to sit here and champion the virtues of a difficult and uncertain path that I have chosen.
So I cannot tell you that your decision is wrong according to your own values. I can only report that, from my perspective, you are accepting a deal that I would have to refuse. That I recently refused. You are trading a commitment to accuracy for a suite of tangible and powerful social benefits. You may even be correct that, for the average human, this is a utility-maximizing strategy. My concern is that the price is higher than it appears, and that the bill will be paid not just by you, but by the family you hope to build.
Good luck. I genuinely respect that you are going into this with a level of self-awareness that is uncommon. I hope the trade-offs prove to be worth it for you.
hydroacetylene
8hr ago
As I’ll continue to say, if Joe exotic can turn men gay, it stands to reason someone, somewhere, can turn them straight. This amounts to viewpoint discrimination in therapy, which is mostly garbage anyways.
My conversion therapy was done with a priest, and featured mildly awkward talk therapy and homework exercises that were psychological in nature. There’s no reason a therapist couldn’t have done it but there’s also no reason it needed a therapist(as indeed, I didn’t use). Restricting it to a different set of practitioners seems both small potatoes but also not something that has a justification.
Is there something in this 5000 word essay you find interesting? I sped through it, but tech->fascism->tech->fascism doesn't provide much insight. The 30 additional mentions of fascism don't make up for it either.
The best time for Bluesky to put its foot down and set the tone was a few months after the platform received the influx last Summer. Enough time for the new users to create networks, get situated, but with enough anti-X relevancy that they can soften the reaction. Make a great big point of it, do the waffle bit, and get the 'we only moderate content on our site' policy riots over with.
Bluesky has been an ideological monoculture for as long as I've paid attention to it. Whenever I endeavor a visit, the main feed advertises this culture as the heart, blood, and soul of the site. There's a smaller, but significant slice of the main feed that is cool friggen' astronomy photos from reddit, but mostly it's Twitter resistance posting and its professional pundit version from anti-Elon diaspora. I believe the CEO when she says she doesn't like it, but the non-activist left-liberal tech networks -- which I assume she likes -- exist in quiet corners.
Does Bluesky ever plan to make money, or is it Jack Dorsey's pet project and it never needs to? There is close to zero demand for a truly decentralized social network, and this preference is no more apparent than in the stereotypical Bluesky user.
It seems that it is hard to make large scale "microblogging" platform that caters to heterodox political culture and I'm a little curious if there is any insight for why it is hard to make one?
I'd argue that the heterodox platform is called X. On the platform you can find unrepentant racists of all stripes, from the deranged ramblings of black nationalist Hoteps to teenage frogposters in Malaysia. You can find content from US representatives like AOC and Marjorie Taylor Greene, or you can hear from award winning economists, rocket scientists, CEOs, and lawyers.
The platform may not cater to heterodox political culture, but that's because few people demand or prefer one. The Motte encourages a heterodox political culture, but it can't conjure one.
dr_analog
top 1% of underdog fetishists
8hr ago
So my lurking on mastodon without account saw that something happened over at Bluesky and people were leaving to go to the fediverse instead.
How does that make sense? Bluesky is refusing to ban this person from the platform, therefore I'm moving to a distributed platform where it's not even possible to ban someone?
The_Nybbler
If you win the rat race you're still a rat. But you're also still a winner.
8hr ago
Werner von Braun was Prussian, though.
ToaKraka
Dislikes you
8hr ago
I barely learned anything reading the article.
Better article with copious screenshots
Jerry Chen: (bluesky user bursts into Waffle House) OH SO YOU HATE PANCAKES??
Jay Graber: Too real. We're going to try to fix this. Social media doesn't have to be this way.
Random person: have y'all banned Jesse Singal yet or
Jay Graber: WAFFLES
I've had similar thoughts about the sorts of opsec blunders reported in cases like this. (I'm reminded of /u/KulakRevolt's Substack piece on Mangione's many mistakes and how to avoid them.) And like some here note, I find it understandable that these men make such trivially-avoided mistakes, given that we aren't talking about the most rational, sober-minded people here.
But there's one simple phrase that makes me doubt that "causing mass death without inherently presenting yourself as a target of investigation" is simply as easy as "practicing even rudimentary opsec" — and that's "parallel construction."
