domain:natesilver.net
netstack
Texas is freedom land
2d ago
there has been a palpable increase in the number of questions related to black writers and activists,
Given the trajectory of many, many programs which don’t involve Mr. Jennings, it’s likely not his doing. Correlation, causation. Not that he has any reason to fight it, but if it makes you feel any better, you can probably blame faceless executives and market research.
It’s especially disheartening to know that a man with his depth of knowledge and clearly impressive mental faculties isn’t able to see the nuance around these issues
There’s, uh, a few conclusions that you could take from that.
But I think the set of (knowledgeable & impressive faculties & nuanced opinion & wanting to talk about it & visible) is vanishingly small. Having a complicated, technical opinion on the Current Thing is inversely correlated with wanting to blast that opinion on social media. And with getting an audience when one does so. It’s probably worse when you’re competing for the attention of media executives with their own politics.
JarJarJedi
2d ago
This is just a payment-processing system, not a whole new currency.
Yes, but if the processing system uses dollars and US banks (or banks that eventually connect to US banks) then US can control it. Dealing with a ton of different currency without having an intermediary one where you can align everything to the single common measure could be challenging...
PAPSS's governing council appears to be populated by the top officials of the central banks of its member countries.
Yes, of course, but what happens if there is a conflict between them? Say, one government has a lucrative trade in goods that are frowned upon by other governments, and wants to use this system to facilitate it? What if two members have a fight and try to block (or steal) each other's payments?
AlexanderTurok
Alt-MSNBC
2d ago
as though they're still in charge of the party
Many are still in high positions in the party, you just don't hear about it.
Good points. In a further twist of irony Hanania himself seems to be more closely aligned with those "frogs and eggs on X" then anyone else and is trying to court the Liz Cheney, Mitt Romney, and David Brooks wing of "soft Republicans" as though they're still in charge of the party.
As @AlexanderTurok says below Hanania has completely failed to update his priors based on the changing situation.
self_made_human
C'est la vie
2d ago
Like Hawaiian shirts? I knew I liked you …
Indeed. It's a pleasure to meet another gentleman of culture.
This particular shirt is of great sentimental value. I got a very nice photo taken in Thailand while wearing it, and I've taken good care of it ever since.
Funnily enough, it was in the bargain rack, and the brand I bought it from never released another of the same style that I liked nearly as much.
I mean, I’ve seen blacks and Hispanics at this point but I just didn’t know it was legal to wear such bright colors.
Tell me about it. You'd think Scotland was in mourning, the way the average person runs screaming from a dash of color. It's all black North Face puffers and drab brown coats. No wonder everyone is depressed.
Love your posts.
Thank you <3
E: as to Israel - I’ve noticed people attacks the weak. My opinion is state what you believe in situations that aren’t related to business. People don’t actually care … they’re just pretending.
In normal circumstances? I'd be happy to defend myself. In this scenario, I strongly value my relationship with my cousin and his girlfriend, soon to be fiancée, and I wasn't inclined to rock the boat. She did seem to care, certainly more than he did, I could tell she was getting worked up by my nonchalant attitude. Plus the UK's approach to free speech is... inadequate. A lot of my spicier takes are necessarily reserved for this site. What I'd give to be in the States instead.
Blanchard draws from wayyyy too little experience. I can give you furry examples of autoandrophiles in the gay male, cis woman, and trans man spheres, and even point some pretty clear distinctions between the autoandrophilic (cw: ftm in shibari and y-fronts, artist is nonbinary and I have no clue birth gender) and not-auto-androphilic (cw: ftm in panties, artist is straight male) treatments.
And that's been around for a while. The first Drayk 'intersex' commission I can find was pre-2010, and trying to find a good word that covers what people want in the fantasy (since some people want themselves, but transitioned, and other people want a character that never had to transition) was both getting a lot of controversy and eventually got an awkward compromise on e621 in early 2016.
ToaKraka
Dislikes you
2d ago
It is understandable that they may have different interests than the US, and thus want a monetary system that cannot be controlled by the US.
This is just a payment-processing system, not a whole new currency.
The question is, who will be controlling it, then?
PAPSS's governing council appears to be populated by the top officials of the central banks of its member countries. PAPSS operates under the auspices of the African Export–Import Bank, whose board of directors likewise is composed of various central banks' top officials.
TowardsPanna
2d ago
Obviously. The truly desperate might still drink warm beer and drive, but it would help reduce the numbers.
