domain:youtu.be
WhiningCoil
1d ago
I think America is already dead. There are almost certainly other theories, but look at the utter collapse of our state capacity.
Sometimes I see people point to Vietnam as the point where America "lost the ability to win wars", the first Iraq War not withstanding. We can fight wars. We can fight wars for decades. But we haven't achieved our geopolitical goals after a war in decades.
But there is more to running a nation than adventurism over seas! Sadly since Obama basically the state has failed at every initiative it ever undertook, and fails harder, faster and more obviously as time goes on. And yet people connected to government keep getting fantastically wealthy!
The corruption and graft is so out of control, we've become like Africa where nothing gets built, but the people accepting the contracts all live in mansions. And it's hard to ignore that the multi-ethnic low trust society we've all been forced into seems to have paved the way for this.
I'm no longer confident the US will be around in my old age. I just wonder which ethnic group or coalition will be lead by some modern day Atilla or Clovis will seize control of large portions of the US under a forced "reorganization" of state and federal power because the feds no longer have the state capacity to stop them. After all, we've seen such a decline in state capacity everywhere else, why should we expect them to hold the country together, push comes to shove? You think the 20 million illegals that flooded the country, or the 60-100 million descendants they'll have in 50 years in their ethnic ghettos care about the continuity of the American project? They came here for a better life, and that doesn't necessarily include us.
If we just look at things which are not just directly related to the changed political valence of the platform
First, people are acting like the political valance of the platform has flipped, this is false. Progressives can post just as easily as they used to, they just don't want to do it when non-progressives have the right to respond.
Secondly, that's stacking the deck already, you can't just not look at it. It was total woke narrative control, even mild jokes used to get accounts nuked. A bit more spam is a fair price to pay for that, as far as I can tell. And it's objectively better that it's not like this anymore, as opposed to just better for one side, because you can't have a healthy ecosystem with one side nuking everyone that disagrees with them. Or put another way - a non-political person is better off having access to info from all tribes.
TitaniumButterfly
1d ago
Must be; thanks!
Muninn
"Dick Laurent is dead."
1d ago
I was deliberately vague because my answer has CW implications but I suppose putting it in spoiler tags is a decent compromise:
NunoSempere
1d ago
Some news items this week:
AI generated video might be directly optimizable for attention, in a way that is more scary than Tiktok
Statement from U.S. Secretary of Commerce Howard Lutnick on Transforming the U.S. AI Safety Institute into the Pro-Innovation, Pro-Science U.S. Center for AI Standards and Innovation
In conducting these evaluations, CAISI will focus on demonstrable risks, such as cybersecurity, biosecurity, and chemical weapons.
^ Sad day for black swans
AI required by court order to save logs?
Chinese couple charged with smuggling a biological pathogen into the U.S.
Floods in Nigeria kill over 150 people
Iran FM preparing response to potential nuclear agreement, holds call with IAEA head.
Iran’s Supreme Leader Rejects U.S. Nuclear Deal Offer
Interesting brief, similar to Sentinel
Israel strikes Syria after projectiles fired, holds Sharaa responsible
The spokesperson for China's Ministry of National Defense, Zhang Xiaogang, responded to recent comments made by the U.S. Secretary of Defense at the Shangri-La Dialogue, criticizing the U.S. for its negative portrayal of China and its military presence in Asia. Zhang condemned the U.S. for its hegemonic approach, inciting tensions in the region, and undermining China's sovereignty, particularly regarding Taiwan and the South China Sea.
Zhang emphasized that the Taiwan issue is China's internal matter and warned against any U.S. interference. He asserted China's commitment to defending its sovereignty and territorial integrity, while also highlighting China's intent to resolve disputes peacefully in the South China Sea. The statement depicted China as a proponent of peace and stability in the Asia-Pacific, opposing any form of hegemonism that disrupts regional harmony.
