domain:weirditaly.com
EverythingIsFine
Well, is eventually fine
21hr ago
Isn’t that just MLK-ism? The whole “unjust laws” bit, how it doesn’t challenge the legal legitimacy but rather the moral legitimacy, and despite the time worn temptation is to conflate the two they are not the same. I’d want to see more elaboration of this point than jump to that assumption. Unless you have an actual issue with MLK-ism?
Stellula
21hr ago
It's completely mainstream to use e-collars for pets, but not like this.
The typical use for an e-collar is for recall, and there are multiple levels to it.
- Noise (it beeps)
- Vibe (it vibrates)
- Shock
You use these when you issue the recall command (usually: "come!") but the dog is too fixated on something to respond. You start by doing the beeps, then the vibe, and then only if the dog is totally locked into something would you use the shock. The shock isn't a punishment, it's just there to get the dogs attention.
There are people who use the shock as punishment, but they're the minority.
Totalitarianit
21hr ago
I care less about the shock collar than I do what it is used for, which is apparently to ensure that his dog remain in a 2' x 4' space for hours on end. That doesn't seem good. I also don't need anything else to convince me of Hasan's character or what he represents. This could be a deep fake AI video, and my dislike of Hasan will remain same.
Hoffmeister25
American Bukelismo Enthusiast
21hr ago
Every person in the church with whom I’ve discussed it has been very clear that caffeinated drinks, other than coffee and tea, are unambiguously permitted. They believe that eliminating addiction from your life is pretty much always an unalloyed good, since it allows a fuller use of your agency and self-control, but that to a certain extent the church is willing to meet people where they’re at and to allow some leeway, particularly for things like caffeine which have clear benefits alongside their drawbacks.
100ProofTollBooth
Dumber than a man, but faster than a dog.
21hr ago
The Bible is special too. But Christians don't think we should ban the Bible in order to protect it. They think we should disseminate it as widely as possible precisely because it's sacred and it brings people into contact with the sacred. (In fact they arrange regular mass public gatherings where they come together to worship that which is considered sacred. Apply the same logic to sexuality and...)
I'll take this in good faith because I think you meant it that way. Obviously, there are different "special rules" for different things. Yes, the mass and general catchesis should be spread as far as possible. No, the same shouldn't be said for explicit sexual relations. Ha.
But I don't actually want to just drop a "This is what the Catholic Church says" style response here. THat wouldn't be helpful. I mean, as far as porn goes, the Catholic response is "100% pure evil, don't engage with it at all." Which I agree with. But I also live in America and do believe in free speech so, while on a personal level I am 100% anti porn, politically I can't just shout "perma ban!" and then walk away.
How do we demarcate the sacred things that need to be disseminated from the sacred things that need to be protected? Do we have a schema outlining the different modalities in which something may be sacred?
At the risk of channeling the spirit of Helen Lovejoy, I think we should think of the children. Meaning, as a rubric, is whatever the "thing" we're talking about something we would more or less be comfortable with in giving to children? So, right off the bat, this means that porn, booze, gambling, drugs, and guns have to have my ill-defined "special rules" consideration.
When I say "children" here I do literally mean minors. More conceptually, however, we can think of "children" to mean people who don't necessarily have the fully developed character or faculties to make generative decisions for themselves. To be clear, I'm not talking about the mentally incompetent or retarded here. I mean "normal" distribution IQ folks who have glaring inabilities to manage their own life.
Another possible rubric could be on "length of time it takes to fuck your life with x." You don't get addicted to porn after a single use. Smoking one pack of cigarettes won't give you lung cancer. On the other hand, you can go down to the liquor store right now and for $50 or less buy a quantity of alcohol that will 100% lead to death. Guns ... I mean, I don't even have to spell that out. I should probably point out here that "special rules" does not mean banning. In fact, "special rules" need not even be particular onerous. For example, I am as pro-gun as they get, but I do think purchasing a gun (from a business, not privately) should require 1) valid and current identification and 2) proof of no convictions for violent felonies (perhaps with some sort of age out provision - haven't thought it all the way through).
I am always suspicious of the State and think it should be as small as possible. I wish a lot more work of social management would be done by local culture. Bring back slut shaming, but don't make laws against being a slut. Bring back social condemnation for being a drunk, but don't make purchasing limits on the amount of booze I can get. Real freedom is preserving the ability to make choices, even bad ones, so long as there isn't an oversized risk of collateral damage to others. I'm not advocating for the freedom to drink and drive, for instance.
