domain:alexberenson.substack.com
HereAndGone
1hr ago
I haven't been following the comics but my impression was that Walker was kind of a proto-Homelander (starting out as Super-Patriot, a villain or at least anti-hero). So Bucky/Winter Soldier, who was there at the start with Original Cap, surely has a lot of opinions about pretenders to the title:
The character of John Walker was first introduced as the supervillain Super-Patriot in Captain America #323 (November 1986). Mark Gruenwald created Walker to counter the general message in Captain America of patriotism being invariably good, describing him as someone "who embodied patriotism in a way that Captain America didn't—a patriotic villain." He said, "Basically, I just wanted to do the opposite of Steve Rogers. Okay, Steve Rogers is a poor northern urban boy. So I'll make a guy from rural middle-class south. Cap is now old, so this guy'll be a real young up-and-comer. Cap has lofty ideals, so I'll make Super-Patriot be more realistic and more pragmatic. So, I put together his background and character traits by playing the opposite game."
I do like how the general aura of Cap means that even the grittier reboot version gradually becomes more heroic to fit the ideal 😀
But yeah, that would have been too deep for this kind of movie.
I love the insinuation that intel agencies are behind the leak of his sex vids. Are you so fucking edgy a journalist that Mossad used 0-day cyber arms to hack sex vids out of your possession somehow to embarrass you? Jokes on them, I have nothing to be embarrassed about, because my sex vids are 🔥🔥🔥
Please don't watch though, this is a violation of my privacy. My private hot gay sex, that is. Because I bring the truth so hard.
2rafa
2hr ago
Dark enlightenment / NrX / Moldbuggian Silicon Valley reactionary philosophy in general. More of a 2007-2017 thing though, even though Moldbug and Thiel are still somewhat influential.
Capital_Room
rather dementor-like
2hr ago
Is there a general term for the sort of broad political position of 'secular/atheist individual who believes in Darwinian evolution so deeply that he is led to reject liberalism, high modernist utopianism, and much of the "Enlightenment" project'?
coffee_enjoyer
☕️
2hr ago
Speaking of which, I find Bernard Kerik’s recent death suspicious. It comes out that he lobbies for Qatar and within a week he is hospitalized for heart issues, dying a month later, with no prior history of heart issues.
quiet_NaN
2hr ago
Take for example the IUEC. From WP:
The IUEC forbids modular construction of elevators, preventing the kind of preassembly and prefabrication that have become standard in elevators in the rest of the world, leading to higher elevator costs in the United States. The union limits entry of new workers into the field, and has constrained the ability of firms to use new technology to streamline elevator production in the United States.
Data indicates that elevator-related work is the highest paid trade in the United States, with a median wage $47.60 per hour in 2021.
See also this article (found with google, I can not vouch for the source):
Smith estimates that a new six-stop elevator that costs $170,000 to install in North America would run $60,000 or less across the Atlantic. Operating cost differences are even steeper. New York City guidelines advise affordable housing developers to budget $7,500 for annual elevator maintenance, with private housing operators in New York and Washington quoting similar numbers. This is several times European costs: one German firm, for instance, offers midrise maintenance contracts for about $450 per year.
I will grant you that building costs are not the biggest impediment to building, they come after high land costs and NIMBY, but they are very much part of the problem.
quiet_NaN
3hr ago
Rather than fear that the AI will work, the fear seems to be that management will buy into the hype and fire everyone, regardless of whether it works or not.
I think that this is justified. There is a reason why tropes such as the Pointy-Haired Boss from Dilbert or the Boss from BOFH exist. In a lot of non-tech companies, non-technical people are in charge of IT management. Often, this attracts a certain sort of people. "We are using tech from a decade ago and it is working okay for our needs" is no way to bedazzle the board or future directors. While IT might be best seen as some more complex version of plumbing which should be mostly unnoticed by the users when it works well, your average head of IT has delusions of grandeur which go well beyond that of the head of facility management.
For example, anyone who understands the basics of the blockchain will immediately notice that it does not offer anything interesting to 99% of non-scammy enterprises. Luckily, your IT manager can count on the probability of a board member understanding what the blockchain is to be very small, so they can sell a fairy tale of the block chain being the future of IT, point out how people got rich from bitcoin, and how there is money on the street just waiting to be picked up, and it with their plan United Dairy Producers Inc will get a slice of the cake. And they can also depend on consultants popping up who will happily sell them some repackaged open source blockchain software.
