domain:alexberenson.substack.com
MaiqTheTrue
Renrijra Krin
2hr ago
I don’t think it’s bad, it’s just that we’re used to it and it’s been run through the commercial food chain much more so than other foods. If I want Mongolian cuisine, chances are im looking for a mom a pop restaurant, or buying the ingredients to make it myself. If I want American food, I can go get McDonald’s hamburgers and fries that are made at an industrial scale out of cheap, shitty ingredients and made with indifference by a teenager with an attitude. That’s not a fair comparison, you’d have to actually compare a top quality hamburger made in a mom and pop restaurant from high quality ingredients to the same in a Mongolian restaurant. I think other than the familiar flavor profile from the burger, they’re probably about the same.
netstack
Texas is freedom land
2hr ago
You have a link to that? One of my coworkers will definitely get a kick out of it.
Shit, I’d prefer an AR15 to my bolt-actions in that case.
netstack
Texas is freedom land
2hr ago
Uh, not really.
Political support for gun ownership is inversely proportional to distance from an urban center. It’s more a rural/redneck/rugged-individualist signal.
WhiningCoil
Ghost of Quokka's Future
2hr ago
I mean, sure, technically you aren't wrong.
But even with everything spelled out for them, few people appreciate the reality distorting effects of 30% interest. They don't appreciate how quickly it is to get in trouble, or how slow it is to get out. They either never learned, or never really appreciated the rule of 72. They never had pointed out to them that their credit card debt doubles every 2-3 years, while a gold standard S&P500 index fund earning the historical average of 10% takes 7 years to double. They have no grasp of the fact that everything they put on a credit card that is accruing interest is eating up 2.5x more of their precious life than the equivalent amount saved in an S&P500 index fund gives them back. Closer to 10x more than a run of the mill savings account.
Math, and especially interest rates, aren't real to most people. Even explained to them, it doesn't translate into years of their life like it should. It was certainly never taught to me that way, nor I suspect to you. It was only in retrospect, in my 30's, looking at my nest egg thinking "This represents 10 years of my life" did these realizations hit.
Now imagine you never have a nest egg.
Grant_us_eyes
2hr ago
There was a video on twitter recently of a PoV of someone having to shoot a charging boar utilizing a bolt-action rifle.
I couldn't help but stare at the set of circumstance and think to myself, 'In that situation, I really, REALLY would prefer a PTR-91. Or AR-10.'
Which are semi-auto magazine rifles chambered in 308. Which is a typical hunting round.
And boars have become an endemic invasive species in America as of late.
That aside... I know enough to say that gun culture overall in the US has undergone a quiet, seismic shift who's origins can date all the way back to the initial attempt at a gun ban in the 1920s, threading through the Firearms Owners Protection Act in 1986, Clinton's Assault Weapons' Ban in the 90s, up until today, where you've had a steady increase in constitutional concealed carry.
It's around this point I could probably fish around for how holders of CCWs having less crime rates than police officer, the twisted and uncertain number of defensive gun uses and so on and so forth... but there's still a very American cultural thread that basically boils down to, when the Government gets a bee in thier bonnet and tells thier citizens 'No', there's an instinctive reaction of 'Fuck you, now I want it MORE'.
Rov_Scam
2hr ago
Progressives were never demanding that the poor get increased access to credit cards; banks have never had a problem marketing high-interest, low limit credit cards to the poor. The argument was that it was stupid for banks to deny mortgages to people with jobs who were currently paying more in rent than what the mortgage payment would be if they bought, on the grounds that they were too high a risk. It's also an argument that no one has made in the 20 years since banks went further than the progressives asked them to and started writing mortgages to people who couldn't pay them off if they lived to be a million, then repackaged them as AAA securities.
There's a thing that can let you pay without carrying cash around, without being present and without having to apply for credit. It's called debit cards. You spend money you actually own, as opposed to some weird exercise of "paying back the money you spent during the month" that I once was surprised to learn most Americans apparently have to engage in. You can't be preyed upon with tricky overdraft fees because if you don't have the money, you simply can't spend it.
pigeonburger
2hr ago
During the Palisades fires some months back, a guy (one of the founders of Treyarch, the game development company) accidentally flew his civilian drone into a firefighting airplane and disabled it.
