domain:moultano.wordpress.com
07mk
1d ago
This reminds me of a scene in one of the later seasons of Game of Thrones, where Tyrion, a dwarf with a scar across his face, is wanted for escaping after patricide, and some men are caught bringing the head of another dwarf that they marked with a scar. When Cersei (the queen and Tyrion's sister) notes this, the guards are about to send the men to the dungeons, but Cersei stops them, telling them that she doesn't want to discourage people from finding and bringing in the real one.
So it seems that Greece-associated things being damaged is a worthy cost to pay for maximizing the number of Israel-related things being damaged. Or, perhaps, "The optimal number of Greek things destroyed in the process of destroying Israeli things is not zero."
The_Nybbler
If you win the rat race you're still a rat. But you're also still a winner.
1d ago
It's been a long time since I looked at a price theory textbook, so yes, I got the axes wrong -- it's where the supply curve is vertical, not flat. But other than convention I believe I described it accurately.
I do not know if this is actually the case for the shitty jobs in question. However, it has happened in software and related fields on a number of occasions. It is not absurd.
The_Nybbler
If you win the rat race you're still a rat. But you're also still a winner.
1d ago
The enemies -- at least, the specific enemies troops are being sent in against -- are not radical left Democrats, it's the people they're letting in and career criminals (as he says elsewhere). Trump is not sending in the military to arrest the Mayor of Chicago the way Kennedy's troops threatened to do to Wallace. Trump did not call the people of Chicago "domestic enemies".
Iconochasm
2. Bootstrap the rest of the fucking omnipotence.
1d ago
see all the hubbub about their (supposed?) lack of respect for due process.
AFAICT, thus hubbub is just bad faith lies. We had a month-long national meltdown over a single missed piece of paperwork that had no material effect on the outcome. When progressives say "due process" what they mean is "continue the process until we win".
I think if you're a legal immigrant, or indeed a birthright citizen who looks superficially foreign, you aren't currently going to have absolute confidence that ICE will leave you alone - or even let you go with an apology, if they should get you by mistake.
No, I actually talk to immigrants, including illegal ones, every day. Legal immigrants think ICE is snatching anyone, legal/illegal/citizen who happens to be brown and black-bagging them to never be seen again. I have had multiple strangers tell me they believed this. This is not an even slightly justifiable belief, but it is the natural result of the relentless propoganda being pushed by progressives.
To an even greater extent, if you are an illegal immigrant, I don't think you're going to be confident that ICE will guarantee you all the protections and legal counsel that you're entitled to.
And for the last time, this is not a justified belief. All data I can find says ICE error/failure rates are lower than almost every other government agency. Maybe instead of relentlessly hammering how understandable it is that innocent people are believing these lies, you could try correcting the lies.
I get the vibe that these are, if not objectively justified fears, then at least fears that ICE are happy to encourage, presumably because they feel like it enhances their intimidation factor.
Then please justify that claim.
dr_analog
top 1% of underdog fetishists
1d ago
Re: unfathomable idiocy
It demonstrates willingness to fuck shit up for Palestine, even if it makes no sense whatsoever. It's signalling her tribal affiliation and commitment.
I think this is stupid but I get it, I suppose.
Iconochasm
2. Bootstrap the rest of the fucking omnipotence.
1d ago
"Collins" is an Irish name that fought in the Revolutionary War.
RenOS
something is wrong
1d ago
My primary issue is that I have yet to see a left-leaning person espouse a position in favor of immigration restrictions that actually work, in any country. The mention of e-verify by left-leaning posters is a good example here; Going specifically after the working illegals is the stupidest option possible, and would result in not only still having the illegals in the country, but now they can't earn anything except through crime or charity. You can't imagine an approach better optimized to cause a surge in crime and welfare abuse, and I'm 100% sure that the left would have made fun of the right if they actually had done it that way around. This is pretty much the situation in germany right now, btw. I mostly consider myself in the center, and all I want is a working border enforcement and the deportation of immigrants who aren't working after several years of being here. But no matter what the right tries, the left will even make a mockery of it and blatantly work around it (like "help navigating how to get access to the german welfare system" by telling people who are currently in poland how to get past german checkpoints) and if not successful, they will complain until the right stops whatever it is that is actually working. I can see how, to a genuine right-winger, this will translate into "If the left complains, that means we are doing something right; the harder, the better". I'm still sufficiently worried about right-wing dysfunction to really be in favour, but the ICE situation seems like the logical endpoint of this game.
Primaprimaprima
Aliquid stat pro aliquo
1d ago
At what ages does one normally outgrow Santa belief in America?
18, in my case.
I figured that if God is real, then reality is intrinsically magical anyway, and I may as well keep believing in Santa too.
MadMonzer
Epstein Files must have done something really awful for so many libs to want him released.
1d ago
America went to the moon and back before we opened the immigration floodgates
And I'm learning Chinese, says Wernher von Braun.
