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Quantumfreakonomics
1d ago
We don’t have to imagine fake Canadian history, we can imagine real American history. Let’s say tomorrow the Navajo decide they’re done being the white man’s bitch and attack the Grand Canyon with smuggled Iranian weaponry. They kill about a thousand people and take a few hundred tourists hostage. The entire white population of the Navajo reservation is evacuated. Twitter is overflowing with clips of Navajo warriors doing the ghost dance over the dead bodies of raped American girls. Big Chief Leaping Antelope declares no surrender until the entire Colorado basin is free of American influence. Bands of raiders take potshots at towns across the Southwest. Dozens of American troops are killed or wounded every week during the attempted occupation by ununiformed partisans blending in with the population.
You know exactly what would happen next, the same thing that happened to all the other tribes who refused to accept American sovereignty.
coffee_enjoyer
☕️
1d ago
indiscriminate
Indiscriminate means “not marked by careful distinction : deficient in discrimination and discernment”. What definition were you looking at? It does not mean that they fire on everyone they see.
ammo
M855 ammo passes through soft tissue more readily, meaning in a large crowd there will be more casualties per shot; his point is that this is a terrible choice for crowd control. Police doing crowd control use rubber bullets etc. In fact the IDF specifically uses .22 LR in Ruger 10/22 rifles for riots in the West Bank. You weren’t aware of this? NATO is not supplying these munitions so I don’t know why you’ve mentioned NATO.
Taking rubber bullets into a situation where you might well get shot at with real bullets is incredibly dumb
It’s an unarmed civilian population receiving food. Rubber bullets are a smart way to do crowd control.
Would that be the thread with several x-ray images of full power rifle rounds, with no deformation whatsoever, in the middle of children's heads?
It was the one confirmed by numerous third party experts who dealt with gunshot wounds. I’m not sure how Israeli pundits responded to it but they may have called them forgeries.
obvious errors
Hm, I don’t see a single error in his testimony. Which error did you have in mind?
aqouta
1d ago
Even in a chiller workplace like the VA Attending psychiatrists start out at around $250k, Which is a little north of what newly minted Bank VP can expect. Bank VPs definitely have some more variability.
DradisPing
1d ago
Still working on my Minecraft API with MCP for AI integration. I got Dockerization working so I can theoretically deploy it somewhere easily. It's not really ready for that as I haven't bothered adding any security to the API yet.
Previous comments here taught me that I can use different LLMs from VSCode, so I've been having some fun with that.
Going forward I really want to let the AI do building construction, so I've been planning out a component system where it can pass component names, options, and bounding boxes and subcomponents will handle the internal details.
I want it to be similar enough to React that it'll be able to transfer over some of that training. Curious to see if I'll run into limits with the context side.
Huh, the more you know. I wonder if they'll make the switch at some point in the future to shorten supply chains further.
P-Necromancer
1d ago
It's the constant prevarications that make it so hard for me to take these complaints seriously.
Israelis open fire indiscriminately on civilians seeking aid.
Oh, OK, that sounds really, really bad.
That’s 14 days of meals. So, out of 64 days, we’ve provided 14 days of meals to the entire population in the enclave of Gaza.
Wait, what? If they're firing indiscriminately on civilians seeking aid, how is this number not zero? Is the claim that Palestinians are charging these aid stations under fire, climbing through concertina wire, and some few manage to escape with food? ... Or are they not actually firing indiscriminately on civilians seeking aid? I don't doubt civilians have been shot in these places -- It wouldn't even be hard convince me this is a deliberate strategy to deter Palestinians from accepting food aid! -- but that's not what the word 'indiscriminate' means.
The sites have not only become death traps, they were designed as death traps. All four distribution locations were intentionally, deliberately constructed, planned and built in the middle of an active combat zone. Some may argue, “Well, all of Gaza is a war zone.” That may be true, but there are parts of Gaza that are direct — or, determined to be active, operational combat zones where Israeli Defense Forces are operating. Those sites were built in the middle of those areas intentionally.
The things that I just described are not just opinions, they’re facts.
How is it, exactly, that Aguilar can confidently make statements of fact about others' intentions? Did they tell him that? If they did, I'm pretty sure he'd have said. Is he a mind reader? Actually, I rather doubt he's met whoever decided on the placement of the distribution locations; he can read minds at a distance, I suppose. Again, I'm not even saying that's not the intention! I don't know! But he doesn't either, and presenting this as though it's certain is dishonest.