China's 'Silent Hunter' laser gun shooting down Ukrainian drones
US Simulates Missile Strikes on Warships at China Choke Point
'Corpses rotting in the Nile' as cholera tears through Sudan – Dominican Republic Post
Sudan's New PM Dissolves Caretaker Government One Day After Taking Office
Death toll in Nigeria jumps past 200
Ukraine and Russia agree to swap dead, wounded troops but report no progress toward ending war
'Balochistan, KP remain epicentres as Pakistan records 85 attacks in May'
'New red line': India, Pak generals exchange warnings at Shangri-La
Al-Qaida affiliate attacks Mali army bases as junta struggles to contain jihadist threat
Indonesia's health ministry issues warning over COVID-19 surge in Asia
Niger Flood: Death toll rises to 150, Tinubu asks NEMA to activate Emergency Response Centre
Trump Asks Congress to Rescind $8.3 Billion in Foreign Assistance
Trump on Musk
Elon was "wearing thin," I asked him to leave, I took away his EV Mandate that forced everyone to buy Electric Cars that nobody else wanted (that he knew for months I was going to do!), and he just went CRAZY!
Elon and Trump fighting
Who detected vaccine-derived polio in samples from children in Morobe (Papua New Guinea)
US vetoes UN Security Council demand for Gaza ceasefire
NB.1.8.1 covid variant
EpochAI database of datacenters
Whatever happened with this?
A nuclear strike on Britain is a real possibility. Here's what we need to do. Grr
veqq
1d ago
Your numbers are off and your explanation is more confusing. The $1.8T deficit is more than 25% of federal spending. (Debt issues are far worse if you include more local government.) Interest payments are 15%. As others noted, it would take 10 years to pay off the debt, if all current tax revenue only went to that. In reality, we'd have to cut spending by 30+% and spend the rest of our natural lives paying down the debt. None of this will happen. The government will simply inflate it away as it has done before.
urquan
Blessings crown the head of the righteous, but violence overwhelms the mouth of the wicked.
1d ago
I also think that there is a significant subset of men that are BPD and misdiagnosed for various reasons, one of which seems blindingly obvious to me, but only on the BPD side.
One of which?
Thoroughlygruntled
1d ago
I live in a blue suburb of an ultraviolet city, and filtering for women mid-20s to mid-30s, no kids, want/open to kids.
Maybe half include some sort of information indicating progressive politics, and 1 in 10 or 12 have something along the lines of "no MAGA" or "conservatives swipe left." It's really not as bad as you think, especially when you realize the apps specifically prompt you to list your politics and pick from a list of causes that are important to you (that are noticebly lacking in right-of-center options), and half the women affirmatively opt-out of including it. I've never had politics come up while talking on a dating app or on a first date off one. I get way more shit for not having social media to stalk than I do about my politics.
I've also noticed that the women saying "no MAGA" tend to not be particularly attractive anyway.
SubstantialFrivolity
I'm not even supposed to be here today
1d ago
The only dub I have enjoyed was Cowboy Bebop. Everything else was meh to bad in my experience.
roystgnr
1d ago
The first big unambiguous attack I recall was Tesla getting shut out of Biden's joke of an "EV summit" ... but the first big conflict I recall was that Musk was heavily opposed to Covid lockdowns, back before being opposed to Covid lockdowns was cool. Not sure who you would say was doing the alienating in that case.
DCC is definitely a big name but several people have independently warned me against it as apparently the author is prone to long, smug /r/atheism style rants which I've had more than enough of elsewhere.
Are you sure you're not mixing up DCC with "He who fights with monsters"? This doesn't sound like DCC and sounds very much like HWFWM, and is likely the second largest LitRPG series out there.
hydroacetylene
1d ago
If they actually did this, it probably would have been by declaring a European ODC the real culprit.