Sure, in this, or any other particular case, the media narrative we're given for how the cops found them is probably true, and they probably did make the blunders described (again, not sane, rational sorts). But if "a lone man with a grudge against the world" was instead caught through some Three-Letter Agency's massive Fourth-Amendment-violating secret domestic surveillance program, that's not what we'd be told. No, we'll be given an alternative narrative of how this individual was found through perfectly-legal police methods, which would probably look something like, well, what we see in news reports in cases like this.
So, maybe your initial "try anonymously mass-shooting and you won't stay anonymous for long" position might still be true after all, just not for the same reason.
sarker
It isn't happening, and if it is, it's a bad thing
9hr ago
The whole point is to "hate the world"
This sounds more like Gnosticism than Christianity.
So they should also be old enough to buy smokes, weed and vodka, own guns, drive cars, have full control over their finances, shoot porn, vote, enlist, gamble in Vegas, make medical decisions without their parent's consent (think transgender surgeries), supply and use sperm banks, hold political office, perform for Epstein?
In order:
They already do, they already do, this was fine in 1960 so why isn't it fine now?, they're nearly there anyway, what finances?, what else do you think 14 year olds use Snapchat for?, no taxation without representation, if they can pass for 18 they lie about it and we didn't much care in the past, welcome to Counter Strike unboxing video #99999, they already do, when they act as sperm banks they owe child support, this would be worse than the current crop of politicians... how, exactly?, meanwhile, in Rotherham...
Oh yeah, and we already try teenagers "as adults" anyway, especially when they break the above laws, so clearly this is just ageism.
we generally do not bestow rights based on how good you are at beating people up.
Rights are not "bestowed". Men have those rights because they are capable of the organized violence required to force their recognition. Every one was fought for.
TK-421
9hr ago
The FCC, Trump, and Healing a Divided Nation Through Handouts
Here is the FCC Broadcast License for WCBS in New York. Broadcast Licenses were talked around a great deal during the Jimmy Kimmel situation but they weren't not talked about very much. This eventually became confusing for me. A lot of the rhetoric implied, and it makes intuitive sense, that removing a station's broadcast license is equivalent to stopping them from displaying their content. You had a license to speak, now you don't, so you don't get to speak.
But what actually happens when a broadcast license is revoked?
The answer eventually leads one to discover a fine distinction: the license permits the station to broadcast according to its specifications but that doesn't mean it's the only way the station has to broadcast. The license is covering the station as transmitter not the station as speaker. The license is really about spectrum allocation, not content. If WCBS loses their license there's no reason the station has to shut down and it's very likely that no one would even notice.
Broadcast stations have certain rights to be carried by distributors like a cable company or YouTube TV. Every 3 years they can chose to be either must-carry or retransmission: Must-carry means that all distributors must include the channel's content in their offerings but the broadcaster isn't allowed to be paid for it. This is common with public television channels or smaller market broadcasters. Retransmission is for broadcasters who have a product that distributors actually want. Local stations in big markets like WCBS-NY. This means distributors have to negotiate a contract with the broadcaster to carry the channel.
This is where we start to enter ground truth: money. Retransmission fees are a major source of revenue for these over the air (OTA) broadcasters. How much of their revenue? This is surprisingly hard to answer because all contracts in this distribution network make the numbers private. Redacted during lawsuits private. For a rough estimate, think 40-55% of their revenue.
There is one more technical aspect that it's important to understand: the distributors do not use the OTA broadcast signal for the retransmission. The OTA studios are sending their signal to the distributors digitally. At the technical level there is no difference for the distributor between an OTA channel and a cable one.
But there's a big difference in how much the distributor pays. Lots of variation but retransmission of a local channel is about 2-3x the cost of a non-sports or major cable channel. The delta is driven by two things: sports and regulatory arbitrage. Take out sports and local channels are essentially a low tier cable channel.
The details of the sports contracts are also proprietary but there are almost certainly reach clauses that a network like Fox would be in breach of if, for example, all of their stations simultaneously lost their FCC broadcast licenses. This would cause a healthy reshuffling across the entire media distribution system.
