domain:eigenrobot.substack.com
No jokes in this post unfortunately. Around 10 years ago Asahi beer was still imported to the US for certain sizes (1L and 2L cans, interestingly enough), tasting it side by side with the US brewed licensed swill gave an insanely obvious difference. The Italy-made swill isn't like old US-licensed swill, but similarly it's not at all like Japanese Asahi.
The level of difference is like the difference between Bud Light -> Guinness - it's not even the same category of beer.
Do the inherent population and cultural differences between Canada and the US really justify that?
At a quick glance the murder rate is 2.5-3x lower in Canada compared to the US. So a lot of the force of that number is cut down immediately.
I've also seen arguments that legal systems play a role: stronger protections in some domains mean that the US must use incarceration as a relatively blunt tool rather than catching people early.
I think the more likely truth is that the US is well past the point of diminishing returns when it comes to prison capacity
Based on? The post-Floyd loosening of the justice system's grip made things notably worse. It didn't lead to a massive exodus of unfortunate bike couriers caught with a blunt from the jails, instead criminals showed themselves.
Corvos
1d ago
Is this actually true? I thought it tasted different in the UK but I assumed it was just a vibe thing.
SkoomaDentist
1d ago
No, really! She was carving her initials on the moose with the sharpened end of an interspace toothbrush given to her by Svenge, her brother-in-law.
Asahi
It might only be a small thing, but I have to break it to you. Asahi anywhere outside Japan is simply low-quality Italian Peroni beer made in Italy and with the Asahi logo slapped on it. It tastes absolutely nothing like Japanese Asahi beer and imo is a waste of money. I hear Britain has alot of domestic beer options but idk shrug.
Ironically "Peroni" sold in the USA is actually domestic Coors labelled as Peroni, while "Asahi" sold in the USA is actually Peroni made in Italy. So "Asahi" in USA is actually the Peroniest beer even more than the stuff that says Peroni on the label. Anyways I hate how trademarks can simply be bought and sold and slapped on whatever as long as the money grubbing conglomerates can make a quick buck. Imo trademarks should exist to protect consumers not corporations, so this should be illegal. See also: "Yashica" Y35.
self_made_human
Grippy socks, grippy box
1d ago
I'm glad you enjoyed your weekend, and this is an excellent write-up. You have a good eye and have now possibly seen more of 2025 London than I have.
Thank you, I appreciate the timely advice given to me as I was adrift in Tottenham. Helped me get my bearings right quick.
I think a huge amount of the cost growth in central London is due to non-doms on semi-annual migration paths
I'm not sure I follow? Are they working seasonally?
For complicated reasons I am staying in a nice block of flats there temporarily and I check the parcel collection regularly for a delivery that I am expecting; I have never seen an English or even a European name on the parcels.
What's that about? Tax fraud? BTW, if you're ever free, I would love to catch up over drinks. Presuming it's not a place where the drinks are even more ludicrously priced than average, they're on me. It sounds like we can both agree on Wetherspoons haha.
I suspect also that there was a pent-up suspicion that London could tolerate higher prices and that COVID provided the excuse to let 'er rip and see the limits of what the market would tolerate. As a result locals seem to have mostly accepted that pubs and meals out are a treat and not a lifestyle, and go maybe once a week while penny-pinching the rest of the time. This may skew prices and (God I hope) they may come down as the market decides it prefers regular attendance to spiky high profits.
It does seem to be tolerated. At the end of the day, the bare minimum for human habitation is subsistence, and it takes a lot to make people truly give up and flee their homes. And there's no shortage of people hypnotized by the London Dream, not to mention a steady influx of tourists. Of course, I wouldn't have met the people who decided that London was too rich for their blood and fled. Anyone there is there by choice, or simply has none.
VoxelVexillologist
Multidimensional Radical Centrist
1d ago
I feel like this is missing some obvious "thirteenth tribe" joke, maybe in reference to the great Mormon work of literature Battlestar Galactica.
