domain:astralcodexten.substack.com
HonoriaWinchester
6hr ago
Great point!
This part
When the government denies your entry into a higher paying market, you are being told you aren't worth that.
is kinda what people are responding to with, "But a country is not an economic zone." Like: "It's not that you aren't worth access to that higher paying market. It's just that you are part of a different community, rather than that one."
HonoriaWinchester
6hr ago
He was in denial about his love for the other servant and hers for him (they could have married and had a happy life, but no); he was in denial about his employer's support for the Nazis. When he finally realized the depth of his sacrifices (see: other servant's love for him), he told himself they were justified because he had given good service to a great man (a stereotypical "blockheaded aristo" who had supported the Nazis along with the abdicator king).
(Looking it up after writing the above: Miss Kenton; Edward VIII.)
Quantumfreakonomics
6hr ago
If they have secret actually-good evidence, then I invite them to show it. From what I’ve seen, the evidence presented has all the classic red flags:
-
No proposed causal mechanism
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a plausible non-causal mechanism (pain and inflammation would be correlated both with Tylenol use and poor fetal health).
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tiny effect sizes.
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effects collapse when confounders are controlled (via sibling studies in this case).
self_made_human
amaratvaṃ prāpnuhi, athavā yatamāno mṛtyum āpnuhi
6hr ago
I remain convinced that it's Peak Fiction, and certainly in my Top 3 Novels. Go for it dude!
self_made_human
amaratvaṃ prāpnuhi, athavā yatamāno mṛtyum āpnuhi
6hr ago
I presume you overlooked the fact that
Amadan
Enjoying my short-lived victory
6hr ago
A new Jussie Smollet case? Another Nurse Karen versus black kids on rental bikes?
Former 'The Bear' writer handcuffed on train after alleged complaint from white woman
Alex O'Keefe is a writer for FX's The Bear and a former speechwriter for Elizabeth Warren. He's also black. On September 18 he was apparently arrested and taken off an MTA train when a white woman told him to correct his posture and he refused.
At least, that's how it's reported on Black Enterprise, which obviously has the most inflammatory version. Most other news sites, such ABC (above) and Newsweek ('The Bear' Writer Arrested on Train After Complaint From White Woman) also seem to be describing what at first glance is a pretty egregious case of "White Karen sics cops on a black man for being uppity." So egregious that I was immediately suspicious. I mean, really? A white woman just points her finger and has a black man arrested for his "posture"? In 2025, in the Bronx?
Well, reading the ABC and Newsweek articles, there are a few additional details.
Police responded to a complaint of a 31-year-old "disorderly passenger" on a train at Fordham Metro-North station in the Bronx when "a conductor reported a passenger occupying two seats had refused to remove his feet from one of the seats," according to authorities.
According to the MTA rules of conduct stated on its website, riders are subject to a $50 fine for occupying more than one seat by lying down or placing their feet up. If a rider ignores a violation notice from an officer, they are subject to being ejected, the rules state.
"When he continued to refuse to exit, delaying service for several hundred other riders for six minutes, the passenger involved was handcuffed and removed from the train, where he was issued a summons for disorderly conduct, a violation, without further incident at approximately 1048 hours, and allowed to board the next train to complete his trip." MTA police told ABC News in a statement.
So he was not actually arrested - he was cuffed and "detained," then allowed to board the next train.
Supposedly one of the woman's friends said "You’re not the minority anymore.”
There is plenty here to make this another scissors incident. I have watched enough bodycam footage on YouTube to imagine it going several ways. Maybe Karen really was being a bitch and didn't like seeing a black guy "manspreading." The cops arrive in authoritarian asshole mode, O'Keefe protests, winds up cuffed and taken off the train.
Alternatively, O'Keefe was spreading himself across two seats, the old lady wanted to sit in one of them, O'Keefe decides no white lady is going to make him move, and when the cops arrive and ask him to please move his feet, he goes into Aggrieved Asshole mode.
Or something in-between. I have seen variations of both these scenarios play out. I doubt this will blow up into a huge story since O'Keefe wasn't actually arrested, but I have definitely seen it in several places now, in some cases described as a near-lynching and something something Trump.
The woman's friend saying "You’re not the minority anymore” is one of those details that strikes me as so on the nose (remember "This is MAGA country"?) that I just don't know what to think. Is it fabricated? Did someone really decide to offer up the perfect soundbite like that? Or was it in the context of a longer exchange between her and O'Keefe (a context conveniently omitted in all reporting)?
DradisPing
6hr ago
I think your characterization of Kirk is doing him a disservice.