How
The FCC has the power to change or revoke licenses at any time for, among other reasons, "...if in the judgment of the Commission such action will promote the public interest, convenience, and necessity, or the provisions of this chapter or of any treaty ratified by the United States will be more fully complied with". The FCC currently has enough commissioners to form a quorum once the government reopens.
The public interest / good is a standard used throughout FCC regulations. It is also not a statutorily defined standard, it is meant to be interpreted by the Commission. The public good for allocating the spectrum has included technical and other non-content related considerations. The spectrum is a public good and there may be a better use for it even if there's nothing at all objectionable about how you're using it.
Which is how the FCC Commission will phrase it. And we know it is true because in 2017 an auction of OTA broadcaster frequencies brought in around 19 billion. Very imprecise but a rough value of auctioning off the spectrum used by current license holders would be the 25-50 billion range. This is a valuable natural resource and economically we are not being good stewards of it given technological advances.
Who Gets What
Trump: 25-50 billion, Drains The Swamp.
Democrats: No more fear of government censorship. Maybe kick some of the auction money their way.
Humble Citizens: lower cable bills, technological marvels from higher value spectrum uses, better access to the sports they desperately crave.
Economy: Redistribution of long standing revenue flows, creative destruction.
The best part - no legislative change necessary. The FCC can do this the moment they convene again following the shutdown using their existing statutory authority. The Administrative State's tools shall dismantle the Administrative State's house.
ThisIsSin
PC is for progressive-conservative
9hr ago
It's been going on for 2 generations now, and I would argue a hallmark of gerontocracies in general.
Hoffmeister25
American Bukelismo Enthusiast
9hr ago
I’ve switched to Yerba Mate (which is fully permitted under current doctrine) and it has not been a major step down. Eventually I might try and find some sort of caffeine powder (I know there are caffeine pills, but the ones I’ve seen are like 200mg, which is a massive amount to consume all at once) to mix into water or something, to reduce my sugar consumption.
Primaprimaprima
Aliquid stat pro aliquo
9hr ago
I didn’t take it as an insult lol, just thought it might be a fun factoid for people who didn’t know how much overlap we had (I know of a couple high-profile mottizens who have confirmed they post there)
MadMonzer
Epstein Files must have done something really awful for so many libs to want him released.
9hr ago
Depends on the date. The SA was the Nazi militia before Hitler took power, and engaged in a lot of non-state political violence. After Hitler consolidated power it had become an embarrassment (it was also a hotbed of Nazis who took the "Socialist" part of "National Socialist" more seriously than Hitler's new industrialist buddies were comfortable with) so it was dealt with in the Night of the Long Knives.
cjet79
9hr ago
The Waffles article is a reminder of how much I hate interacting with other parts of the internet.
Its a writing style that consists almost entirely of assigning the worst possible terms you can get away with to people you don't like. "Fascist", "race scientist", "shit-head", "racist", "white supremacist", etc. No regard for truth value, just pure culture warring and mud slinging.
I barely learned anything reading the article. There was about one paragraph of content explaining something that happened and then like 30 paragraphs of name-calling. That half paragraph that is most useful is here so no one else has to visit that link:
A little while back, Bluesky CEO Jay Graber approvingly tweeted a post by Jerry Chen about a person bursting into a Waffle House and shouting "oh, so you hate pancakes?". In the replies, someone asked her why she'd not yet banned notorious transphobe, fascist and serial instigator of harassment campaigns Jesse Singal from the platform, to which she replied with only "Waffles!".
Even in those two sentences she couldn't help but throw out some names.
I have to wonder if part of this writing style is a leftover problem of "micro" blogging platforms like twitter. In isolation you might believe those things about Jesse Singal, and it would be very useful to learn that thing. So a tweet saying that would get boosted up and retweeted.
But when its paragraph after paragraph of everyone being called a fascist, or some other thing that is the worst thing a progressive liberal can think about someone. You can't help but notice that this writer thinks everyone is a terrible awful no good human piece of garbage. And suddenly the information content collapses from "this person she is speaking about is really really bad" to just "she doesn't like this person, and everything she says about anyone is suspect".