VoxelVexillologist
Multidimensional Radical Centrist
1d ago
I know a Jewish family that has carefully acquired and maintained multiple passports across generations rather openly based on the lived experience of their parents (and grandparents, and great grandparents) during WWII. The cynics would say "rootless cosmopolitans" here (and maybe there is an element of that), but having heard their Holocaust stories second-hand, I see why they care so much.
pusher_robot
PLEASE GO STAND BY THE STAIRS
1d ago
Moose bites can be pretty nasti
self_made_human
Grippy socks, grippy box
1d ago
Just three? I was there for several hours, and if the blurb was accurate, the damn thing looped every 17 minutes.
Rest assured I quickly stopped paying much attention.
TIRM
1d ago
My school teachers are not trusted to make good judgments. They'd screw up corporal punishment. In a better world we'd have reliable teachers who could correctly determine who needs a paddling. We don't live in that world.
Arnaud
1d ago
Unless I've been reading maps really wrong up to this point, North Koreas main adversary is immediately to its south and connected by a land border.
Corvos
1d ago
Remember that one culture-war flashpoint is the fact that the vast majority of asylum seekers are getting sent to the places that are too poor and too lacking in political power to refuse them. People are pissed. If there's one thing the English still believe in, it's in everyone doing their part.
self_made_human
Grippy socks, grippy box
1d ago
The 'charitable' explanation seems to be utter bureaucratic incompetence. The cynical one would be that said bureaucrats are trying to prove a point, getting one over the financiers too big for their britches.
pusher_robot
PLEASE GO STAND BY THE STAIRS
1d ago
Just give police their nightsticks back. A poke in the back or a tap on the shins is enough to motivate most people to move along while discouraging the impulse to fight back.
celluloid_dream
1d ago
We observed the strange outcome of a government policy decision: an attempt to convert a luxury hotel in the heart of the Wharf into a center for asylum seekers. Leaving aside the political firestorm, the pure economic logic is baffling. It seems like an attempt to solve a problem using the most expensive possible tool, a phenomenon I've noticed governments are particularly prone to.
To tug on this particular culture war thread, I also don't understand why anyone would agree to this. Even if your only allegiance were to the asylum seekers, you could house more asylum seekers with the same funding in cheaper real-estate on the outskirts of the city. See also: homeless shelters, rehab centers, halfway houses, etc.
Throwaway05
1d ago
The UK was doing well, or at least okay, until the middle 2000s.
Auspicious timing, I just started watching Top Gear from the beginning and early in the second series (which would be 2003?) they have a bit on the Humber Bridge and the decline of British efficacy, engineering, and manufacturing.
It sounded like the kinda thing you'd see in the news in the US or Uk today but over 20 years ago.
I think someone on the left might point to that and indicate that the fears are overblown but I'm more concerned about how far we've fallen and how much further we may yet fall.
FtttG
1d ago
The OP uses the Hannibal directive as an example of how Jews are very unsafe
Even saying "very unsafe" is an example of exactly the kind of thing I'm complaining about. In an actuarial table of how Israelis met their ends since the founding of the state, would "being intentionally killed by the IDF to prevent them from being taken hostage by groups hostile to Israel" even crack the top hundred most common causes of death? The top five hundred? The top thousand? No, obviously not. And yet critics of Israel have this obsessive fixation on the Hannibal directive as evidence of how uniquely barbarous the nation is - when in reality, a counterfactual world in which the Hannibal directive didn't exist would only mean a tiny handful of Israelis would still be alive.
Let me put this in terms that you might find more agreeable: being shot dead by a police officer is a live possibility for black Americans in a way it isn't for black Britons, or indeed black citizens of just about any European country. But if you were investigating the causes of the reduced life expectancy among black Americans relative to other ethnic groups, "risk of being shot dead by police officers" shouldn't even enter into the equation. It's evidence of a mindset warped by political partisanship.