He wasn't a mundane political organizer, he was an exceptionally talented political organizer in party that's lacking in them.
He was only 31 and was arguably the most important Republican under 40. You can easily imagine him getting into the Senate then launching a Presidential campaign in his 50s.
He wasn't a public intellectual, which definitely hurts his image around here, but that doesn't usually lead to success in politics.
HonoriaWinchester
6hr ago
I'm from a traditionally AUA family. Always think about writing about it, never seem to find the time.
I left in the '90s, so I don't know if what @MayorofOysterville said is true about the UUs, but I can mostly agree with it about other old school liberal orgs:
Basically Boomer liberal organizations were actually liberal and boomer liberals did believe in principles such as free speech. However, they lacked the antibodies to deal with hardcore woke cadre because they could easily be manipulated by being called racist and out of touch with the youth.
My parents are Depression / war babies rather than Boomers. And I think I've said it before on here, but yeah I was raised that freedom of speech was our most important principle as liberals.
But UUs also had a previous problem that I grew up watching, where the uh "old believers" ;) were, basically, swamped by all the ex-other-denoms coming in in the '70s and '80s. It's hard to find the time to try to write about it though....
The strangest conclusion one can draw from these five crucial minutes of that shortest day--though it would have been perfectly clear, had one bothered to read the signs--is the fact that the refugee horde seemed so blithely unaware that this land it was about to make its own could possibly belong to others already....
all those determined to see it through to the end come pouring from the villas, and cottages, and gardens, down to the beach...to welcome the refugees and guide their first steps. They will. They must. For their own self- fulfillment. Life is good. Life is love, and all men are brothers....
Panama Ranger scans the surging mob, almost close enough to touch him, trying to find a smiling face, a glance to grasp the friendship in his eyes. But he looks and looks. No smile meets his. No one even seems to see him.... He's finally seen the light. "They don't need me," he murmurs. "They'll just take what they please. I can’t give them a thing ..."
As for his pals, they disappeared too, absorbed and digested in much the same way... Only a handful were adopted, as it were, yet lots of them did their damnedest to be helpful... But they soon got discouraged. Though the horde often listened and took their good advice...they no sooner gave it than they felt themselves rejected. The brightest among them were quick to understand: the more helpful they were, indispensable in fact, the more hateful they became.... No one wants to have to remember the masters and mentors from the opulent past. They're just in the way.
You could say: they didn't seem to join thinking they were you know joining a church. They seemed to join thinking "Here's what I can call myself while doing whatever the hell I want." From my biased perspective.
And then before that there was the AUA-Universalist merger. (Which arguably opened the door for the problems I saw growing up...but both--the merger and the problems--could just as easily be attributed to the times.)
And then there's the snide attitude most people here take to Unitarians. I would suggest that people apply the "write like everyone is reading (including Unitarians)" rule. And of course it's hard to write about people you don't know. But then that applies to me too these days wrt the UUs.
My parents haven't attended a church since the '90s. They don't like the one where I grew up, they don't like the one where they now live. They have a lot of Congregationalist friends, so they're thinking of joining their local Congregationalist church. (The AUA was formed by Congregationalists who were dissatisfied with Calvinism. Problem: So are my folks...)
The AUA was not "created to be a liberal denomination of [implied by the quotes: fake] 'Christianity.'"
To get a better understanding of what it was for, I suggest reading Harriet Beecher Stowe's roman a clef Oldtown Folks (Ellery Davenport is basically Aaron Burr, except that he dies instead of Hamilton). Guess I could summarize as: It was invented by and for a certain type of person, who (at least in a Christian context) needed it. It does not work well for anyone else.
HonoriaWinchester
6hr ago
Jawboning is 100% fine per Murthy v. Missouri, Jimmy Kimmel will never again face firing over his reaction to specifically Charlie Kirk's death, so he has no standing to complain. :bland smile:
dragonfly
7hr ago
transgender care is fameously done without it he applications of meatcleavers to genitals, and other body parts.
The vast majority of trans healthcare doesn't involve surgery of any kind. On the other hand, I'm pretty sure the side effects of circumcision don't include infertility.
DiscourseMagnus
7hr ago
I mean, I'd like to see the evidence, too, but I think the elephant in the room here is that the autism crisis is primarily memetically driven - both in that more functional autism behaviors can be turned into more dysfunctional autism behaviors by a more memetically hostile modern environment (the nonsexual equivalent of the "guy who wants to fuck toasters" thing), and in that the category of autism (and particularly a spectrum of autism) is itself a hostile meme propagated by psychopaths to pathologize their natural enemies.
Compare and contrast transgender.
