domain:nunosempere.com
Earendil
Then over Middle-Earth he passed
1hr ago
That's a remarkably quick turnaround for a gender inherently programmed to oppress women. What's going on there?
I get into this a bit more throughout the series (later books) but I just don't think men and women have each other figured out yet. If anything, by nature, I think men are fairly happy to indulge women and children in their stated preferences even to a fault, especially when we think it's likely to get us what we want in the moment, whether that's their presence or their absence. We can be pretty short-sighted about this both individually and corporately.
kky
1hr ago
Sure.
Jan 6, a group of protesters gathers around the Capitol, some breaking in. They are under the impression they are demanding a recount and an investigation into fraud. Inside, a group of Trump loyalists inform the frightened Congressmen that they are demanding a corrected record, and there is no telling what they might do. A set of unfamiliar people, claiming to be electors, arrive and announce an alternative slate for Trump. Dissent is quashed by law enforcement, which says the situation is “dangerous” and that loud debate may draw attention. Pence walks in, and announces that in accordance with the text of the Constitution, he can verify electors. He verifies the new one. The people present do not know what to do, and do not oppose this move. Pence declares Trump as the continuing President.
Jan 7. News of this event comes out. America is immediately divided. Trump claims that he is President. Biden claims he won the election, and is now the president. Congressional Democrats move to invalidate the Jan 6 decision. Trump loyalists in Congress oppose the move strongly. Most Republicans aren’t sure what to do, and try to delay. A few days later, the first protests are organized and start. After nightfall they quickly descend into riots. MAGA counterprotests immediately follow. Mayors attempt to control the worst of it with riot police, but they increasingly struggle to control the crowds and opt to let the two sides have it out. News channels blast opposing viewpoints, and one-up each other in extreme language. Despite all this, things are eerily silent, and nothing really changes leading up to inauguration.
Jan 20. Trump arranges an inauguration in Washington DC. He deploys the National Guard around it. Biden, citing concerns for safety, withdraws to NYC and holds his inauguration there. Congressional Democrats go with him.
Jan 21. Biden, as President, orders the National Guard to defend him as he moves into the White House and displaces the pretender. Trump countermands that order. Both demand that the other be arrested. Some Guardsmen agree to support each side, and the civil war begins. What happens next depends on chance and individual conscience and is beyond predicting.
I hope I’ve made my point. The natural result of the plot was two people declaring their formal status as President at the same time. The moment one of them tries to exercise his executive authority you have a civil war. This is not particularly imaginative; this is what happens in history, over and over again, whenever you have a succession crisis that isn’t nipped in the bud. In reality, Trump backed down and the crisis ended. That was lucky. We were not guaranteed luck.
Pongalh
1hr ago
Yea people oscillate between hanging you for who you are/what you do and what you say. Progressives claiming Robinson's upbringing and demographic profile make him actually right-wing e.g.
Pongalh
1hr ago
Al Green, a black Texas Dem that surely screams "woke," said kind things about Kirk. Said they have the same creator up above and that Kirk "had a right to be where he was, and a right to life." But he's old school black religious, likes MLK Jr. The newer school of James Baldwin and post-colonial lefties, not a sentiment you see much.
Something that's getting frustrating to me around the discussion of Charlie Kirk's assassination (man it feels weird to say that) is that conservatives are being told to eat the Paul Pelosi attack as a right wing thing.
But the attacker (David Depape), was, if he was even capable of holding any sort of political position at all, not even remotely right wing, at least not in any way that any right winger would identify as a bedfellow.
His own defence attorney literally said it was because he passionately believed in far right theories. https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-67372363
During opening arguments on Thursday, Mr DePape's defence conceded that their client attacked Mr Pelosi in his quest to find the California congresswoman.
But they said his interest in Mrs Pelosi was not due to her political status.
"The reason he acted had nothing to do with Nancy Pelosi [and her] official duties as a member of Congress," defence attorney Jodi Linker told the court.
Instead, Ms Linker said he was driven by right-wing conspiracies that blame the country's demise on corrupt elites who use their status to spread lies, including facilitating the sexual abuse of children.
"Members of the jury, many of us do not believe any of that," Ms Linker said. "But the evidence in this trial will show that Mr DePape believes all these things… with every ounce of his being."
They said this to fight charges against kidnapping a federal official (which requires it to be directly because of her official duties as a member of Congress and not outside motivations such as those far right theories). The goal was to present him as a crazy nutjob who took Qanon, 2020 being stolen, and other far right ideas spread online seriously rather than a targeted attack triggered by any official action.
He himself testified to this
The man on trial for the bludgeoning of Paul Pelosi admitted in testimony Tuesday that he struck him with a hammer during a botched attempt to kidnap his wife, then-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, for “lying about Russia-gate.”