So I don't support a State level ban on porn or impossible-to-enforce-and-also-1984-style digital age verification attempts. But I do support the return to the common idea that porn is for weirdo perverts. Trevor Wallace, a comedian I sometimes have pop up on my nonsense YouTube account, often has porn "actors" on his podcast and in his comedic clips. This does make me sad and its made me shy away from his content more because it normalizes the "everyone uses porn" meme. That isn't true. It was never true. Furthermore, on the topic of cultural memes, I think it's pretty easy to draw a line from the sexual revolution of the late 1960s to the ridiculous sexualization of society today along with all of the mental gymnastic that accompany it.
Capital_Room
rather dementor-like
21hr ago
If popular opinion is in line with Trump, then the votes should bestow enough power onto the Republicans to formally change the regulations.
"Should," according to a civics textbook model of how our "democracy" works, but, as we can see, it clearly doesn't. Yes that's "the whole point of a democracy," which is why its absence demonstrates that our "democracy" is a sham.
RoyGBivensAction
Zensunni Scientologist
21hr ago
I have successfully given up coffee (not caffeine entirely, although I’m actively working to reduce my daily caffeine consumption and dependence)
I know a number of devout LDS members, and they're all over the place on the caffeine issue. Coffee is a clear no, but opinions diverge widely on caffeinated sodas and energy drinks. I'd say that's a lower priority than the big steps you've made in other areas.
MadMonzer
Epstein Files must have done something really awful for so many libs to want him released.
21hr ago
This is, of course, the load-bearing item of contention. To me, and to many, peacefully breaking immigration laws is some combination of trespass, home invasion and squatting. If I come to your house, and I eat your food and I tell you I'm never leaving, and the police back me up, it's not really your house any more.
If you are a Republican voter in Alabama, I don't see how Chicago is "your house" in any morally relevant way. If you are a Reform UK voter in Lower Snoring, I insist that my house in London is not "your house" in any morally relevant way, and politely suggest that you show some gratitude to the people whose taxes fund your lifestyle rather than insinuating that our friends, neighbours, colleagues and servants are somehow "eating your food". That it is your country is legally relevant, but the only moral claim that gives rise to is the one that upholding the law is generally good. My claim that illegal immigration is morally trivial is restricted to the situations where the community the immigrants are moving to does not, in fact, object to their presence.
That's ignoring the face that lots of illegal immigrants actually turn out to be neither nice, peaceful or helpful, of course. But is it any wonder that voters react badly to breaking immigration law, or helping others break immigration law, when seen from this perspective?
Yes - there is supermajority support essentially everywhere for curtailing abuse of the humanitarian and family-based routes to immigrate to first-world countries, based on the accurate belief that the people who get in that way are, on average, bad neighbours. We should do so. But public opinion on this point is downstream of immigrant behaviour - people who have experience of well-behaved immigrants don't want to kick them out.
the direct import of specifically American racial grievances post-Floyd
I remember the pictures of the pro-Floyd march in London. I haven't seen a London crowd that close to all-white since before Blair opened the immigration floodgates, and I doubt I will ever see another one. I think it was whiter than the recent Tommy Robinson rally. Wokism isn't being pushed by immigrants or their descendants - unless you count the Milibands.
It is? I have literally never encountered anyone in real life that uses one or even talked of using one outside of joking about doing something cartoonishly evil.
ToaKraka
Dislikes you
21hr ago
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Speed limit is too low → mayor continues to enforce speed limit → convicted speeders get angry and complain to their municipal councilors → municipal councilors change speed limit
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Speed limit is too low → mayor stops enforcing speed limit → there are no convicted speeders to get angry → no municipal councilors have any reason to care about the speed limit
EverythingIsFine
Well, is eventually fine
21hr ago
This is a shooting based on anti police sentiment. There’s no strong connection between that and the debate here, which is about anonymity.
EverythingIsFine
Well, is eventually fine
21hr ago
But not, notably, targeted ambushes. A 2014 report claimed somewhat lazily that about a quarter of all ambushes had an assailant that had a prior relationship (broadly and vaguely defined) with the officer. Two thirds were spontaneous. Reading between the lines, the reasonable assumption is that it’s probably more like 1 in 8 ambushes that loosely fits your profile (ambushes themselves seem to be maybe a quarter of all “officers get shot at”). And I suspect ambushes where a very specific officer is the actual and only target is small, even there I’m not convinced their name being public is moving the margins much.
