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dr_analog
razorboy
1d ago
Thank you for the clarifications (and outright corrections!). I suppose the awkward fitting is to avoid stepping on the President's toes wrt his authority to declare an emergency, which seems to be widely upheld?
citing health concerns
I'm glad she didn't starve herself to death. And yet, is it terrible that I read this and immediately think to myself "do a flip faggot"?
There's something so contemptibly safetyist about voluntarily signing up for a task which is dangerous by nature - then refusing to do it, because of how dangerous it is. It induces the same feeling of disgust in me as those photos of Secret Service agents cowering behind Trump while he was being shot at. What the hell did you think being a Secret Service agent entailed? Vibes? Papers? Essays?
aqouta
1d ago
Is there any actual scientific evidence in favor of social contagion playing any part in transgenderism? The pro-trans tribe claims that social contagion plays no role, and to me, it's trivially true that social contagion plays an astounding part, as well as fetishism and abuse, and autism. I have no idea how many kids genuinely become gender dysphoric due to genetics, if there are any at all. And if there are any, I certainly don't think that it's a given that they need puberty blockers. How the hell did that become the default? But anyway, has The Science turned up anything on social contagion
The problem with empirics here is that the whole phenomenon is unfalsifiable. I think that many trans people are indeed experiencing something whether it's sociogenic or a physical ailment because they are doing a lot of costly harm to themselves to a degree that makes no sense if they aren't actually suffering. But there just isn't really a way to tell if a kid is going through a phase or has this more real thing assuming there is a real thing. Even the prospective trans person themselves can't know if what they're experiencing is what other trans people are experiencing. It's all guessing all the way down.
I enjoy your effort-posts about law, so criticize Unikowsky to your heart's content!
At least for Espinoza, Montana's argument was pretty much just one too-clever-by-half argument after another:
- Discrimination is bad. But unlike discrimination on race, which is never permissible (though see his commentary on SFFA here, which does not make the same division), discrimination on matters of religion are permitted because of the establishment clause, so long as it does not discriminate from one religion to another. Sure, this amendment was near-certainly motivated by dislike of Catholics in its original form, and the analysis when the state constitution was reenacted was perfunctory, but it's not from the Champagne region of France, so why look closer?
- Wait, what does that whole "free exercise clause" thing mean, then? Oh, it requires his preferred position, too: access to a nonsectarian and generally applicable fund might give "government leverage to influence religious education", so the free exercise and establishment clauses together doubly mandate a rule against funding being available to religious people. You thought perhaps it would be wiser to stop government influence of religious education by allowing states to challenge government influence of religious education, so I'm sure Unikowsky will eventually have some commentary on the ministerial exception someday, but it's not happened yet.
- And the various process concerns Montana raised in the brief are pretty pretextual. There wasn't a federal question or a bunch of other similarly prescribed other state laws, despite the existence of Blaine Amendments in over a dozen other states or the state's interpretation of the federal constitution, because there's some very specific things about how the program was funded or how the Montana Court blew up the program. Any other case would have these sort of specifics, if different in detail, but it's an argument, throw it against the wall.
With regards to Unikowsky's position on clever interpretations, how do you think a litigator's arguments on behalf of clients should be weighed against the views they independently express?
I think it's a more plausible argument for public defenders than it is for people on the SCOTUS bar. Unikowsky was not assigned to work with Montana out of some computerized selection criteria or preset longstanding contract. At minimum, he joined Jenner and Block knowing it was arguing these sort of cases with this sort of valiance, he's done so in a variety of contexts (eg whether public employees can be fired for inadvertent misgendering), and some of those he's argued separately from his clients or employer. More likely, while he wasn't the sole decision-maker, he had a pretty sizable degree of control and advocacy, and personally chose to be involved in the case.
Within that context, there are still some places where I can understand someone just having to work with what they've got -- Unikowsky's response to the animus discussion is misleading, but heightened-rational-basis-because-animus is basically fatal, so if you don't have better arguments yolo, okay. But his statement in AshLael's link is about what he sees as what the role of SCOTUS; if that's not the same thing as what's more likely to succeed before SCOTUS, it means nothing.
