domain:city-journal.org
GBRK
21hr ago
What do you suppose America's worst and dullest are doing right now
They're in prison, living off welfare that illegal immigrants are ineligible for, or employed in sectors that actually have to check for employment authorization and consequently have pay more as a result. For example, cashiering at big box stores. Walmart actually make an effort to hire people with work authorization (though Warlmar's contractors are a different story.) American citizens have strictly more negotiating power than non-citizens so for the same level of intelligence and conscientiousness, they're eligible for better jobs. Or to restate that in another way-- for an equivalent job and pay rate, the noncitizens are probably going to be smarter and more conscientious (because if they weren't, the employer would just hire a native in their place.) See: every story about attempting to hire americans for farm work instead of illegals.
Actually, I can personally attest to this being true because I spent a few weeks detasseling corn as a teenager. The attrition rate for the program was incredibly high and included myself-- american teenagers just would not stick around. I found out later that the bulk of the work ultimately ended up being done by migrant labor. So self-evidently, the immigrants were more conscientious than the natives.
jake
21hr ago
The Israelis have a habit of shooting Palestinian children in the back
I once again ask that literally anyone provides me with evidence of this. Not bootstrapped citation farming and not faked x-rays. Specific, unambiguous footage of Palestinian civilians being murdered.
https://x.com/search?q=palestinian%20civilian%20shot&src=typed_query&f=media -- you won't find it here. I've looked in darker places and found nothing there, either, but I could have missed it.
What's so galling about this claim is with the volume of media coming from Palestine and the alleged frequency of the outright murder of civilians, there should be at least one glaring example. One I would have heard by specific reference as it made the rounds among judenkritikal lefties and righties alike. Instead it's always the generic, "They're shooting kids," not "They shot this specific child, here's his body, you'll notice the distinct lack of a head."
I don't give a shit about Israel, I don't want a penny going to them if we don't get a dime back and I don't want one single American dying for that flag. I just want the truth, and being told something exists when I would have seen if it did, and when I then look for it and still can't find it, makes me quite certain the videos don't exist, because the deeds they would show haven't happened, because Israel does not indiscriminately murder civilians. They do murder civilians, many civilians, as is the nature of war in casualty of their real targets. It's just that you can't allow your enemy in war to dictate how you fight. If they use human shields thinking it will save them, you shoot the hostage then the soldier, you blow up the apartment building or hospital. If those shields know with certainty they will be killed by Israel, then it's on them to put down the ones who hold them hostage, and if they don't, they get what they deserve.
It's that old chestnut, where the white supremacy of yesteryear emerges in intersectional politics that can't help but treat whites and especially white men as the only beings on this earth with full agency. The Palestinians either have agency or they don't. If they can't see that there is truly no win condition and behave accordingly, Israel should rule them.
Goodguy
22hr ago
I feel like your statement kind of might just boil down to "things I like are freedom, things I don't like are not freedom".
From an objective point of view, we absolutely have more sexual freedom right now than people in the West did 150 years ago.
I think one can argue that the modal man of 1875 was some farmer who spent his life at the mercy of his father and his local community, or some city factory worker who was at the mercy of his local political machine's boss. Also, they had actual conscription back then, the government could force you to join the army against your will (technically that's still true but in practice it's extremely extremely unlikely to actually happen). More freedom back then? I doubt it.
The Goldwing is kind of the Cybertruck of motorcycles, so I don't see a problem with this. What if the rule was "kg x brake kw <= n"? ("n" might be 750,000, based on a semi-arbitrary selection of great sport-sedans, in which case a 2,000 kg truck could have a 350 kw brake power output.)
JarJarJedi
23hr ago
Some people think "self-defense" can only begin once you already got punched, or stabbed, or shot. If somebody takes out a gun, aims at you, shouts "I'm going to kill you, motherfucker!", and tries to press the trigger, but you're quicker on the draw and shoot first - you're the "aggressor". Or at least they pretend to think so when Israel is concerned. Of course, there are also plain old antisemites for which Israel is bad in any case, and they are just need to find the reason why.
