domain:parrhesia.co
Amadan
Enjoying my short-lived victory
10hr ago
I agree and disagree. I think Trek's fandom has always been predominantly male, with a substantial distaff side. The boys like geeking about the Warp specifications and photon torpedo load-outs of the various versions of the Enterprise and playing Starfleet Battles -- the girls like cosplaying as Orions and shipping Kirk and Spock.
The quasi-military structure of Starfleet was always a bit of thematic dissonance; Roddenberry was really envisioning a post-religious, post-military, globalist society, but framing a crew of explorers who also sometimes have to fight Klingons (Chinese/Soviet analogs) as anything other than a military vessel would not have made sense to a 60s audience. Making them a space navy was an easy way to get the normie audience oriented, but the show itself was, as has often been noted, actually Wagon Train in space.
You'll notice the officer/enlisted distinction in Starfleet is practically non-existent and getting promoted rarely has much to do with command as opposed to just being good at your job (like in a civilian job).
I think this cognitive dissonance has continued through various iterations of Trek; sometimes they try to lean away from the military themes and more into political or social ones, and sometimes they lean into it and tell a war story (DS9, the best Trek), but lately, it's just kind of incoherent as Trek parodies itself. That said, Trek has also always been a commentary on contemporary issues, told through the medium of sci-fi, so it's not surprising that as woke spread, Trek became more woke.
The fundamental problem with Trek is largely the same one as Star Wars (and to a lesser extent the MCU) - it's running on fumes. It's got a huge fanbase of aging nerds who loved it when they were 12, but a franchise can only live so long on nostalgia, and both Trek and Star Wars are having trouble pulling in the next generation. I think this is something we are starting to see with cape movies as well. How many Zoomers are invested in 60 years of Superman or X-Men lore? Will alphas even read comic books at all?
ThomasdelVasto
Κύριε, ποίησόν με ὄργανον τῆς ἀγάπης σου
10hr ago
Yeah I just played recently on a private server. Was fun, accelerated xp so you don’t waste your entire life leveling hah.
A new one is coming out for cataclysm soon and I want to try that.
On Halloween I was coming home from the pub at maybe 10 or 11 pm when I happened on a girl who'd passed out on the street after having too much to drink. I immediately realised she needed to get to a hospital to have her stomach pumped, so I called an ambulance and put her on her side in case she was sick. Her two friends called me a pervert and accused me of groping her, then left, abandoning her to her fate. Because of the occasion, I had to wait somewhere in the region of three hours for an ambulance to arrive. At least some other passers-by stopped to help, including two nurses in training. A day or two later the girl texted me to thank me and said she was cutting ties with the two friends who'd abandoned her.
In July I went into my local cornershop, in which a customer was accusing the staff of short-changing him (I assume he was mistaken). He attempted to climb over the counter to assault them, whereupon I stepped in to put him in a half-nelson and drag him out of the shop. He feebly attempted to attack me before being dissuaded by his (I assume extremely embarrassed) girlfriend and slouching off in defeat. The staff were very grateful and made a point to thank me when I came into the shop over the following few days. Another patron came up to me immediately afterwards and quipped that I was in the wrong line of work and ought to become a bouncer.
A few weeks ago, my parents were flying back from Australia, and I offered to drive them home from the airport as I knew they'd be jet-lagged. When we got to the car, my mother, God love her, offered to drive. I very gently pointed out that the sole reason I was there was to save her the trouble of having to drive.
ThomasdelVasto
Κύριε, ποίησόν με ὄργανον τῆς ἀγάπης σου
10hr ago
Yeah a shared group identity is pretty crucial. Which do you think are still the most potent in the current era?
JTarrou
10hr ago
Unity of people will reinforce any vision that captures it. A deracinated, divided people are capable of following no vision but force.
This is a GPS unit in search of a vehicle. The car broke down a century ago. The UK is now a mirror on the vehicle that is the US empire.
magic9mushroom
If you're going to downvote me, and nobody's already voiced your objection, please reply and tell me
10hr ago
I'm getting at the philosophy-of-law question, not current custom. Lots of non-Anglo countries reject precedent. The philosophical question is mostly reliability vs. justice (after all, a bad precedent is literally judges getting a decision wrong; following that precedent is getting it wrong again).
Precedent also potentially worsens the "rogue judiciary" problem, since it allows a few rogue justices to control their inferiors more easily and their successors at all.
