domain:doyourownresearch.substack.com
2rafa
4hr ago
Not really. Murray’s ideology is the status quo as of the late 2000s / early 2010s. As polling suggests, in the UK among his generation that includes the extremely mainstream and almost universally accepted viewpoint (outside of the radical left and Indians) that Winston Churchill was one of the greatest Britons of all time because he ‘won’ the last major war that the country was involved in - and really there is no deeper complexity to that perception.
Murray’s ideology makes him a small-c conservative in some ways (he basically wants Britain as it existed in like 2007 to exist forever and for it to be filled with people who accept the major tenets of liberalism forever) and a classical liberal imperialist in others. The latter (liberal imperialism) isn’t an oxymoron, by the way, it has a long tradition in British politics going back at least 180 years.
It’s hard to hate Murray because, like Harris, he’s actually pretty open about what he believes and he openly acknowledges that this is mainly based on his perception of his own self-interest. He’s a gay man who wants to export liberal western culture, by force, onto the whole world and prevent mass immigration of people who hate him. You can disagree with him, but he is ideologically consistent.
Jiro
4hr ago
I've never heard of people claiming that the Bible is good literature make similar claims about the Koran or other scriptures. So I'm inclined to think that claims that the Bible is good literature are mostly halo effect (with some addition of 'everyone uses it so you need to read it to know the references').
Still not seeing the mischaracterization. Why would Churchill, the man whose decision making process ultimately nailed the final nail in the coffin of the British empire, be venerated by the likes of Murray? It's because Churchill opposed Hitler.
Ideology, for the likes of Murray, is central. That is why he spent 30 minutes waffling about good and evil on Joe Rogan when the topic of Darryl Cooper came up.
Eupraxia
Shut up and quantify
4hr ago
Maybe not a virus, but a vaccine...
RandomRanger
Just build nuclear plants!
4hr ago
It really is that simple: flight speed, payload and range isn't capped at some modest multiple above a falcon but by how much fuel you're prepared to burn and whether you're willing to use serious, atomic rockets.
That there is a hard scaling limit is true but it's not remotely relevant to my point since the difference between a bird and a nuclear rocket is so vast as to make any comparison but the most galaxy-brained 'it's all specks of dust from 50,000,000 light years' ridiculous. This should be immediately apparent!
That there is a scaling limit is secondary to where the limit actually is. There is no reason to think we are anywhere near the scaling limit. In rocketry we are limited by our level of investment and our unwillingness to use advanced propulsion, not by physics.
Your whole framing is ridiculous:
Fission, fusion, antimatter, whatever. Yes, we literally did antimatter. The conclusion? None of them give you all that much more in the face of the tyranny of the rocket equation. Certainly not if we're thinking galactic or cluster scale. More? Yes. But in context, underwhelming.
In context, underwhelming because it isn't galactic scale? And by the way, it clearly is galactic scale in a fairly reasonable timespan. Galactic scale in space, why not give it a couple hundred thousand years? A million years is peanuts in astronomical time, in the movements of galaxies or the evolution of life. You're taking an analogy I selected, not understanding it and then producing mixed contexts while complaining about my single, relevant, assumed context of 'things that matter on Earth to real human beings' as opposed to the 'insanity of exponentials and the universe' which doesn't matter to anyone.
WhiningCoil
5hr ago
Yeah, I don't think Mechwarrior 1-4 are ever getting released again. For a time Mechwarrior 4: Mercs got a free re-release, but the "free license" for that has been withdrawn, and it's no longer distributed officially. MW3 is actually the only one I haven't replayed to completion in recent memory. Perhaps I should make that my next retro project.
atelier
Jimmys: unrustled
5hr ago
I wonder if they will continue it for hundreds of years and it will end up like Sweden's navel oak Forrest's (planted 20 years before steel became common for shipbuilding now they have a forest of oaks that are usually tall and straight).
hydroacetylene
5hr ago
Because their domestic audience hates Russia so badly they wish the Nazis had won WWII and it’s not like Russia can do much to them- the wrath of big daddy America is too fearsome.
