domain:youtu.be
dasfoo
2d ago
In the best possible case that I can see, we would be expending our political power to create stable economic conditions for our opponents to then rule.
You just explained why any party that campaigns on cutting spending will never do it.
OracleOutlook
Fiat justitia ruat caelum
2d ago
Usually punishment is confinement to her room for X amount of time, the worst was for two days in a row when she was suspended from school.
We tried spanking for a span when she was four, but it didn't have any effect. Confining her to her room doesn't really have an effect either, except giving her space to calm down.
My mom just recommends taking the next treat away, but the behavior is so continuous, disruptive, and unsafe that we're at the point where we don't do treats. We don't get to go to parties, play dates or movies. We take away the next trip to Costco.
professorgerm
You shall love your crooked neighbor, with your crooked heart
2d ago
it seems quite likely that transing a neutral country will bring it culturally closer to the American universal culture fold
Surely Coca-cola and McDonald's have been doing a better job for decades with less risk of cultural backlash? Or does it need to be specifically government-funded imperial initiatives that count?
Chrisprattalpharaptr
Ave Imperaptor
2d ago
If either or both of them dedicate significant resources to striking at each other, then that will confirm that the breach is serious in nature, and that will bode extremely ill for my faction.
...why? I mean, firstly, 'significant resources' is load-bearing here in a way that's difficult to falsify. Secondly, I recoil at the use of 'my faction' (where's the guy who was trying to address the address the hate in his heart with his pastor, or something like that?) but I guess that ship has sailed. Thirdly, what does it matter to you whether Trump cancels Elon's contracts or Elon doesn't show up for republicans next election? Your coalition is the same, the people who vote for guns and the people who vote for abortion and the people who vote for whatever else will turn out in 2028.
Either way, I'll go way out on a limb and predict that the presidency goes D in 2028, without knowing who either candidate will be. In the grand scheme of things, Elon-Trump beef is irrelevant.
this would be evidence that our leadership is fundamentally dysfunctional, and I would expect that to manifest in other ways in relatively short order.
Again, why? Obviously your leadership is fundamentally dysfunctional - how can you read what Elon and Trump are tweeting at each other and conclude anything else? Would you ever behave that way, let alone behave that way if you were representing a nation? They're just dysfunctional in ways that you or your 'faction' approves of.
What updates beyond this would you recommend?
You should probably update on at least the stability of Elon. Whether the drug of choice is ketamine or culture war, something degraded significantly in the last couple years, and I say that as a papa Elon fanboy.
I'd say you should probably update on Trump as well, but I expect you already think he's bonkers and love him anyways or you'll never change your opinion, so that's probably not a worthwhile conversation.
thinly-veiled
Was this meant to link to a pop song? If so, the reference went over my head.
Where do you expect the thinly-veiled minecraft references to be directed?
From Trump supporters, towards Elon.
oats_son
2d ago
It makes sense to me that different things framed differently can get more or less popular at different rates. With the amount of media coverage being dedicated to transgenders, it is likely more normie-coded than wearing assless leather out in public, giving cover to anyone undertaking the transgender path. I'd argue a huge part of the discourse is in trying to present an obviously sexual thing as not sexual at all. The way it's presented is "transgenders are just normal people like you and me trying to navigate their mental illness (even though dysphoria isn't actually a requirement in the public eye anymore), so most restrictions are hateful." I think that kind of framing would have a big impact on uptake of any paraphilia, or any trend at all, like T-shirt wearing or membership in a gun club or motorcycling.
Ioper
2d ago
So it isn't a problem because you plan to cut entitlements and raise taxes? How does that make it different from any other unfunded entitlement?
professorgerm
You shall love your crooked neighbor, with your crooked heart
2d ago
One of the ChatGPT image-generation things going around Twitter is to ask it to create an image how it feels about you. Goblinodds has a cool one and features more in the replies. So I gave it a shot and the results are... underwhelming. At least it gets the melancholy right but I don't think my shoulders can pull off that mourning dress.
