domain:philippelemoine.com
self_made_human
Grippy socks, grippy box
20hr ago
For once, the Brits are better about this. Living wills and Ancticipatory Care Plans are quite common and actively encouraged. You get to have people make these decisions before they become infirm or lose decision-making capacity. Then the family and doctors do their best to follow along.
FiveHourMarathon
Wawa Nationalist
20hr ago
My wackiest theory is that when a drug like semaglutide comes out that essentially everyone wants, the government should be able to nationalize the patent for licensing, and in exchange the drug developer gets a one-time Get Out of Liability Free Card, where if they have a drug go wrong they can just get out of Liability for it.
This would lower drug prices, improve drug availability, and encourage labs that are producing good products to take risks; all things we want to do.
ToaKraka
Dislikes you
20hr ago
Columbia County's online application states that an applicant's references must call the sheriff's office within five days of the applicant's applying.
Rov_Scam
20hr ago
In PA the sheriff is allowed to ask for references, and it's on the standard form, but not allowed to contact them. I can't speak of other counties, but in Allegheny County the (Democratic) sheriff doesn't require them and the form they distribute has the fields pre-filled as "Not required".
FiveHourMarathon
Wawa Nationalist
20hr ago
I'm more interested in the raw numbers of dead Russians, plus the severe life-ruining casualties on top of that. Maybe it's been a very bad year so far, but I haven't gotten that impression, across the course of the war that's gonna be something like half a million dead so far out of about 30 million Russian men between 14-45?
Ukraine is probably in even worse shape, though it says something if Trump is repeating pro Ukraine fake news these days.
RoyGBivensAction
Zensunni Scientologist
20hr ago
In year 2025, the appeals panel reverses. The city charter grants to the city personnel director, not the power of establishing holidays, but merely the power of establishing employment regulations regarding holidays. The power of establishing holidays is not explicitly mentioned anywhere in the charter, so by default, in accordance with state and federal practice, it inheres in the legislative body—the council. Therefore, this executive order is a usurpation of legislative power. (This analysis applies to substantive holidays that are days off for city workers. The mayor still may declare temporary, symbolic holidays that have no effect on anybody.)
Somewhat similar to the history of MLK Day in Arizona.
In 1983, then-president Ronald Reagan signed the bill that made Martin Luther King Jr. Day a federal holiday, the first to commemorate the life of an African American, according to the U.S. Senate website. Three years later, the Arizona House of Representatives created a bill to recognize the holiday. One vote defeated the bill, but nine days later, Gov. Bruce Babbitt issued an executive order to create a paid MLK holiday.
Subsequent governor Mecham gained national attention several days after his inauguration by fulfilling a campaign promise to cancel a paid Martin Luther King, Jr. Day holiday (MLK Day) for state employees. The holiday had been created in May 1986 by executive order from the previous governor, Bruce Babbitt, after the state legislature had voted not to create the holiday. Following the creation of the holiday, the state Attorney General's office issued an opinion that the paid holiday was illegal and threatened to sue the incoming governor over the cost of the paid holiday, as it had not been approved by the legislature. Despite the issues of the legality of how the holiday was created, Mecham replied to comments from civil rights activists and the Black community after the cancellation by saying "King doesn't deserve a holiday."
The decision turned to the voters in 1990, when two separate ballot measures for a Martin Luther King Jr. Day holiday were put on the state ballot, according to the Pima County Public Library. Both measures failed to pass, once again drawing outrage and boycotts against Arizona. Notably, the National Football League stripped the state of its right to host the 1993 Super Bowl. Musicians refused to perform in Arizona.
The loss denied Phoenix a projected $200 million in revenue. An agreement was made that Arizona would host the 1996 Super Bowl, with the condition it passed a referendum to celebrate the holiday.
The holiday was finally inked into state law in November 1992. Voters passed a Martin Luther King Civil Rights Day holiday, making Arizona the last state to formally install an MLK holiday
FiveHourMarathon
Wawa Nationalist
20hr ago
Is it inexcusably awful that I think we should be utilizing the "wants to and is approved to die" demographic for experiments like that?