Now I imagine firefighting planes fly uncharacteristically low due to their mission, but the speed and mass of a drone is probably enough to cause severe injury in a direct collision, or to damage low flying planes (say, near an airport) or other vehicles, putting the lives of the people in them at risk. Imagine a drone going straight at your windshield while driving.
I might be mistaken, but I think most countries don't require a license to purchase a drone, only to fly it. Which, for someone planning mischief with their drone, is not a concern.
And this is without considering the additional homemade modifications one could make to make a drone more dangerous. Homemade explosives, yes, but that's hardly the only way to make it deadly. You could have them carry liquids (bleach, paint, lye, acid?) in a container that's meant to burst on impact, you could duck-tape spikes or knives to it... I'm barely even trying to be imaginative here.
The_Nybbler
If you win the rat race you're still a rat. But you're also still a winner.
2hr ago
They aren't "openly defrauding" the poor. We have all these disclosure laws about credit cards, which among other things tell people how much and how long they'll be paying if they only pay the minimum. The people who get into credit card trouble want to get stuff and pay only the minimum. They may want this because they are stupid and foolish, or they may want it because they figure if they get in deep enough someone will bail them out, but they want it.
Tenaz
2hr ago
You believe the "godhead" is "one" in the "'scriptural' 'sense'" via the eisegetical interpretation your predecessors tore apart the scripture in service of making, not what Christians have held for most of 2,000 years.
What you call eisegesis, I call exegesis. As I said, no matter your beliefs you must hold that some scriptures are figurative and others literal, and there is no clear reasonable-beyond-all-doubt key contained in the Bible to determine which is which.
I agree some of the other examples are strained, so it's a good thing we don't hold to sola scriptura. Nobody is claiming that 1 Cor. 15 + 2 Cor. 12 is proof, or even sufficient evidence, that there are multiple kingdoms of heaven. Nor, to be clear, am I saying that scripture is clear about the nature of the Godhead either. Then again, I have the freedom to say the Bible isn't perfectly clear about the nature of the Godhead/Trinity, because I don't believe that there's a multiple-choice test to get into heaven predicated on whether we correctly answer that God is three persons consubstantial in essence.
The Septuagint condemns him. Solomon was tested with the lechery of his father, he failed, his chalice was filled with iniquity as the sin was visited upon him fully, the kingdom fell. There's a lesson in this.
Dishonest. I didn't ask if you'd condemn David, I asked if you'd condemn the wives given to him by God. Do you deny that God says he gave those wives to David? Do you have some interpretation of those scriptures where God gave those wives to David, but accepting them was a sin?
I condemn David too, not for his polygamy, but for his involvement with Uriah and his wife, as well as perhaps the later polygamous excesses (after this conversation with Nathan).
The Edmund-Tucker Act preceded the "revelation" and this is what Woodruff is quoted as verbatim:
Well, yeah, that's what I said. Is "the government has made demands, and God told me to acquiesce to them" not allowed as a form of revelation? I suppose Jeremiah was wrong to tell the Israelites to submit to Babylon, and they should have listened to Hananiah instead?
sun_the_second
could survive a COD lobby and a gay furry discord server
2hr ago
If it was actually possible to stamp down the number of handguns circulating in the US metro areas (and not just taking them from the law-abiding citizens), I'd expect a general reduction of crime for the following reasons:
- criminal ghettoes could be policed more reliably and in a less volatile manner, resulting in lowering the hostility of inner city culture towards cops;
- harder to commit crimes and run gangs when guns are harder to get;
In addition, while I'll let Americans correct me my impression was that the large segments of the population who are wary of black people and the segments of non-black population who live in the US metro areas were two circles that do not overlap much. Cities vote blue, rurals vote red, do they not?
The_Nybbler
If you win the rat race you're still a rat. But you're also still a winner.
2hr ago
I'm perfectly fine with increasing cost and reducing utility in this situation.
Yes, of course you are. Because you value the wretched above all others, because that is the general rule everyone is taught. This is itself a problem with modernity, if modernity goes back to AD 1 anyway.