ArjinFerman
Tinfoil Gigachad
10hr ago
I just noticed he actually linked to the conversation, so you can judge for yourself.
quiet_NaN
11hr ago
Firstly, prices only reliably influence decision making if you have skin in the game.
If I am at a bar and paying for my own drinks, I will carefully consider the trade-offs between different options. If some corporation is paying for drinks, different things could happen. Perhaps I am indifferent to the company spending money, then I might use high prices as Bayesian evidence for "is a good drink". Or I like the corporation and do not want them to spend money needlessly, then I might still consider the trade-offs. Or I hate them and want to try my best to bankrupt them through my liver, then I might simply drink the fanciest drinks I can find even if they taste like horse piss to me.
For major surgeries, patients typically do not have skin in the game, their health insurance is paying for them. Price transparency is nice for society, but not crucial for patients.
Secondly, the health insurer and the hospital already have a pre-existing agreement on a price list. What they are negotiating about is which medical procedures (and line items) are indicated.
In a borderline sane medical system (e.g. what we have in Germany), that should be wholly between the health insurer and the clinic. The doctors use whatever procedures they see medically indicated, and then their billing department will settle with the health insurer. Sometimes the health insurer will dispute the charges. If dispute resolution favors the insurer, the hospital will just eat the charges. Running a hospital is a mixed calculation, you can afford to lose money on a few cases if you make some money on average. The patient would only be on the hook if they had lied about having health insurance.
Of course, the US health care system was lovingly hand-crafted by Moloch himself. Take competing health insurers, but then let the employer -- who cares very little about coverage but a whole lot about costs -- pick the health insurance company for their employees. Then pass a lot of regulations forcing Dog Butcher Healthcare to actually cover anything. Let every insurer build their own network based on secretly negotiated prices so that people will have to change their therapist when the change jobs. Sprinkle in some socialized healthcare for the poor. Have juries award excessive malpractice damages to keep everything expensive. Also link in the Molochian university and student loan system for the same reason.
There's a pretty decent number of women authors who just write male-focused or general fiction, especially for teen and young adult audiences.
I recently delved into LitRPG/Cultivation sphere, which I think is somwhat newish offhoot of scifi/fantasy genre and is at least adjacent to YA scene/audience. And to be frank, I start to think that female protagonists like in surprisingly interesting Azarinth Healer series may work better in that context. The male protagonists in many of these stories are some combination of weak whiners, being overshadowed and constantly scolded/humiliated by female side characters, having weird fetish/harem sidestories and more.
The pet theory of mine is that feminism is basically projection of male virtues/characteristics on females. Terrible girl-bossing is just projection of what feminists view as toxic masculinity on women: aggressive know-it-alls, emotionless or even cruel leaders etc. If the author can do modicum of work to reign that tic at least a little bit, they can actually end up with decent formerly male character only in skirt. With female protagonist you will not see her being literally hit on head if she says something "dumb", scolded for being a creep, being told that she is an idiot, humiliated or womensplained for not knowing something or any other type of terrible writing now so prevalent with male heroes. Or to me more precise even if they are addressed like that, they have a mature response to it.
It reminds me of the story how the character of Ellen Ripley from Alien was originally written for male actor and how it surprisingly worked well for female - especially in a world where only women are allowed to have oldschool male traits/virtues.
ThomasdelVasto
Κύριε, ποίησόν με ὄργανον τῆς ἀγάπης σου
11hr ago
Hopefully it's more coherent than that! Though healthcare does seem to make people go crazy for one reason or other.
ThomasdelVasto
Κύριε, ποίησόν με ὄργανον τῆς ἀγάπης σου
11hr ago
Reading an article on why Britain should settle Antarctica from Palladium got me thinking: are there any major, visionary projects happening at the moment that have a plausible chance of success?
I'm still hopeful for SpaceX to at least make operations on the moon more feasible, though I'm skeptical of making a real go at Mars colonization, especially as Elon's star has fallen so far recently.
China seems a likely contender, but I don't know what they have going on. I know that AGI is the thing on everyone's mind, but I'm thinking more about a physical, non-software based major visionary project that's happening in the physical world.
To quote some from the article:
These apparently radical measures will look less radical by the year, but would nevertheless represent a dramatic break from the Westminster status quo. Declining nations can resort to many sensible technocratic reforms that are easy to explain, but they find it hard to come up with compelling political or bureaucratic motives for those reforms. That can only be done with national visions—visions that are not only suited to the capabilities a country could realistically develop, but also a congruent continuation of its history, or at least the best of its history. We can see that these two conditions have been fulfilled with nearly every successful national founding or refounding. Britain’s overlooked Antarctic legacy, and the vast frozen territory it still retains, then, offer us the opportunity for such a vision.