FirmWeird
Randomly Generated Reddit Username
7hr ago
What would possess Egypt to attack Israel exactly?
Egypt is currently bribed on a regular basis to prevent it from causing problems with Israel. Also, note that I never said attack - I said it would stop supporting Israel. There's a big difference between attacking a nation and not supporting it. I don't think the logic here is particularly hard to follow, either. If you were paying someone to do something and then stop paying it is pretty easy to assume that they will stop doing what you were paying them to do. Why exactly do you think the flow of bribes cutting off will mean that Egypt is suddenly more friendly with Israel?
A couple dozen to hundreds of people who were family members to people that were already sworn enemies of Israel just isn't a serious concern.
Hamas' entire recruiting strategy is to pick up and take care of people orphaned by Israel and the IDF. If you want to say that Hamas isn't a serious concern or problem for Israel then you're going to be contradicting a lot of their public statements.
While your point here isn't that strong anyway, I think you're being very sneaky by saying "people that were already sworn enemies of Israel" when the example in question was a twelve year old girl. If I'm making the argument that Israel's brutal treatment of others and expressed glee (how many pager jokes did you see?) at the killing of innocent children is going to destroy their reputation amongst a given people, "those 12 year old girls were sworn enemies of our country with a first world military" is not actually an argument that will convince anyone who isn't already on your side.
You know and I know that service in the Israeli military is compulsory. Who precisely isn't getting genocided in this scenario?
There are traffic offences with prison sentences longer than the one you get for not signing up with the IDF, and they recognise conscientious objectors. Every person who serves in the IDF had the choice to not do so - sure, some choices are harder than others, but if you're making the choice that service in a genocidal military is worth it for the career opportunities you know what you're getting into. Personally I'd prefer to spend a few months in prison than shoot children in the head or crush so many human bodies with a bulldozer that I get PTSD and kill myself, but I'm not Israeli so that choice isn't really gonna come up for me. The ultra orthodox are completely exempt too, so they're also free.
You're proposing a pretty divergent middle easy equilibrium so it's hard know exactly how things shake out. I don't really see the Saudis and Iran getting along regardless of how Israel is seen by the US so presumably Israel will look to join one of those two factions. What's the US's relation to Saudi Arabia in this hypothetical?
Saudia Arabia just came under the Pakistani nuclear umbrella and signed a pact with them. Most nations in the middle east are now extremely wary of US security guarantees because what happened in Qatar proves that they're completely worthless. My view of the US in this future would be that it is isolationist, withdrawing to the heartland and abandoning an unsustainable global empire.
As for Israel joining one of those two factions, lol. There's zero chance Iran lets them sign up with that axis (turns out when you use negotiations as a bad faith trick to bomb people they stop wanting to negotiate with you), and the Saudis aren't exactly happy to deal with them either. With support from the US cut off it isn't like they could afford to bribe their way into either of those power blocs, and they've made everyone around them hate them. They're going to have a lot of trouble shacking up with someone else.
Exactly zero neighboring nation is going to take the "maybe get turned to glass in order to conquer worthless deserts at at best a port" proposition.
I said that a land-grab would happen after the collapse of Israel, i.e. when nobody would be nuking anyone. Who participates would depend on which nations Israel reduced to glass in its death throes - I can absolutely see them spitefully ruining the environment on the way out.
Just to clarify, I don't think that those neighbouring powers will be directly militarily responsible for the collapse of Israel - I think that their presence necessitates an incredibly high military budget, which in turn is one of multiple sources of pressure on Israel.
Why would that be?
Have you ever seen a map? India and Israel aren't neighbours, and there are plenty of states hostile to both of them in between. What trade route would all these goods be taking?
And yeah, I don't think Israel would win a war against the entire rest of the world blood lusted against them, but no one thinks they would so this hypothetical becomes very boring.
How long did South Africa, another nuclear power, last? It wasn't like the rest of the world was attacking them militarily either, and they're a perfect example of what I'm saying will happen to Israel if it gets cut off from the world. Right now, Israel has a worse reputation internationally than apartheid SA and their actions are so odious that there are constant, material protests against them even from countries with leadership that has been thoroughly purchased and owned by Israel.
Right now the human infrastructure of the shipping industry is in open revolt at the idea of having to work for what Israel is doing in Gaza - there are massive strikes (I believe one of them is happening today) because people in other countries think what Israel is doing is so heinous that they do not wish to support it at all. I don't have to look very far into the future to see a world that is incredibly hostile to Israel and refuses to support their existence, let alone their freedom to exterminate unwelcome minorities for more lebensraum.
dragonfly
7hr ago
I predict that the constant drumbeat of "trans bad" will continue to work until parents feel secure that government force is not going to shut them out of medical decisions relating to their children.