The equipment, the equipment that we were issued, fully automatic weapons, which, in and of itself, is not a violation of protocol. However, we were issued M855 green-tipped ammunition. That’s important, because green-tipped ammunition is a steel-jacketed copper round that’s designed to — specifically designed to penetrate armor. It’s designed to kill. It’s designed to shoot through reinforced objects, to kill someone on the other side of it. That’s what all the UG Solutions contractors are equipped with right now in country. Everyone carries a standard basic load of 210 rounds of M855 armor-piercing military combat ammunition. Why would anyone need that, even if to defend themselves for their — defend their lives, against an unarmed population? It’s inappropriate. That, in and of itself, that action there, is a war crime.
What nonsense is this? Are the distribution locations in active combat zones or not? Anyway, armor-piercing rounds are, obviously, intended for piercing armor. Against unarmored targets, they're less lethal than hollow points. Unarmed civilians, notably, are unlikely to have armor. As for the capacity to penetrate cover: I thought these locations were designed to be death traps? Why would they leave convenient cover in the killing field? Anyway, I don't see the logic in permitting the individuals guarding the site to have weapons, but only so long as they'll be ineffective against a prepared adversary. (Especially after admitting there are prepared adversaries in the area.) I have to say, it seems very weird to me this would be a war crime. Let me do some reading...
Oh, it's not a war crime.
The M855 green tip (the American version of the SS109) is the standard issue round for all of NATO! It's actually not some super special armor-piercing variant, it's what they give every last grunt. Safe to say, issuing this round is not illegal.
It sure is designed to kill, that's true -- is this former green beret confused about the purpose of firearms and their ammunition? Or is he just so contemptuous of his audience that he believes they are? As I noted, they're less deadly against unarmored civilians than hollow points, but here's something I didn't know until I looked into it: using those is (arguably) a war crime! I'm deeply curious what round Aguilar believes would be appropriate; unfortunately, he doesn't say. Rubber bullets? Taking rubber bullets into a situation where you might well get shot at with real bullets is incredibly dumb, but that's not the real problem with the idea: no one even makes rubber bullets in 5.56. They don't exist. Blanks, perhaps?
Aguilar makes some other points that are harder to contest -- for all I know, they are using concertina wire inappropriately -- but I see very little reason to take anything he says seriously given the obvious errors -- I struggle not to say 'lie,' but unlike him, I'm willing to extend the charity to allow he might just be incorrect -- I found briefly skimming the article.
Maynard also suspects that the IDF is deliberately shooting children for sport, which other doctors have said in the past (I wrote a post on this a year ago or so).
Would that be the thread with several x-ray images of full power rifle rounds, with no deformation whatsoever, in the middle of children's heads? I'm genuinely asking; it might be something else. But that's the one I remember, because it was a transparent hoax.
Once again, I'm perfectly willing to believe the IDF is misbehaving in Gaza -- actually, I'd go so far as to say I do believe it, at least to some extent -- but if there's such overwhelming evidence for it, why do their opponents insist on mixing in obvious falsehoods? Just tactically, I'm certain it does far more damage to their position than just sticking to points that aren't trivially refuted.
SkookumTree
1d ago
The man's 57.
I've known people who feel this way and aren't young. especially healthcare workers.
nomenym
1d ago
There have only ever been three options: ethnic cleansing, ethnic cleansing, or forever war. Pick one. All are terrible and wrong.
SkookumTree
1d ago
Haul my demented ass into the Alaskan wilderness for one last walk in the woods. If I come back, I'm not too demented; if I don't, good for the local wildlife.
SkookumTree
1d ago
I mean - the blackpilled monk types will either not pay for their care or suck-start shotguns, depending.
SkookumTree
1d ago
The exercise in futility is the point. The pointlessness is itself the point. You are building character through an exercise in futility.
SkookumTree
1d ago
Start working in healthcare, or volunteering there. Ideally, it'd be a clinic or something in a rough part of town. That will give you a much better idea of the long-term health consequences of varying degrees of fatness.
Are you an insanely charismatic man in excellent shape, who's impeccably dressed and whose every word and gesture are a near world-class work of performance art? No? Plenty of people have happy relationships - or non-catastrophic relationships - with women with BMIs of 30, 40, 50, even 60.
Disgust is MUCH more malleable than most people think. Work in healthcare or something like that for a year or two. Your disgust response will calibrate itself better. You'll still dislike gross things - but they'll become dangerous to you, not gross - more like vats of acid than human shit.
ABigGuy4U
1d ago
I’m sure this is an opinion that will manage to piss off everyone for different reasons, but I think the IDF is highly overrated, both historically and in its current form. It’s basically what the Russian Army would be like if they had never fought in Ukraine or Afghanistan or Chechnya, and were 1/20th in size.
Their technological achievements are mostly in the field of air defense and certain high-impact intelligence operations, both of which are genuinely impressive but aren’t necessarily going to help in an October 7th kind of situation, especially when the command and communications systems have completely broken down.