DaseindustriesLtd
late version of a small language model
2hr ago
This is the part of Uncomfortable HBD Facts that is very underdiscussed: Blacks More Likely to have paranoid schizophrenia.
African Americans were four times more likely than Euro-Americans to receive a Schizophrenia diagnosis … race was the strongest predictor of an admission diagnosis of Schizophrenia after controlling for the influence of other demographic variables. Interestingly, Barnes showed that Schizophrenia subtypes were not equally distributed by race, with African American consumers significantly more likely to receive a diagnosis of Schizophrenia-paranoid subtype or Schizophrenia-undifferentiated subtype than Euro-American consumers.
There's a ton of results in this vein, and his Arabic name makes me suspect that his parents were into Nation of Islam stuff, Yakub doctrine and all that, which is of course schizophrenic throughout (very funny though), so it might be hereditary for him, on top of direct schizophrenia-promoting nurture.
But I don't think the beancounting method really explains the problem. Many, many, many more Blacks who don't get any diagnosis and generally function well buy into this zany conspiracist bullshit. In the limit, the whole narrative of Black existence under the yoke of Systemic Racism and mass slaughter of unarmed black men by the police in the US is a giant conspiracy theory with clear paranoid motives, and spotlight cases like Nick Cannon going off about melanin, people buying into Jussie Smollett hoax, Candace Owens spiraling into even crazier hypotheses about secret societies behind Macron's wife being a man, "black scholars" with mind-bogglingly idiotic and racist doctrines propped up as real intellectuals (I like Kobi Kazembe Kambon a.k.a. Joseph A. Baldwin, read it up), etc. etc. all add up to a general schizophrenic-paranoid tone in the Black community. Except – wasn't it Whites (and Jews, but in any case, the well-off, educated non-Black demographics) who championed the doctrine of systemic racism? Aren't Whites also buying into many of these hoaxes and libels today?
These are accomplishments he is very proud of, that frequently come up during his expositions. He will start by telling me how the people at the Social Security office are stealing from him (AFAICT, that was either taxes or a garnishment of some sort), then veer into reciting all the vegetables he eats because he knows how to eat healthy, he cooks for himself, but these people they not eatin' right and it causes problems, mental problems in they head they be havin' mental problems because they don't eat right, not like him because he eats his green beans, real food that he cooks for himself because he knows how to eat right, act right because he learned it in school, third grade, food pyramid, he learned that here in Jersey in school, third grade, and these other people should have learned it but they not acting right, that’s just Jersey, lotta bad people in Jersey, obsessed with money, takin’ from you, takin’ your money.
Unless you exaggerate greatly, Hassan sounds like he has quite a low IQ on top of his "schizophrenia". Mentally, he's close to an 8-10 year old White or Asian kid.
And I think this is the elephant in the room. There is simply not enough capacity to suppress delusions induced and exacerbated by the information environment. There is no clear separation between delusions and sincere confusions, Hassan won't have a mature enough epistemology to distinguish things that he pathologically overfixates on from things that just kinda legit sound right, even if you pump him full of antipsychotics. This is the ground zero of Black American Madness, along with smarter people than Hassan who also have a more profound illness and/or higher ego strength so they keep it together and spread their nonsense around. Then there are borderline cases who are relatively gullible and either propagate the message or simply do not push back, like that smart and non-insane Black guy once did for another celebrated Guggenheim scholar, Ibram X. Kendi:
"They are aliens," I told Clarence, confidently resting on the doorframe, arms crossed. "I just saw this documentary that laid out the evidence. That's why they are so intent on White supremacy. That's why they seem to not have a conscience. They are aliens."
Clarence listened, face expressionless. "You can't be serious."
"I'm dead serious. This explains slavery and colonization. This explains why the Bush family is so evil. This explains why Whites don't give a damn. This explains why they hate us so damn much. They are aliens!" I'd lifted off the doorframe and was in full argumentative mode.
"You really are serious about this," Clarence said with a chuckle. "If you're serious, then that has got to be the dumbest thing I ever heard in my life! I mean, seriously, I can't believe you are that gullible." The chuckle turned to a grimace. "Why do you spend so much time trying to figure out White people?" he asked after a long pause.