VoxelVexillologist
Multidimensional Radical Centrist
5hr ago
Status-wise, there's no doubt Spanish has a lower socioeconomic association, so if you're trying to raise your kid to me a major climber, Chinese might be better if that's your primary goal.
At least in my part of the US, there is a niche for small business owners who use Spanish to communicate with (some of) their workers. This may be less status than you are looking for (construction contractors, restaurant franchise owners, ranchers), but it is something.
Analogously, I've at least heard of Chinese-speakers being pulled in to negotiate with "the factory" (mainland or Taiwan) building products.
On the gripping hand, our Brave New World today could easily spell major changes in both of these with changes in immigration and tariffs, so my confidence would be low.
hydroacetylene
5hr ago
It’s entirely possible that the women are unhappy because gen Z guys(I won’t get into the discussion of what qualifies as a man) are inadequate and that their standards are either very reasonable or only slightly high. Porn and gambling addictions, for example, are much more widespread in this generation than in the previous ones, and male employment is often less stable.
kky
5hr ago
Presumably because of demand. As I figure, the HOA is basically a way of forcibly excluding people who can’t “fit in” with the community or follow the rules. Reading in between the lines, that was what was going on in this case, as in, classic bullying. Probably the people trying to force defendant to fit in were a real mess of busybodies, obviously, as they brought a dumb case to court, but this is the function here.
In a more sympathetic case, imagine a family moved in who left rusting cars on the lawn and other obnoxious but not quite illegal things that nobody of your class or background would do. How do you make them stop? I know a lot of the people here are libertarians, principled or otherwise, but the average Joe ain’t and would rather keep those families out, or else coloring within the lines. Personally I don’t empathize and enjoy my freedom more, but I get that’s a rarity overall.
And apparently HOAs are overall popular. People like em. Or at least, they aren’t the kind of radioactive that would stop people buying these properties, even with the very obvious downsides, and encourage developers to not enforce them. I know revealed preferences is a meme, but it seems to apply here.
Relating this out. I’ve seen a lot of people on this forum arguing pretty directly for a shared US culture. Well, the HOA feels exactly like what’s being asked for here - an association that punishes deviance with process, and upholds normalcy. Japan is a pretty culturally centralized place, and from what I hear from my friends there, pretty much every little village and neighborhood has its own little HOA (micro-local government). They organize things like who goes to sweep out the graveyard, sure, but also make certain nobody gets too far out of line, in that distinctive passive-aggressive but unmistakably Japanese way. And I think of that, and of the fuck-you American spirit, and it makes me laugh a little. Conformists are allowed their little liberties here, but why think they’re remotely popular? An American will only subject himself to banding together once he’s exhausted the alternatives for keeping the undesirables out.
(This is ignoring the little associations that are just about funding shared resources, like an HOA that pays for the community pool. Those have a straightforward reason to be.)
hydroacetylene
5hr ago
Lots of people dream of working an oil rig/alaskan crab boat/mining camp/whatever. It’s very well remunerated(sometimes more in fantasy than reality), it’s away from civilization, it’s physically difficult, etc.
Having a very high income while very young is a common young male fantasy for the same reason young women fantasize about becoming incredibly beautiful after some minor change.
No ceasefire until Ukraine withdraws from the four mainland regions
What is the purchasing maxim? Never offer to pay what someone is willing to do for free? This is the inverse of that- demanding for free what others know you are willing to pay for.
Even if all parts of the Russian position eventually end up being accepted as written, this demand alone would be reason enough to keep fighting on. The 'rapid' advances of Russia in the eastern front last year were still slow enough in absolute amount of territory gained that it would have taken years of fighting at the same rates to finish conquering the claimed territories at the same rate, if they could sustain the same intensity over that period of time. Indications so far this year don't really support that, with the territorial advances in Ukraine in the earlier part of this year falling behind the rate of the last months of last year.
The upcoming Russian summer offensive does not change that. In fact, the bloodier it is expected to be, the less reason to accept the Russian ceasefire terms to give up land it has not conquered, especially if you expect this advance to make major gains against the Ukrainian defensive lines.
