domain:inv.nadeko.net
I think that getting away with assassination doesn't just require smarts (and it requires plenty of that in our heavily surveilled world where there are cameras all over the place), it also requires a lot of coolness of nerve so that you don't make simple, stupid mistakes in the middle of the act, in the throes of overwhelming fear, adrenaline and other kinds of emotions. I think that there are very very few people in the world who not only have the smarts to get away with an assassination of a high-value target, but also have the sort of emotional coolness where they can actually apply their intelligence to the situation while they are doing it, instead of having 90% of their smarts wiped away in the moment by raw adrenaline while trying to pull off the act, and/or just stumbling into the sort of friction that always happens when trying to implement a plan in real life as opposed to in theory or daydreams ("no plan survives contact with the enemy"). Dostoevsky wrote a great description of how this works in Crime and Punishment.
philosoraptor
5hr ago
Rarely do these things turn out to neatly fit anyone's narrative. I think this or something like it is very likely indeed.
100ProofTollBooth
Dumber than a man, but faster than a dog.
6hr ago
Yes and no.
Biden / Pelosi style catholics are definitely solidly blue tribe and do vote democrat. There's even vestiges of old school machine politics for these kind of folks in states like Rhode Island and Massachusettes.
The problem is they aren't actually catholic. Just as "culturally Jewish" is a thing for totally non-observing "Jews" in the bicoastal cities, I believe "culturally catholic" exists as well for many democrat strongholds. To me, it's almost stolen valor. People like Biden etc get to say "faith is at the core of who I am" blah blah blah and infuse their speeches - and votes - with high minded moralism. But they aren't actually living or even trying to believe the doctrine of their faith. The Church is pretty damn clear on abortion and divorce, among other issues.
Theologically serious Catholics, nowadays, have to vote Republican because, of the two parties, it is the only one that isn't openly hostile to all of the bedrock elements of the faith. A lot of the politically motivated (and serious) American Catholics also get really into issues of religious liberties. One need look no further than the recent SCOTUS decision on tax-exemption status for faith based charities.
fmac
Ask me about bike lanes
6hr ago
But it gets on my nerves a little, the YIMBY assertion that these population shifts are just a fait accompli, that there’s nothing to do but adjust
This is an excellent point. I definitely fall into this trap. I think I've become so frustrated and disillusioned with our societies inability to meaningfully address (any)things that it seems like anything less than "do the thing big and decisively" gets committee'd to death and the end result is either nothing, or so neutered it might as well be.
But yeah, totally agree that there should be room for change that complements what already exists, not change that upends it.
But at the same time, I expect more of our leaders, you know?
Me too, me fucking too, I end up disappointed a lot though lol
whose founder decided to just stick in the area
I dislike having to rely on the charity of billionaires, but we absolutely lost something with the death of noblesse oblige. The Rockefeller's of the world may not have been great people, but at least the dumped money into their communities to show us how big their dicks were.
Now they buy movie studios and make horrific adaptations of classic novels like Rings of Power.
I also appreciate this conversation! You've given me some good thoughts and I've enjoyed articulating and defending mine. I hope you have a lovely rest of your weekend.
fmac
Ask me about bike lanes
6hr ago
Most Americans like driving
I mean aside from the fact long driving commutes demonstrably make people miserable.
And the fact this misery results in crazy cultural self-owns where people start blocking other people from entering lanes to the point you have to suddenly change lanes without signals (or fake them out with a signal so they speed up to block you so you can sneak behind them) to take the other people by suprise so you can change your lane.
fmac
Ask me about bike lanes
6hr ago
So just build trains between the suburbs too. Make America Trains Again, we must RETVRN.
fmac
Ask me about bike lanes
6hr ago
London/Asian megacities do it well and they're not long skinny islands
It's doable, it's not easy, but it's doable
And it's definitely better than doing nothing and drowning in gridlock
I understand your complaints, I guess I don't really understand what your forward looking thoughts are?
If the status quo (gridlock, people hating driving/each other) sucks, why shoot down every potential solution to wallow in the status quo?