David DePape, 43, told a jury that he planned to dress up in a unicorn costume and record a video of the top Democrat in Congress as he interrogated her about what he saw as her false statements about ties between Russia and Donald Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign.
What better evidence could there be than him and his defense literally saying it?
I'm also getting sick of hearing that the right wing is supposed to eat January 6th. We've had every single right wing politician "disavowing" this for the last 5 years, despite the fact that the only person killed on this day was a right wing woman.
If it was disavowed, why did people who stabbed, tasered, threw bombs at, or otherwise attacked cops get pardoned? The idea that only murder is violence (and she herself was shot at by a cop as she refused to listen to a lawful order and continued illegal behavior so I guess you're saying police brutality is more of an issue than violence against police is) seems weak. All of those things are violence!
In fact here's something interesting, I asked chatgpt to run some numbers. "Per participant, was Jan 6th or BLM more violent towards cops?"
Police injuries on Jan 6th, 2021 About 2,000–2,500 rioters entered the Capitol complex.
140+ police officers (Capitol Police + D.C. Metro Police) reported physical injuries (sprains, burns, concussions, eye damage, broken bones, etc.).
That means 5–7% of participants injured an officer, or 1 injury for every 15–20 rioters.
Police injuries during 2020 BLM-related unrest Over the course of summer 2020 protests, an estimated 15–26 million Americans participated.
Nationwide, various agencies reported 2,000 law enforcement officers injured during the protests/riots (mostly in the first two weeks after George Floyd’s killing).
That’s 0.01% of participants injuring an officer, or 1 injury for every 7,500–13,000 protesters.
Comparison (per participant) Jan 6th: 1 in 20 participants caused a police injury.
BLM protests: 1 in several thousand participants caused a police injury.
👉 Conclusion: On a per-participant basis, Jan 6th was vastly more violent toward police officers — by orders of magnitude.
Of course it doesn't matter, at the end of the day everyone is an individual and should be judged as an individual. Whether you attended BLM or Jan 6th, if you didn't assault a cop then you don't deserve blame for it. But it is quite interesting to see. Even if we change it to say, 40,000 (a medium estimate of the total Jan 6th protestors and not just those who entered the capitol), it's still about 1 in 400 or so.
Edit: You know there's also an interesting thing to consider in right vs left violence discussions. The gender gap!
Men make up 80% of violent crimes (and some specific ones like mass shootings like 97%). Thus statistically a group composed of men should have more violent people than an equal sized group of women. And violence is typically a thing done most by youth, so the group with younger men should presumably have more than the group with younger women.
Combine this with
Americans under the age of 30 voted for Harris by 4 points (50 percent Harris – 46 percent Trump), though young men and women diverged dramatically, with men under 30 voting for Trump by 16 points (41 percent Harris – 57 percent Trump), and women under 30 voting for Harris by 24 points (59 percent Harris – 35 percent Trump).
And it would make sense if right wing violence was a bit more common, just because it has more men.
jkf
1hr ago
Musks's Tesla now doing transformers
Dammit, I was really hoping he was merging the car and robot product lines!
Thanks, I appreciate some constructive feedback.
he doesn't address at all societies which practice 'hard' arranged marriages, which would mean women have pretty much no say at all in their mates, and we would expect to lessen, or at least change the form male peacocking takes, as well as cease to force women through a hypergamous darwinian selection process.
Totally fair. All I can really say is that more material than you'd probably believe is on the cutting room floor. I do gesture at what you're talking about in places, but the deeper truth at which you're pointing here is more the sort of thing that will be important in later books. Then again the crescendo of gender (in book one at least) isn't until chapter 10, so I suppose you'll have to wait and see.
One thing I'll suggest for now though is that 'hard' control of women pushes them, if anything, further toward adultery, since they're shorter on less-objectionable options. Who has harder control of his women than the Emperor? Yet he's also the guy deploying eunuchs to manage them.
In addition, I find his insinuations his fairly convincing view of how stone-age tribes slugged it out explain modern racial politics pretty risible.
Would you mind elaborating? I don't really remember doing that and this may be a case where I implied something accidentally. Related to the below?
By the time of the last serious elite-supported defense of pure hereditary elitism - De Gobineau's age - the claims European Elite Human Capital represented nearly pureblooded Aryans ruling over potato people peasants were completely false. Warfare had simply gotten too lethal by the Middle Ages, to the point nearly all European nobility represented former commoners raised to knighthood and eventually higher rank to replace some Aryan conqueror unceremoniously stuck through with an Ottoman crossbow bolt or whatever.
Yes, well-said. We do get to that next week and then again the week after. Only so much development can be covered in each chapter and only in so many dimensions. I think you're slightly overstating things here but you'll need to let me know down the road whether I end up scratching this itch for you.