While blockchain might serve as a baseline for "empty hype", AI certainly has a non-zero potential for most corporations. But unlike the blockchain, there is no decisive first-mover advantage for adopting AI tech for non-tech companies, if your archenemy Dairy and Cheese United adopts some tech a year ahead of you, it seems unlikely that they will bankrupt you in that time because they just reduced their accounting costs to zero.
sun_the_second
3hr ago
"To a company" does a lot of legwork here. Jobs that are essential to companies but only for the companies to compete for the market and squeeze each other out, with nearly zero sum for society, are the classic example of a bullshit job.
sun_the_second
3hr ago
I doubt anyone at that point was even thinking about using the stones themselves. Quill could barely survive holding the Power Stone by sharing it with all his friends.
sun_the_second
3hr ago
The only reason Steve got picked by the guy who developed the highly experimental and unproven Super Soldier Serum is because he showed the willingness to sacrifice himself when he threw himself over a grenade during bootcamp.
And also in general because he expressed that he wants to fight the Nazis to protect his people, not to kill the Nazis. It is highlighted that the serum corrupted Red Skull because Red Skull had the wrong morality. Many John Walkers would also fail. To be fair I haven't watched Thunderbolts, so maybe John was just as pure-hearted as Steve.
sun_the_second
3hr ago
Avoiding pain on a basic level sounds like what evolutionary instincts are supposed to do. They developed way before sadistic will-breaking cultures did.
Capital_Room
rather dementor-like
3hr ago
Count me as another one who found this through the AAQC roundup.
As an inhabitant of the state with the highest population fraction Eastern Orthodox, I feel like I should say something here; but I don't exactly have much relevant first-hand knowledge, except to note that our Orthodox population is, as one might expect, disproportionately Native (what with many of their ancestors having been first evangelized by Russian Orthodox missionaries, back before Russia sold the place to the USA).
kky
3hr ago
Most women did reproduce, but up until the 20th century, pretty much no women anywhere on Earth -- not enough to change the behavior of the sex -- had a choice in who would be the father of their children.
Do you seriously believe this? Have you read what people in those eras write? Let’s stay recent, if patriarchal. Tolstoy is exquisitely clear that, in the upper classes of the time, courtship was expected to be somewhat mutual. Marriages where the woman was unenthusiastic went much worse. You see echoes of this in Austen, or Dickens, or any of the other 19th-century European authors of note.
OK, how about further back? Maybe the age of chivalry? Wait a minute, isn’t the model of chivalric love a man trying his utmost to get a woman to cheat - where she can say yes or no? Sounds a lot like she’s controlling who she has kids with, and indeed genetic testing has started to indicate that female infidelity is truly a woman’s way to choose when more traditional methods are removed from her. And that’s not just the West - circa year 1k in Japan the courtly literature is clear on infidelity or intrigue driven by women’s desire.
Obviously there were major cases of rape or abduction. They matter. But women’s choice has been a driving factor in sexual selection for forever. Why else do you think teenage boys so actively, so instinctively, try to impress the girls around them? It sounds like your impression is based less on actual people and more on some BAP fantasy of the Real Gritty Past. And I hope you see how that ignorance could seriously mislead you.
Southkraut
Vibe of vibes, saith the Preacher, vibe of vibes; all is vibe.
3hr ago
Fair point and good suggestion.
It's all temporary anyways, isn't it? A few more years and the whole internet will just be bots talking to each other.
ArjinFerman
Tinfoil Gigachad
3hr ago
Is trying to associate people, who's views you don't like, with nazis a woke tactic? Do you know who'd qualify as "woke right" if the answer to that question was "yes"?
stuckinbathroom
4hr ago
As I understand it, “woke right” doesn’t just mean “hardcore right-winger”; it means, roughly, co-opting the tactics and analytical methods of wokeism to advance a right-wing political agenda.
For example, hiring quotas for conservatives in academia to boost “viewpoint diversity”, or affirmative action for flyover-country whites, would be “woke right” policies, while Ramaswamy/Musk-style “green cards stapled to STEM degrees” would be “tech right”.
stuckinbathroom
4hr ago
If bargaining were truly Coasian (hah!) then you could easily make a deal to increase salaries even further in exchange for bringing staffing to international standard.
Not that this is politically feasible in the least, but to keep labor costs down, we could (like Singapore) bring in guest workers from places like Bangladesh to do construction work on the cheap—co-Asian bargaining, if you will
magic9mushroom
If you're going to downvote me, and nobody's already voiced your objection, please reply and tell me
4hr ago
Can't find the original ABC (as in, the Australian state broadcaster) articles I read (I think I might have seen a bit on TV too, back when I watched TV) with trivial effort, but a minute's searching turned up a couple of links.
If you really want more, I can look for the originals, I guess. But yeah, it's reasonably-common (common enough, at least, for expats who aren't explicitly extorted to still fear it).