The_Nybbler
In the game of roller derby, women aren't just the opposing team; they're the ball.
1d ago
Vance did not make a statement "that citizenship in the US should be based on ancestry instead of individual choices and beliefs". He said that choices and beliefs were neither necessary nor sufficient. He implies ancestry is sufficient, but not that it is necessary.
You are not stuck in traffic, you are traffic. I am responding with a modhat but this is not a warning and will not be noted on your account, even though your past posting history weighs against you on this.
The reason this is not a warning is because you are plausibly making an effort to understand something, which is good.
The reason I am responding with a modhat is because we have a growing problem with posts like this, namely, posts that begin with the framing that "the Motte" can be helpfully or usefully addressed collectively in connection with particular ideological commitments. I believe this is mistaken as a matter of substance, but even if it weren't, it would be a violation of the rules:
Post about specific groups, not general groups, wherever possible.
Don't attempt to build consensus or enforce ideological conformity.
The paradigmatic consensus-building post is "I'm sure you'd all agree..." Lately I have seen too many people approach that from a position of disagreement instead--as here:
I am under the impression that most posters here who care about American politics would 99% endorse this statement
You've couched this in sufficiently perspective-taking language that it's not an egregious violation of the rules, but it is nevertheless not the way to approach questions like this. You could (and should) have written your entire post as a clear question without reference to a monolithic Motte: "what do you [whoever is reading] think about these ideas, or this claim?" You don't need to accuse your readers in advance of being wrong about something; if you have a question about what people believe, ask them, don't tell them. If there's a specific ideological position you want to address, address the position, not the people you imagine to be holding it.
"This place" is a website
for people who want to move past shady thinking and test their ideas in a court of people who don't all share the same biases. Our goal is to optimize for light, not heat; this is a group effort, and all commentators are asked to do their part.
That's all. You may see some people in other parts of the Internet characterize this as a site catering to some particular ideology, but those people are wrong, often maliciously so, and they tend to spread misconceptions about the community that are harmful to the community. I can't do anything about that in other spaces, but I do what I can to try to stop it from happening here.
(And that is actually kind of an answer to your question, if "the Motte" is what you are interested in understanding: the foundation generally manifests as individualistic and meritocratic, because individuals (not groups) post here and individuals (not groups) get upvotes or downvotes, AAQCs or warnings or bans. But individuals here have many different views on meritocracy and individualism, I'm sure, and honestly I'd be surprised if even 60% of participants here held the beliefs you have, entirely without evidence, attributed to the entire group.)
yunyun333
1d ago
Okay, maybe a bit of an exaggeration, but Westerners don't have a problem with guerrilla tactics if it's their side doing it.
kky
1d ago
Oh, is Asahi Select an actual thing? Whoops, my mistake. The point was that an actual market share would encourage actual importing.
Anyway, I’m not sure how the “completely different” clause is expected to fly. PDO works by obsessively dividing products that are actually quite similar, such that only a few dry sparkling whites are champagne. Something on the same level of granularity would be factory-by-factory, which to be honest would be fairly interesting to have printed on every product, although I suspect that this would be ignored by most consumers if there’s anything more recognizable. Substantive difference, on the other hand, sounds like a 10-year court case with expensive expert witnesses and piddling awards. I’m not sure there’s a convenient bright line there.
Your second point, about brand raiding, I would say is more about the modern high-liquidity stock market rewarding various pump-and-dump schemes. At that point I’d wonder whether allowing shareholders to sue executives for fraud following one of these events would move the needle any, or whether you need different financing plans altogether.
Could be a stockpile. Could be tunnels between Egypt and Gaza, with one found last year so large that a car could fit through. A small tunnel for beans / flour need only be a quarter in size. It could be that civilians are giving food to their relatives, one of whom is a member. It could be a tunnel from Israel to Gaza. Could be an underwater drone of sorts. Could be drones from Egypt to Gaza, apparently being used recently.
edit another important point. There’s an assumption that the number of Hamas units is fixed since the war began, and that Hamas is a monolith. These are silly assumptions. Israel is creating thousands of boys every week who want nothing more than to fight back against Israel — because they just saw soldiers shoot their grandmother, or shoot their little sister, or kidnap their brother, or maybe Israel bombed their entire family, or maybe they were mistreated, or maybe their cousin is starving. No sane young man anywhere in the world would not seek to do something in response to this. So there are new Hamas soldiers being officiated every day. But the officiatiation is not formal and organized. They join small cell structures (in all likelihood apolitical and religiously moderate, if not irreligious) who are then provided with weaponry (and ideas) by a small number of Hamas intermediaries (and these are the extremist ones). Meaning they were civilians being fed as civilians until the inhumane oppression became too much for their heart to bear, and they fight back. The same happened with the Irish against the British —
The British policy of interning persons suspected of involvement in the IRA and the killing of 13 Catholic protesters on Bloody Sunday (January 30, 1972) strengthened Catholic sympathy for the organization and swelled its ranks”.