I think it overindexed on characters I previously generated to accompany a writing project and decided that my "self-portrait" needed to look along the same lines. Or since I'm a freeloader I'm not getting the fun, creative version; I notice the settings are more restrictive for the free tier recently.
Anyone else having fun with image generators? Or more generally, doing anything fun and non-programmer with generative llms? I like skimming Zvi's updates but so much of supposed usefulness is for programmers, where do I find the normie's guide to interesting things to do?
wlxd
2d ago
Please, do the math. Get some data on how many wealthy people are there, how much you expect to get from each, multiply one figure by the other, and get surprised about how paltry it is.
As it happens, US already has the most progressive tax system of all developed countries. In US, it is disproportionately the wealthy how pay the bulk of the taxes. In contrast to that, in Europe, the bulk of the taxes is paid by the middle class. For example: in US, you only enter the 32% tax bracket once you’re above $192k/year. In France, and I shit you not, you start paying 30% tax starting from 27.5k EUR. On top of that, when you actually try to spend whatever you’re left with, you pay 20% VAT, whereas in US, the highest sales tax rarely exceeded 10-11%.
The result is that people making 60k EUR/year are the backbone of French budget, whereas in US, if you make $60k, you barely pay any tax at all, considering deductions, EITC, etc.
Seriously, just do the math.
mrvanillasky
Indo Aryan Thot Leader
2d ago
mrvanillaskys guide to rural India
I finally stepped foot in the village my mother comes from today. It's an hour away from hier small town in my last weeks update and the problems of the city are not as apparent there as the entire village is one km in radius or two if you are generous, so if you walk for t10 minutes and so without stepping on the animal waste, you will find yourself surrounded by proto bali like crops on slopes that are not super impressive compared to bali but still pretty interesting.
My moms family ran the entire village and a few centuries ago one of our ancestors saw Shiva in a dream, where he was told to go to a tree, uproot it and make a shiva temple with the Shiva Linga found there, he did just that and the most important temple in that small region of a few villages was built on that site. I feel great whenever I go there. The problems of poverty and a lack of resources, general helplessnes plague the people, unlike the city, you dont see rivers of open sewage, the air is cleaner. I felt quite out of place too, I was introduced to some of my distant relatives and it was nice to see that they were studying real things like biology or math in college as the arts here are just bad.
My familys house there has close to 80 something rooms, built more than a century ago, the most important person being my uncle, one of them, the youngest one, though all are older than my mom who was the youngest and the only girl. His wife got a PhD in psychosomatic disorders and has been trying her hardest to make the place go beyond plain agriculture by getting people to open shops up that provide some regular cash. She moved back to the village because of my uncle and renovated parts of our huge house. I felt quite a bit of peace going through the narrow paths that cujt through fields and semi arid forests. You apprecaite and also dislike the large city you live in.
People were quite short, pretty dark and very simple minded. There were some marriages happening, marriages are gneerally happy times in the grim setting that rural India is. People vist the temple my family built and everyone knows everyone. We had giant monekys that have a black face entre the house daily which led to my aunt and uncle using their air gun a bunch of times. What did surprise me was tha availability of ultra procesed food and smartphone addiction. Everyone is 2 feet away from shops that sell soft drinks, potato chips, ice creams and everyones always on thier phones, much less than a city. I wish to visit the place soon, hopefully as a better man.
PokerPirate
2d ago
This is a straightforward example of my claim that "basically all objections to pacifism boil down to rejecting the doormat failure mode", and so whole-heartedly disagree with you :)
DuplexFields
Ask me how the FairTax proposal works. All four Political Compass quadrants should love it.
2d ago
The FairTax would make it so the truly rich couldn’t spend money without the government getting a quarter of it. Anything else either has loopholes or drives them out of the country.