If such a project is pursued with enough vigor, it will make Britain’s claim to Antarctica inarguable. It is easy to draw peremptory lines on an empty map, but it is much harder and more admirable to people that map and to rescue its land from barrenness. For a stagnant or declining nation, it is easy to find this or that technocratic intervention that can solve this or that economic, social, or political issue. What is more difficult is finding a vision that gives the nation reason to carry out such reforms. These visions must be inspiring, but they must also be within reach. Most importantly, they must match the legacy and history of the country.
This is culture war because, well, the decline of nations is extremely political, and from my view the Trumpian Right, for all it's many and varied flaws, is the only party at least nominally pursuing a future vision of greatness, instead of simply ignoring or managing a decline.
Also, this is a very sassy quote from the article I loved:
This unworldly modern Britain is hardly the “perfidious Albion” depicted in the propaganda of its 19th century geopolitical rivals. Not wholly unflatteringly, contemporary Russian state media still portrays the country as the shadowy orchestrator of coups and death squads. A truer depiction, though, is that of the “cash-poor, asset-rich elderly woman who has somehow inherited a portfolio of scattered, high-value properties she doesn’t know what to do with.”
Corvos
11hr ago
The Lion King? The Jungle Book? The Emperor’s New Groove? Aladdin?
Aristocats is more borderline but the American audience is mostly intended to identity with the chirpy working-class American-accented tomcat rather than the beautiful English-accented heroine IMO.
There were multiple dress rehearsals for a national reckoning with race over black males getting killed by police or vigilantes. A lot of those cases (e.g. Michael Brown, Trayvon) didn't really pan out as good outlets or didn't have video.
With Floyd, we did. The video was bad enough that, iirc, initially even conservatives were sympathetic.
JTarrou
12hr ago
Disney was always for chicks, some people fell for a marketing ploy when they decided to chickify a couple boys IPs. This was always an act of aggression against those fanbases, and that's why it was done. Disney is a giant international slopCorp staffed by failed theater kids and orally fixated women. If you care deeply about Disney, you need to make your peace with that.
Or you could do what most boys do by the age of five and stop thinking about a globohomo company that makes princess cartoons. It's not the masculine flex you might think.
BahRamYou
12hr ago
it's an interesting question that's surprisingly hard to answer.
At first glance, you're right. Those majority-minority districts produce huge majorities for democrats that waste a lot of their votes. For example, look at Georgia's 4th district: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Georgia%27s_4th_congressional_district#Election_results where the Democrats have been winning by 50+ points in almost every election.
On the other hand, those districts are very effective. It leads to way more black congressmen than they would probably have without them. For example the Congressional Black Caucus has 55 members while the Hispanic Caucus only has 37, despite the US having a larger overall Hispanic population. And since many of those are very safe seats, it leads to those congressmen sticking around a long time, giving them much greater influence in congress than the ones from swing districts who haveo spent all their time campaigning and usually don't last more than a few cycles.
That in turn leads to black voters being very loyal to the Democrats. Democrats typically get something like 90% of the black vote, compared to 40% of whites and 50-60% of other racial groups. It's actually really hard to find any other demographic that's nearly so loyal to one party. Black voters also have higher voter turnout than most other non-white racial groups. Going from this: https://edition.cnn.com/election/2020/exit-polls/president/national-results the only similar effect is if you group people by "do you self-identify as a liberal/conservative." Most demographic effects are waaaay smaller. And the Democrats really need that voting block. Playing with https://www.cookpolitical.com/swingometer/2024 shows how ugly the electoral map gets for them without it... changing their share of black voters down from 90% to just around 75% means they suddenly lose all the swing states they won in 2020, without changing anything else.
Or to put it another way: bringing in 10 extra black voters with one voting Republican gives the Democrats around +9 votes overall. Bringing in 10 extra Asian or Hispanic voters with 4 of them voting Republican gives the Democrats just +2 votes. So they'd need 5 times as many Asian or Hispanic voters to get the same effect they get from Black voters.
So, maybe it costs the Democrats a few congressional districts, but pays off for them overall in statewide elections. But then you also have to ask... why are Democrats doing so (relatively) badly among every other demographic? Probably a lot of reasons, but some of it might be that they're giving black voters too much control of the party. They take on positions like Reparations and Defund the Police which are popular with black voters, but unpopular with moderate voters. They choose Kamala Harris in large part just because they needed someone who was black enough to appease their base, not because she was a good candidate.