After all, if the land and defensive lines would be lost regardless, the relevant variable isn't the land being lost, but the resources both sides lose to do so. Russian forces and equipment and time spent taking the easternmost regions by force are resources that can't be used in a later offensive should the conditional ceasefire break down. In turn, the defensive positions in the east, even if they are insufficient, are better than the defensive lines further west, while the investments in the east provide no benefit if turned over without a fight. But defenses in the west will have more time to be developed if it takes months, or even 'just' weeks, to be developed.
Even if the entirety of the four regions is conquered in the coming offensive- and that requires a level of belief that the Ukrainians are about to have a systemic collapse cascade that ignores the last few years of the war to date- it would still be better to accept the Russian demands then, rather than now.
And if the Russians wouldn't be interested in accepting them then, that is a pretty strong indicator they aren't likely to be satisfied even if the terms were accepted now. Which increases the value of making the Russians pay more manpower / material / time in the present, rather than leaving it open in the future.
2rafa
6hr ago
It’s because Murray is British and thinks British culture and history are the best in the world, and Churchill is by far the most beloved British political / cultural figure in history, topping almost every single poll of the greatest British people of all time. Ideology is entirely secondary, although in general Murray, as a fan of the British Empire - of which he considered neoconservatism / liberal imperialism a successor - likes Churchill’s imperialism. Churchill’s actual opinions are irrelevant on both sides (see, for example, Cooper’s insistence that Churchill’s primary motivation in prosecuting WW2 was some debts he allegedly owed to Jewish moneylenders).
FiveHourMarathon
Wawa Nationalist
6hr ago
Dude that's not even "Hitler was a vegetarian!"
This is like saying "Hitler had legs."
Hitler certainly fucked.
People who don't have the full range of human emotions and experiences are cripples. That doesn't make them morally bad people, sure, but it's wrong to pretend they aren't cripples. Being deaf is substantively worse than not being deaf, and deaf "activists" who want to lobby against cochlear implants are insane.
omw_68
6hr ago
This isn't a real schedule. This is an artifact of legal and bureaucratic processes.
I tend to agree with you on this. I would guess that at some point the town residents wanted buried power lines. Maybe someone was injured by a downed electric line, maybe there was a power failure with especially bad consequences, maybe it was the pet issue of a few leading residents, who knows. At the same time, there wasn't the political will to spend the necessary money to do it. (Presumably it's very expensive to bury power lines as it is very unusual). In that kind of situation, nobody wants to tell some widow that the town doesn't want to spend the money to prevent more possible electrocutions. So one way to square that circle is to set up a situation where you can pretend that there is an actual project to bury the power lines when in reality there is not.
I think that these sorts of situations -- let's all pretend that we are addressing problem X -- are actually pretty common in politics. Anyone with a lick of sense knew perfectly well that the crime bill of 1992 would not reduce crime; that the No Child Left Behind Act would accomplish little or nothing; and so on. More recently, a lot of the policies put in place to fight against Coronavirus were obviously never going to help. So I would guess that the Pasadena power line project is a similar kind of situation.
zeke5123a
6hr ago
How about bring overturned on a national injunction is evidence of bad behavior and therefore removal is merited? That is, a judge should only do it in the most extreme clear situations?
zeke5123a
6hr ago
I think it’s 5-4 with ACB being on the liberal side. Government got the harder of the question but BK made the most impactful point re asymmetry of the outcome and Roberts understands institutionally forum shopping nationwide injunctions increases the frictions between the branches in a way that will cause a constitutional crisis. ACB reads too much of the NYT.
EverythingIsFine
Well, is eventually fine
6hr ago
See my other comment but I'm puzzled that you'd feel Chinese is a bigger cultural transformation when there are more Spanish speakers, as a percentage of the population, than there are Black people in the US. I might be biased from living in the West, though.
zeke5123a
6hr ago
A few points:
-
If the argument is “it doesn’t matter SCOTUS will decide anyhow,” then (1) maybe not due to cert denial, (2) maybe yes but if SCOTUS sided with the 499/500, then an injustice occurred potentially for years, and (3) if trying to solve time then legal issues don’t get to evolve within multiple rulings to tease out the thorny issues.
-
DOJ discussed long standing precedent that the general rule is they respect the opinion and judgement but they reserve the right to respect only the judgement. Notably, this is a historic precedent something that the DOJ actually pursued while Kagan was solicitor genera. However, the DOJ stated they would respect both the opinion and judgement of SCOTUS.
