domain:abc.net.au
orthoxerox
If you can read this, you're using a custom theme
2hr ago
No it isn't? I've got it pulled up right now, confirm is F, QTE is space, and you can switch targets with A and D while you have a skill selected.
Yes it is. I play with ESDF, and there's no key binding that maps confirm to F that I can rebind.
Sunshine
2hr ago
I find it hard to believe that most black voters would know who the VP nominee is unless someone went out of their way to tell them. Most people don't follow politics that closely. I recall trending Google searches about whether Biden was still running the day after the election.
Just don't send Pete to Chicago. Send him to do the Pride parade and shake hands with suburban moms. Send Kamala to talk to the brothas and sistas. (I don't think black voters like Kamala Harris either, but that's neither here nor there. They ended up sending Obama. With a bench that deep, who even needs the VP?)
Sunshine
2hr ago
I think it's an indictment of Harris' political instincts. Buttigieg is the best communicator in the Democratic Party. Harris and Walz are both weak speakers and weak debaters who struggle to connect with the voters. She could have picked the person who shored up her weakness, but instead she chose someone who had the same weakness. She was so fixated on identity (Walz is a white male football coach therefore white men will vote for me?) that she missed the larger issue.
Her assumption that her greatest political weakness is being a black woman shows a lack of self-awareness. She didn't need a straight white man to shore up her weakness of being a black woman, she needed a charismatic speaker to shore up her weakness of being an uncharismatic machine politician.
Tophattingson
2hr ago
Shouldn’t conservatives, i.e. the party of law and order, be a fan of measures which promote public safety?
Should Conservatives be a fan of law and order in Stalin's USSR?
This is just bad understanding of what conservatives believe. There are authorities worth following, and authorities that are not, differing slightly depending on form of conservatism.
Tophattingson
2hr ago
The problem with suddenly slapping a QALY triage system on covid vaccination is that covid just doesn't have that big an effect on QALY. About 1-2 weeks loss per infection on average. This pales in comparison to other risks, like smoking (loss measured in years) and even to politically polarised risks like being a sexually active gay man. If you were assembling a checklist or survey you use for the calculation you wouldn't bother putting covid vaccination on it over hundreds of other risk factors.
This policy would rightly be seen by its victims as a blatant and obvious political attack on them specifically rather than part of a calculated dispassionate healthcare strategy. So no different than the mandates themselves.
Rosencrantz2
2hr ago
I pretty much agree with all your criticisms and also enjoyed the book as I read it. It really struck me as it did you how repetitive and baggy it is, something it has in common with successful books in most genres today (other recent culprits I've read – 'There are Rivers in the Sky' by Elif Shafak and 'Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow' by Gabrielle Zevin).
You might think that in an age of frenetic short-form content it would be the tautly written books, in terms of both plot and prose, that would break through as they make less demands on our time and pack in more beats per page, but that has not been the case. At all. My theory is that people are so used to scrolling at speed and not having to think that they read in sort of the same way, so that repetition and cosy re-confirmation is the only way they can actually take in and understand what's going on in the story. Conclusion: the faster we read and the more distracted we become, the longer and flabbier novels are going to become.
This is f'd up. We should be taking the same time as it takes to plough through epics to read miniaturists and elegant stylists with care. (Kazuo Ishiguro, Patrick DeWitt, Yoko Ogawa, Percival Everett could all be worth a try in this regard.)
EverythingIsFine
Well, is eventually fine
3hr ago
I attribute it to not drinking alcohol or smoking. Though it's still a bit abnormal. Still, capable elderly politicians aren't actually super uncommon, with some heavy selection effects. Example: does this guy look 78 to you?
EverythingIsFine
Well, is eventually fine
3hr ago
I think it wasn't nearly as bad as the Clinton campaign, that was the strongest of the vote-shaming, but it was there in part. I do disagree about the overall framing though. I don't think Harris tried that hard to put at the forefront any other argument beyond "Trump bad" and "Trump endangers democracy". Maybe "trust the status quo"? With a dash of "billionaires ruined your life"?
sarker
It isn't happening, and if it is, it's a bad thing
3hr ago
Bro, they've got wandshit #1 on the nyt bestseller list these days.
https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/quicksilver-callie-hart/1145866827?ean=9781538774205#
I'm not saying that Trump is bad. (In fact, I think he's more good than bad. Not perfect, but no one is.) I feel like I'm catching friendly fire from someone I agree with. I feel a bit indignant, actually, that you think that I am another 'Trump bad' commentator. I demand an apology!