JarJarJedi
2d ago
It is understandable that they may have different interests than the US, and thus want a monetary system that can not be controlled by the US. The question is, who will be controlling it then? Somehow I doubt it being controlled by Zambia or South Africa or any other African state would be better for the long-term perspectives of it, and in general African states - especially ones that are located close and thus most in need of common currency system - aren't best known for always valuing cooperation over conflict. Of course, they could elect China or Russia or Iran to be their master - but why exactly would that play better for them than the US?
They could try to implement a truly decentralized zero-trust system, but given as nobody really done it on the national scale, I'm not sure they have the expertise or the guts to try it. Would be an interesting experiment though, but there are so many failure modes there that it could only be of any value if successful.
a $200 million trade between two parties in different African countries is estimated to cost 10% to 30% of the value of the deal.
That sounds horrendously expensive. I wonder is that because of the risks? Then of course homegrown systems would be cheaper - by just ignoring the risks, until the next rugpull.
ArjinFerman
Tinfoil Gigachad
2d ago
Well, like I told Netstack, I think the end result would end up coming off much more whiny than interesting, but I'll keep it in mind.
ArjinFerman
Tinfoil Gigachad
2d ago
I don't know how you would arrive to that conclusion
It's simple - the "entry points" through which these ideas are spreading through society are centralized in the hands of a relative few. Sure, they can't control the entirety of society at will, 100% of the time, but engineering does not require 100% accuracy, just predictability.
Mihow
Lipstick on a guitar
2d ago
Not to turn this into a travelogue with my fellow traveler heading to China later, but I’m heading to Washington State and the coast of Oregon in early October.
One full day at Olympic National Park coming from the north entrance (Port Charles or something?).
Five days on the coast of Oregon (Arch Cape?) - literally right on the beach.
And then like three hours south and inland for three days. (Scott’s Mills)
What should I and my wonderful wife do?
Specifically anything can’t miss in Olympic? It’s been a dream of mine to go there.
I like waterfalls and short hikes and maybe a brewery or two. I love scenic stuff and have never seen the fall.
hydroacetylene
2d ago
I think nobody drinks warm beer, yes.
Agreed, you can see a similar dynamic with Comedians as well.
The greats all seem to have (or had) some deep well of trauma or crazy that they would draw from.
JarJarJedi
2d ago
Re-read The Left Hand of Darkness which I had read a very long time ago and remembered almost nothing from that time, so it can be counted as the first reading essentially. This novel is well known for it's exploration of gender topics, which got me interested in how it would read in 2025, being written in 1969. It actually read quite well. Since then, a lot of efforts have been made - including, unfortunately, by Le Guin herself - to make the novel be more woke then the text would support, but it did not ruin it for me (one of the reasons being I only read most the commentary after finishing the novel). Wikipedia's description of it is one of the examples of such wokification, which is as expected, and serves as another warning, if one still needs it, that trusting an anonymous woke mob to pre-chew your information for you may be convenient, but has significant dangers. I don't think I agree with all the ideas implied in the book (like "wars are caused by male hormones") but I found reading it and thinking about it enjoyable.
anon_
2d ago
doesn’t that make the fact that they we’re about to declare them out of compliance quite significant?
VoxelVexillologist
Multidimensional Radical Centrist
2d ago
The zipper and button closures on men's and women's jackets and shirts are traditionally reversed from each other, too.
ArjinFerman
Tinfoil Gigachad
2d ago
Believe it or not I'm fairly neutral on the valance of ideas spreading through mind control, and am perfectly capable of admitting my tribe is doing it's fair share of that, but you're probably guessing right about what kind of experiences about what kind of people shaped my views on the matter. So I don't know if I'll be writing any effortposts on this, pretty sure it will come off as whinging about past culture war drama, I think I'd prefer to finish the Psycho Pass review.
gattsuru
2d ago
Can you give an example of a potential EO rule to change this?
How well-grounded do you want?