As well as the Project Paperclip scientists, George Mueller grew up in a German-speaking household so he wasn't exactly a "heritage American". The ancestors of Aldrin (grandson of Swedish immigrants) and Collins (long-established Irish-American family) wouldn't have been let in if the nativists of their day had won their political battles.
Primaprimaprima
Aliquid stat pro aliquo
1d ago
Excellent post.
Just wanted you to know that in spite of (or because of*) our stringent disagreements on certain issues, you remain one of my favorite posters here and you're one of the posters who continues to make TheMotte worthwhile, so I really appreciate what you do.
(* Ilforte once told me that my "value system deserves oblivion", and I still cherish that as the nicest compliment I've ever received on the internet. You don't want an interlocutor who's just going through the motions of nitpicking this or that argument. You want an interlocutor who opposes you on a deep spiritual level. That's where the good stuff is.)
HMK2
1d ago
https://old.reddit.com/media?url=https%3A%2F%2Fi.redd.it%2F8s58fo0kjrtf1.jpeg
The manager/franchisee of a Lush store in Chicago put this sign up. AFAIK the entire Chicago subreddit agrees with this sentiment.
muzzle-cleaned-porg-42
1d ago
I would put a relatively high credence for uptick in political violence such as Italian "Years of lead" . If it happens, will be matter of scholastic debate which act of political violence was "the shot".
Escalation to genuine civil war: no, not yet. You would need an incident which set ups major part of military apparatus against each other. Without that, it will be "what if you had a war but nobody came". It look like unrest that the government is eventually able to do something about (crush it or embrace their demands) without it escalating to warfare.
(Consider the situation at the outbreak of Spanish civil war: military coup had support of Army of Africa and many commissioned officers, but some parts of military and substantial parts of police and Assault Guards took the Republican side, who then joined forces with left-wing militias.)
Amadan
Enjoying my short-lived victory
1d ago
Uh, okay.
I mean, you do you and I hope this gives you whatever you are looking for, but for myself, I have occasionally considered joining a church (again) for the community and such, but I am just fundamentally incapable of lying to myself, and also fundamentally incapable of believing in mythology. So to attend a church knowing that I consider all their beliefs (at least on the spiritual and metaphysical and cosmological level) to be bullshit would just feel like I'm being an insincere actor. To say nothing of the LDS's ... well... utterly nonsensical prehistory.
Yeah, I'm aware most churches (including the LDS) would be happy to have me in the congregation even as a disbeliever. I can see the pull it has for you personally (hot, chaste young girls eager for marriage and babies). But for me personally it would still feel deeply dishonest.
@self_made_human made some good points. Most missionary churches are geared towards picking up young disaffected people like you. And I don't underestimate the power to "fake it til you make it." Eventually you may come to sincerely believe.
I will say all the Mormons I know are very pleasant people and if I were to consider a church and could overlook not having a speck of faith in me, I'd consider the LDS strongly. (Honestly the greatest trial for me in terms of adhering to their rules would be giving up coffee.)
But the lack of faith and the requirement to at least pretend to believe a lot of bullshit things would be a dealbreaker for me.
I kind of feel like you're someone entering a cult, eyes wide open, saying "Sure, I see their game, but it won't work on me," even as the bait is perfectly obvious. But there are worse cults to fall in with, I guess.
Good luck.
ActuallyATleilaxuGhola
Axolotl Tank Class of '24
1d ago
I think that if my neighbors had learned I had broken the law, they would like me less and would (rightly) regard me as a criminal. Japanese take the law very seriously, they don't have any of the American-style anti-authoritarian animus. And although I'm loathe to admit it, I'm also not sure how me getting deported would harm them. This house would probably be vacant for a few months before another polite and quiet middle class family moved in with whom they would get along just fine. And they'd probably be relieved to no longer be living next to a lawbreaker. My friends here would be sad, but they'd probably think I made some pretty stupid choices and got what I deserved.
I'm tired of hearing about Elon Musk and Jensen Huang. America went to the moon and back before we opened the immigration floodgates, we can clearly do just fine without mass third world immigration. The idea that America "needs" a bunch of immigrants to stay competitive is IMO a revisionist historical narrative promoted by those same recent immigrants. I don't even really blame them for pushing the narrative; doing so helps them fill a psychological need to write themselves into the American story. The Ellis island generation did the same thing ("America is a nation of immigrants!"). But it's also fair play for heritage Americans to call it what it is, revisionist propaganda.
A few months ago, @ymeskhout shared a video of a 23-year-old American woman who happened across a diner decorated with what she thought were Israeli flags, and began tearing them off the diner while chanting various pro-Palestine slogans and condemning the diner for being complicit in genocide. The proprietor came out of the diner to ask her what on earth she was doing, and pointed out to her that (I'm sure you've guessed the punchline) it was a Greek diner decorated with Greek flags. Shortly afterwards, the woman was arrested for destruction of property.