...regardless, it is my observation that American politicians are big on the performative aspects of politics. It's not enough to merely engage in policy-making: one must make the pious noises of Righteous Rule and kneel to the appropriate deities, which necessitates ideological belief in policy making. In our case, the dogmas are the liberal consensus of the post-war period - and, more recently, the progressive elite culture.
I don't think there's a reason to be overtly cynical about their anger when Trump breaks those mores and disowns those beliefs. One can be self-serving and outraged at the same time.
Trump, I think, has no strong ideology, no more than the CEO of Ford has an ideology when it comes to making cars. He has protectionist beliefs and populist instincts but is readily swayable by anyone with the patience. His political product is himself, for better or for worse. So when a subordinate fucks up, his political movement can go 'if only the Tsar knew!' and he can smoothly purge a disobedient follower without fear of ideological contradiction. This process has happened many times before. Elon is a very prominent example, but no one on his cabinet is safe. I suspect he'll go through more advisors before his term is over.
This is very much not what the Biden administration was like, where the cabinet ministers stayed on permanently no matter how terribly they did because they were the ones really in charge. The difference between top-down and bottom-up leadership. On the Democratic side, the president is merely a figurehead executing on the advice of his well-credentialed advisors. On the Republican side, the president is a emperor whose favor his advisors must pursue.
long exhale
Which, to get back to the point, Trump doesn't care about individual policies not working because to him, it is a manner of changing the people responsible. Democrats do care - because the people responsible are all executing the same policy, no matter who they are! There is nothing inherently offensive about EIF's statement here. It is easier to change personnel then it is to change ideologies. Chadface, YES, this is a good thing. QED.
assman
3hr ago
I was curious about this the other day since discussing increasing autism rates seems entirely pointless without distinguishing between non-functional autism and “nerd++” autism so I asked ChatGPT whether there’s research showing an increase in non-functional autism. It led me to this paper https://autismsciencefoundation.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/04/CDC-Profound-Autism-Statistics_ASF-Copy.pdf which shows that rates of non-functional “profound” autism have been increasing, albeit at a slower rate than ASD generally. This is somewhat convincing that there is something real about increasing rates of autism but could also still be an artifact of more people seeking diagnosis. The one thing that stuck out that makes me think the whole “increased autism” thing is probably fake though is that prevalence of “profound” autism in black children is almost double what it is for white children. My thought is it’s all just Goodhart-ing by school districts to get more special education funding and create more excuses for problematic/low-performing students.
SubstantialFrivolity
I'm not even supposed to be here today
3hr ago
Thank you. I don't really care if someone doesn't like Sanderson, taste in art is subjective and it's ok to like different things. And I don't mind if someone wants to give a detailed rationale for why they didn't like the book, have at it! But it is so uncalled-for to write a long post sneering at Sanderson fans as people who just haven't read much, or are midwits, etc. One can not like something without being a dick to those who do like it.
He's got zero percent of the first winner-take-all preference, yep. But his favorables are at +22 net, that's +39 and -17, with a whopping 45% "don't know" as I recently pointed out. So with actual polling data, it especially as VP it seems very tenuous based on the data to assume he'd be some kind of Black vote poison-pill, especially with a Black woman at the top of the ticket.
Edit: punctuation and clarifying:
That's favorables among Black voters specifically. The eventual nominee, Tim Walz? Among the same group of Black voters, +30 net, that's +49 and -19 with 36% DK. A little bit of daylight, but not an incredible amount - definitely not the kind of poison pill you describe. In fact, if my napkin math is right, assuming the same proportionality, if Pete had Walz's 36% "don't know", then his numbers would be +25 net, +45 and -20. That's only 1% worse (absolute) in negative viewpoints.
The numbers seem to clearly reject this idea, unless you make three very questionable assumptions: that massive numbers of Black voters didn't then know he was gay, and would also change their views unfavorably, and that this unfavorable swing would affect the entire Harris-Buttigieg ticket (in turnout or voting instead for Trump). Again, those seem very questionable assumptions.
Did Kamala have polling we didn't? Plausible. Seems unlikely.
raakaa
3hr ago
I’m gonna take the cowardly way out and reduce everything to language games. More specifically: for the term “anime fan” to be useful, it should tell you a lot about the kind of person whom that term describes, people who refer to themselves as “anime fans” should be able to have qualitatively different conversations among themselves than people who don’t, etc.