Fuck it, harness them up and toss them off a bridge. Let them drive dangerous car races, or play airsoft with live ammunition. See if it alters their feelings about death.
quiet_NaN
20hr ago
how do I make the quote one continuous block I don't know how to internet
> line 1 <br>
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> next paragraph
will yield
line 1
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On the topic
Police are needed to maintain a police state, boots on the ground. And no matter how many police you have on the ground they will always be vastly outnumbered by civilians which is why in a police state it is vital that your police have automatic weapons while the people have nothing but their limp dicks.
I think that your model of tyranny is very different from my model of tyranny. Your model seems to be that the government will be replaced by some entity universally loathed by the civilian population. I think that this exceedingly unlikely to happen -- the ayatollah will not become the US president through some legal loophole and a bad SCOTUS ruling.
Any tyranny which will happen will have buy-in from one of the big political tribes. Probably they will have at least 10% enthusiastic supporters, 20% who still prefer it to whatever the previous status quo was, 40% who are indifferent to uncomfortable and 20-30% who are very opposed. Of course, they also need enough legitimacy so that the military will not oppose them, so all three branches of the federal government will have to back whatever tyrannical actions they are taking.
Possibly tyrannical actions could include violating freedom of speech by making all the arguments of the opposing side illegal hate speech ("mentioning Epstein/migrant crime is illegal"), de-naturalizing and deporting 5% of citizens, effectively abolishing democracy (i.e. an amendment to the effect of "like the pope appointing cardinals, the president can appoint any number of congressmen for life, who will vote alongside their elected colleagues") and so forth.
The 10% strongly in favor of whatever tyrannical acts the feds are committing can probably be recruited as brown- or rainbow-shirts -- earning a nice federal paycheck and fighting with state of the art weapons and sleeping in guarded camps while fighting for your beliefs seems appealing enough.
For the anti-tyranny side (which will still mostly be fighting for tribal object level goals rather than against tyranny per se), things look different. Neither tribe has much of a culture of shooting federal officers or servicemen. The rebels will not make much money, they will fight with civilian weapons and sleep either in the woods (and hope that they are not spotted by thermal drones) or in the houses of sympathizers (who are risking their lives for them).
Also, fighting a guerrilla / protracted war is extremely stomach-churning. Basically, it is a competition of who is better at terrorizing the civilian population into compliance. The government will have an advantage here because they can rely on the trappings of legitimate power. Their goons can afford to have nice show trials where people who provided material aid to the rebels are convicted and then executed -- or just disappear people. It is a lot easier to make a non-psychopathic man arrest a random civilian countryman and put them on a truck than it is to make them shoot them on the spot. To out-terrorize the tyrant, the outgunned rebels would have to murder civilian collaborators without any of these trappings of legitimacy.
(Then you have the problem that tyranny typically comes in thin salami slices, and there is no good Schelling point where most potential rebels would agree that shooting at feds is indicated. Especially since every dictatorship aims to make it hard to create a common knowledge that a certain fraction of the population is willing to violently oppose the government. One might argue that this kind of coordination problem has been solved with the internet, but the internet will be the first thing to go when things heat up. I do not think that most of the population being addicted to their smartphones and social media is going to be helpful for an uprising against a tech-savvy government which can turn the former into bugs and the latter into a database of political leanings. And then coordination of uprisings would have to byzantine fault tolerant, because it is in the interest of the state to lure the most gung ho rebels to start early because they are mistaken about the level of support they have and take them out.)
The US won their independence war and the Taliban won against the US because the loser was in a position where they could afford to lose. If the fall of Kabul had meant that the top 1k people in the US government were beheaded, the US would have paid whatever price required in money or brutality to keep that from happening.
A domestic rebellion is such an existential threat to the people in charge. A federal government could not decide to pull out of California or Texas the way the US pulled out of Afghanistan, especially not due to irregular warfare -- once they have established that states can get rid of them by being a pain in the ass for a few years, people in other states might try to emulate that. Better to set a precedent where they glass the cities and turn the rest of the state into Gaza before retreating.
So while I agree that small arms are ultimately essential to control a country, I also think that any likely tyranny could also field enough goons to outcompete the very small fraction of citizens who are willing to give up their creature comforts to fight ruthlessly in an uphill battle.
--
A different argument can be made that uprisings can also serve to deter unpopular measures even if they are ultimately crushed simply by imposing costs. This might be a steelman of BLM: property destruction, unlike peaceful demonstrations hit the government where it hurts them (a bit, at least -- it is not like the US would declare bankruptcy over one or two billion dollars). The convictions of the four cops involved in the Floyd killing (whatever you think of their culpability) certainly was helped along by the fact that any verdict other than guilty would have resulted in another billion dollars going down the drain.