Hanania shared a video of the alleged shooter's alleged roommate saying he's a Trump supporter.
https://x.com/RichardHanania/status/1934036017746780454
EDIT: Excuse me. Hanania shared a video of the alleged shooter's alleged roommate allegedly saying he's a Trump supporter. I thought he was saying it during the cringe blubbering part but now that I listen on better speakers it's not that. The source for his roommate saying he is a Trump supporter is the reporter in this video https://x.com/RichardHanania/status/1934061437691072727
anti_dan
6hr ago
The success of this fellow and the Luigi fellow re-enforced my long standing belief that the primary reason we don't live in a world rife with terrorism and crime is because terrorists and criminals are almost exclusively stupid. Even the ones doing "complex financial crimes" (as categorized by prosecuting attorneys) are typically dummies stealing social security numbers from the people at the nursing home they work at, or bilking medicaid "on behalf of" the people living at the nursing home they work at.
If more smart people become motivated to do crime, we are screwed. Not only with the trains, planes, and other targets be successfully destroyed, we wont even catch them.
anti_dan
6hr ago
Children that are themselves illegal is probably in the low million, children OF illegals in the high single or low teen millions.
anti_dan
6hr ago
Illegal immigrants aren't supposed to vote. That doesn't mean they do not. Many states give them DLs and auto-register everyone with a DL. In addition, many jurisdictions dont actually check ID (as in photo ID or any other) when people vote, particularly by mail.
AlexanderTurok
Alt-MSNBC
7hr ago
Why do you believe in supply and demand? Sure, it's "basic economics" but economists mostly reject your theories on immigration and trade. If you're going to throw out economics, you might as well go all the way.
Amadan
Enjoying my short-lived victory
7hr ago
I do not like @Fruck's antagonism (borderline, but saying your argument is dishonest is allowed even if I wish he'd be more charitable). However, while I think immigration advocates mostly do believe in humanitarian and economic justifications, your arguments that there can't possibly be any self-serving motives seem either naive or, well, the less charitable option Fruck pointed at.
I will make three counterarguments:
*. "Illegal immigrants can't vote." This is true, and I tend to mostly think claims of widespread voter fraud are unsupported. That said, to claim it absolutely does not or could not happen, and cannot be an intentional policy, is to ignore history. I've mentioned this before (because it's one of my favorite books) but Robert Caro's biography of Lyndon Johnson talks a lot about his 1948 Senate race in Texas. It was quite eye-opening. At that time, shipping large numbers of Mexicans across the border to vote illegally was in fact something party bosses did routinely (both parties). Everyone knew this. And it certainly wasn't happening only in Texas.
I'm going to say this probably doesn't happen today, at least not on a large scale, but the fact that it did happen within living memory, and clearly there are politicians who would be quite happy to game the system like that if they could find an exploit, means I do not think you can so casually dismiss the possibility, and the concern. I don't know if pro-immigrationists are finding ways to get illegals to vote in significant numbers, but I believe they absolutely would. Especially given that many pro-immigrationists basically believe in open borders and we've seen more than one politician openly advocate for letting illegals vote, since they literally don't think anyone should be "illegal."
*. Even charitably assuming most of them aren't angling to get illegal immigrant votes, most of them do expect anyone who comes and settles here illegally to eventually be legalized. They don't want anyone to ever be deported, and again, they don't actually believe anyone should be illegal. So yes, people who can't technically vote now are very much seen as future votes, at least.
*. "The xenophobe vote." This assumes they would not advocate for more immigration and illegal immigrant rights because it would hurt them electorally; the "xenophobes" would vote against them. Sorry, but Fruck is right here. The xenophobes are already not going to vote Democrat (or Green, or Peace and Freedom, or Socialist). They aren't losing any votes they might otherwise have gained. Maybe if the Democrats were actually the party of the working class again they'd have to worry about blue collar and farm workers worried about their jobs, but they don't actually care about those people anymore, and haven't for a generation.
Jiro
7hr ago
Illegal immigrants can't vote, so the "importing voters" theory doesn't hold up so well
But they add to how much the votes of people around them count. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evenwel_v._Abbott
DaseindustriesLtd
late version of a small language model
8hr ago
So, despite 15 years of supposed collapse
There's been no collapse, but there is a great deal of ruin in a nation. Canada has been a great country to live in, and it is still good by OECD standards. Canada is just on a starkly different growth trajectory from the southern neighbor (to wit, it does NOT grow, among other problems), a trajectory that holds no promise of changing. 10-15 years ago it was on par with the US in per capita GDP, then trends diverged more and more. In 2020 this was still easy to ignore, and anyway perceptions take time to change, the British are still stereotyped as sophisticated gentlemen in some parts of the world.
You attribute the quality of Canada in the past to Canadians, and the current condition to the government of Canada. But it's, of course, made of Canadians as well. My point is that the governance of Canada seemed to be successful, based on results, and for the last decades the results are getting worse and worse.