For some concrete scenarios:
- Alice has only watched Cowboy Bebop and Dragon Ball Z. She says “I don’t watch that icky stuff for weebs; I just like good stories.” Alice is probably not an anime fan.
- Bob watches every series that comes out each season, even if most of it is garbage. He discusses them online (even if most of that “discussion” consists of sharing screenshots of the girls in each series), rates them, etc. Bob is probably an anime fan.
- Carl is into film and television, and this interest in moving pictures extends to some anime. He knows about certain famous auteur directors (e.g. Yuasa, Satoshi Kon) and is able to talk deeply about the technical and artistic merits of Perfect Blue. But he doesn’t necessarily partake in the broader subculture as an activity distinct from how he’d discuss French New Wave films. Carl might not be an anime fan, although it’s harder to say, and it certainly does seem that he has a greater “appreciation for the medium” than Bob.
- Dennis doesn’t watch any anime. He doesn’t read manga either. He does watch YouTube videos posted by e-celebs summarizing or reacting to the latest flavor of the month series, he scrolls through /r/animememes, and he likes erotic fanart of anime characters on Twitter. Yet somehow, this almost makes me inclined to call him an anime fan, since even though he doesn’t actually watch any anime, he does partake in the culture surrounding it. (The word Ive seen people use to describe people like Bob is “secondaries”, that is, secondary fans.)
The common thread here is that at the end of the day, deciding to call yourself or someone else an “anime fan” is inherently a social act. If other people weren’t involved, then there would be no need to raise this question of identity: you could just watch some amount of anime on your own, in addition to whatever else you do during your time, without attaching a label to it. What this means is that if you are going to go to the trouble of applying the term “anime fan”, then the criteria for application should necessarily have to do with how to categorize groups of people.
SubstantialFrivolity
I'm not even supposed to be here today
3hr ago
He's a self-admitted mediocre prose artist, but he has a reasonably effective plot formula and has a genuine knack for writing fantasy action scenes, which make his books fun to read if you're into that sort of thing.
Also, there are plenty of people (hello!) who couldn't care less about his prose. I don't read to enjoy the quality of the words themselves (no shade on those who do, it's just not my thing), I read to enjoy the content those words convey. People love to dunk on Sanderson saying his prose is mediocre, but rarely seem to consider that not everyone values that the way they do.
EverythingIsFine
Well, is eventually fine
3hr ago
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Yes, although turnover among administrators, fetishization of the novel, and lack of patience dooms a lot. It's more a matter of over-ambition and good intentions burying fundamental principles of teaching and learning than apathetic leaders, in my opinion.
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I don't understand this question, did you forget a word or I'm missing too much context?
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Yes, but crime rate statistics in particular have notorious noob-trap concepts as well as in how the numbers interact with policy, so officials are all over the board. Nationally, I think yes. However, it's a little difficult as a federal politician because you're so far removed from the ground level reality.
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Normally yes, since businessmen in both parties are major donors and always complain when things are bad. Those constituencies and influences don't magically go away after election season, you can only temporarily ignore them.
I mean, it's a sliding scale obviously, no denying that. Trump just seems like an anomaly. Like 1 month goes by as president and oh, the economy is the best ever. 1 month goes by with Biden as president, oh no, total disaster, he ruined everything. 1 month goes by as president again and oh, the economy is magically the best ever again. Usually politicians are a little more measured. Like, here is Biden around this time in his term. Skim it. He's talking specific jobs numbers, he's saying things aren't all great yet and some people are still hurting, he says there are a few areas that he wants to do better on. There's spin, but it's not beyond the pale. I'm trying to find something similar for Trump. His official white house website has a "Remarks" section too, but all it has is Youtube videos without transcripts. He's saying stuff like:
So let me tell you a little story about a place called D.C., District of Columbia, right here where we are, it's now a safe zone. We have no crime. It's in such great shape you can go and actually walk with your children, your wife, your husband, you can walk right down the middle of the street, you're not going to be shot, Peter. You're safe. Everyone likes you anyway, they probably wouldn't do it.
Oh! DC is fixed. Magic.