Still, I would argue that gun ownership was not central to the George Floyd protests or their prevention. 19 people killed is an extremely small number when compared to a billion of property damage. The state was not interested in escalation because they (correctly, IMO) feared a snowball effect: shooting looters would have fanned the flames. BLM, for their part was also happy to stick looting. Mostly unopposed looting is much more lucrative than deciding to murder cops or whites and bleeding to death after a shootout.
Throwaway05
20hr ago
squints
nods
Em dash big? En dash small?
Small brain human use small dash?
Throwaway05
20hr ago
Think journalists, researchers (or their editor), pretentious literary types etc.
Yes! Destroy, the, grammatical, patriarchy.
oats_son
20hr ago
I agree with your argument overall, but I think hanging is not as painful as you say that it is. It's just some pressure for a few seconds and then lights out for the next 20 minutes while your body kicks around and tries to free itself. The real bother for the suicidal person there is that they need a good rope, they need to find a good spot that will support them and not let them come loose, they need to be able to tie a great knot, and they need to worry not about aesthetics of such a violent death. I imagine that these constraints are themselves large barriers to depressives who have little willpower for planning in the first place.
The thought sometimes strikes me of unique ways to commit suicide. Ones I have wondered about:
- Apple seeds contain about 0.6 milligrams of hydrogen cyanide. You could theoretically order 1000 of them, soften them up in some water, and then blend them up and drink them.
- You might not need to use a gun to kill yourself with a bullet, handy if you don't have the means to buy or make a gun. Bullets can go off with heat or by being stricken with a metal object, though they would lack directionality and the gases wouldn't be as lethal without the constricted space creating pressure. You might be able to buy a pack of .308 or 12 gauge buckshot and press your head on the entire thing while you heat it up somehow, maybe a frying pan.
You never hear about people doing either one of these. I don't know if that's because it just doesn't work or because nobody goes for them. The apple seed one would be painful, anyway, and there are probably more effective drugs out there...
self_made_human
Grippy socks, grippy box
20hr ago
You write far fewer long-form essays than I do, thought they are almost always a treat to read. I'm sure if you keep it up, someone will come get your ass too.
Incidentally I write with - transitions all the time. Is that materially different than that em-dash thing all the kids are complaining about? Do I look like an AI??????
See, it's a if she floats/if she sinks situation. If it sits still, it's probably an AI. If you see 'em make a dash for it, then it's definitely an AI. Or so the logic goes.
(People think that someone who can come up with that pun, while dying of heatstroke and quasi-manic from sleep deprivation on a bus, needs AI? Hardly. The AI is lucky to have me. This post is only 90% a joke)
The most cynical will, like in my case, assume that - transitions are a search-and-replace. That is despite me swearing on Scout's honor that I never put one em-dashes put in, or had to take one out at any point (and I actually was a Scout). It is trivially easy to launder AI written content. If I was making an intentional effort to disguise entire tracts of the stuff, I promise nobody would ever tell.
On a more general note, em-dashes are noteworthy because very few people used them before ChatGPT did. Think journalists, researchers (or their editor), pretentious literary types etc. They were often difficult to type on most devices, leaving aside most people didn't really conceptualize them as a separate thing from normal dashes, let alone finer considerations like the en-dash vs en-dash.
The only minor impediment
Don't forget the requirement of two references, including at every five-year renewal.
TequilaMockingbird
Brown-skinned Fascist MAGA boot-licker
20hr ago
Section 2.1 on architecture and methodology.
MadMonzer
Pedo! Pedo! Pedo! Out! Out! Out!
20hr ago
What's the acceptable rate of systemic murder?
That just reduces the question to an argument about the meaning of the word "systemic". The acceptable rate of men killing their wives is clearly greater than zero, given that it's a sizeable chunk of the overall murder rate and we don't spend a lot of resources trying to prevent it. It isn't obvious why this changes if the men are talking their wives into in appropriate MAID.
I write with " - " transitions all the time. Is that materially different from that em-dash thing all the kids are complaining about? Do I look like an AI??????