I think that getting away with assassination doesn't just require smarts (and it requires plenty of that in our heavily surveilled world where there are cameras all over the place), it also requires a lot of coolness of nerve so that you don't make simple, stupid mistakes in the middle of the act, in the throes of overwhelming fear, adrenaline and other kinds of emotions. I think that there are very very few people in the world who not only have the smarts to get away with an assassination of a high-value target, but also have the sort of emotional coolness where they can actually apply their intelligence to the situation while they are doing it, instead of having 90% of their smarts wiped away in the moment by raw adrenaline while trying to pull off the act, and/or just stumbling into the sort of friction that always happens when trying to implement a plan in real life as opposed to in theory or daydreams ("no plan survives contact with the enemy"). Dostoevsky wrote a great description of how this works in Crime and Punishment.
philosoraptor
23hr ago
Rarely do these things turn out to neatly fit anyone's narrative. I think this or something like it is very likely indeed.
100ProofTollBooth
Dumber than a man, but faster than a dog.
23hr ago
Yes and no.
Biden / Pelosi style catholics are definitely solidly blue tribe and do vote democrat. There's even vestiges of old school machine politics for these kind of folks in states like Rhode Island and Massachusettes.
The problem is they aren't actually catholic. Just as "culturally Jewish" is a thing for totally non-observing "Jews" in the bicoastal cities, I believe "culturally catholic" exists as well for many democrat strongholds. To me, it's almost stolen valor. People like Biden etc get to say "faith is at the core of who I am" blah blah blah and infuse their speeches - and votes - with high minded moralism. But they aren't actually living or even trying to believe the doctrine of their faith. The Church is pretty damn clear on abortion and divorce, among other issues.
Theologically serious Catholics, nowadays, have to vote Republican because, of the two parties, it is the only one that isn't openly hostile to all of the bedrock elements of the faith. A lot of the politically motivated (and serious) American Catholics also get really into issues of religious liberties. One need look no further than the recent SCOTUS decision on tax-exemption status for faith based charities.
fmac
Ask me about bike lanes
23hr ago
But it gets on my nerves a little, the YIMBY assertion that these population shifts are just a fait accompli, that there’s nothing to do but adjust
This is an excellent point. I definitely fall into this trap. I think I've become so frustrated and disillusioned with our societies inability to meaningfully address (any)things that it seems like anything less than "do the thing big and decisively" gets committee'd to death and the end result is either nothing, or so neutered it might as well be.
But yeah, totally agree that there should be room for change that complements what already exists, not change that upends it.
But at the same time, I expect more of our leaders, you know?
Me too, me fucking too, I end up disappointed a lot though lol
whose founder decided to just stick in the area
I dislike having to rely on the charity of billionaires, but we absolutely lost something with the death of noblesse oblige. The Rockefeller's of the world may not have been great people, but at least the dumped money into their communities to show us how big their dicks were.
Now they buy movie studios and make horrific adaptations of classic novels like Rings of Power.
I also appreciate this conversation! You've given me some good thoughts and I've enjoyed articulating and defending mine. I hope you have a lovely rest of your weekend.
fmac
Ask me about bike lanes
23hr ago
Most Americans like driving
I mean aside from the fact long driving commutes demonstrably make people miserable.
And the fact this misery results in crazy cultural self-owns where people start blocking other people from entering lanes to the point you have to suddenly change lanes without signals (or fake them out with a signal so they speed up to block you so you can sneak behind them) to take the other people by suprise so you can change your lane.
fmac
Ask me about bike lanes
23hr ago
So just build trains between the suburbs too. Make America Trains Again, we must RETVRN.
fmac
Ask me about bike lanes
23hr ago
London/Asian megacities do it well and they're not long skinny islands
It's doable, it's not easy, but it's doable
And it's definitely better than doing nothing and drowning in gridlock
I understand your complaints, I guess I don't really understand what your forward looking thoughts are?
If the status quo (gridlock, people hating driving/each other) sucks, why shoot down every potential solution to wallow in the status quo?
Hanania shared a video of the alleged shooter's alleged roommate saying he's a Trump supporter.
https://x.com/RichardHanania/status/1934036017746780454
EDIT: Excuse me. Hanania shared a video of the alleged shooter's alleged roommate allegedly saying he's a Trump supporter. I thought he was saying it during the cringe blubbering part but now that I listen on better speakers it's not that. The source for his roommate saying he is a Trump supporter is the reporter in this video https://x.com/RichardHanania/status/1934061437691072727
Dug a little deeper into why procedural generation in Unreal didn't work out for me, found out about a bunch of fundamentals that I had managed to ignore, but haven't really gotten around to applying that knowledge yet.
Also once again find myself chafing at C++ and the need to make every structural change twice - in .h and .cpp files. It's just so very inelegant, as far as the workflow goes. Those header files haven't really justified their existence yet, to me.
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