My argument is not about Unikowsky's credibility as a lawyer (I don't, frankly, know). It's about whether his analysis tells you anything about what the courts will do, or even about what principles he thinks the courts should follow in general, rather than just what he thinks will get him his way in a given case.
iprayiam3
1d ago
I've all of the sudden seen AI blackpilling break out into the normie space around me. Not so much about FOOM, and paperclipping, or terminator scenarios, but around the sudden disruptive nature, and especially around economic upheaval. Not exactly sure why. Veo3 has been part of it.
For example, coworkers suddenly aware that AI is going to completely disrupt the job market and economy, and very soon. People are organically discovering the @2rafa wonderment at how precariously and even past-due a great deal of industry and surrounding B2B services industries stand to be domino'd over. If my observation generalizes, that middle class normies are waking up a doompill on AI economic disruption, what is going to happen?
Let's consider it from 2 points of view. 1 They're right. and 2. They're wrong. 1. is pretty predictable fodder here - massive, gamechanging social and economic disruption, with difficult to predict state on the other side.
But is 2 that much less worrisome? Even if everyone is 'wrong', and AI is somehow not going to take away 'careers', people in mass worrrying that it's so will still manifest serious disruption. People are already starting to hold thier breath. Stopping hiring, stopping spending, running hail mary's, checking out.
Somehow, it's only senior management who doesn't realize the impact. (They keep framing 'If we can cut costs, we'll come out on top, instead of following the logical conclusion, if everyone stops spending the B2B economy collapses.) - I have a nontechnical coworker, who has recently recreated some complex business intelligence tool we purchased not long ago using readily available AI and a little bit of coaching. He had an oh shit moment, when he realized how cannibalized the software industry is about to get. The film industry seems about to completely topple, not because Veo3 will replace it immediately, but because, who's going to make a giant investment in that space right now?
I suspect the macro economic shock is going to hit faster than most are expecting, and faster than actual GDP gains will be made, but maybe I'm just an idiot.
imreallywondering
1d ago
If I'm taking this right, you think that getting swipes is more important than going on dates from the swipes? So 100 'yes hi' and nothing more is better than three dates from three 'yes hi' messages?
This is a caricature of my position. Firstly-- you need to consider that most only a fraction of likes will convert into matches into dates into sex or relationships. If you want to be successful on this app, you need to rack up likes and matches and be able to filter through a large amount of women relatively quickly. This is pretty basic stuff. If you get 10 likes a week, you're probably going nowhere.
That seems to me to be a strange measure of success, but it does seem to fit the theory that "women don't go on dating apps to meet men, they go on dating apps to receive validation by getting swipes".
Non-sequitur.
Is that what you are aiming for here? More swipes means more validation but you don't actually want to meet or date any of the people who matched?
Non-sequitur.
Also, it isn't just women saying "yes hi"-- matches will show more interest and desire if you're more attractive. The benefits don't stop at raw numbers of likes or matches.
imreallywondering
1d ago
I'm just a bit genuinely curious on your philosophy so I'm going to ask flat out. Do you actually think that you're going to get more dates with two matches a day rather than two hundred?
Whether or not there’s a second date/you get laid is almost totally determined by your game and her mood, rather than how good you looked in 6 photos.
I'm not trying to be rude but this just isn't true. If a girl is actually physically attracted to you it takes pretty close to no effort to get laid with her. Of course as with anything it's a matter of degree-- but saying it's all or even mostly game is just straight up wrong.
Also your example is totally irrelevant because it has no time measure, no location settings, and more importantly no info on how hot these matches are.
If you actually took a look you'd've seen that there were quite literally multiple time measures, so this is a bit of an odd question to ask. The rest of this seems a lot like special pleading and goalpost moving. Hinge match
Muninn
"Dick Laurent is dead."
1d ago
I mean, my wife doesn't love it when I start in on an infodump, but she married me anyway and we make it work. She has occasionally quoted Jen from The IT Crowd at me, specifically making white static noise at me or saying, "I want to stop listening to this," to bring me back to Earth, a behavior that I have encouraged so that she doesn't have to get ever-more lost in what I'm on about.
Muninn
"Dick Laurent is dead."