-
Human or LLM: Yes—no—maybe (em dashes)
-
Lazy human: Yes--no--maybe (pairs of hyphens as ersatz em dashes)
-
Idiosyncratic human: Yes – no – maybe (en dashes plus spaces)
-
Lazy and idiosyncratic human: Yes - no - maybe (hyphens as ersatz en dashes, plus spaces)
-
Insane human: Yes- no- maybe
-
Insane human: Yes — no — maybe (em dashes plus spaces)
Rov_Scam
20hr ago
I live in PA, and getting a CCL here is trivially easy, even in deep blue areas. The only minor impediment is that in some counties you have to submit the application in person, while others allow mail or online submissions, and in all counties you have to pick up the permit in person. Compare this to getting a DL, which requires a physical exam, written exam and eye test at the licensing center, ID plus Social Security Card plus two proofs of address, and then a road test to cap it all off. The procedural hurdles for driving are significantly higher.
charlesf
20hr ago
The Indians I work with say its about 30%. Work has sent me to Hyderabad a couple of times, and a few other cities like Chennai and Delhi for shorter periods, and this % seems like its large enough that its much easier to actually be a vegetarian there. My coworkers there always just used the shortened term "veg", which was also the label used on menus and food packaging. My veg coworkers from the US always enjoyed being sent to Hyd for a while as you could reasonably expect effort to be put into the veg offerings almost everywhere, though we could all do without the heat and humidity of India in July/August, though Hyd seemed not as bad as some other cities. Also you can get beef in India if you really want to; ask the Muslims about it. You can generally identify them by their names in many cases I've found.
Throwaway05
20hr ago
Lol, well "no actually it is quite a bit more complicated than that and the popular presentation and imagining is grossly inadequate" is like the central lesson of The Motte. Internalizing that and putting it to use is YOUR credit.
For the issue at hand - it's worth noting that most Americans can be signed up for Medicare or Medicaid and hospitals will do that in an attempt to deal with some of the cost of mandatory care.
Illegals become more problematic and can easily end up sucking up hospital level resources for a year and a half while waiting for a charity care dialysis placement or something like that.
Incidentally I write with - transitions all the time. Is that materially different than that em-dash thing all the kids are complaining about? Do I look like an AI??????
ToaKraka
Dislikes you
20hr ago
TowardsPanna
21hr ago
Don't live in the past. There are always new, major opportunities in each cycle. Few developments are ever fully priced in, if you are somewhat quick on the trigger. Market efficiency is to a significant degree a myth.
dr_analog
top 1% of underdog fetishists
21hr ago
Novo Nordisk's glory days are behind them
It's true more people are waking up to GLP-1s, but there's more competition in the pipeline than ever, In my view, Novo and Eli seem awfully close to getting into a price war.
Also, the rest of the planet is nowhere near as lucrative as the US and the US might be close to tapped out. There's also attacks on the patent regime (might be lost in Canada which might be a backdoor into the US) and also the borders seem quite porous to gray market sources entering the country. Why not? The same Asian labs that produce it for Novo/Eli can just do additional shadow runs and ship directly to US dealers. It's the same money for them but 10% of the cost for US consumers.
The future looks bright if you're a fatty. Not so great if you're pharma. It's actually a bit alarming, since even with GLP-1 boom the pharma industry has plummeting ROI https://www.cremieux.xyz/i/163939433/preclinical-prioritization
charlesf
21hr ago
If imitation meats were a bit higher quality, a bit cheaper, and reliably available I'd switch to them without hesitation. I always try the newest offerings on the market; we aren't quite there yet, but I feel like we're getting progressively closer.
I've already stopped eating mammals. It started with pigs over a decade ago, then all mammals about 5 years ago. Just birds and fishes. I might eat a lizard but its never come up.
TowardsPanna
21hr ago
I've seen a couple of doctors over the years who were so clearly not people-persons that they acted similarly. I think some of them might be autists and/or just status and money chasers who don't deign to view the patient as a human.
If by "talking to people" you mean dealing with unreasonable felonious clients, their unreasonable families, obnoxious and occasionally unethical prosecutors, unhelpful court staff, belligerent judges, probation officers, police officers, and a bunch of others, then yes. And of course, most of the court staff, probation officers, police officers, clients, and their families all believe they're lawyers and know more about the law than I do.
None of that includes the administrative side of things.
lol. lmao, even.
No, criminal defense.
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