FairestWorld
4hr ago
I just now realized I should've included this in the OP, but I was blindsided since it's actually one of the few above-avereage Marvel movies, but in Civil War, the conflict between the 2 sides is over Bucky, Cap's long lost friend, who being brainwashed, killed Tony's (Ironman) parents. The previous movies establish a friend/rival relationship between Ironman and Cap, who are the defacto leaders of the Avengers. There's a line in the trailer where Cap says "Tony, he's my friend" and Ironman responds "So was I" which still gives me goosebumps.
While there still is a ideological undercurrent in the movie (should heroes work unrestrained or should they be state agents and everything that comes with either choice), in the comics that's the main thing.
I guess the jarring thing is that this sort of "drawing battlelines and breaking up the organization/friend group" is usually reserved for romantic conflicts in a love triangle or just 2 guys vying for one woman (think Troy).
I guess this is more common in Japanese media, Naruto has an unhealthy obsession with bringing Sasuke (even weirder friends/rivals relationship) off the wrong/evil path.
FairestWorld
4hr ago
Yes, that's basically what happens, with some underlying "these people are/can be actually heroic if not for their traumas/life circumstances.
The argument over Cap's shield happens in Falcon and the Winter Soldier.
And "Fake Cap" is kind of weird, since John is arguably much more suited to be Captain America than even Steve Rogers. If you'd have to choose a priori, would you pick the scrawny nobody or the multiple times decorated soldier with proven experience and skills?
The only reason Steve got picked by the guy who developed the highly experimental and unproven Super Soldier Serum is because he showed the willingness to sacrifice himself when he threw himself over a grenade during bootcamp.
You might say that you'd test it on a guy like Steve and then roll it out to all of the John Walkers out there. The only reason that doesn't happen is because the facility gets sabotaged and they lose the formula.
Dean
Flairless
4hr ago
I had to get this done a day early, or it wouldn't get done until several days late.
Thank you for doing so. The 1st of the month roundup is, well, a highlight of the month. The new month wouldn't start off right without it.
FairestWorld
4hr ago
I think the reason the scene is so maligned, is because it seems contrived to have the heroes lose from a basically unloseable situation, just so they could have thr sequel.
Like,
ulyssessword
4hr ago
Union leadership also limits membership to secure jobs for their members.
If the local union has 500 members and each can do 0.2 houses per year (e.g. a crew of 10 can do two houses per year), then I guess your city is building a max of 100 houses. What if you want more than 100 houses built? Too bad, union labor is mandated, and they're not interested in de-monopilizing the sector.
Those 500 workers will sure be happy that they're in so much demand. The union did its job.
FairestWorld
5hr ago
... what? I think that's the most common trope in the last few decades, friends-to-lovers.
Anecdotally, online and offline, it also seems that at least in the Anglosphere (maybe exclusively?) a lot of women express preference for starting as friends, which may then develop into a romantic relationship.
Her description of her childhood rearing is indeed terrible, but I can see ordinary not-terrible parents deciding that an over-sensitive child who (for instance) is reduced to fits of tears at a birthday party simply because "other people are looking at me!" needs something to toughen them up a bit, and that the kid has to be compelled to do this for their own good (cruel to be kind). "If you don't do X, you won't get Y" is part of ordinary child-raising. If you gave up on "oh no, they hate it, they're crying and begging, we won't do it" and let the kid off, then there's a good chance they'll just become ever more introverted and sensitive, won't learn how to deal with adverse events or "I don't like this but it has to be done" and you'll end up doing more harm in the long run.
The parents didn't force her to keep doing karate, and I think she doesn't understand why. It wasn't "oh they weren't totally cruel after all", it was that the aim had been achieved: she learned to power through and do something she found personally unpleasant. That was the lesson: no, even if you are 'burning with shame and have tears pouring down your face' the dreaded outcome isn't that bad after all. You didn't die. People were not laughing at you. You got through it and the world did not end. Think of exposure therapy. It needn't have been karate class, it could just as well have been a dance class and young Aella was working herself up into imaginary fears of "the others are toddlers! people will think I'm a toddler! they will be laughing at me for being so stupid and dumb and useless that I have to go in with toddlers!"
That doesn't mean that beating a child eleven times is a good thing after all, but rather that some of the treatment was normal child-raising. My parents made me do things as a kid that I loathed, and in the long run they were right. I have to do things even today that I hate (going out in public and mingling with people, for one) and that early experience has given me the tools to cope. If my parents had let me off because 'burning with shame and tears pouring down', I'd be a news story by now about "hoarder hermit had to be rescued by social services, never set foot outside front door in thirty years, house is condemned as unfit for human habitation".
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