domain:web.law.duke.edu
VoxelVexillologist
Multidimensional Radical Centrist
21hr ago
So, the Bike discussion down below generated a lot of angst and heat
I just want to state the obvious here, that bicycle sheds should be blue.
quiet_NaN
22hr ago
Right now, the equilibrium is that somebody (or their alt account) is willing to take a ban to just do the thing that needs to be done.
The requirements for a top level post in the CW thread are notably lower than the requirements for a doctorate in international affairs. Original thought is fine, but so is paraphrasing/citing/linking takes of others.
We do not require a Scott-Alexander-much-more-than-you-wanted-to-know 40 hour full depth investigation.
Ideally, you would wait until reputable (in a bounded-distrust sense) media report the facts, then quote or paraphrase them. If it is big news, it will be reported by everyone, so you can check multiple sources, from the New York fucking Times to Al-Jazeera. Provide a few links. Some of the reported facts will be contested by comments, some may even turn out to be wrong. This is ok, but it is still useful to have a shared base of claims or (ideally) agreed-upon facts before the arguments start. If the top level comment for Oct-7 is "BREAKING: HAMAS KILLED A BUNCH OF ISRAELIS. LIKE A LOT. MORE DETAILS TO FOLLOW", then the comments will have to establish what actually happened.
The competitive advantage of the motte is not that it can report what is true faster than twitter, nor that it is better at reporting facts than the news media. The advantage is that it offers takes from a broad spectrum, at least some of which are typically interesting. But good takes can only appear once the facts are half-way settled. Sure, any idiot with a twitter account can reply to "BREAKING: IDF BOMBING IRAN" with either "Fucking Jews are trying to start World War 3 again" or "Bloody camel-fucking antisemites had it coming". But all the interesting takes, like "This was mostly theater for the benefit of Netanyahu's domestic audience, and here is why ..." or "The nuclear weapons angle is a distraction, by taking out a few military leaders Israel managed to reshape the landscape of Iranian politics, as ..." or "Actually, this is a direct consequence of a recent development of the Ukraine war, where ..." will only happen after the facts are in and the posters have had a day to think on them and how they tie into their world view.
A decent current news top level post is basically providing a canvas for takes.
Another low-hanging fruit is reports of reactions by relevant parties. What did Trump say about it? Did Putin react? Again, this is typically widely reported.
Then, you might want to link this to culture war topics. What takes are trending in the cesspits of social media? Are the wokes condemning it as colonialist violence or something? Is the anti-nuclear crowd celebrating?
Then, you might already offer some takes of your own, or link to takes from elsewhere you found interesting, but personally I consider this optional for top level posts on news topics which are sure to spark discussion.
I confess that I do not track which news stories are skipped by the motte because nobody can be arsed to spend a quarter of an hour to write a decent top level post on them. My suspicion is that we would not have skipped the attacks on Iran, but feel free to point out such news stories, or instances of people having gotten a warning/ban after making a low effort post (say, a link to the Guardian, plus a one paragraph quote, plus a two sentence take) for stuff which sparked a lot of discussion.
I see this as a coordination problem. We do not have a system to assign news items to posters, so you will only want to tackle news items when you are confident that you are not preempting another user who is in the middle of a more detailed writeup. I would propose a system of sliding standards. In the first 24h of a news item being reported, I would expect someone putting in a solid twenty minutes of citing multiple news sources. After 36h, if it is an important CW news item (e.g. the first Trump tariff story, not the tenth), I propose top level posters should get away with a low effort post (source+quote+two sentences).
Pasha
Defend Kebab
22hr ago
The life experiences she gets from her weird upbringing/being very attractive/hypersexuality/knowing interesting people/extreme class mobility/unusual revenue streams make for an interesting read of her blog. Her data science work is just dogshit people tolerate for the rest. It is like talking to an elderly woman about your life while using horoscopes as the "context". The point is not the horoscope, it is talking about your life to someone.
MollieTheMare
22hr ago
Impressively accurate.
naraburns
nihil supernum
22hr ago
So I ask again- why bother? Is the time for talking over?