Overall it's hard to say. In a different world where they weren't required to have those majority-minority districts (mostly meaning black districts because of how the population maps play out), all of politics would be so different that we really can't say with any certainty. It's amazing how redrawing a few lines on the map, which aren't even state boundaries, can have such a drastic effect on everything.
ArjinFerman
Tinfoil Gigachad
12hr ago
We had a guy arguing that, I remember ControlsFreak getting into a rather long fight with him over this. I believe the argument is something like "the number is fake anyway, so you don't need to see it".
SkoomaDentist
12hr ago
They went full retard. Never go full retard.
quiet_NaN
12hr ago
This is your regular reminder that gerrymandering is just a symptom. Your underlying problem is that your voting system sucks.
Now, on a theoretical level, all voting systems suck. But in practice, some do suck a lot harder than others.
The main appeal of first past the post (FPTP) is that you can tie every representative to one voting district. This used to matter a lot more than it matters today. In 1800, having a representative who would visit their district and talk with people was certainly useful. Today, nobody has to ride to DC to talk to their congresscritter any more, they can just use video calls (if they are interested). And for most stuff congress passes, regional considerations are not important. If congress declared war on Mexico, I suppose that Texas might feel different about that than Washington. But if they declare war on Afghanistan or pass Obamacare, the impact will be similar for every state. Most of the federal decisions where some areas are disproportionally impacted is probably federal funding spend on particular contractors located in a particular town. Senators trying to redirect the gravy train to their state seems a bad thing to me.
On the other hand, FPTP effectively means you have a two-party system. This is terrible for political discourse. Basically, you split the electorate in the middle, and everyone to the left -- from Marxists to centrists leaning slightly left -- votes for the D party while everyone to the right -- from right-leaning centrists to Klansmen -- is represented by the R party.
One lens to compare FPTP with proportional representation is through the lens of information content in a single vote. If you pick between two alternatives which are roughly 50-50, then the information content of a ballot is one bit. (Of course, if the outcome in your state is a foregone conclusion, there is a point to be made that your vote has a probability close to zero to change the election outcome.) By contrast, the Shannon entropy of a vote in the 2025 German federal election (if you voted for a party which ended up in the Bundestag) was 2.2 bits. Even if counting the 14% of votes for parties which stayed below the 5% threshold as devoid of information, this gives you 1.9 bit -- almost twice as much as in a US presidential election. In the US system, half of the relevant information -- which two candidates will appear on the ballot -- are decided in the primaries and party conventions.
I think that this is a big reason why US politics became so toxic when social media rose. Both in FPTP and PR, candidates and parties will attack other parties before the election. The difference is that in PR, parties can rarely hope for an absolute majority by themselves, they typically need a coalition. If you have called all the other candidates shitfaces, then it is unlikely that you will be part of a coalition.
With FPTP, once a controversial position is adopted by one party, the other party is bound to adopt the opposite position. If you like both abortion and gun rights, or are concerned about both climate change and immigration, you will just have to prioritize. (Even with a PR system, you are unlikely to find a party which will share all your priorities.
--
The fact that FPTP also allows you to rule with slightly over a quarter of the votes is just the cherry on the top.
I am wondering if any US state had thought to introduce multiple layers of gerrymandering. For example, in a presidential election, rather than awarding your electoral college votes to whom got most votes in your state, you could introduce a state-wide electoral-college-like abomination. Say each neighborhood will award their electors to whomever got the majority in that neighborhood, then the town's electors get awarded to whomever has the most neighborhood electors, then you repeat the same process for a few more layers. With each layer of winner takes all, you introduce another factor of 0.5 to the number of votes required to win.
ThomasdelVasto
Κύριε, ποίησόν με ὄργανον τῆς ἀγάπης σου
12hr ago
When have people argued that customers don't want to see price in healthcare? Seems insane to me. I also have no clue why you wouldn't want to price things out up front. Does it benefit the medical industry?
quiet_NaN
12hr ago
Yes, if the judge is high enough in the food chain. This is called case law.