MaiqTheTrue
Renrijra Krin
2d ago
I’ve always put this somewhat before that. Around the start of the 20th century the idea that the West as a civilization was good and right and its ideas were good and right we’re already declining. Vietnam was more unveiling than the change itself. You can look to almost any institution you care to name, and in the 19th century they were self-confident, willing to impose themselves, and seen as obviously right and good, and the way forward is to impose those values and ideas on the world. Western Christians in 1840 were trying to impose Christianity on colonies. Now those colonies are more orthodox than Western churches who now apologize for ever taking Christianity seriously. In the past, it was self evident that imposing western ideas on the rest of the world was making the world better. Today, we have teach-ins to make sure that no one thinks that democracy, human rights, free trade, or science are better than tribal authoritarian governments that put women in tents and refuse to let them speak.
I submit that Western civilization is old and has various serious philosophical illnesses. Most of them are not fatal if treated in time. But I don’t think they will be.
netstack
Texas is freedom land
2d ago
Point taken.
But “related to sexuality” isn’t really load-bearing. A big chunk of the politics leans on comparison to paraphilias. If being trans looks statistically different from crossdressing, or BDSM, or whatever else has gotten more popular since 2000, then it makes less sense to assert that it should be treated like those things.
HermeneuticsOfVibes
2d ago
There aren't, but there are plenty of Amish a stone's throw from Cleveland, Columbus, Philly, and Pittsburgh. They even open furniture stores in these cities, and employ the English to run the stores, build websites, do customer service, and what have you. Doesn't take as much distance as you'd think.
DelendaEst
2d ago
Even if we accept that this is the case, doesn't it seem like moving from a system where all social media is biased the same way to having at least one site be biased in a different direction is still a net positive?
BreakerofHorsesandMen
2d ago
Sorry man, but you taught your kid to respond to random violence with wisely targeted violence.
Unless you are operating on a very different definition of pacifism than I am, you are a bad pacifist, but if it’s any consolation, you are a good dad.
Southkraut
Vibe of vibes, saith the Preacher, vibe of vibes; all is vibe.
2d ago
Been getting a little time in, actually. Not much to show for it; I'm mostly just experimenting with procedurally instantiating objects in Unreal and marvelling at how they don't behave how I expect and at how difficult it is to do anything with the Unreal editor.
gakles
2d ago
Isn’t the solution to reduce executive power so whoever wins the next election can’t just destroy whatever’s been built? On the other hand, much of what restrained the executive was convention and tradition, which has been razed in the last 10ish years. This would force policy to become constructive instead of spoils based. I’m not exactly hopeful those in power (and the voters) will choose deescalation.
WandererintheWilderness
2d ago
I mean it all comes back to his trans kid, doesn't it? Who came out in 2020.
Lykurg
We're all living in Amerika
2d ago
In terms of Joe, the best evidence that he didn't take bribes was that Republicans (a hostile party) subpoenaed his bank accounts and repeatedly found nothing of the sort.
Im not up to speed on how this discourse went, but I dont think kickbacks to Joe personally are especially relevant? He could have just played his part so that Hunter would have money. I mean whatever he was taking in at that point was mostly for the next generation anyway.
gakles
2d ago
My position of authority on this subject is pretty weak (1 american polisci class) so take this with a grain of salt.
I agree that fiscal responsibility is a component of right wing ideology, but I want to point out that the deficit is not just enlarged by govt spending but also by tax expenditures. When the govt encourages certain actions through tax deductions (say a student loan deduction) its losing potential revenue. Trumps 2017 tax bill reduced the fed revenue by an estimated 1.9 trillion over the following 10 years. Also studies (Tax Policy Center) say it didnt end up paying for itself. In this way the deficit can be expanded through means besides dems funding trans operas in latin america.
Tax cuts are far more fiscally responsible than an equivalent amount of deficit spending. With tax cuts, you can always raise taxes later and people will grumble and accept it. But god forbid you try to take away someone's gibs. Remember that Elon literally killed over 300,000 people by cutting usaid.
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