SkookumTree
1d ago
And possibly honorable life paths for perma-single people; there are some valuable, honorable economic niches that are hard on marriage and family. Not impossible - but hard. Long-haul truck driving, neurosurgery, stuff like that.
SkookumTree
1d ago
I suppose. But holy shit were there a lot of perplexed guys when locker-room talk took place in my youth. The guys would talk about tits and ass and I'd say I wanted an abrasive bitch.
SkookumTree
1d ago
Ha - the 400-pound ones that nonetheless maintain basic hygiene and work their jobs? Five years ago, I was rather disinterested in that prospect; now, it seems like it might not be too terrible. Sure, there might be home health aides a couple decades earlier than I'd hoped and What's Eating Gilbert Grape, but that's not terrible; I had a medical school classmate like that.
netstack
Texas is freedom land
1d ago
We ask that top-level posts in the main thread get a little more substance. If you don’t want to elaborate, you could try the Sunday thread.
SkookumTree
1d ago
No, but a couple of years ago I became reconciled to the possibility of dealing with severe weight-related health problems in a partner in middle age. That isn't ideal - but What's Eating Gilbert Grape beats the crap out of kids with FAS, a mom on fentanyl maybe causing chaos and legal problems, or just plain crazy - as in 'felony child abuse' crazy. Therefore I don't consider fatness a dealbreaker until it makes them unable to do basic hygiene...although "a sprained ankle away from being bedridden" is a bit of a hard sell to me now. Five years from now I'd be OK with it to be honest.
SkookumTree
1d ago
That's because of 1) motivation - if Everest was as easy as seeing the Grand Canyon, how many would go and 2) you probably hang out with many more autistic people than even somewhat casual mountaineers. The criteria I'd use is something like "Do you own an ice axe and crampons?"
EverythingIsFine
Well, is eventually fine
1d ago
BLS commissioner 2013-2017, an Obama-era one but still obviously a person in the know:
FADEL: As a former commissioner, is it possible to just make the numbers up?
GROSHEN: No. The commissioner does not see any numbers before they're final. So they are already baked in the cake. The commissioner sees them before they're released and mostly approves the narrative that accompanies the table with the numbers. But the commissioner has no role in estimating the numbers in those tables. The commissioner doesn't have access to any of the systems and the data that go into the numbers. So a lot of people would know if the commissioner were fussing with the data, and the culture of the BLS is such that you'd immediately get pushback, resignations, whistleblowers, something like that.
FADEL: So it sounds like it would be nearly impossible without, as you pointed out, many people knowing to just phony up the data.
GROSHEN: Absolutely. That's intentional. That's not an accident. And when the BLS changes its methodology in any way, it publishes papers about it, it explains why it did it. All of that is very transparent.
I think that elucidates the point a little bit more, especially the bit about how methodology changes are obvious and up-front. The operation in professional statistics orgs like this is pretty plug-and-play on the collection side and there's a lot of cross-checking that happens. Plus, anecdotally, the BLS has one of the better reputations in the stats community and worldwide.
What I mean by evidence is like, if not actual whisteblowers or a smoking gun email or edited Excel file, at least some kind of specific alleged mechanism: did she pressure data collectors to poll only certain forms? Was the sample size abnormally low? Did they go on some kind of fishing expedition? Were internal policies not followed? Something like that.
SkookumTree
1d ago
Yeah, that is a hell of a bullet to bite. "Humans must be controlled or their sexuality will destroy society" seems broadly reasonable, but fundie Islam/Handmaid's Tale seems like a durable abomination.
SkookumTree
1d ago
If this is true, you have a nasty problem where you're running civilization off of restricting otherwise-capable women from competing for jobs or niches like 'surgeon' when they can do the job just as well as any other man. It's arguable that a civilization that doesn't have enough people willing to voluntarily contribute should just go belly up.
SkookumTree
1d ago
men need a parallel kind of deference in childhood, mostly focused on their much delayed organizational skills
Have you just considered scaring the ever-loving shit out of them, coupled with describing organization and neatness as a moral virtue - and the opposite as a MORAL failing? I am reasonably sure that a sufficiently extreme level of shame, fear, and valorization of neatness and organization could make most boys well-organized. If we see a teenage boy's messy room as an indicator of moral failure and potential evil, rather than a common peccadillo? Teenage boys will have cleaner rooms.
I mean - I successfully applied Cold War-era deterrence theory at 11 to a family argument that I was highly motivated to win and perceived as an existential danger; Westerners in the middle class are generally uncomfortable with threatening this level of consequence to preteens except in extremis.
hydroacetylene
1d ago
Israel was, quite literally, the only* country which supported the apartheid government until the end.