Clarence had asked this question before. I always answered the same way. "Because figuring them out is the key! Black people need to figure out what we are dealing with!"
"If you say so. But answer me this: If Whites are aliens, why is it that Whites and Blacks can reproduce? Humans can't reproduce with animals on this planet, but Black people can reproduce with aliens from another planet? Come on, man, let's get real."
"I am being real," I replied. But I really had no comeback. I stood and turned around awkwardly, walked to my room, plopped down on my bed, and returned to staring at the ceiling. Maybe White people were not aliens. Maybe they became this way on earth. Maybe I needed to read more Frances Cress Welsing. I looked over at The Isis Papers on my nightstand.
Well, Clarence then probably got a normal job and never achieved prominence as a thought leader for his people. He wasn't exuberant enough to be made a champion.
…and then comes everyone else, who is simply overwhelmed by moral blackmail, the volume of second-hand "corroborating evidence" and plain emotional confidence. And here we are.
In short my thesis is that a small (large relatively, but still amounting to fractions of a percent of the total population) difference in the rates of paranoid schizophrenia, compounded by significantly lower IQ, creates a critical mass of self-propagating cultural madness in the Black community, which lowers general epistemic standard to rock bottom and then spills over to the broader society, warping the entire default narrative of what it is about. And now we're training large language models on this oeuvre, which seals the bubble of the consensus reality. I bet if I feed this exchange to any frontier LLM, it'll rebuke me harshly with the usual tut-tutting routine about how systemic racism is totally real and Scholars say so.
Regarding your actual question: I think paranoid schizophrenics, no matter how "functional" for the moment, certainly can't have guns. This isn't hard.
ThomasdelVasto
Κύριε, ποίησόν με ὄργανον τῆς ἀγάπης σου
2hr ago
Can I blame the lenders and the progressives?
In general this argument that political pressure has forced businessmen to be immoral is not very convincing for me. I hope to live in a society where generally businessmen have lines they won't cross, like openly defrauding the poor.
The_Nybbler
If you win the rat race you're still a rat. But you're also still a winner.
2hr ago
They wouldn't accept cash? I mean, literally piles of Benjamins?
ThomasdelVasto
Κύριε, ποίησόν με ὄργανον τῆς ἀγάπης σου
2hr ago
LOL this is a non-answer, but at least it's funny. I'll give you that. ;P
roystgnr
2hr ago
I don't think I understood any of this.
My apologies. I'll back up, if you're still curious.
Think of the function sin(x).
We can take a number, like x=π/3, and plug it into the function, and we get another number, in this case sin(π/3)=√3/2. (here π/3 is in radians, which when we start doing calculus turns out to be more natural than 60°) We can imagine doing that with every real number, and plotting every (x,y) on a plane, and we get a "sine wave" picture like this. That "plane" gets called ℝ×ℝ, or ℝ², because it's defined with 2 real number (ℝ) lines that form a cross intersecting at one point. It's a great picture! I can think about the function inputs as being the length of lines in one direction, outputs as the lengths of lines in another, derivatives as slopes of angled lines, etc.
But ... how about sin(i), where i=√-1? On the one hand, who cares, because it seems like √-1 shouldn't exist: there's no real number whose square is negative, and even when we found such numbers to be useful intermediate results in algebra problems we still decided to call them "imaginary" as opposed to the newly-named "real" numbers; you'd still expect to have a real number in the end. On the other hand, we soon found "complex numbers" (ℂ, all the numbers x+yi you can make by adding a real number x to an imaginary number yi) to also be useful in engineering problems (they represent oscillation a way similar to how positive numbers can represent growth and negative ones decay), and then we found them to be useful in physics problems (where a "quantum wave function" takes complex values), and at some point it's hard to ignore something as not "real" when it's at the foundation of our understanding of reality.
We can plot a collection of complex numbers on the "complex plane": for every complex number z=x+yi you just plot it as (x,y). One complex number can be described with two reals.