I am highly suspicious of such a thing in a country with jury trials, but that’s how you’d go about it.
roystgnr
1d ago
The "save a trillion dollars by rooting out fraud" overpromise wasn't one of Musk's usual sort, though. Sometimes he disappoints by fulfilling a promise in a half-assed weasel-worded way ("full" self-driving?), and usually he disappoints by presenting an improbable if-nothing-at-all-goes-wrong timeline for progress that eventually takes at least twice as long, but this time the promise was something that obviously was never going to be possible at all. Many voters were dumb enough to believe it, though, so it's not entirely unlikely that Trump's inner circle believed it too, and even Musk consistently kept acting like he was drinking his own ketamine koolaid.
Rov_Scam
1d ago
If Musk had simply acquired Twitter and quietly relaxed the moderation policies, I don't think it would have been seen as a big deal, and would have probably led to a better outcome overall. But between the explicitly political motive, the drama surrounding its acquisition, the Twitter Files, and the obvious boosting of favored viewpoints, to someone like me who was neutral through all of this it looks like he just swapped one ideological bent for another.
Sitting here today, I couldn't tell you what it was about if you put a gun to my head, beyond the fact that some people who played video games made misogynistic comments or something.
Oh, oh, let me try. I don't know how you can't know after reading the CW threads.
My understanding is "gaming journalists" had corrupt, incestuous relationships with industry developers. Which makes sense, because gaming journalism is a fake sect of journalism and always has been. Both journalists and the industry developers went pretty hard in the Social Justice paint. Gamers got mad about the ethics and the foreign culture imposed on them. Then, during the uproar some mad people said means things to Brianna Wu and Zoe Quinn who are either indie* developers or gaming journalists. Both names I impressively muscled from memory, though their profession I did not.
Once people said mean things to the individuals, then that's the only story anyone in the industry, in gaming journalism, or in mainstream journalism talked about. This side stepped any other concerns which only made people more angry. Now painted as villains, this justified categorical bans and censorship of identified GamerGaters on [platform]. The basic dynamics of -ism'ing your way out of criticism was then put on loop for the following 8+ years. It spread to other media, such as movies, TV, and literature. I understand why people consider it important for that reason.
"Anita Sarkeesian" was another big character, but I was only reminded of her after writing via Wikipedia. I also remember a funny fact that moot, previous owner of 4chan, was dating, or was friends with one of these three. My city paper has 7 hits for " GamerGate" from 2015-2016.
self_made_human
C'est la vie
1d ago
It was a pre-built, so about 2300 GBP all inclusive. This was about 400 pounds cheaper than competing, equivalent builds. I think just the 5080 alone would have set me back well north of 1k, assuming there even was availability.
gorge
1d ago
A babysitter quit because one of her "stuck ideas" was to get revenge on the sitter for some slight (didn't get the right color dinner plate, if I remember correctly.)
What was the punishment for this?
When I say the oldest is a handful, I mean that she is seven years old and has been suspended from school twice for running away from school and across a busy street without looking. ... she tried to run into the parking lot by herself but an employee stopped her.
What was the punishment for this?
gorge
1d ago
I've always thought they had the exact same communication style -- they both constantly make low-effort lies and say things for the effect, not because they have carefully thought it through. In the Isaacson's biography there is the story about how Elon lied upfront about the number of users his company had when they were negotiating the merger to create PayPal. There are his constant claims that Tesla's car will be "fully self-driving this year." There were all his claims on X about finding some fraud that turned out not to be the case. Neither are Machiavelli types that careful plot high-effort technically true deceptions.
The other thing that comes up his biography is that Elon has never worked well under others, never gotten along well with a boss or controlling investors.
In almost all famous successful partnerships (Augustus and Agrippa, Washington and Hamilton, Jordan and Pippen, Jobs and Woz, Brady and Belichick), there is one person who takes to being the face, and one person being great at checking their ego and being a deadly efficient operator. Elon has too much ego to be the subordinate, deadly efficient operator. And Trump just isn't actually very competent and has a fragile ego, and so has trouble delegating to more competent people and sticking with that person's plans when the going gets tough.
Jiro
1d ago
"Scientism" is itself a sneer, and insofar as it means anything, is usually a false accusation claiming that people worship science or use science when they should be using feelings instead. Of course since its actual meaning is vague, anyone who uses it can deny meaning what they are using it to to mean and there's no way to prove them wrong.