Throwaway05
1d ago
Would mod notes allow this, wouldn't otherwise need anything technical?
"Informed user they were on thin ice and needed to stay out of the culture war thread until 9/1, if caught posting in CW thread give a 6 month ban."
Person would need to remember not to post, but if they do and it leads to mod action....off with their head. If they forget and post in the CW thread and nobody notices, well not the end of the world anyway.
Corvos
1d ago
It's not something I make a habit of. I felt the information was broadly public knowledge.
quiet_NaN
1d ago
Jeffrey Epstein
I am of the opinion that as far as securing the US support for Israel, Epstein is not even in the top ten, and possibly not in the top 100.
Most politicians have a thing were they accept campaign donations from special interest groups in exchange of political consideration. Some US Jews are very rich. At the risk of sounding like an antisemitic conspiracy nut, I think political donations are the main way that the US position towards Israel is influenced. (For the record, there is also Christian Zionism to consider, as well as the fact that Israel sometimes just is a good ally to the US.)
Nor is it only Jews who can lobby. United Fruits certainly influenced US policy, for example.
By contrast, blackmailing politicians with videos of them fucking underage girls is much riskier. If such an operation was traced back to Mossad, it would create an existential threat for Israel. And even then, a politician bound to your will through blackmail will likely resent you and try to undermine your cause, while a politician who sees you as a big donor will proactively try to keep you happy.
When Epstein was active, few people cared really about Palestinians. "No political donation could convince me to send bombs to Israel, but faced with the threat of the blackmail material being revealed, I am willing to kill a few Palestinian kids" was very much not the stance.
And even if Mossad had wanted to blackmail senators, having a single "Pedophile (sic!) Island" seems a strange way to go about it. Once you reveal the first bit of footage and the first senator 'fesses up, the cat is out of the bag and Epstein is implicated. What you would want to do instead is to target the politicians independently, so you can reveal any slice of evidence without compromising your whole operation.
but marrying the rich guy is generally how we define winning for a woman.
I think the "peasant girl catches the princes' eye" has been a fairy tale for eons... for a reason. So yes.
But the 'winning' move that is more attainable is generally to pick a guy early who becomes rich and successful, thanks to concerted efforts between the two of you. The blatant stereotype is that women don't chase guys, they wait at the finish line to bang the winner, of course.
But for women who have good guidance and play their cards right they can get that guy locked down before he hits his jackpot.
The problems that arise from that came up in last week's discussion on divorce laws.
That said, when you talk about "soft harems" I think we're mixing up what the data here is about.
I mean, when I say "soft" harem, I usually mean girls who are willing to be on 'rotation' as a booty call, maybe they occasionally get a ride in the sports car or boat, or a nice dinner, but they're really just occupying the spot in the vain hope that he DOES settle for them.
So the physical capital outlay is minimal, he's not keeping her in a fancy apartment or buying her lavish gifts regularly, that'd defeat the point.
I strongly suspect even the ultra wealthy would rather not spring for a real harem, its a more complex operation that you can really justify. Its like, why pay for a personal motor pool when Uber provides approximately the same level of service for 1/3 the price.
Pasha
Defend Kebab
1d ago
That’s a lot of words for saying “I don’t like the people who mention bad thing so I will make up an imaginary argument in my head and win it”. Congratulations I guess.
The OP uses the Hannibal directive as an example of how Jews are very unsafe in modern Israel in a way they aren’t in pretty much any other modern country. This is trivially true no matter how much you foam about the true intentions of the people who mention this uncomfortable fact.
George_E_Hale
insufferable blowhard
1d ago
Indeed. I suppose I'm just averse to talking behind backs, as it were. A lesson learned the hard way, along with "do what you say you're going to do." (Which is irrelevant here but a lesson I learned nonetheless.)
Homeless shelters are often located at the center of the city because that is where the people who need their services mostly are.
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