For example, Roe v. Wade was case law made by the SCOTUS which made abortion legal in the US on a flimsy interpretation of the 14th amendment, and that stood for 50 years.
self_made_human
amaratvaṃ prāpnuhi, athavā yatamāno mṛtyum āpnuhi
13hr ago
Those are edge cases. Since Phoenix Point has rather granular time units, it is easy enough to make a soldier move a single tile to clear the line of fire, then shoot and scoot back to cover.
self_made_human
amaratvaṃ prāpnuhi, athavā yatamāno mṛtyum āpnuhi
13hr ago
You're welcome! Given how much I've played the franchise, since I was a wee bairn mucking around with the original Operation Flashpoint on my first pc, it would be weird if I didn't heartily endorse it. It's no Tarkov, the kinda game you have a love-hate relationship with but can't stop playing.
For many, it's an acquired taste. There are all kinds of official and fan-made game modes, from the comparatively frantic King of the Hill, which, if not Battlefield levels of intense, is still up there. Then there are full milsim servers, where you might spend half an hour of downtime before being cleared for a sortie, or a medevac crew waiting for a mass-cas event. People usually find their niche quickly, as a Zeus, I did a little bit of everything, even if the majority of the work was commanding the AI around and keeping players engaged.
The main frustration of players accustomed to more casual shooters (let alone Quake) is the downtime. Yet that downtime serves a very important purpose! It offers time for movement and maneuver, allows for wide flanks or ambushes. It makes death mean something, even if most servers won't have a one-life system. You are fighting the world's most dangerous game in PvP, and the pleasure of merking some poor fool arises includes the knowledge that he isn't going to immediately respawn in the building next door and be upon you in a few seconds.
But there is something enchanting with the picture you paint of the kind of fun you unlock when you can study infantry tactics manuals to get better at a game, or the way it forces teamwork in a way other games simply do not even try to.
I don't mean to oversell it, since the level of teamwork can vary considerably.
In organized operations, one can witness communication and coordination that rival professional military practice. Squads have defined roles, leadership structures are respected, and air assets are integrated with ground forces according to established procedure. It is a simulationist's dream. A lot of players are active duty or ex-military, and they love their day job so much they do it again when they're off.
On more casual servers, the dynamic is closer to a Battlefield match, but with a crucial difference. Players may initially operate as individuals, but the game's mechanics consistently pressure them towards cooperation. Almost everyone uses a microphone. A direct request for assistance or coordination is, in my experience, almost always met with a good-faith effort. An emergent cooperative equilibrium tends to form out of shared necessity.
Even when not playing with a clan, I always try to brighten days/induce PTSD by really getting it on in VC:
"I can't feel my legs" + realistic sobbing is a good one.
"Tell my mom I love her" I say, neglecting the fact I almost never actually call.
"Tell my wife that... I have another wife" always goes down well. Never fails to get a chuckle.
"I can see the light, are you an angel?" followed by kissing sounds when someone works on my dying corpse. Or "buddy, that's the sun" if someone pulls that line on me.
(My neighbors love me)
Anyway. Just a few years ago, I would have recommended another FPS that was, itself, well-placed between Battlefield and Arma. Squad, as the name suggests, is a team based milsim-lite, the spiritual successor to a Battlefield 2 mod. It is more rigid than Arma, but also more fast-paced. You play your class with a well-defined role, on a medium sized map. It has a higher skill floor and lower skill ceiling. You must work as a team to get anything done, but often because an individual is unable to do very much except shoot and move. You can't even drive a car without getting approval from your Squad Leader!
I can no longer recommend it very strongly. The developers, in an attempt to further incentivize teamwork by "slowing down" the gameplay, implemented changes to weapon handling that I found debilitating. The player's avatar now moves with the sluggishness of someone suffering from both advanced Parkinson's disease and severe asthma. The stated goal was to make gunfights more deliberate, but the result was a pervasive and frustrating clumsiness that felt less like tactical realism and more like a systemic handicap.
I no longer play it, but many still do. It might be worth checking out, you'll fit right in coming from Battlefield. I would still recommend Arma instead, but watch some gameplay videos to figure out what appeals to you.
RubixRaptor: Absolute chaos and tomfoolery.
Operator Drewski: More considered, tactical gameplay. My ideal.
Karmakut: My man, have you considered joining the Army?
Corvos
13hr ago
He converted at 31 or 33 years old.
Source: https://www.cslewisinstitute.org/resources/the-most-reluctant-convert/
But I would say both serious atheism and serious faith were relatively rare for intellectuals at that time. The majority being cultural Christians, if you like.
I know this isn't popular but I quite disagree, I think Floyd was exactly as bad a martyr as everyone else, he just stuck a lot better because of the circumstances and that makes it harder for people to have awareness of that.
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