Thoroughlygruntled
1d ago
There's also the fact that women are better about maintaining relationships, planning group outings, etc., so that she usually "gets" most of their mutual friends in the break up (Managing the social calendar is traditionally the woman's domain in a relationship). Most of them were probably her friends first anyway, since she was more likely to maintain a large group of friends after leaving school.
Because men tend to have fewer close friends and recieve less emotional support in general than women, break ups also tend to be more traumatic. It makes sense men associate being single with loneliness more than women. If you're a stereotypical man who has oursourced the work of maintaining his social life to his wife for a decade, single life is going to be a lot more lonely for you than for her.
Part of me thinks there should be such a thing as social/emotional alimony. Shared friendships are essentially a valuable and unrecognized marital asset, regardless of who "earned" them.
WhiningCoil
1d ago
If you don't watch the ADV Films dub of Evangelion, complete with nepotistic casting of Asuka voiced by the wife of the ADV president, you are doing it wrong. Yes it's terrible. Yes it's obnoxious. Yes it's horribly unprofessional and undermines the quality of the entire show.
But damnit, it was the 90's and that's just how old anime was done.
lancbyw719n
1d ago
Obviously the story of the week is Musk vs. Trump. Support seems to be coalescing in two camps: on Musk's side, people who think the national debt is the most important issue the US faces, and on the Trump/MAGA side, the idea that culture and national borders are more important. It's kinda like a proxy Stephen Miller vs. libertarians battle.
The question comes down to: can a country stay the same if the people are "replaced", so to speak.
Let’s take the SGV (San Gabriel Valley) in Los Angeles as a real-world example, where I'm from. Drive through certain areas there and you'll be hard-pressed to find a single sign in English. You’ll see Mandarin, Vietnamese, Korean—entire commercial districts where English isn’t the default, and where cultural references, aesthetics, and even holiday calendars operate on a different frequency than the rest of America. Is this good? Bad? That depends on your values. But is it a change? Unquestionably. Even after WW2 and the effective destruction of its entire country, Germany remained full of Germans and tts continuity wasn’t just institutional, it was cultural and demographic. America, by contrast, is attempting something unprecedented in history: to maintain national coherence while undergoing massive demographic transformation without any clear cultural center holding it all together. How much change can a country absorb before it becomes something else entirely? And does that change matter? It’s not that immigrants are bad or incapable. That’s not the point. The point is that America is trying to do something historically novel: become a post-ethnic, post-historical nation that binds together people with radically different origins, languages, and values using only a kind of civic glue—and lately, even that glue seems to be dissolving.
HaroldWilson
1d ago
Very dependent on individual experience, of course, but it definitely seems like Twitter is much more of a slop factory under Musk. If we just look at things which are not just directly related to the changed political valence of the platform, scams and bots are way more prevalent than they used to be, even paid advertisements are pushing scams and the comments under any big post are utterly worthless because of the boosting of blue-check replies
yofuckreddit
1d ago
FWIW my family started falling into the two meal habit for a bit. I still do it as a treat for expensive food - I'm not going to serve my kids prime ribeye till their palate can appreciate it.
But I nipped that shit in the bud fast. I had to grab the reins of cooking for a while to do it which was exhausting after a full work day etc. etc. but the multiplicative effort from it got to be ludicrous.
I've been lucky my kids are responsive to the "no candy after dinner if you don't eat what we brung ya", so while they're picky I just don't care. I'm making stuff I know they like if they'll just try it.
In my opinion, it's not about believing him, or not. The point is they gave him power, and what he did with it was thoroughly unimpressive, he can't blame that on the rest of the administration.
If it's because he was doing "typical Musk overpromising", maybe he should have thought twice before overpromising so much.
Yeah, because he's causing chaos for absolutely no political benefit. Rubio at least brought some scalps when he was given charge of USAID.
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