Americans also have a lot of cruel things to say about their governance, and about each other. I dismiss their entitled whining because the actual performance has been and remains superior to the competition.
Census says 126,340 people left Canada for the U.S. in 2022, a 70 per cent increase over a decade ago
sounds bad, but what do I know.
iprayiam3
8hr ago
no idea what denomination this guy is, but in the Catholic world, prolife, pro-immigration, pro-social justice like healthcare for the poor, anti-Trump is not particularly ideosyncratic. Rather it's extremely common, and a relatively consistent worldview. This probably describes the pope himself, and many priest and bishops in the US.
However, I don't this agree that this maps to 'Red-coded'. I think it's the default left-wing half of Catholicism in America, consistenly votes democrate, and is pretty solidly blue tribe, just not woke.
Amadan
Enjoying my short-lived victory
8hr ago
Well, it is, actually. Some people just misunderstand "freedom" as an unalloyed good. Freedoms come with responsibility, as they say, which is why a lot of people like libertarianism in theory but find it's completely nonviable in practice, and anarchists are just profoundly unserious people.
Put another way, your argument would also be made by Muslims who claim that making women wear burkas actually gives them more freedom, since they are protected from the lustful gazes of men. (I have actually known Western progressive female converts to Islam who argued this, happy in their burkas, and ignoring the key word making.)
Getting back to @KMC's point, he's right in the sense that a man in 1875 could ride out into the frontier and build, explore, or taking another path, rob, rape and pillage, with much more impunity than today. That was certainly more "freedom" and some men fancy themselves born into the wrong age, but yes, freedom comes with tradeoffs. And wealth, safety, and security is very much a kind of freedom! Sure, a man starving in the wilds is more "free" than me in the sense he has no legal authorities "surveilling" him.
aqouta
8hr ago
I don't really get what the problem here is. The effort required is basically just to actually put together the currently publicly available information and describe why people would be interested in discussing it. It's the kind of thing a college bound high schooler should be expected to be able to do in 20 minutes. And for this effort bar we filter out a lot of fluff. The cost is that we will have to wait 20 minutes for someone to do this before we have a discussion about breaking news, but we're not aiming to be a breaking news platform so this is a very low cost.
It aids discussion a lot to have a rough draft of the facts that can then be directly disputed, it channels discussion in a less free form way.
Hadad
8hr ago
I too have seen reports his list involved those targets. But, tellingly, the sources saying this didn't share the entire list. They just said it included those targets. It's yet unknown if he was targeting only Democrats, targeting specific people, or targeting many -- ultimately, the cops caught him too early, so he didn't get the chance to go through his entire list. We'll have to wait for the manifesto to release, if it ever does.
I'll admit I'm curious as to his motives. He's so... out of the expected range of random killers.
Amadan
Enjoying my short-lived victory
8hr ago
Or he's one of those political oddballs who cannot be neatly categorized as "red-blue." A pro-life Democrat who hates Trump but who also has idiosyncratic reasons for hating particular Democrats? Not impossible.
phailyoor
8hr ago
Apparently the police have a manifesto, so we'll probably know the truth soon enough.
Maybe it's my inner partisam speaking, but if the attack is strongly red coded I'd expect the dems would be rubbing it in everyone's faces every chance they get.
DaseindustriesLtd
late version of a small language model
8hr ago
Israelis hadn't changed, but the clearly rising antisemitism among the western left and its Islamic neighborhood pushed Israelis to vote for the one cynical hawk in town : Bibi. While politics shifted right, the average Israeli remained a normal person.
this is quite tendentious.
Israelis have changed, and will change more. Demographically, politically, culturally. Israel today is not some offshoot of Western Civilization but a higher-IQ Middle Eastern nation, with all that follows. This narrative is getting very stale.
TitaniumButterfly
8hr ago
There's freedom from and freedom to. If rampant sexual degeneracy ruins most young people as spouses, the remainder is about as 'free' to behave traditionally as they would be in solitary confinement.
Some people think "self-defense" can only begin once you already got punched, or stabbed, or shot. If somebody takes out a gun, aims at you, shouts "I'm going to kill you, motherfucker!", and tries to press the trigger, but you're quicker on the draw and shoot first - you're the "aggressor". Or at least they pretend to think so when Israel is concerned. Of course, there are also plain old antisemites for which Israel is bad in any case, and they are just need to find the reason why.
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