Well... it isn't 100% on point, given the different context, but I would invite you to read what I wrote to Kulak's exit and imagine how the substance of my post might apply to you.
Stellula
22hr ago
This was your original claim;
In a normal, healthy, average relationship, men trade resources and services for sex. That’s just how it goes. Prostitution simply formalizes the exchange.
Elaborate on this. I have never traded resources or services for sex.
Primaprimaprima
...something all admit only "TRUMP", and the Trump Administration, can do.
22hr ago
You continue to misinterpret my claims.
Love, if it exists, is a miracle. But did I ever say, at any point in this conversation, that you shouldn't believe in miracles? I've said no such thing.
I, along with perhaps billions of other people will tell you that
Regardless of what claims you think I'm making, this would not constitute a legitimate criticism of any of them.
You could almost say that it's the business of philosophical reflection to produce claims (or, plausible sounding arguments for claims, at any rate) that almost everyone rejects. It has variously been claimed by different parties in the history of philosophy that cars and buildings and animals are not real, that conscious experience is not real, that 1+1 does not equal 2, that there exist sentences which can be both true and false at the same time. Almost all humans reject these claims; but this is not taken to be any major impediment. Truth is not subject to democratic rule. The philosopher simply carries on with his business; he is well aware that other people will think he is in the grip of some kind of psychosis. When the propositions of "common sense" are finally subjected to long-overdue critique, the results will unavoidably be counterintuitive.
the harm that people like Aella have done to society is to convince people of the incorrect, unhealthy, anti social framework of understanding that you are presenting here.
I mean, you will certainly believe that some people are incorrect and unhealthy and anti-social, but we still all have to try to get along, y'know? Tomorrow it could be you who's getting called incorrect and anti-social.
You, nor Aella, nor the red pill people, nor the pickup artist people before them
I don't agree with the TRP/PUA people at all! I've done a terrible job of explaining my positions if that's what you took away from it.
I'm less familiar with Aella, but I'd probably find points of significant disagreement with her as well.
oats_son
22hr ago
This state of affairs reminds me of Kyle Rittenhouse a bit. One guy shooting three other guys? He has to be in the wrong, right? He's so violent. Well, actually, he's only violent because everyone around him is forcing him to be, and they're actually the unreasonable ones. But a lot of people disagree, some of them partly because they don't see the unreasonable ones as so unreasonable.
Pasha
Defend Kebab
22hr ago
She is reaching the end of her career in the coming decade and still has to live off her earnings for close to half a century. If she cannot arrange some alternative income stream that is probably actually barely an upper middle class lifestyle living off her current wealth and not leaving much to any children.
I think the burden of having a very well known prostitute as your mother also does require some more golden spoon than the average to carry.
And she has been hanging around relatively wealthy successful people and prostituting herself to very rich men for a while. I am sure her perception of wealth is quite skewed.
Amadan
Enjoying my short-lived victory
22hr ago
I am genuinely shaking my head in amazement that you wrote such a long wall of text to defend such an absurd argument and expect it to be taken seriously.
Right now, the equilibrium is that somebody (or their alt account) is willing to take a ban to just do the thing that needs to be done.
What are you even talking about? How many times has someone been banned for this? Any guesses? You talk like this is how it usually goes down, that when a big breaking news event happens, everyone wants to talk about it and someone has "take one for the team" and post a thread-starter they will get banned for.
Of course when big events happen, there will inevitably be a thread about it. Because someone will write about it. And they will, hopefully, write at least a measly paragraph or two that is something beyond just "HEY GUYS SOMETHING BIG IS HAPPENING I WANT TO BE THE FIRST TO START A THREAD SO MY THREAD WILL THE THREAD ABOUT IT!"
Our standards are not high. They are not unreasonable. You do not have to write an essay, a flowery effortpost, or come up with some wildly innovative idea. You just have to not look like an attention whore on Twitter.
There is a very simple solution for a major event worthy of discussion: write something about it. If it's too low effort, we'll probably clear our throats and say "Low effort, don't do this." Sometimes we will create a mega thread, like for elections and other predictable events. If next week, World War III has started, we will probably create a mega thread for it (you know, if we're alive and the Internet is still up and stuff).