Leaving aside what this farcical incident says about the typical pro-Palestine activist and how well-informed they are, what really jumped out at me was that the perpetrator recorded the video herself, and even after her mistake was pointed out to her while recording the video, she still uploaded it to TikTok under her personal account. Now, if it had been an Israeli diner, I can imagine a sufficiently committed activist publishing a video of themselves damaging it in order to make a political statement, fully cognizant of the fact that doing so would make it easier for the authorities to arrest and convict her. But this woman attempted to commit a crime in order to make a political statement, failed due to mistaken identity of her victims, and even after realising her mistake, still distributed the video of her committing the crime. Not only did she commit a crime for no discernible personal or political benefit, she made a complete unforced error in distributing evidence of her committing this crime under her personal TikTok account, again for literally no benefit that I can fathom (except maybe the fleeting dopamine hit of racking up some views of her making a fool of herself).
It's a level of idiocy I simply cannot fathom. As I said last month: attempts to practise law enforcement by appealing to the rationality and common sense of criminals are doomed to failure by virtue of the fact that criminals are a group selected for lacking rationality or common sense.
FtttG
1d ago
I wonder to what extent just decriminalizing minor physical violence would help. Like you look back to the 30s/40s and it seems like a low level of pervasive physical violence was normal.
In that period, about 56% of the US lived in urban areas. Now, the equivalent figure is about 81%. If two guys working on a farm get into a fistfight, it's unlikely to result in anything worse than a black eye. If two guys get into a fistfight outside a bar, a single punch can easily result in one of them falling over, hitting his head on the concrete and being killed instantly. This is such a big problem in Australia that various states passed so-called "one punch" laws.
benmmurphy
1d ago
he showed the collar on stream and claimed it was only had vibrating functionality (https://old.reddit.com/r/LivestreamFail/comments/1o1r33t/labased_streamer_shows_off_his_canine_companions/) but now people are accusing him of using electric tape to cover the electric contacts. https://old.reddit.com/r/Destiny/comments/1o1waqw/bro_gave_0_effort_in_putting_on_that_tape/
MaximumCuddles
The world-spirit texting on the toilet
1d ago
I’ve done well doing well the “I can neither confirm nor deny the Santa Question” with my kids.
I also don’t make a big deal about Santa either so it works.
MadMonzer
Epstein Files must have done something really awful for so many libs to want him released.
1d ago
Both dogs and horses could be working animals and valued companions. I suspect the Neolithic dogs given honoured burials were hunting dogs, not housepets.
ArjinFerman
Tinfoil Gigachad
1d ago
Whenever anyone says anything to anyone, we should at least consider the possibility that what they said was meant literally. But there's nothing here to suggest a literal interpretation, this is no different than Lyndon B. Johnson's "war on poverty" speech.
And if you disagree, then put your money where your mouth is, and bet me.
ControlsFreak
1d ago
if the supply curve is very flat, behavior that looks like that can happen. Suppose there are 10000 people willing to do a job from any price from $10/hr to $100/hr.
A very flat supply curve would, by convention, be nearly perfectly elastic, with the value of elasticity very close to infinity. In contrast, what you go on to describe is a perfectly inelastic supply, with the value of elasticity very close to zero.
This is in pretty sharp contrast to actual measurements of the elasticity of labor supply, which are more like 0.7-1.8. Do you have any sort of empirical support for this claim of (I believe) perfectly inelastic supply (as opposed to your description of the supply curve, which would be perfectly elastic)?
Maybe I'll put off dealing with the demand side until we see if we can make some progress on the supply side. TBH, I've got a bad feeling about this one.
2D3D
1d ago
That claim holds only if Hasan expressed acceptability if heterogenous morality. His own stated moral framings are uncompromising and totalizing, morality as he defines it being foundationally right with no room for alternative moral heuristics. That he expresses sympathy for islamists and lgbt rights simultaneously is internal incoherence, not heterodoxy tolerance. Some conflicts do test this incoherence more, and livestreaming animal abuse is one of them. If he had a white skinhead paid to be whipped in the cuck chair that'd be fine for his morality, but reddit aww updooters are part of his moral universe and that is why this is breaking his world.
MadMonzer
Epstein Files must have done something really awful for so many libs to want him released.
1d ago
When a boss gives a speech to subordinates, we should at least consider the possibility that what he said was meant literally.
2D3D
1d ago
I legit cannot tell if the spirited defense of "its just a dog bro make it suffer" are honestly held opinions about directional cruelty or just hasan stans desperately trying to downplay an obvious act of on air abuse.
Its not even like "dont abuse animals" is some niche position, the whole point of the leftist omnicause is to assign reputational damage to those who abuse those on the oppression scale. If Hasan beat up a white skinhead he'd have been ok, but he shock collared an animal that existed for reddit updoots. Thats haram no matter how you cut it.
I was about to ask how, exactly, destroying a Greek diner's exterior could possibly hope to advance the interests of the Palestinian cause.
... but then it occurred to me that "pointlessly destructive behaviour which could not possibly hope to advance the interests of the Palestinian cause even in principle" actually describes a great deal of pro-Palestine activism, and activism for a number of other omnicause issues. So, yeah, good point.
More options
Context Copy link