Dont get me wrong policing in general is “fucked”. I wouldn’t want to be one. In the general sense though, we do trade cop deaths for other benefits, much like we trade other deaths for other benefits all the time. It’s normal in a society. Cold as it may sound, it seems the marginal drawbacks to no-mask policy are worth the non-marginal gains in trust. And for that matter, at least naively my first assumption is that ICE agents are more, not less, safe from targeted retribution (presumably mostly gangs and cartels) because they know escalation doesn’t benefit them (stateside).
benmmurphy
21hr ago
Somehow this reminds of one of Kulak's posts on his blog about how different cultures treat animals differently. This is much more frowned upon in Western culture but maybe in other cultures this is not such a big deal.
AI (and more specifically multimodal LLMs) will radically transform the life of every man, woman and child on earth in the next decade.
But that doesn’t mean there won’t be a huge valuation bubble burst along the way.
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There’s extreme cross-ownership / circular dealing in the market where Nvidia is pouring hundreds of billions of dollars into AI companies and data centers who buy its chips, pushing up their valuations, meaning they can borrow and issue more capital to make more orders for more GPUs, meaning NVIDIA can pour more money into… etc. This is and has been widely noted as a feature of all major sector-driven bubbles in the history of capitalism.
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Even if AI ends up being huge (and it will), that doesn’t mean most people are going to make money on it. The railroad bubble is the most famous example of this; between the 1840s and 1890s every major capital market on earth had multiple successive railroad bubbles (which were the ultimate cause of almost every financial crisis in this era because speculative railroad investments failing triggered bank crises / runs and subsequent failures which triggered credit crises that spiralled out in weeks to the wider market). Railroads really did change the world and drive huge improvements in commerce and communication, and therefore economic growth and productivity specifically. But most people who invested in the railroad business lost the majority of what they put in, even in cases in which construction was completed. Today, commercial railroads are relatively profitable after 130+ years of consolidation and modest valuations, and passenger railroads all lose money outside of Japan.
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Big AI companies have no moats. Competitive models are at least semi-open-sourced. Brand means nothing when most corporate and consumer platforms can be easily switched over to another foundation model in seconds, if OpenAI ekes out more margin then you switch to Anthropic or XAI or vice versa, and price-per-token gains are quickly made by all the big players; engineers jump between them far too often to maintain a real competitive edge for long. Plus, whether you’re 3% better at an arbitrary benchmark means very little to most corporates, so within broad quality categories price will be the main factor. AI datacenters have the same GPUs and so compete solely on price for compute; they have tiny labor / upkeep costs, so this is essentially just electricity and GPU depreciation (the latter of which will be an industry standard before long if it isn’t already) plus a tiny margin that your competitors will constantly be chipping away for everyone. Everyone in AI except Nvidia is selling a commodity with little pricing power, and even with Nvidia a bubble burst will depress demand and AMD and the Chinese may well eventually catch up.
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Many industries that will be initially disrupted by AI will collapse almost entirely rather than shifting to being primarily AI customers. If half the big SaaS or advertising or media companies signing megabillion AI contracts implode because AI code tools allow their valuable corporate clients or end users (in the case of TV, movies, games) to replicate their products and services in house…that actually means lower revenue for the big AI providers, not higher revenue. The same goes for big spenders on white collar software tools like law firms, financial services companies, accountants, consultants, insurers, tech outsourcers and so on. If white collar workers are fired en masse, demand for Microsoft’s central Office 365 product collapses, because it’s billed on a per-user basis. If the ad industry suffers because consumers spend less because they’ve been fired, there goes the source of 80-90% of Google and Meta’s revenue, which means much less to spend on GPUs.
Thus AI’s success and failure are both bearish for these stocks.
It's not the messaging that spooks me out, it's the sheer size of the marketing and education infrastructure that was deployed in order to drive adoption, the speed with which it was ready to go, and who it was targeted at. Public and public-adjacent institutions aren't usually pushing people towards the latest fads, but this is exactly what's happening right now.
The best mundane explanation I can think of is that it's some galaxy-brained eurocrat scheme to Lead The World In Innovation or something, except that doing a free marketing campaign for American tech companies (which they usually low-key hate) is a bit of a weird way of doing that, and even if we go with that explanation that still kinda is a conspiracy.
hydroacetylene
22hr ago
My view of immigration is that there is no market clearing price for first world citizens doing a variety of shitty jobs- you can reallocate the limited supply by offering more money, but you cannot get them fully staffed.
Ideally we would let Hondurans come, make lots of money(for them) and then go home and enjoy the purchasing power advantage. But at a certain point it’s on us for being lazy and incompetent.