But how do we plot a function that takes complex number inputs and gives complex number outputs? We would need to plot it in ℂ×ℂ, two complex planes that form a cross intersecting at one point. "But two planes meet in a line, not a point", you might object, and that's true, in 3D. ℂ×ℂ only fits in 4D. If I wanted to clearly plot part of a real function y=f(x), I can plot each point as (x,y) in a square, but if I want to clearly plot part of a complex function f(x+yi)=u+vi, I need to be able to plot each point as (x,y,u,v) in a hypercube. I don't have any hypercubes lying around! I can't even visualize a hypercube.
So, we plot garbage like this instead. The xy plane there is the complex plane of inputs x+yi, and for each output u+vi=sin(x+yi), the height z of the red surface is u and the height z of the green surface is v. We plot (x,y,u) and (x,y,w) in the same cube and try to picture the true (x,y,u,w) from the result. Those two 2D surfaces twisting through 3D space are really two aspects of a single 2D surface twisting through 4D space. They're easier to understand if you use that web page to rotate them back and forth and turn them translucent, but still I can't picture the single surface in 4D that they represent. If I could actually visualize 4D then the plot of that single surface would fit in my head as naturally as that first "sine wave" plot did.
If you magically found yourself in a 4D space you might be best off acting a bit like a slime by closing your eyes and feeling your way around. Your eyes will lie, your touch won't.
I think here it depends on what you mean by "in a 4D space".
If my movements were naturally restricted to a 3D manifold (a "surface" is just a 2D manifold) curving through 4D space then you're probably exactly right. Let's back up to 2D. Imagine as an analog a 2D version of me, living on the surface of a globe. Open my eyes, and if light also follows the globe surface then in any unobstructed direction I look I see the back of my own head one globe-circumference away, but if I'm small enough compared to the globe then it feels almost like I'm in good old flat 2D space. Even if the globe is made of taffy and some 3D monster stretches spikes out of it, mushes parts of it together elsewhere to make a torus or worse, whatever. I can still move around any weird surface I'm stuck to so long as it's smooth enough, to any part of it I want to go to so long as it's it's connected. When I'm on the globe, or on any points of "positive curvature" on a more complicated surface, I might feel a little weird (there's more "room" inside a shape than you would expect from its boundary, so it might be like my skin is getting compressed or my innards stretched). Or, on points of "negative curvature" on a more complicated shape, I might feel like my skin was getting stretched or my innards compressed. But either way, if I was small enough compared to the curvature then I'd still be just a slightly squished-around version of me.
Your "bag of holding" example actually is a 3D manifold - locally I can move parts of my body in no more or fewer than the usual 3 dimensions: up/down, left/right, or forward/backward. But those things are only consistent locally - if I stick my arm 10 inches forward into the bag and then reach 10 inches up, it won't be in the same place as if I reach my other arm 10 inches up (outside the bag) and then 10 inches forward. This 3D manifold has geometry that can't exist in 3D space, but only embedded in a space with at least one more dimension.
But with the same one extra dimension, if my movements were unrestricted? Local senses like touch would get weird too. Imagine that 2D me, previously stuck to the globe like a flat sticker (though free to move parallel to the globe surface), suddenly peeled away into the air. I can still wiggle around in my accustomed two directions, but my orientation with respect to that third direction is at the whim of the breeze. On a globe I might be able to look or propel myself north/south vs east/west, but 2D me has no muscles that can turn his limbs up/down. Even if someone took pity and stuck me back on the globe so I could move around its surface again, if they stuck me on backwards then I'd be backwards for the rest of time; clockwise would seem to be counter-clockwise and vice-versa. 3D me in a true 4D space would be in the same boat; my arm has no way to reach hyperup/hyperdown.
ThomasdelVasto
Κύριε, ποίησόν με ὄργανον τῆς ἀγάπης σου
2hr ago
I'm perfectly fine with increasing cost and reducing utility in this situation. Yes credit cards are convenient, no I don't think the societal ills they unleash on the financial illiterate are worth the amount of convenience they provide. I like having them, and don't think we should get rid of the entire industry, but I'd be happy to make it significantly more inconvenient to use them if we could stop the predatory behavior.