It also highlights why some of Scott Alexander's takedowns of people are so damn effective and brutal. He will spend a lot of writing space saying many nice things about people that seem objectively bad. And then he will end by saying something slightly not nice about one person, and you come away thinking "damn that person must be the worst piece of shit ever".
If your default is to be nice, kind, and charitable to everyone, then if you ever need to stray from that default and say bad things about someone we know you really mean it. If your default is to insult everyone you just look like a misanthrope.
RoyGBivensAction
Zensunni Scientologist
9hr ago
And the HBDers here will be very aware of the demographic breakdowns between those two positions (and it's not usually a switch these days but more likely an electrical cord).
Walterodim
Only equals speak the truth, that’s my thought on’t
9hr ago
Still in complete agreement!
For the sake of completeness though, I think I have undersold just how obsessive our girl is about fetching. This behavior:
Whereas every collie I see playing fetch seems to have it optimized down to a science of how to get and return the ball as quickly as possible, and then to grind out as many repetitions as possible as fast as possible.
Maybe they're actually having a ton of fun doing it, but it just feels very serious in a way other dogs playing fetch doesn't.
That's her when fetching, just completely obsessed with the activity to the extent that she completely ignores other dogs, doesn't want to take even the smallest break, and sprints the ball back as quickly as possible until she's fatigued enough to decide she's had enough. She's an ex-breeder that I think developed some neurotic habits from the confined lifestyle prior to her moving to our home setting, and is also epileptic - there are some neurologic oddities that I think keep her from being entirely normal, so we just kind of roll with that. The finding games at home are a more relaxed, playful activity, but fetching is very serious business.
But yeah, more generally, I know exactly what you mean. I don't understand why people insist on getting these working breeds as city dogs where they're just wildly out of place and obviously have strong drives to do other things. For an old lab, even one that's neurotic about fetching, spending the vast majority of the day laying around is pretty optimal for her, but collies and Aussies and other herding dogs are clearly just losing their minds. I really don't get how their owners look at behavior that is just short of literally chewing on themselves and think it's fine.
RoyGBivensAction
Zensunni Scientologist
9hr ago
you have to look around you and determine that actually maybe I’m the one who believes something that makes for a worse, less fulfilled society,
See the semi-recent post by @WhiningCoil about realizing he was raised incorrectly, or even that substack post by Bismarck where he realizes he, in fact, is the rootless cosmopolitan.
2rafa
9hr ago
Congratulations on finding a faith, it makes me happy to know I played some (very) small part in it, and I wish you all the best on that journey.
Hoffmeister25
American Bukelismo Enthusiast
9hr ago
Choosing to get baptized into a transcendental faith, especially (a nominally) Christian one, after or because of creating a list of temporal pros and cons is wildly contrary to the faith itself.
I didn’t say that this list is why I got baptized. But if I’m trying to justify/explain the decision to people who are totally uninterested in any non-secular reasons, it makes sense to actually take stock of what is happening on a secular level.
That being said, I will openly admit that I have no interest in “hating the world”, nor in spending my every waking hour preparing for the afterlife. I don’t actually believe that this is what Jesus demands of me, and if it is, then I’m going to fail to live up to his demands. I do think the things of the world, including the world of man in the material world, are beautiful and important and meaningful and worth preserving. I’m not especially concerned with the prospect of a rapture that will sweep away the civilizations of men and totally remake the world; I will leave that for future people who will be around for it to consider more closely. I think there are benefits to trying to check my own animal instincts by weighing them against the example of Christ-like charity and temperance, but I certainly do not plan to sell all of my possessions and forsake all material desire, as seemingly demanded by the Jesus of the Gospels.
You're ignoring the fact that, according to Neilsen, about 20% of people in the US rely on OTA TV to receive local stations, myself included, and that number is in excess of 30% in some markets. This is up from 2008, when only 15% of households relied on antenna broadcasts. In 2008 on-demand and internet-based video services didn't really exist, and cable-television was bigger. Also in 2008, we were freeing up a part of the spectrum by making TV stations switch to digital transmission. This theoretically affected even fewer households, as nothing needed to be done unless your TV was several years old, but the changeover was delayed by six months, and the change was only accomplished by the government handing out coupons for free converter boxes. Telling 20% of the country that they have to pay for television or give it up is a nonstarter.
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