Jiro
7hr ago
You are being excessively literal. Can you link to some people actually saying such things, instead of paraphrasing them?
ace
7hr ago
Should I wait to see the evidence he used to reach that conclusion, or is that just my insane moon epistemology talking?
TheAntipopulist
Formerly Ben___Garrison
7hr ago
It's all either:
- Reasonably limited, like "we should only go after people who are inciting violence", but that's not representative of what's actually happened (i.e. the Right certainly hasn't limited itself to just that); or
- It accurately describes the Right's actions, but is excessively broad, like "it's fair to go after anyone saying mean things about Kirk".
FiveHourMarathon
Wawa Nationalist
7hr ago
Yeah it feels like a compromise climb-down. Vaccines are cool, but it's the Tylenol.
FiveHourMarathon
Wawa Nationalist
7hr ago
Maybe I wasn't paying close enough attention to your posts, but I got the impression you were looking to buy new for that price, since most people buying used don't have much option wrt features or brands, especially at the lower end of the used market. Maybe things are better where you are, but most of what I see on FB marketplace/CL is junk, and the specialist bike sites are more along the lines of "This year-old $6500 bike is a steal at $3000".
No that's pretty much craigslist here as well. Over time I've noticed some decent deals here and there, just wrong size or wrong style for me.
Though I may ultimately just keep the ones I borrowed. I'm fairly certain that the people I borrowed them from don't particularly want them back, at least not from me.
Any 10–20 year-old used bike is going to need a chain, probably a rear cassette, probably tires, probably new cables.
So, like, bike-sensei: I haven't actually changed most of those things on several bikes that haven't been ridden in years, and the tires are hit-or-miss, but with a bit of lubrication the rest seems to work ok in that I hop on and pedal it and it goes. Should I be changing out all those things as well?
TheAntipopulist
Formerly Ben___Garrison
7hr ago
Sure, people were misinterpreting my toy example there as if I always thought self-defense was hypocritical, which isn't true for the reason you listed. I've added a note to the original post for clarification.
TheAntipopulist
Formerly Ben___Garrison
7hr ago
This is a valid point, although I'd (lightly) push back in a few areas:
- To what degree was this actually true? I definitely remember it happening in at least some instances, but I also remember people saying that cancel mobs had short attention spans. Sure, you might get a few wackos keeping tabs, but the vast majority of the fury was a one-time deal.
- Right wing cancel culture is still new, and there's a chance they could do this too. I... kind of doubt they will to be honest, but I would guess the reason would be due to a lack of institutional power rather than a lack of wanting to do so. Granted, that would still be a difference, no doubt.
Browser
8hr ago
Kirk is like an 8.5/10 where a successful Trump shoot would be like a 10/10. Everything else in recent memory has been like a 3.
LateMechanic
8hr ago
Yeah they're interchangeable at this point, especially from the perspective of everyone understanding basically what you mean. And the 1-syllable version is certainly easier to be workable offline rather than the 5-syllable one.
I just think there was meaningfully something different being gestured at with the "warrior" part of it that we were seeing in the mid 2010s, while 'woke' was more like new elite manners or religion that especially spread among coastal urban white people who were susceptible to guilt tripping or were looking for meaning. I don't know why it works, but being told that you have the original sin of being born white and thus being intrinsically racist (even if you don't consciously think you're racist), but that the good news is you can repent and strive to actively be anti-racist and elevate PoC in your life while spreading this awakening to others...somehow this did actually work on a lot of people. So at least the way I saw it, there's usually a well-meaning core to wokeness. A lot of these people actually did think the non-woke were simply lacking education about historical injustice or something, while other older boomers maybe just shrugged their shoulders and went along with it to avoid status loss, like "I guess this is where society is going now, I can adapt".
So in my opinion, wokeness is enough to ruin movies/shows/fiction, or to make events or press conferences annoying with land acknowledgements or massive split-screen sign-language translations. But it took some real coordinated meanness/nastiness of self-styled social justice warriors to actively cancel people and salt their earth. This had a different level of commitment where these people knew they were down in the trenches of the culture war and had enemies.
zoink
8hr ago
Never going to convince anyone in these measuring contests. The heuristic I use that strongly indicates that society is bent to the left is the ration of self-identified Marxist/communist professors vs Nazi professor. Communists have practically infinitely more power and influence in this country than Nazi. When a fascist terrorist get's tenure maybe I'll change my view of the world.
It's also possible to work in embedded at a contractor where nothing you do will have any impact on anyone outside the company and their direct customers :)
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