1d ago
Did I warn you that I'm totally a cheap date when it comes to Kindle books in general and LitRPG in particular since it plugs right into the brain centers that began to develop the first time I picked up D&D as a wee lad? Because I'm totally a cheap date when it comes to Kindle books in general and LitRPG in particular! That disclaimer out of the way, while I can't remember anything specifically atheistic in DCC, it's more than crapsack (grimdark?) enough of a setting to invoke that sort of thing and Carl is definitely guilty of wangst-filled thought monologues throughout the series; I honestly wouldn't be surprised if one or more of those was explicitly atheistic and it just didn't register highly enough for me to remember it. Anyway, I should probably qualify the series that I've enjoyed so let me do that real quick, starting with the fact that out of all of them, 12 Miles Below is the only one that doesn't have any sort of comparative rules or system and that in fact intriguing enemies and RPG systems are definitely one of the hooks that get me into series. So:
- 12 Miles Below: I utterly adore the world and the worldbuilding of this series. Good writing and characters as well! I'll devour these as soon as they appear.
- Noobtown: Intricate RPG system, lots of "fish out of water" humor along with hysterical foil characters, lots of pop culture referencing, not too heavy of a tone in general with periodic exceptions for reasons of Plot.
- He Who Fights Monsters: Another intricate RPG system, tons of fights, many of them epic, surprising world, character and system depth overall, which isn't surprising given that the series is long and still unfinished. That said, the MC is a self-described chuunibyou and he's got a lot of that wangst going on, so maybe get some other opinions if those things don't sound like your cup of tea.
- The Menocht Loop: I don't even remember how this one came across my radar but I utterly adore the magic system and the worldbuilding of these books. This series starts with the MC being way OP for his world but explores what that looks like in a larger 'verse. This is perhaps the best written series of all of the ones that I mentioned, with a well-thought-out magic system, and a rich 'verse for the characters to explore. Exceptionally well written characters, at that.
- The Dungeon Slayer: Just good overall, but an interesting system where most characters are locked into their overall level and skillset, with the exception of the MC who starts with nothing but can actually advance. Some interesting characters and bosses and good fighting as well.
- Oh, Great, I was Reincarnated as a Farmer: This one's another humorous, "fish out of water," series, that's all about the MC gaming the System to advance and prosper despite the lowly farmer class he inherits when he enters the world. Not outstanding, but the humor largely worked for me and did I mention that I'm a cheap date to begin with?
And thanks for the recommendations! I haven't read any of your main recommendations yet, though it sounds like I'll have to check out all of them at some point. I actually have Primal Hunter in my Kindle library, but I know I haven't read it yet. In fact, I have several LitRPG books and even series in my library that I haven't gotten around to because some shiny daily or countdown deal caught my fancy as I have a bad habit of reading the free sapble and then buying if I like what I've read, sometimes multiple books in the series. Looking at you, Guardian of Aster Fall series. Don't think I've forgotten you either, Cyber Dreams. And that's just LitRPG in particular, I have plenty of sci-fi, fantasy, nonfiction, and psych stuff in my library to read (someday?) as well, so I'm definitely on your wavelength there. And doggone it, I only ever did read the first few books of the Master and Commander series... But yeah, I'll have to check out your must-reads and honorable mentions for sure!
EverythingIsFine
Well, is eventually fine
1d ago
Again this whole thing would be easier, ironically even for Trump, had Trump not personally torpedoed a major compromise immigration bill before coming in to office. Which among other things would have increased the number of available judges.
falling-star
1d ago
Naw bro I'm a white guy from New England.
sodiummuffin
1d ago
That's why I suggest doing them in one of the countries that no longer recommends puberty-blockers - the choice would be between a 50% shot at blockers as part of the study or a ~0% shot as part of the general public. Theoretically some could go doctor-shopping internationally, but hopefully not enough to ruin the study. An unblinded RCT would still be a huge step up from the evidence we have now.
EverythingIsFine
Well, is eventually fine
1d ago
This is just anti-credentialism at its most stupid. If anything the legal industry is one of the best places to be credentialist, because so many cases turn on very specific case law and precedent that the non-credentialed have almost no hope of fully understanding. Let alone the whole demand for isolated rigor lens. Respectfully, your intuition is twisted.
philosoraptor
1d ago
EverythingIsFine
Well, is eventually fine
1d ago
What the above poster is claiming and what I think is more accurate is that rather than foreign students “taking spots” from domestic students, instead there is a synergistic effect where more-profitable foreign students essentially underwrite less-profitable domestic students. Like how health care takes profits from healthy people (and lucky people) to pay for poor people (and unlucky people). If you take away foreign money, you actually hurt domestic students! Universities will shrink their advanced degree programs due to funding shortfalls rather than expand access to domestic applicants. Making this an own-goal (at least in absolute numbers)
EverythingIsFine
Well, is eventually fine
1d ago
The funny thing I read recently was about how shipping is a mess because of Trump - first, a ton of big ships made trips to the EU, and now that there’s a pause in the China tariffs and US companies are stocking up, the ships are in the wrong spot. Basically a lot of reactionary decisions all around and because Trump’s mind is hard to read the logistic decisions at also unstable and sometimes “wrong”
Muninn
"Dick Laurent is dead."