What? Who believes that? It's my understanding that a strong majority people across all political sides think [European] WWII was preventable, it's just that the reasons vary. I think there are, broadly speaking, about three camps that conveniently tend to align with modern political positions:
-
The people of Germany should have been better at fighting back and denouncing Nazism when it was rising and/or after Hitler took control (Left)
-
The other nations around Germany should have been better at drawing firm lines in the sand for what was allowed and what was not, it was appeasement that let Hitler get out of control (Right)
-
The winners of WWI shouldn't have imposed such an overly strict and emasculating treaty of Versailles which led to German resentment and decline creating an environment of radicalism and lawlessness (Center)
I mean these were all reasons, but I think historians (to the extent that they agree) roughly rank those reasons above in ascending order of importance. I guess you could add underestimating Hitler (first bin), failure of the League of nations (first bin), economic factors (second bin), criticism of the Weimar democracy (third bin) too.
The argument for non-preventability rests on what? Actions from Versailles and foreign leaders are pretty agentic and led to many of the other reasons, I guess you could call the Great Depression non-agentic, or simply say that the world hadn't yet learned these lessons because similar situations hadn't existed yet?
(edit: formatting)
EverythingIsFine
Well, is eventually fine
7hr ago
"Scapegoating" itself as a word comes from Jewish tradition where the sins of the entire nation would be laid on a single literal goat who was then released into the wilderness (practically, pushed off a cliff outside town), while another 'innocent' goat would be sacrificed on Yom Kippur, the holiest day of the year. Jesus literally and symbolically took the role of both being innocent and being sacrificed, and it's quite literal in Christianity that he took on him the sins of the world there, which sins would otherwise prevent us individually from reaching heaven. Reasons for why exactly he was capable of doing this differ across sects but usually are some variant of him being innocent or of godly nature.
In modern discourse being scapegoated is seen as a bad thing (i.e. avoiding responsibility) but Christians would agree that you need some action yourself to obtain this absolution, though it's "free" in a more general sense. Here is the key point where the various sects differ greatly, what action? Some believe that you need to follow some kind of true regret/restitution/prayer process, others that you need to confess to a priest, others that you actually don't have to do anything other than once in your whole life ask for forgiveness and that's it.
aldomilyar
7hr ago
I just felt like it should have been brought into the vampire climax somehow and felt like it just kinda weirdly floated above the rest of the movie just to tick the 'racial oppression themes' mentioned box moreso than really contributing to the plot perse. Also like the only two real white person interactions of the movie are 'The Local Klan is ready to go on 24 hours notice for the grave crime of selling an old barn' and 'Old drunkard's friend is mass lynched for the crime of having $20' which is a pretty insane setup.
If it had tied into the vampire plot with say the Vampiric mulatto woman going to the local town and making up a rape or something to galvanize the Klan into action to get the vampires into the barn I'd buy that, or if it somehow tied into the source of the Chicago money with organized crime contacts using the Klan to try and get revenge. Otherwise it's just a child's understanding of the South where mass lynchings were a daily occurence in every locality.
EverythingIsFine
Well, is eventually fine
7hr ago
It depends on what parts of the Bible. Some, absolutely. My very-atheist hometown of Portland, OR (suburbs but still) had a "Bible as Literature" English elective class in high school! No, I didn't take it, sadly.
Not all chapters are equal, and it also depends on the translation. KJV has a pretty famous poetic style, though the NRSV keeps a good bit of the charm while updating the language somewhat. Read some famous passages in the ESV though and you might feel like a toddler, it's pretty bad. There's some of the Psalms, of course, parts of Isaiah with nice imagery, the start of Genesis is a bit of a classic. In the New Testament, it's a little more parceled out into particular chapters, though John and Luke are definitely more literary than the other Gospels.
Well paid labor job without any particular educational qualifications. You can sub in whatever similar job appeals to you personally, but the point is that I don't think there's any white collar professional in America who doesn't occasionally think about getting on the interstate and driving all night until you reach a country town in a state where no one knows you and get a simple labor job and start over.
More options
Context Copy link