EverythingIsFine
Well, is eventually fine
2hr ago
I am terrified of wasps and yellow jackets. But ticks are not to be underestimated - I say, out of maybe irrational fear, because I don't live and haven't lived in major tick-infested locations, but the idea that I could go hiking and end up with a life-changing inability to eat meat without even realizing is scary
WhiningCoil
Ghost of Quokka's Future
2hr ago
Credit cards are truly evil. I mean, I use them. I've used them for 20+ years and never had a single finance charge or fee ever, while accruing thousands of dollars in cash back rewards. They paid for my Switch 2 in fact.
But they're still evil. The yawning gaping pit they represent, which I have to balance on the edge of every time I run up their balance each month (within my budget) and then pay off in full is nightmarish. Because there is nothing stopping me, besides 20 years of inflexible habit and discipline, from just YOLOing with the nearly $40k of available credit they make available to me.
I watch some of these Financial Audits, and people's minimums on all their cards is over the amount I manage to save each month. I'll watch someone my same age, my same income, and they are looking at 5-10 years of aggressively budgeting and paying off debt to get back to zero. Meanwhile my assets appreciated more than my annual salary the last few years. But in another timeline, with only slightly different choices early on, I could have been them.
Half these people, when asked about a specific credit account, just go "I don't know, they just gave me that card when I bought X". X could be a car, a new roof, a large plumbing job, etc, etc. Like in my driveway story below, fucking everything is trying to get you to sign up for a new credit card now. People unthinkingly just take them. "Yeah, more free money" they think.
As I've gotten older, my arrogance at being part of the Credit Card Master Race has waned. Fuck them.
Shrike
2hr ago
I think I agree that a firearm has a lower entry point. However the drone might pose a greater threat at relatively similar skill levels, although it's possible that counter-drone tech advances and popularizes quickly enough to once again raise the skill level necessary to use a drone competently.
The truth is that a low-functioning psychotic with a gun (or a drone) does not pose a threat to society even if he poses a threat to individuals in society. It's intelligent and organized individuals that pose the threat to social stability, and guns and drones are a force-multiplier to that effort. Drones are to modern society what firearms were in an earlier: an extremely powerful tool – or weapon – that allows relatively under-equipped groups to reach parity with professional soldiers. The drone is to the tank what the musket was to the knight.
EverythingIsFine
Well, is eventually fine
2hr ago
Honestly I don’t mind EA as much as some of the other mega studios. They put out some decently fun Star Wars games, BioWare was BioWare’s own fault apparently, Apex is okay, Split Fiction and It Takes Two are examples of creative games rare elsewhere, their bombed games rarely break my heart. I’d like them to be a little looser with owned but semi dormant IP, but that’s every big company.
quiet_NaN
2hr ago
overtly anti-Zionist and anti-Semitic content
Out of genuine interest of someone who avoids most social media: how overtly antizionist and antisemitic content is trending on social media? And what kind? Classic Nazi stuff, caricatures of long-nosed Jews sitting on bags of money? Alleged IDF war crimes which may or may not be Hamas fabrications? "From the river to the sea", which denies Israel's right to exist? Narratives parallel to SecureSignals', e.g. that that most Jewish citizens are faithless towards their 'host' country and their true allegiance is to Israel?
FWIW, near-east related content I see on imgur is mostly critical of Israel, but mostly not what I would call "overtly antizionist". Mostly it emphasizes the horrors of Gaza, sometimes perhaps spreading wartime propaganda (e.g. "IDF snipers are deliberately headshotting kids in Gaza", which seems unlikely on priors). I do not recall reading memes which would advocate for Israel to be wiped of the map, or content which mentions Jews directly. But then again, imgur is a filter bubble full of elderly lefties.
This hit hard, as a Dutchman.
I wonder, and sincerely doubt, if those who come after us will manage to keep up the sea walls, not necessarily in technological ability but in social ability. I saw Louisiana drown. It doesn't take much.
I remember people here being like: pish posh, should've maintained the levees. Yes, you should've maintained the levees. But that's the entire crux of the matter. You need to have a society that manages to do that, and keeps managing to do that, and not (for example) steal all the dike maintenance money to benefit yourself in the short term. And if you couldn't do it then, what's to say we'll (or that those will succeed us will) do that 30-40 years from now.
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