Usually politicians at least wait a few weeks or months to declare a symbolic victory, but no, Trump doesn't just say it, he "declares" it, and right away, bugger the truth. I guess I had a similar discussion last week and maybe it boils down to this:
I typically expect, and think most people expect, presidents to tone down the campaign-trail type tactics while actually in charge. Less hyperbole, more adherence to facts, actual work. A candidate uses big and exaggerated and ambitious language because that's all they have, while an incumbent can, you know, do things and then talk about it. Natural, right? One compelling Trump thesis is he thinks he's found a cheat code where he doesn't even have to finish doing things. He can just start things, talk about what it's intended to do as if it's already done, and expects to reap the same benefits even if nothing actually happens at all like he describes as the policy takes place - or more likely, collapses under its own weight quickly. Say it loud and proud, and you temporarily gaslight people.
He might be right that you can skip the "doing things" part and no one will notice, but I don't think so, and if he is, and everyone starts doing it, then I despair what the next 10 years will look like.
assman
3hr ago
There’s definitely some cynical politicking involved here but the autism thing seems to be one of Trump’s personal hobbyhorses given he was tweeting about it back in like 2012.
Fruck
Lacks all conviction
3hr ago
True, but it does fly against ALL of the messaging of the Harris campaign, which was that the only reason anyone wouldn't want to vote for Harris is because they are a bigot who should listen to their betters. If it's unacceptable to vote for Trump or not vote because you aren't feeling a woman president then it is similarly unacceptable to not vote for the gay vp. That kind of petard self-hoisting is very entertaining imo.
MathWizard
Good things are good
3hr ago
I find something about the...Frenchness?... off-putting. Uncanny. It's hard to describe entirely, but a lot of it is in the characters' facial expressions. Sometimes they smile and give each other weird looks and it feels very weird given the setting and the tone of people dying and the apocalypse and what not. But here they are rolling their eyes and giving each other weird French smiles like they're on vacation in Paris.
MathWizard
Good things are good
3hr ago
I definitely like the mathematical approach here, but wonder if it survives contact with subcategories and niches in broader genres. For instance, I would definitely consider myself a fan of videogames but... there's a LOT of different types of videogames and I only like some of them.
Let's suppose as a simplified example that there are 20 categories of video game, Puzzle games, RPGs, Roguelites, MOBAs etc..........
And suppose in our imaginary example that all of them have an equal number of games, and all of the same distribution of games by objective quality. But I only like 9 of the categories. Suppose I like every single game in my 9 favorite categories, but no games in the other 11 categories. Then my score would sum to 0.45 < 0.5.
Is it fair to say that I am not a fan of videogames in general and should only describe myself as a fan of those 9 categories? If it was only one category: suppose I only liked Puzzle Games, then I would agree that I should be called a fan of "puzzle games" and not a fan of video games in general. But if it's 9 different categories across the spectrum that differ wildly from each other then it seems hard to describe my preferences as anything other than a "fan of videogames".
Bartender_Venator
4hr ago
The mottizen Objectively Rational Classical Liberal cope is always that Trump is going senile and has one foot in the grave - I'm told by reputable posters he's been a couple months from Bidening out for almost a decade. For anyone who remembers the details of Trump's first term and the 2020-24 interregnum, though, it seems pretty clear that Trump is energized whenever he's on the campaign trail ahead of an election, or, sometimes, fighting a very particular fight like the early covid-era daily press conferences, and outside of that he doesn't bring the full stadium rally energy, plays a lot of golf. If previous election cycles are a guide, libs will be perfomatively worried about this for about six months, then right-wingers will be nail-biting worried about him not doing enough for the midterm elections for about six months, then the Trump rally machine will kick in and conservatives will cheer and libs will goldfish.
ArjinFerman
Tinfoil Gigachad
4hr ago
but Western politicians are big on the humility and the empathy. It's not enough to just give lip service: you have to believe it.
What?!
The strategy for Trump I was "I know politicians are corrupt liars, but how can you support Trump? He's literally Hitler!", now that the Hitler thing has wore off and we have Trump II it seems like we're trying "I'm not saying Trump is literally Hitler, but he's not sincire about being humble and empathetic, unlike all the other politicians"...
Are you serious? I'm not sure what to tell you, if you are. "Paying lip service, and not believing a single word that comes out of your mouth" has been the in the job description of every single western politician, as far human memory reaches.
A lot of liberals believe that rules and policies are more important than outcomes.
That's debatable, but irrelevant anyway. It's the literal opposite of the point EIF made.
If you want tk make your own point about why Trump Bad that's fine as far as it goes, but if you're responding under a post about how Trump doesn't care about the outcomes of his policiee (unlike all the other politicians), and a poster expresses utter bafflement at how anyone can reach that conclusion, I think you should address that argument, not keep sthrowing spaghetti at the Trump Bad wall.