@ABigGuy4U ate a ban because he was so blatant, so deliberate, so "Tee hee ain't I clever guys!" about it. I explained this. Normally if someone rushed to be FIRST! we'd just warn them not to do it again (as I said!) and let the thread continue. But someone who goes out of his way to be obnoxious about it, yeah, he's going to eat a ban. Don't tell us "I'm breaking the rules on purpose because the rules are stupid and I want attention." Of course I'm going to be inclined to respond harshly to that.
oats_son
22hr ago
It's probably not something I should make a habit of, but I feel compelled to give some support to Israel here. Israel didn't steal any land any more than anyone else won or lost land before and after World War II, but the difference is the reaction to them has been way crazier because they planted themselves in the middle of a sea of extremists based around a nucleus of religious sites (geez, how many holy sites are Muslims entitled to? The Jews just have a few right there, right?). Much blood has been spilled because there was no postwar liberal consensus in the Middle East as there was in Europe. The postwar liberal consensus had to be created by Israel basically all by itself, with limited success, as the situation in Gaza shows. Israel was making some serious progress on a two-state thing, but that whole deal was killed by rampant terrorist attacks, and due to these sustained attacks, the Palestinians have never been farther from their own state. That's never what they wanted, anyway; they want everything, river to the sea.
Israelis are considered more valued by both sides. You can see this based on the prisoner exchanges between Hamas and Israel. Always, Israel releases hundreds or thousands of militants in exchange for a handful of their own soldiers or civilian hostages. Hamas is glad to accept these deals that bear the implication that one Israeli is worth thousands of Gazans, so I can't blame anyone for believing it's true. But disproportionate casualties have always been acceptable in war, which is what this is. Those civilian to militant casualty ratios are not even out of the ordinary for war. Massive assaults on civilians have also always been a decent cause for war, especially ones committed by the literal government of a territory.
If Israel is an ethnostate (it probably is), it's not a very good one. Do you think that Nazi Germany would accept having a populace composed of 20% Jews?
Normally, I find the idea of actual genocide to be pretty terrible. Ethnic groups and DNA and culture are fascinating to me, and to see something like that die entirely is a huge bummer. Gaza tests this value of mine. Never has a people been more problematic than them and never has a people been more determined to reject their lot in life. Basically their entire purpose nowadays is to take back every square inch of Israel, no matter how impossible that is, no matter how many people on their own side and on the enemy side are killed. Before the 20th century, they absolutely would never have been tolerated. They would have been, at the very least, brutally slapped around until a huge percentage of the population was dead and the rest was too weak and scared to retaliate. If this is not done, this conflict will likely never end. Even forcibly moving every Gazan out of the area probably would not fix the problem, because they are extremely intent on getting their territory back, and distance does not stop the likes of the Houthis and the Iranians either.
I am a little fascinated by the right wingers who do not like Israel. For them, it's generally a much more obvious case of antisemitism than it is for left wingers. My father introduced me to the fact that antisemitism is really, really old in Europe. For Christians, it makes a lot of sense; they were a very radically different group that lived in close proximity to them, considered sinners, forced into a universally disliked profession as bankers, and there is some basis for the idea that they killed Christ and called down a blood curse upon themselves. This, plus random grievances accumulated throughout the centuries just from tallying up every negative incident they could find. For the non-religious, I do not know why they would dislike Jews in particular. My best guess is conspiracy reasons related to Hollywood or perhaps certain Holocaust deniers. If anyone here is agnostic or atheist or otherwise not a Christian, and really doesn't like Jews, please let me know your reasons. I'm interested, scientifically. My father really liked Jews before his, uh, awakening, and he hated Muslims. Now he basically loves Gazans and hates Jews, while still mostly hating Muslims in Europe.
FiveHourMarathon
Wawa Nationalist
22hr ago
If you had a lot of dense traffic, and some of it can't legally go faster than 30, while others can go 90, is a nightmare.
Everyone needs to be going about the same speed for traffic flow.
FiveHourMarathon
Wawa Nationalist
22hr ago
I'm jealous of your M5. I've always felt like at some point I'd like to own a full-fat M car, but the added expense just doesn't seem overly worth it and I probably never will.