Supah_Schmendrick
1hr ago
Presented without comment from the opening of Antony Beevor's "The Battle for Spain, 1936-1939":
'A civil war is not a war but a sickness,' wrote Antoine de Saint-Exupery. 'The enemy is within. One fights almost against oneself.' Yet Spain's tragedy in 1936 was even greater. It had become enmeshed in the international civil war, which started in earnest with the Bolshevik Revolution.
The horrors in Russia had undermined the democratic centre throughout continental Europe. This was because the process of polarization between 'reds' and 'whites' allowed both political extremes to increase their own power by manipulating fearful, if not apocalyptic, images of their enemies. Their Manichean propaganda fed off each other. Both Stalin and Goebbels later exploited, with diabolical ingenuity, that potent combination of fear and hatred. The process stripped their 'traitor' opponents of their humanity as well as their citizenship. This is why it is wrong to describe the Spanish Civil War as 'fratricidal.' The divisiveness of the new ideologies could turn brothers into faceless strangers and trade unionists or shopowners into class enemies. Normal human instincts were overridden. In the tense spring of 1936, on his way to Madrid University, Juian Marias, a disciple of the philosopher Jose Ortega y Gasset, never forgot the hatred in the expression of a tram-driver at a stop as he watched a beautiful and well-dressed young woman step down onto the pavement. 'We've really had it,' Marias said to himself. 'When Marx has more effect than hormones, there is nothing to be done.'
VIM
1hr ago
Besides what you've already mentioned, Kirk was assassinated publicly in the middle of a livestreamed debate. I have a hard time thinking of any comparable examples besides the JFK assassination and even that's a stretch.
kky
1hr ago
a country that had just lost a war
This is the excuse that the defeatists gave in the moment, but in fact they had not lost the war, and de Gaulle went on to win it. Had he the advantage of the French fleet and a loyal army evacuated to North Africa (which the Germans could not touch, in accordance with what their generals were writing at the time and in retrospect), one can only imagine the process being smoother. The armistice question was also up in the air for longer than you suggest.
George Lucas was probably thinking of a combination of Caesar, Napoleon, and Hitler.
None of these were known as kindly old men in whom the country could trust in trying times and who was willing and eagerly voted excessive powers by a legislative body feeling lost and ineffective, which is Lucas’ text here. The first (whichever you choose) won a civil war and set terms. The second leveraged a generalcy into a coup. The third used a popular movement of angry young men to quell opposition and gain legitimacy. None were voted in by a deceived parliament thinking it was a jolly good thing too. On the other hand, Petain is actually a good parallel to the literal text. I suggest the Wikipedia analysis, insofar as it ignores the words, is misguided.
Supah_Schmendrick
1hr ago
If Israel's military is so great why have they failed to take an area the size of a suburb in almost two years despite massive brutality and having to beg for boundless supplies of weapons?
Because they aren't actually being all that brutal. Depopulating and securing an area is quick and easy if you're willing to adopt the ROE of Ghengis Khan or the Greco/Turkish war.
Israel's main military asset is propaganda
This seems wildly inaccurate.
giving low IQ west bank settlers the capacity to do things that are seen and heard globally effectively turned that on its head.
I think you've got that backwards.
Rex
1hr ago
I saw a smart comment elsewhere that suggested that it’s the rank and file dem voters that are cheering on and celebrating the assassination. And that it’s actually worse than if it were dem leaders. You can change leaders. You can’t change the voters.
VIM
1hr ago
If it gets to the point where the United States is willing to make Israel a pariah state, the Israeli Jews won't have any place to go.
The Boers didn't have any place to go either but they gave up instead of choosing to become North Korea despite facing infinitely worse demographic prospects.
Of course, none of this is going to happen. All of this fantasizing about how the entire international community (including the US) is going to look at Israeli atrocities and the angelic behavior of Hamas and cut Israel off once and for all is just mental masturbation.
Thinking it's going to happen because the "international community" miraculously decides to start caring about morality would be mental masturbation, but it's actually going to happen because Israel is a gigantic liability whose subsidy is indefensible from an America First realpolitik perspective.
The total American expenditure on behalf of Israel over the past two years is measured somewhere between tens and hundreds of billions of dollars, including nearly a quarter of the THAAD interceptor supply in just under two weeks. This enormous investment towards a country that appears to operate parasitically vis-a-vis the US and which has no issue taking actions that directly harm American interests seems unlikely to survive the next election cycle.
Supah_Schmendrick
1hr ago
No, they would have been ordinary arab citizens of Jordan, Egypt, Syria, and/or Lebanon.
Supah_Schmendrick
1hr ago
(Also: would you have accepted the same argument regarding the Nazis and their victims?)
President Truman did...
ToaKraka
Dislikes you
1hr ago
So effectively no real use of Hanja there either.
I'll point out that error to him tomorrow.
Now I'm even more confused.