IRA numbers always increased when the British took an oppressive approach. Perhaps we should assume that somewhere between 5% to 90% of boys in Gaza would very much like to fight the IDF in any way they can, and they are more than happy to receive a weapon from Hamas.
professorgerm
You shall love your crooked neighbor, with your crooked heart
1d ago
Specifically, whether this disagreement is real or just against a strawman, and if it is real, what are the best reasons why the disagreement is not serious enough to justify conclusions like "despite all their craziness, I would rather the woke have power than people with TheMotte-like views".
If you put any value at all into individualism and meritocracy, then there are very few groups you should rank as less deserving of power than "the woke." Even if you find The Motte undeserving, you're still betraying those values.
even though they line up with a many widely-held intuitions about fairness
Strongly disagreed, they are almost entirely counter-efforts to what many people would consider "fairness" for the last 30-50 years.
And I happen to think that it’s absurd, and the modern left seems dedicated to doing this, to saying, you don’t belong in America unless you agree with progressive liberalism in 2025.
It's disagreeing about what the creed of America is. The people who fought in the Revolution and the Civil War (charitably, one could think the North; being a Borderer, Vance undoubtedly had ancestors on both sides) stand for one set of creedal ideas of America.
Progressive liberalism, to the extent one can call it liberalism without choking on their words, rejects everything that came before and represents another- IMO murky, and to the extent defined at all completely unworkable for a multicultural society- set of creedal ideas.
Is this statement actually anti-individualistic and anti-meritocratic as defined above?
5-10% anti-meritocratic at most. Liberalism isn't a suicide pact, don't have a mind so open your brain falls out, yada yada. Rephrased, "we want useful, competent people- so long as they don't hate Civilization."
ThenElection
1d ago
Offering a data point of myself:
Does this place actually overwhelmingly support JD Vance's statement?
I would reject it, though I'm not sure I represent the typical Mottezan's viewpoint. Then again, I question whether the typical Mottezan is even a meaningful category.
Is this statement actually anti-individualistic and anti-meritocratic as defined above?
Yes.
Are the above interpretations of meritocracy and individualism reasonable and consistent with anti-individualism and anti-meritocracy being very bad things or are they just word games?
Word games, but "meritocracy" and "individualism" are just pointers to confused concepts that are themselves products of a long series of word games.
2rafa
1d ago
Agree. I also like the idea of general posting cap, let Hlynka have 5 posts a month for example.
oats_son
1d ago
Is it so difficult to believe that under conditions of starvation people might organize even outside existing power structures to try and secure food?
Not unbelievable at all, no. This is the nature of guerilla warfare, though. With no uniforms and a scattered organizational structure, maybe no one can tell. I would think we could trust Israeli intelligence to indicate that Hamas is still operational, since they seemed to quell concerns about Iran after the strikes, but maybe the Israelis don't listen to their intelligence when deciding what to do.
There is no gene that makes Palestinians hate Israelis, but I don't see any off-ramp in Palestinian animosity towards Israelis. Most people in Palestine support Hamas and support what they do/did. A relatively hands-off approach to Gaza with serious checkpoints and the occasional bloody and awful incident at the hands of the Israelis didn't make Palestinians hate Israel any less. I think it's unrealistic to expect Israelis to lift all restrictions and also have a perfect track record, not that they're that guiltless.
So I mean, if you don't want rocket attacks every day and terrorists next door plotting attacks on you, what do you do? I dunno. I guess my idea right now would be to do a complete sweep of the entire area, take every cache and every loose weapon, and heavily restrict incoming supplies, since the West Bank appears to be successfully disarmed and helpless. But I don't think Israel is doing that, if the "arming gangs" thing that coffee_enjoyer posted is to be believed. It happened in Syria, so I could believe it.
NewCharlesInCharge
1d ago
Most Americans seem to have broadly positive views of the Viet Cong, whose calling card was using innocent villagers as cover.
"The Vietname war was a mistake" is a common sentiment among Americans, but "the VC were good guys" is not.
Wow, you've described my job to a T. Very little seems to be expected of me and I am increasingly finding it difficult to actually force myself to work on anything, but nobody seems to have noticed or care, and getting on with my coworker/boss is more important. We both do a lot of screwing around. It's decent pay for a single man, but I feel some crazy pressure on me to improve my skills and move on, which feels like it's going to be more difficult the longer I stay, and even though I have a decent amount of free time, my commute and my laziness make it feel like a lot less if I want to actually do stuff, which I usually don't.
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