FiveHourMarathon
Wawa Nationalist
22hr ago
What cars have you driven on a regular basis? If they were expensive, have you found them to be worth the extra money?
Well, here's the list of everything I've ever put more than a few thousand miles on. Most of them were family vehicles in one capacity or another that I either borrowed for long enough to get a feel for them, or they were , only one did I buy new-ish from a dealer,
1952 Dodge Pickup Truck: A friend of my father had this parked in his driveway for about two decades straight. When I was in high school, he called my father and said all his wife wanted for her 50th anniversary was the damn truck out of the damn driveway. So my father and I went over and towed it out of where it had sunk into the pavement, and spent the better part of a year fixing it up. It's candy apple red with a small block chevy v8 in it, running through mostly Ford Explorer running gear. It's not actually fast, but it's fun to drive in that you feel every single thing. Sometimes I think that if you get caught speeding way over the limit, you should be sentenced to your license being limited only to cars like this, in that at a sustained 60mph everything rattles so damn much that it feels unsafe, while in better more modern cars 80 or 90 or 100 feels like nothing.
1991 Ford Bronco: I never actually drove this much on the road. My dad picked it up for $100 cash on the side of the road, and gave it to me for my 14th birthday to learn to drive on the farm. I drove it all over the local farms and trails. Not a bad car in and of itself, but I once read a statistic in an article that something like 1/10 of this model wound up involved in a fatal rollover crash, so probably good that I sold it before I actually got my license.
1996 Ford Explorer XLT V8: My sister's first car before it was my first car, stayed in the family for about twenty years. Bought for $1800 with 100k miles, ran without any problems through two fender benders to 200k miles, while being driven mainly by teenagers, before finally being sold off for $1200 two years ago. This was really a near perfect teen car, strong AWD system, the V8 had enough power to pull out on the highway but not so much that I got pulled over as a teen. You could pile ten kids into it when we went hiking, or about 500lbs of fireworks when me and a buddy bought them illegally. Had a six cd changer, which was the height of luxury.
Various American Work Spec Pickup Trucks from between 1990 and 2005: All pretty much the same. Ford, Chevy, Dodge, it's all the same thing to me. Different mechanics swear by different trucks, but with some minor variations (Chevys are cheaper to replace an engine on, Fords have the little keypad) it's all the same story. It'll run forever but everything will break. Every little thing will need to be replaced, but it's easy to find and never fatal.
2000 Subaru Outback Wagon XT Manual: First car I bought, off my elderly cousin who bought the turbo for some reason. Oh man did I love this car. Fun to drive, AWD, manual, space in the back for stuff. I'd still have it, if i hadn't been t boned at a rural intersection and gone into a coma for a week. RIP to a real one, amazing I survived after the damage it took.
2000 BMW 323ci Manual: Got it off a family friend. Gorgeous, perfect car, one of the best driver's cars ever made for my money. Perfectly balanced, rides comfortably but can take corners as hard as you want, perfectly stable predictable handling, the small engine option so you can drive the hell out of it, but despite only having 170hp the inline six pulls in every gear. I still have it, and periodically I think I should get rid of it because I don't need it, but I see the pittance I'd get for it and think eh I really like driving it when I do. Then my wife got a 3 series and now likes the his and hers/collection bit.
2003 Mercedes-Benz C230 Wagon: Here's where the chronology vs model year gets thrown off, I bought this car for $5k after I graduated law school. I love station wagons, especially small ones like this, and if they were more available it's what I'd drive now. It was a great car, only flaw was the automatic transmission. My dog loved it, riding in the back. It was great on the highway, had pretty good sporty handling, and it could hold all my rock climbing stuff. Got totaled in a hailstorm, I put the offer ($2k more than I'd paid) in my back pocket and drove the car for another two years and 30,000 miles, then sold it to the insurance company. I regret getting rid of it sometimes.
2003 Chevrolet Corvette: My dad's car, he bought it new when Chevy was running crazy incentive deals, as he tells it "post 9/11" though I don't remember the time well enough. Red, convertible, manual, FE RWD. What a vette should be. The 2000s GM finishing is as mediocre as you'd think, and it's not the performer that later vettes would be, but it's fun to hoon around in on occasion.