The_Nybbler
If you win the rat race you're still a rat. But you're also still a winner.
22hr ago
That's been tried before: in 1992 (admittedly under the elder Bush administration) Randy Weaver (not the best of characters, mind you) had an undercover informant request illegal shotgun modifications, then ATF agents shot his dog, shot his son in the back, and shot his unarmed wife who was holding a 10 month old baby.
This was actually a joint Federal operation. ATF entrapped him, a US Marshall killed his dog and his son, and an FBI sniper killed his wife.
Hoffmeister25
American Bukelismo Enthusiast
22hr ago
This past Sunday, I received baptism into the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints.
As some of you may be aware, I have been passively orbiting this church with various degrees of interest over the course of my entire life, as a result of family connections and several very close friends. Like most non-Mormons, I found various reasons not to pursue any active interest in the church: the total lack of anthropological/scientific evidence for historicity of its central religious text; the concerning signs of Joseph Smith’s charlatanry and general strategy of “making it up as he went”; the onerous lifestyle restrictions; the financial burden which tithing imposes, etc.
Furthermore, I’m occasionally cited here as an able critic of Christian ideas about theodicy, the efficacy of prayer, and the apparent contradictions between the idea of a loving and omnipotent God on the one hand, and the sheer amount of random and wanton suffering present in our world on the other. People have linked to my somewhat recent discussion with @FCfromSSC regarding this matter as an example.) Thus, it may strike many users here (and does seem to have struck at least some people in my IRL life) as surprising to see me commit myself to this church.
However, about eight weeks ago I was approached by a pair of pleasant-looking young sister missionaries at the mall while leaving the gym. Although I was sore and tired and just wanted to go home, I couldn’t resist stopping to speak with them. We had a conversation about what I believed about the Book of Mormon, and about my research into, and interest in, the church. They invited me to attend services with the local Young Single Adults ward that upcoming Sunday, and I accepted. I decided that this would probably be my last opportunity to sincerely immerse myself into the church, at least on a provisional basis, and see what my experience would be. I also, for reasons I’ll keep personal, saw this as at least possibly an answer to prayers I’d offered not too long ago. Since that day, I have consistently attended Sunday church services (both the sacrament meeting and the subsequent scripture discussion sessions, where I’ve been an active participant even since my first week of attendance as an “investigator” of the faith) and plan to continue doing so. I have successfully given up coffee (not caffeine entirely, although I’m actively working to reduce my daily caffeine consumption and dependence) and pornography. (I had already drastically decreased my alcohol consumption, so reducing it even further to zero has been trivially easy.) I’ve attended various social events organized by the ward, which has allowed me to ensconce myself into a community of bright, wholesome, surprisingly-mature and well-grounded young people. I finally decided that baptism is the next important step — a costly signal of my escalating commitment.
It is difficult for me to articulate the reasons for my decision in a way that would meet the intellectual standards of this forum. I still have many of the same doubts I did before accepting baptism; I still don’t believe that the Book of Mormon is a historically-accurate description of real events that took place in the pre-Columbian Americas. (Rather, I currently believe that it is an allegorical text, intended by God to usher in a new dispensation by providing a scriptural text which would be narratively and intellectually compelling to the specific audience to which He intended it to be presented, given their particular interests, level of historical understanding, and literary/religious frame of reference.) I still have a lot of questions about Joseph Smith’s character, intentions, and leadership qualities. I’m still working on wrapping my mind around what it actually means to aspire to live a Christ-like existence; toward what political/philosophical positions and actions does this obligate me? There are, however, many elements of Mormon theology and the Mormon lifestyle which appeal very strongly to me. (Ideas about the Plan of Salvation and the nature of the afterlife being chief among the theological appeals, and the sexual conservatism being the primary secular/lifestyle appeal.) I was strongly influenced and encouraged by a post a few months ago by @2rafa — arguably my favorite poster here, and the one with whom I probably feel the greatest degree of intellectual and personality kinship — in which she implored people here to embrace the benefits of a loving and welcoming religious community and to try hard not to ruin the experience by thinking too deeply and skeptically about the inner workings of the theology. I decided that if she could do it, I should probably try to see if I could as well. So far it has been more enriching than I could have imagined.