I don't think we'd see a Democratic President put forward an EO holding all asylees, once granted asylum, to be treated as having "been lawfully admitted for permanent residence" at the time of their entry, rather than the time they were issued a green card, but that's for political reasons rather than fear of judicial review. A court case would inevitably point to such retroactive adjustments in other contexts (the Cuban Adjustment Act was a statute, and had a portion of "lawfully admitted" happening up to 30 months before registry), but the real power would just come from the courts, and especially SCOTUS, not being able or willing to retroactively strip citizenship from hundreds of thousands of people, no matter how improperly given. A unilateral executive modification of the immigration registry date falls under similar problems -- even if a 2029 Dem admin had unilaterally granted it a green card to someone under this law that couldn't possibly have legally been eligible (eg, having been born after 1986), it's not clear anyone would have standing to challenge it... and it's just as unclear what political results would fall from that.
These are still mechanically possible; both could lead to a large number of people being given American citizenship overnight.
For a more politically plausible path, take something more like a soon-as-possible policy of rubber stamping of asylum claims, followed by a late-in-administration full rule setting a rubber-stamping of asylee-to-green-card-to-naturalization process. The strict read of the relevant statutes has six years, but it's not clear that even a fair-handed judiciary would read it that way rather than five years. This wouldn't get people voting overnight, but it'd be able to naturalize them within a single President's administration. The APA tomfoolery we've seen with DACA applies here; it could well be done with one term if the following administration was forced by courts to keep the old policies running.
There's other options that are more politically possible, but I'm not comfortable discussing them publicly.
Also, hasn't SCOTUS been pretty open to claims of standing by states challenging Federal policy?
Not really. Massachusetts v. EPA's what everyone points to requiring courts give 'special solicitude' to state challenges of federal policy, but that's literally only been used for that one case at SCOTUS, with every following case leaving states high and dry.
floral print
Like Hawaiian shirts? I knew I liked you …
The first store my mom ever took me to in the US was a place called Marshall’s. A fantastic place for cheap clothes that last season were in the fancier stores.
She told me to go look at the men’s area and when I turned a corner there was this huge H Rack of tropical shirts. My little communist brain was gob smacked.
I mean, I’ve seen blacks and Hispanics at this point but I just didn’t know it was legal to wear such bright colors.
It’s been 34+ years and I still rock my tropical floral Hawaiian shirts almost daily.
I also have social anxiety and am 6ft5 285 so I try to hide by standing out and the shirts help in that department.
Love your posts.
E: as to Israel - I’ve noticed people attacks the weak. My opinion is state what you believe in situations that aren’t related to business. People don’t actually care … they’re just pretending.
Bold of you to claim that intelligence, drive, and ambition, are qualities incompatible with being a populist.
You, Fuentes, and Hanania are all coping hard. If somone disagrees with your takes it must be because they are stupid and lazy not because of legitimate differences.
That said, congratulations to Fuentes for being the first gay man invited to speak on Iranian State TV.
fmac
Ask me about bike lanes
2d ago
I'm so torn on gambling. I'm generally staunchly in the "let people do things" camp, and I dislike regulating things that will immediately create uncontrollable black markets because the demand is very strong.
But holy shit gambling is a fucking disaster for our society. The explosion of sports betting has made me firmly convinced of this.
Crypto at least is harder to get into and plausibility useful. Same with prediction markets
self_made_human
C'est la vie
2d ago
I'm far from an expert on the topic, but it seems to be that the following might be true:
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Brits hold a far greater amount of what can be best described as "white guilt", and are more likely to express remorse for colonial misadventures. I think the exhibition I just saw, putting some random Punjabi woman of no particular importance in the limelight, it's a symptom of various attempts to make amends. It is very easy for people to pattern-match Israel into the colonial oppressor, and Palestine into the plucky underdog. There are a lot of bleeding-heart libs around. I might be rather liberal in my worldview, but I'm also very hard-nosed.
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Opinion polls show that the average Briton is rather divided between the two options. But the younger you go, the more pro-Palestinian they get. And the young are far more likely to be activists attempting to rally the troops. Those geriatrics clinging to their youth I mentioned earlier aren't likely to be the people graffiting slogans. Supporting Israel in that demographic is very uncool, but it's not like there isn't any strong support at all, they've got their share of lobbyists and adherents in the halls of power. So my impression is that there's a Palestinian groundswell going up against an Israeli entrenched government.
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https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/topics/c207p54m4rqt A quick browse of the BBC suggests relative neutrality but a noticeable lean towards Palestine.
Thanks for always posting these stories!
You're welcome!
Ethnic cleansing, as a distinct concept from genocide, has traditionally involved there being a territory where the population being cleansed is cleansed to. Thus far, Israel has not succeeded in finding such a territory.
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