*excluding bantustans, of course.
Amadan
Enjoying my short-lived victory
1d ago
This is basically all of FdB's articles lately. Lots of words to complain about how people care too much about things he doesn't care about, and like things he doesn't like. He's lost his edge worse than Scott.
SkookumTree
1d ago
If I had to guess at examples/exceptions, the Puritans would be pretty high on the list. The island of Inis Beag might've been too small for aristocracy.
Amadan
Enjoying my short-lived victory
1d ago
I know a lot more people on the spectrum who have decent relationships than I do people who've climbed Mt. Everest.
SkookumTree
1d ago
Yes. Very few people can be professional ballet dancers, either - and "Chad" is every bit as determined as any world-class athlete. His social gracefulness probably cannot be described in English, at least not the dialects any of us speak. It would take Paul Ekman and his team a hundred years to articulate what Chad can do - a microexpression held for a tenth of a second too long can communicate an entire sentence.
Amadan
Enjoying my short-lived victory
1d ago
They have frequently not engaged in good faith any more than the Palestinians, especially under PMs who really didn't want to make any kind of a deal and made noises about it only under US pressure. They have manipulated Palestinian leadership for political convenience and not to actually effect change in Palestine. And the West Bank settlers are particularly egregious. A lot of it boils down to fairly predictable radicalization (or at least lack of sympathy) after years of conflict. The Sabra and Shatila massacres in Lebanon, for example, were preventable had the Israelis given a fuck, but the Israeli military basically cheered it on because they were past giving a fuck.
EverythingIsFine
Well, is eventually fine
1d ago
Sorry and thank you, you're very right and right to call me out, I in fact do know better. I should have written "'no evidence' in the traditional sense* and expressed myself poorly.
Two things are true: in a Bayesian statistics sense most things count as evidence, and in an everyday sense people want to see some kind of fact to support an allegation. Zero were provided, as far as I see. Not even a cogent rationale was gestured at. I do try and consistently be charitable in my comments, I tried a bit in a follow-up comment above, but Trump's method of handling this gives virtually nothing to work with. (And as I stated, the former Trump-appointed commissioner sticking up for her is pretty large evidence against Trump's claim, even if you weight Trump's claims highly on a personal prior level)
SkookumTree
1d ago
Essentially, dating is a hock like challenge, good luck in the boreal forest and tundra.
hydroacetylene
1d ago
There was an increase in censorship?
I would, if forced to make the decision, prefer our country's violent nutjobs target insurance company CEOs(who can hire private security, spend time behind secured areas instead of in public[eg going out to eat at country clubs rather than the local steakhouse], etc) than schoolchildren. From a utilitarian perspective I hope Luigi has copycats because it will redirect potential mass shooters. I would, of course, rather that our nutjobs be sane, or failing that confine themselves to long, thought out, and incomprehensible youtube comments, and if they must act out in public it's best they be institutionalized. But none of those things are going to happen.
I haven't noted any wave of censorship, either.
SkookumTree
1d ago
If you're autistic and not otherwise impressive or a "supercrip" it's rather gross for you to want to be anything other than a celibate and prosocial monk. As for fashion: I suspect that the schlubby straight guy is countersignaling some kind of social grace stuff. At least in some places. At my hospital: the medical students dress better than the residents, who in turn dress better than the attendings. One attending I mistook for a janitor or laborer at first!
popocatepetl
1d ago
the best argument against Freddie deBoer isn't a bunch of words but just to point out that he suffers from severe mental illness and is desperately trying to shed that reputation
Chat, is this Bulverism?
Textbook case.
Fruck
Lacks all conviction
1d ago
I liked using the stochastic parrot idea as a shorthand for the way most of the public use llms. It gives non-computer savvy people a simple heuristic that greatly elevates their ability to use them. But having read this I feel a bit like Charlie and Mac when the gang wrestles.
Dennis: Can I stop you guys for one second? What you just described, now that just sounds like we are singing about about the lifestyle of an eagle.
Charlie: Yeah.
Mac: Mm-hmm.
Dennis: Well I was under the impression we were presenting ourselves as bird-MEN which, to me, is infinitely cooler than just sort of... being a bird.
SkookumTree
1d ago
Possible that they're extraordinarily charismatic and kind of...retired from the high-reward, high-stress lifestyle that you get when trying to monetize that. Like a guy with a math degree from Princeton undergrad working the counter at Subway, or the former investment banker working as a chef or cook at a small resort.
Wanting a masculine woman is a bit strange. Almost like a kind of cerebral homosexuality
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