1d ago
Interesting! I'm not big on audiobooks as I tend to prefer the speed of reading and the imagery that my head evokes but there's definitely a lot to appreciate in a good narrator. I may have to give a James Marsters narrated Dresden Files novel at some point, for instance, because that sounds a lot like a Reese's Cup combination right there. But yes, I'll have to see how much the audiobook will set me back and I'll definitely drop a line if/when I pick up City and give it a read. I'm positive I've seen it on sale at the Kindle store at some point in the not too distant past so I view it as only a matter of time. :)
EverythingIsFine
Well, is eventually fine
1d ago
It’s tough, but I don’t think RCTs are possible. Despite obviously how helpful they would be. They require you to randomize treatment, and not only is blinding difficult or impossible, at its core for an RCT to even occur you need parents and teen subjects BOTH who are willing to give up the choice entirely to chance! That is, if you’re assigned to a transition group or not, neither the parent nor child can have a veto, or it ruins makes random assignment useless. I don’t know anyone who would be comfortable doing that, do you?
ActuallyATleilaxuGhola
Axolotl Tank Class of '24
1d ago
Are you Indian? I feel like every user on here who is young and doing some startup thing is Indian. I'm not sure why that is but it's an intersection phenomenon.
HereAndGone
1d ago
I think it's not so much that the Romans had fucked-up sexual morality (though they did) as it was that "if you're powerful enough, you can get away with anything". See the allegations about Tiberius on Capri:
44 1 He acquired a reputation for still grosser depravities that one can hardly bear to tell or be told, let alone believe. For example, he trained little boys (whom he termed tiddlers) to crawl between his thighs when he went swimming and tease him with their licks and nibbles; and unweaned babies he would put to his organ as though to the breast, being by both nature and age rather fond of this form of satisfaction. 2 Left a painting of Parrhasius's depicting Atalanta pleasuring Meleager with her lips on condition that if the theme displeased him he was to have a million sesterces instead, he chose to keep it and actually hung it in his bedroom. The story is also told that once at a sacrifice, attracted by the acolyte's beauty, he lost control of himself and, hardly waiting for the ceremony to end, rushed him off and debauched him and his brother, the flute-player, too; and subsequently, when they complained of the assault, he had their legs broken.
ActuallyATleilaxuGhola
Axolotl Tank Class of '24
1d ago
I was pretty disappointed by the lack of actual debate as well. Yarvin put forth some assertions that she could have contested, but she instead seemed to be trying to avoid legitimizing his ideas by treating them as beneath her consideration. I wonder if she knows that that cat is already out of the bag. And she seemed to be either be speaking in vague meaningless generalities the whole time, or she was speaking academic/Cathedral jargon (cf. Catholic theological jargon).
Also, maybe just personal taste, but man, her voice and tone were just incredibly grating. She has some sort of West Coast uptalk accent (I kept thinking "ermahgerd") and her constant unprovoked sassy black girl put-downs really dragged the whole thing down and were kind of embarrassing to listen to. Just sounded really arrogant and scolding. Really off-putting.
Yarvin IMO only did "okay" himself. To be fair it was hard to pin down what Allen was saying, but he meandered a lot and his points were probably hard to understand for people unfamiliar with his writing. At one point he tried to make some point about identical twins being equal in moral worth as some sort of gotcha, and the even the moderator was so confused he asked for clarification. Silver lining was that his speaking ability seems to have improved. Last time I heard him on a podcast I had to turn it off because there were so many "ummms" and "uhhhs."
Overall, pretty weak showing for debate between a professor from the World's Greatest Center of Learning and the Prince of Dark Elves. I suspect they chose a black woman to trigger audience programming about race/sexism in order to taint the debate, because she clearly wasn't chosen for debate skill. I'd much rather have watched Yarvin debated some highly competent old white professor but maybe Yarvin doesn't have those anymore.