Well, maybe I'm misremembering. I asked him about his views on Mandarin and Cantonese today, but we discussed Japanese many months ago. I'll ask him about Japanese again tomorrow. But he may just reiterate that I can't properly understand the situation without learning Chinese, as he told me today when I tried comparing Serbo-Croatian (a speech-first language with two different writing systems that may eventually diverge into two different languages) to Chinese (a writing-first language with two different speech systems that may eventually diverge into two different languages).
birb_cromble
1hr ago
General construction: there’s a stereotype of them as crackheads, but recent trends make that unfair- they mostly do meth instead.
Around me, that's the stereotype for roofers. Even the "calm" roofers I know go through 4+ energy drinks a day.
Supah_Schmendrick
1hr ago
birb_cromble
1hr ago
has anyone else noticed this new “lawmaker” noun? I just picked up on it in the last few weeks but it’s absolutely everywhere
https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?date=today%203-m&geo=US&q=lawmaker&hl=en
It really does seem abrupt. My personal assumption is somebody sent out talking points, though I couldn't predict who.
Quantumfreakonomics
1hr ago
P.S. has anyone else noticed this new “lawmaker” noun?
I actually like it. All 50 states have different legislative structures. Most use the typical terms "senator" and "representative" for members, but some don't. It's a lot easier to just use the generic term "lawmaker" for every state legislative body member. They could use the fancy term "legislator", but that means the same thing while being less understandable for those citizens who couldn't pass government class.
bonsaii
2hr ago
He said was referring specifically to the Koreans who live in China.
If he's talking about Yanbian, from Wikipedia:
In Yanbian Korean Autonomous Prefecture in China, local newspaper Northeast Korean People's Daily published the "workers and peasants version" which used all-hangul in text, in addition to the existing "cadre version" that had mixed script, for the convenience of grassroots Korean people. Starting on April 20, 1952, the newspaper abolished the "cadre version" and published in hangul only. Soon, the entire publishing industry adopted the hangul-only style.
So effectively no real use of Hanja there either. My understanding is that these people are basically Korean-Mandarin bilingual in the same way as any other linguistic minority.
He doesn't think that Japanese counts as using the same writing system as Chinese.
Now I'm even more confused. His claim is that forms of communications are dialects if they all used the same speech-independent writing system, but doesn't think this applies to Japanese? Japanese speakers are significantly better equipped to understand a cut-paste Chinese written sentence than Korean speakers.
FarmReadyElephants
2hr ago
This is complacency. Mass college education and the trend towards more extreme university politicization changes the game. There's a big difference between 0.5% of your population being sympathetic to revolutionary Marxism (still dangerous!) and 20% of your population being sympathetic to revolutionary Marxism. A difference in degree becomes a difference in kind.
MadMonzer
Epstein Files must have done something really awful for so many libs to want him released.
2hr ago
As I said, legal processes to invalidate elections involve specific election offences committed by the candidate or campaign. In the case of Georgescu, it was (assuming that the documents released by the government were genuine) an absolutely blatant campaign finance violation - a million euros was spent on paid promotion of the TikTok account while Georgescu was claiming to have received zero campaign donations.
Rex
2hr ago
The online left seems incredibly frustrated right now. They are trying to link Paul Pelosi and those two MN “lawmakers” deaths to the right. I don’t think it’s working at all. Normies are not buying it. They’ve got very weak arguments and you can tell they’re losing the messaging fight and trying to throw whatever they can at the wall. Nothing is sticking.
P.S. has anyone else noticed this new “lawmaker” noun? I just picked up on it in the last few weeks but it’s absolutely everywhere. Has this been the case for a while? This is such a strange euphemism. Google says it’s because it’s gender neutral, but I don’t recall this from the time when we were changing all the other gendered words. It seems like there’s some other objective here with this change than gender.
I don't generally like using emotive language but I'm going to in this to try to make some points.
This gets into the almost impossible "measuring contest" of who commits the most violence. The recent shooting directly challenges the narrative. How many Republicans, conservatives, or right-wingers support killing Black or Latino people just for being Black or Latino? Or, to make a fairer comparison, how many would say anything close to, "I'm against killing Blacks in a grocery store, but..."? The left has branded Charlie Kirk a "Nazi white supremacist" for citing crime statistics. As far as I know, he's never hinted at genetic causes; he uses standard boomer-con it's about culture, claiming intact families would reduce crime and that affirmative action places some Black women in roles they're not qualified for. That's why you can't make the right eat Crusius and Gendron. @Stellula. Any right-winger who said, "...but despite making up 13% of the population, Blacks commit 50% of violent crimes," would be shit-canned before they could take their next shit.
What making the left eat this is after a man with a young, beautiful family had his throat blown open, with so much blood gushing out that if it wasn't real people would have thought it was slasher-horror film excess - not just random nuts, but professors and teachers - said, "...but."
More options
Context Copy link