2004 Audi A6 Quattro 2.7t: My mom's car when I was in high school, I inherited it when I went to law school and they felt I needed an AWD. It was a great car, tons of power from the twin turbo, I'm told that a chip tune would double the power on it pretty easily but I never messed with it. Ran great for 100k until suddenly it didn't: died on the highway when an alternator gave out, then flooded in a rainstorm because the drain holes under the batter pan clogged with dirt, then the cooling system leaked and leaked and leaked. Sold for peanuts to some kid who I hope had better luck with it.
2005 Audi A4 3.0t Quattro Cabrio: Bought it used from a local dealer. Extremely fun car to drive, but ultimately I don't get the point of a fun car without a manual. Bad time technologically: screen but a crappy screen and no native bluetooth. Sold it for a little more than I paid for it after fixing it up a little.
2005 Toyota Camry: Another family car, my grandfather bought this new, in classic Indian-Dad gold/beige, and smoked in it every day until he died. Smell of cigarettes on the cloth is just fading now, but the burn holes aren't going anywhere. Honestly, one of the best cars ever made for my dime: starts whenever I turn the key, v4 is plenty on the highway and sips fuel, never done a single thing to it. Some of the interior parts are cracked from sun damage, and the exterior is showing wear, but it runs and runs. And when I park it in the city, I never worry about it, which is a use case all its own. I drive it the most, but really it's more of the family beater: it's the utility infielder if anyone needs a car, or the car we lend to a friend if someone needs to borrow a car. For which it is great, because it will always work, but no one is too thrilled about borrowing it. I reach for the key any time I need to go anywhere and not be seen.
2008 Chevrolet Avalanche LTZ: My first "nice" pickup truck in my life, got it at a bankruptcy auction from some jackass who didn't pay his taxes but did spend a ton of money on a chromed out bitch of a pickup. Still only 80k miles, so it's got a decade to go at least. Leather, good sound system, big v8, got a chip tune on it so it wouldn't do the v4 thing. Terrible mpg, but I have other options to avoid using it when I don't have to on long trips.
2015 Mercedes Benz E550: My mom's car for a while until it had some kind of weird electronic heart attack and was impossible to revive for less than it was worth. My god was it an amazing car while it lasted, though. I can see why at one time its close cousin held the Cannonball record: on a highway it would pull through 130-140 like nothing was happening, and would hold 120 better than the Camry held 65. It was still beautiful and the interior perfect when it gave out, but too expensive to revive.
2015 Mercedes-Benx SL550: My mom bought this car for reasons I have never really figured out. What possesses a 65 year old woman to buy a v8 coupe/convertible that gets to 60 in 4 seconds? I think she couldn't resist the bargain: she got it off the estate of an old guy who had only put 8k miles on it, and she got it for a song at seven years old. She almost never drives it...but I borrow it frequently. Honestly, it's too much power. It would be more fun with less engine. Within seconds of touching the gas pedal, you're committing a felony. Good for a couple of passes, but not really a great driving car at the end of the day. Handling is clumsy, transmission is herky-jerky with the too big v8.
2015 Lexus Rx350: My wife's first car. Workhorse, did everything you wanted it to do, ran perfectly except for eating batteries, but ultimately I just hated it for being a mid size feminine SUV. Around the time it hit 100k, I looked up its trade-in one day out of curiosity and realized that Lexus' hold so much value that we should really consider getting my wife a new car. Then my wife decided she didn't want a new car because nothing was any better than the Lexus, but my in laws had already decided that if my wife got a new car they wanted the Lexus and we had decided to give it to them, so we wound up buying my wife a...