I think, broadly, that Trump cares about his policies working as much as the CEO of Ford cares about your car getting you to work or the CEO of Dunkin Donuts cares about the taste of your coffee. If your car explodes, or your coffee is poison, they get involved. But if your car breaks down or one time your coffee tastes bitter, he's not going to get personally bothered about it. And that's fine - that's how the world works - but Western politicians are big on the humility and the empathy. It's not enough to just give lip service: you have to believe it.
A certain valence of care, although I'm not sure what EIF is getting at. Personally I'm on the vibes-aligned part of the political spectrum than the policy-based one - if a leader is directionally correct, they can be trusted on the smaller details - but a lot of people don't think that way and want a big rulebook where the leaders care about the rules, no matter how silly those rules may be. And the liberal democracy handbook has a bunch of big rules that he's ignoring. A lot of liberals believe that rules and policies are more important than outcomes. They're silly, but people are allowed to be silly.
I think you have plenty of fair points, the realpolitik aspects of whether it’s better to be shamelessly hypocritical or to be principled can be debated forever. There are certainly some people posting mostly unobjectionable things that are getting caught up in the cancellation fervor. Agreed that being a partisan of one side or another makes you blind to your own side’s transgressions. But, as one of those partisans, doesn’t keeping score of the specific behavior matter a little bit…?
Forgetting all of the higher profile public figure type cancellations of the 2014-2024 woke era. In 2020 the national health authorities currently in the midst of recommending lockdowns throughout the country announced that racism was a bigger public health issue than COVID and sanctioned “protests” over a career lowlife felon who died in police custody after swallowing a bag of fentanyl while waiting for the ambulance to arrive. There were riots across the country throughout the summer causing billions of dollars of damage to property, with reporters of major news networks calling them “mostly peaceful” while cars were burning in the background. Major Democrat (and even many Republican, at the beginning) politicians solicited donations to bail out those arrested in the riots, and campaigned for various “defund the police” style reforms in major cities. Rioters were mostly given slaps on the wrist, and the policy changes led to a massive increase in homicide rates. In the midst of all of this, regular-ass people (in addition to tons of higher profile celebrities, politicians, professors, businesspeople) were not only being cancelled/fired/publicly shamed for being unsupportive of the “current thing”, but for sentiments deemed racist years in the past. Regular-ass people were being accosted by minorities and being filmed and publicly cancelled for not kissing their feet. It’s hard to exaggerate how widespread this behavior was. I was in college at the time and there were people making anonymous Twitter accounts posting screenshots of random high school classmate’s Facebook posts from when we were literally 12 years old. There were hundreds if not thousands of students who had college admissions revoked for social media posts from when they were in middle school. There was a professor fired for saying a different word that sounds like the N word. Companies were paying exorbitant fees to DEI consultants to tell everyone they were racist no matter how fervently they denounced racism. In just one example of higher profile news, the NBA players threatened to cancel their season due to an insufficient response to a multiple-time felon being shot while attacking the police with a knife as he was trying to kidnap his children. Shortly after the worst of the Floyd summer subsided, there was a whole other cancel culture brouhaha regarding Covid vaccines where you could be fired from your job for not taking them.
In contrast, you have a few news anchors, an unfunny late night show host and a relatively large number of normies “cancelled” for in many cases publicly supporting or excusing the very recent political assassination. Charlie Kirk, whatever you think of his political opinions or tactics, was an upstanding citizen participating non-violently in political discussion.
Some number of these cancellations are wholly unjustified I’ll agree, but people are not being successfully cancelled for being democrats, not being republicans, being democrats 10 years ago, or not being republicans 10 years ago. Normies are not scared that they tweeted an unrelated left-wing opinion when they were 12. They aren’t in trainings at their job about being too anti-white. Pro-assassination posts on normie Twitter still routinely get 300k likes from face accounts. The wokes did have a super-power for a while, they got a significant contingent of the country to support their policies, won the 2020 election, and had normies completely afraid to publicly disagree with them for years. It wasn’t until Elon bought Twitter and Trump narrowly missed having his head blown off that the vibe shift occurred. It’s hypocrisy in that it’s “cancel culture” sure, but also not really. I think a norm that you shouldn’t publicly celebrate the assassination of political talking heads that are otherwise upstanding citizens just because they have the same political opinions as your boomer uncle is good. I think a norm that you shouldn’t do things that circa 2020 woke morality deems racist is wrong. No hypocrisy.
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