Over the coming weeks I will undergo the rites of the lay priesthood common to all male members of the church, set myself up to begin automatically tithing, and begin working towards obtaining a “temple recommend” allowing me to enter LDS temple buildings. I am actively working on finding a spouse with whom I can raise a family; I’ve already been on a lovely date with an intelligent and creative woman (one of the few female members of the ward somewhat close to my age, as most are closer to 18-20) and have another one already arranged. I expect at least a few of these people to become long-term friends. I don’t know what else to expect in terms of how this will affect my life trajectory, what will be asked of me, etc. All I know is that right now I am finally beginning to taste what it might be like to truly believe that I have a Heavenly Father who loves me, that my Redeemer lives, and that he has provided me with a way to dwell with Him eternally along with my loved ones.
roystgnr
22hr ago
Are we not arresting people? There have been a few stories lately (the first to come to mind: Decarlos Brown Jr.'s 14 prior arrests) that suggest that the problem is later in the pipeline.
RoyGBivensAction
Zensunni Scientologist
22hr ago
Under a month from my upcoming trail race, and then a month after that to the possible second one. I am ready for all this training to be over. Trying to get in a 10-mile run on a weekday morning is tough, to say nothing of the weekend runs.
Also, it's funny how thin 195 lbs. feels after years in the 210-215 range. I'm still 20 pounds heavier than my endurance race weight when I was in my late 20s, but that was years ago and doesn't count in my mind the same way.
07mk
22hr ago
Occam's razor suggests Americans opinion of this is probably being shaped by the things ICE is deliberately doing to shape their image.
I'm not sure how Occam's razor would suggest such a thing. There's nothing more parsimonious about that than Americans' opinions being shaped just as much by the organizations that have shaped Americans' opinions in the past and continue to do so through today. It's clearly being shaped by both, and it's very difficult to parse out which has more influence, and parsimony doesn't really offer us any answers.
ChestertonsMeme
blocking the federal fist
22hr ago
I would appreciate an in-depth defense of this claim. I'm a big proponent of following the law as it is, but working to change bad laws. If changing the law requires violating it then I would have to rethink my stance.
EverythingIsFine
Well, is eventually fine
22hr ago
Words are words, and actions are actions. If ICE agents actually come to major and life threatening harm as a direct result of city-mandated inaction, that’s one thing. If the Chicago mayor says inflammatory things that’s another. Trump floated using the Insurrection act, but it’s a major stretch from the actions POV (which is what matters way, way more in legal matters) to jump straight to claiming actual insurrection and rebellion. Trump has gotta sit and wait for evidence. Much like I disapprove of “declaring” emergencies (IMO you need to have, you know, an actual emergency and not just a political agitation) I strongly disapprove of that kind of crackdown based on what “might” happen. I know it kind of sucks if you’re convinced overreach is inevitable (on either side!) but the simple sucky fact is that usually you need to wait for things to actually happen (or not happen) before you can take the next step. Perception of inevitability is time-proven to be not at all equal to actual inevitability.
And on the facts the local government will always be reasonable for preventing the feds from setting up in school district parking lots (the practical and contextual issue at hand, less so some kind of Seattle lawless zone 2.0). It’s reasonable for the city to object to these actions hindering the normal and peaceful operation of their city. Even if you’re a “make immigrants uncomfortable on purpose” type, there’s a compelling public interest in making schools off-limits.
07mk
22hr ago
I'm reminded of an ironic line someone posted in a comment back on slatestarcodex or perhaps the subreddit, well before TheMotte was a thing:
I'm principled! My principles are, everything for my team, nothing for yours, and win at any cost.
I'm also reminded of a discussion I had on the SlateStarCodex subreddit with someone probably around 2020, when they were arguing that Twitter was being perfectly principled in selectively censoring Trump, since they were following the principle of "I don't want Trump to speak" (it might have been some different public figure on some different platform - my memory is fuzzy).
If you make principles sufficiently absolute or sufficiently bespoke, then you can make any behavior principled. Which, sort of like "everything is political," is really just word games, since the entire point of words having meaning is to discriminate between things that match that word and things that don't, and this destroys this ability to discriminate between "principled" and "unprincipled."
Either that, or perhaps it forces people to explicitly declare which principles are involved, forcing people to recognize different principles that each other have that were only implicit until then.
When we got a dog, and had it professionally trained, they used a shock collar. They also gave use the shock collar, and instructed us on it's use. It was really helpful training the dog to stop jumping on people, because it scared our daughter so badly she was hesitant to come out of her room if the dog was around. Later on, when we got a geofenced collar, it's also a shock collar. Basically an invisible fence collar, except it uses a GPS instead of a buried wire.
Now that I think about, everyone I knew with well trained dogs has them on shock collars. But maybe that's regional or social bubble related.
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