HereAndGone
1d ago
Also, Nero played both roles: he was the husband of Sporus, but the wife of Pythagoras, at least according to Tacitus:
37 1 He himself, to create the impression that no place gave him equal pleasure with Rome, began to serve banquets in the public places and to treat the entire city as his palace. In point of extravagance and notoriety, the most celebrated of the feasts was that arranged by Tigellinus; which I shall describe as a type, instead of narrating time and again the monotonous tale of prodigality. He constructed, then, a raft on the Pool of Agrippa, and superimposed a banquet, to be set in motion by other craft acting as tugs. The vessels were gay with gold and ivory, and the oarsmen were catamites marshalled according to their ages and their libidinous attainments. He had collected birds and wild beasts from the ends of the earth, and marine animals from the ocean itself. On the quays of the lake stood brothels, filled with women of high rank; and, opposite, naked harlots met the view. First came obscene gestures and dances; then, as darkness advanced, the whole of the neighbouring grove, together with the dwelling-houses around, began to echo with song and to glitter with lights. Nero himself, defiled by every natural and unnatural lust had left no abomination in reserve with which to crown his vicious existence; except that, a few days later, he became, with the full rites of legitimate marriage, the wife of one of that herd of degenerates, who bore the name of Pythagoras. The veil was drawn over the imperial head, witnesses were despatched to the scene; the dowry, the couch of wedded love, the nuptial torches, were there: everything, in fine, which night enshrouds even if a woman is the bride, was left open to the view.
Suetonius repeats the same story, but gives a different name - Doryphorus:
28 1 Besides abusing freeborn boys and seducing married women, he debauched the vestal virgin Rubria. The freedwoman Acte he all but made his lawful wife, after bribing some ex-consuls to perjure themselves by swearing that she was of royal birth. He castrated the boy Sporus and actually tried to make a woman of him; and he married him with all the usual ceremonies, including a dowry and a bridal veil, took him to his house attended by a great throng, and treated him as his wife. And the witty jest that someone made is still current, that it would have been well for the world if Nero's father Domitius had had that kind of wife. 2 This Sporus, decked out with the finery of the empresses and riding in a litter, he took with him to the assizes and marts of Greece, and later at Rome through the Street of the Images, fondly kissing him from time to time. That he even desired illicit relations with his own mother, and was kept from it by her enemies, who feared that such a help might give the reckless and insolent woman too great influence, was notorious, especially after he added to his concubines a courtesan who was said to look very like Agrippina. Even before that, so they say, whenever he rode in a litter with his mother, he had incestuous relations with her, which were betrayed by the stains on his clothing.
29 1 He so prostituted his own chastity that after defiling almost every part of his body, he at last devised a kind of game, in which, covered with the skin of some wild animal, he was let loose from a cage and attacked the private parts of men and women, who were bound to stakes, and when he had sated his mad lust, was dispatched by his freedman Doryphorus; for he was even married to this man in the same way that he himself had married Sporus, going so far as to imitate the cries and lamentations of a maiden being deflowered. I have heard from some men that it was his unshaken conviction that no man was chaste or pure in any part of his body, but that most of them concealed their vices and cleverly drew a veil over them; and that therefore he pardoned all other faults in those who confessed to him their lewdness.
SubstantialFrivolity
I'm not even supposed to be here today
1d ago
With this, I'll (by some estimates) enter the top-1 percentile of individual compensation in the US.
Do you mean you have a very low salary or a very high salary? If it's very high then it's 99th percentile, or top 1 percent. 1st percentile would mean that only 1% of people earn a lower salary than you.
philosoraptor
1d ago
You will not make yourself more romantically successful with women by putting on dog ears, getting on all fours and barking because there are a couple women out there that like dogs.
With men, on the other hand, that'd probably work.
I have observed the same thing and I also think that the trans phenomenon is clearly one of social contagion, but I think your particular argument is very weak, practically self-defeating. Autism is generally understood to be an in-born condition of biological/genetic origin, and transgender activists would typically argue that they're the same way. A correlation between these conditions is exactly the kind of thing they'd predict.
It's much clearer to observe the spread of trans stuff through a community, how insular and tight-knit communities wind up disproportionately transgender through cultish dynamics and the memetic equivalent of the founder effect.
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