2022 BMW 330i: My wife's new car, the ultimate answer to the last time I posted asking what car I should buy. This is honestly, in my opinion, the peak of the ICE car, the swan song of the genre. Four door awd completely practical to commute or take to costco, gets 40 on the highway with the mild hybrid, but also tons of fun to take on a twisty and hoon. Tossable, responds well to the gas pedal in sport mode, my wife loves driving it so much that she frequently takes breaks while WFH to just take it for a spin on country roads near us. Can drive it five hours and feel great, can rip around a country road and love it, can drive it every day. Fingers crossed on reliability, but Consumer Reports gave it good marks so maybe we'll be ok. Genuinely love this car, and my wife loves this car so much that she suddenly understands why I've loved cars before. Truly a great machine. Bought it two years old with 12k miles for a little over $34k, which was reasonable for me for getting my wife something she liked.
sarker
It isn't happening, and if it is, it's a bad thing
22hr ago
Throwaway05
22hr ago
Follow-up question: what do you mean by the road train stuff?
Also re: headlights, lots of people have and use automatics now, do you oppose relying on that?
TheAntipopulist
Formerly Ben___Garrison
22hr ago
gattsuru
22hr ago
- Yes.
- Yes.
- Not in the US, in good weather, at daytime. Expect 10-15% over to be acceptable. Rain, snow, or true nighttime off an interstate, speed limits are more strict to their posted number. Other countries can be more aggressive; Australia going 1 kph over too often can cost you your license (though in turn, their norms for road trains are near-suicidal by US standards).
- On the interstate and state roads, yes. Residential roads, I'd consider it rude to get into the left lane for a left turn more than a couple miles ahead of time, but it'd still not be a norm violation and in heavier traffic might be a good idea.
- At lower speeds, it's just impolite. Higher speeds (50+ mph), I'd consider it a norm violation unless they've been really stupid (eg matching speed, ignoring or not seeing turn signal for several hundred meters).
- No.
- a. How long after sunrise or before complete sunset do you need to turn on headlights, and what amount of rain should you? b. What sort of load, if any, in an open truck bed, before you need at least one ratchet strap?
AlexanderTurok
Alt-MSNBC
23hr ago
Except all across the board, in this scenario, the country removes the downward pressure to wages caused by the underclass who can get paid under the table, who cannot ask for help if they are abused, and who are desperate to accept any wage to avoid going back home.
Machinery is also abusable and doesn't require any wage at all, should we increase wages by banning it?
MaiqTheTrue
Renrijra Krin
23hr ago
Actually what’s worse is that because of this constant Israel = Bad rhetoric, there’s actually less incentive to not go for broke. Gaza was “genocide” on Day 1. Exactly what does Israel get for not doing exactly that — other than more attacks? Why not simply raze everything and put up Israeli 7-11s where Gaza and the West Bank are now, rather than waiting for the next one? Why not settle Judea? Why not go crazy if you’re crazy anyway.
FiveHourMarathon
Wawa Nationalist
23hr ago
Manual transmission Subaru Forrester:
Middle income professional, probably "could" have afforded something more expensive but chose the Subaru. Practical, not overly showy, but not overly false-modest either. LL Bean in human form. Probably outdoorsy, but in a modest hiking/biking/canoeing kind of way; rather than an EXTREME making it your whole personality way.
Stellula
23hr ago
I, along with perhaps billions of other people will tell you that they are in love with their wives/husbands and children, and that yes it is subconscious.
Your frustration with this is because you haven’t personally experienced it. You should reevaluate your belief that you are experiencing a wider range, more intense set of emotions than most people, because you apparently have no experience with the emotion that much of the world feels most intensely, and you apparently do not feel at all.
As to your question: the harm that people like Aella have done to society is to convince people of the incorrect, unhealthy, anti social framework of understanding that you are presenting here.
Yes, love is real, yes it is healthy to love your wife and children, and no this is not all transactional. You, nor Aella, nor the red pill people, nor the pickup artist people before them, nor any of the other people of that persuasion have discovered something unique insight into human emotion. Aella et al have figured out an exploit in the human psyche that enriches them, at your expense and the expense of the rest of their customers.
FiveHourMarathon
Wawa Nationalist
23hr ago
I feel like if it was kept constant momentum it would just lead to a dystopia of motorcycles zooming through lumbering cybertrucks.
But if it were just a 20mph difference I'd agree completely. Big trucks and SUVs should stay at a steady 65, but let small cars and motorcycles play at 90.
Probably Dilaudid, also known in the ER as "I'm allergic to everything except for that one that starts with D."
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