domain:ashallowalcove.substack.com
EverythingIsFine
Well, is eventually fine
3hr ago
IIRC they both said she wanted more green energy stuff generally (power generation, that is), which I counted. My mom also said... "something about housing? I don't really know and can't remember" which I didn't count because it was too vague. She was right though, that was one I named, the first-time homebuyer credit. I also could name the expanded child and childcare tax credit, and her vague gestures at tightening the borer. After thinking about it a little longer, I think I was able to remember some plan to negotiate Medicare drug prices, but Trump also had some similar-sounding version of the same plan, so I wasn't sure if that counted - or if the border tightening counted either, since she was basically forced into it.
Amadan
Enjoying my short-lived victory
3hr ago
I replied that your reasoning is a defacto state of eventually arbitrarily banning anyone who goes against the dominant ideology of this forum unless they adhere to a much stricter ruleset.
Thank you for adding another nickel to my pile.
You will continue to get downvoted as long as you're not in line with the consensus.
I'm glad we can agree this is what's happening. I wish this was universal knowledge here.
MAGA (a concrete group of people
Is MAGA really that concrete of a group? I always understood it to be fairly amorphous -- I doubt many people would unironically identify with such a label on this forum, yet I know plenty of people here are effectively in it by the points they argue.
EverythingIsFine
Well, is eventually fine
3hr ago
I said "first of all" but so far responses have been fixating on this point rather than the broader point that modern racism doesn't back-extrapolate to history very well at all. That's presentism. Modern racism has at best very imperfect analogies historically (at the very least, pre-industrial ones). I just want to register my annoyance that I'm being argued with on a point that's not germane to the topic I was trying to refute.
What you say is true! Any categorization algorithm, which usually involves some kind of "cutoff" that is chosen, is inherently subject to a confusion matrix with its accompanying tradeoffs. Right? You have false positives, true positives, false negatives, true negatives. To continue that analogy, in the modern world, the tradeoffs are actually kind of large. Total model "accuracy" hits unacceptably low numbers, in my opinion, because of how many blurred borderline cases there are, resulting in miscategorizations of various types. So I guess what I was trying to say is that people have currently 'latched on' to race because of its salience in the political conversation, but it's a poor tool for the job. So sure, race as a categorization algorithm "works" to some extent, and so in that sense it's "real", but we shouldn't be in the habit of substituting models of reality for actual reality. That's the sense by which I call it "not real" - it works (kinda sorta) but it isn't a true depiction of reality. A lot of people especially on this forum go around pretending that race is a Big Deal, and are the equivalent of the gender essentialists (which I actually kind of am) but for race (which I am definitely not). But gender is like, obviously and self-evidently a Big Deal, and race is... well, it just isn't. Not by itself!
This is why I always try and insist that we should have different conversations for issues of race (broad category that, critically intersects with a lot of more-potent things like culture, social status, economics, etc that we might as well discuss more directly!) than we do for issues of discrimination (where we debate and talk about ethics and how they intersect with practical reality and probability) because otherwise everyone always ends up at cross-purposes.
RandomRanger
Just build nuclear plants!
3hr ago
right now they depend on GPS systems for accuracy
Pretty sure they're using GLONASS, the Russian version of GPS.
At the end of the day war is mostly about mass. If there's broad technological and political parity (not a colonial stomp or a guerilla war), then it's about numbers. How can a European NATO of over 600 million lose to a Russia of 140 million? What level of unpreparedness and inexperience can counter 4:1 in numbers? And they have the defender's advantage too.
If Russia can quickly make lots of cheap jet drones, so can Europe. Anything Russia can do, Europe can replicate. The asymmetry is this: just as Russia can hammer Ukraine down in attritional fighting after early reverses, so can Europe to Russia.
Only if there's a political failure, if the whole edifice just implodes as the Turks nope out, the Serbs and Hungarians decide it's not their war, if Britain and France won't really use nukes to defend Polish or German territory... then Europe loses. But so long as they're united they can fight on to victory, if only by drowning Russia in men. The US need not even show up IMO.
Let the Gerans fly, let the Oreshniks blow up Patriot batteries, let the T-90Ms thrust into the Baltics, let the Russians run wild for 6 months. They've got a huge front to man from Finland to the Caucasus. They'll be hemmed in at sea. They'll still be facing vast reserves of wealth and manpower, a foe with time on his side and talent to spare. At the end of a long attritional war they'll have to fall back on their strategic nuclear forces to broker a peace.
I don't buy that they'd risk a war with NATO unless China suplexes the US in Asia, at which point we all have much bigger concerns.
Primaprimaprima
...something all admit only "TRUMP", and the Trump Administration, can do.
3hr ago
So, to be clear, the reason people get downvoted is because they express views that go against the majority opinion. The downvote button is a disagree button. You will continue to get downvoted as long as you're not in line with the consensus. Sorry.
That being said, I think the reason @Goodguy's third comment there didn't get downvoted is because he framed the issue as being more about Trump (an individual) and Trumpism (an abstract ideology), rather than MAGA (a concrete group of people, as you seem to be using the term). In the short comment I'm replying to, you said that MAGA "likes authoritarianism" and "goes with the flow". You can't hide your contempt for the majority of people who are reading your comment. That's obviously not going to endear them to you.
urquan
Hold! What you are doing to us is wrong! Why do you do this thing?
3hr ago
The hypergamy crunch is just around the corner. We're already at a point socially where there are three women to two men among new college graduates. This clearly cannot last.
Why can’t it last? Sure, over timescales some groups will have more children than others, but liberalism is a powerful identity package that has a lot of ability to convert people from conservative backgrounds.
TheAntipopulist
Formerly Ben___Garrison
3hr ago
Yes. I wrote four paragraphs to explain my reasons.
I replied that your reasoning is a defacto state of eventually arbitrarily banning anyone who goes against the dominant ideology of this forum unless they adhere to a much stricter ruleset.
Someone with right-leaning views makes a borderline bad post --> nobody gets upset, so it scoots by just fine.
Someone with left-leaning views makes a borderline bad post --> right leaning posters are upset, snap back and get warned themselves --> left-leaning poster is seen as a troublemaker and is eventually banned for nebulous reasons.
We're gonna have to see if Trump actually goes through with the lawsuit and what happens over it, but given WSJ and Murdoch decided to go through with the article knowing his plans (they even state in the article that's the comments they got when reaching out to the admin) I'm expecting they might be storing more in the barrel still and baiting.
As a North Carolinian, I saw a similar story play out with Mark Robinson where he claims it's fake, starts a lawsuit and then quietly dropped it after things were no longer relevant. Especially funny cause he kept using the username in question too.
Still whether or not this particular letter is real is mostly a distraction from the Case of the Missing Epstein Files we kept getting promised only to end up not existing and things like the altered video. Probably why this is the first time JD Vance suddenly has some thoughts to share, of course none about the Epstein situation, it's so sad how we just don't talk about it anymore in favor of random drama of the day.
Anyway funniest conclusion will be a real letter but not by Trump or associates, but by Epstein and associates faking it and putting people's signatures on things for some weird fantasy.
Amadan
Enjoying my short-lived victory
3hr ago
Is there a reason you're modding a post made by one of the few consistently left-leaning posters
Yes. I wrote four paragraphs to explain my reasons.
although you said up above that you weren't equipped to handle that one so OK I guess, as long as it eventually gets handled.
I didn't say I wasn't equipped to handle it, I said I chose not to. That doesn't mean it's going to "get handled" as you would like.
crushedoranges
3hr ago
Mhm.
I apologize. From now on, I'll just won't engage. Sorry, I'm being an ass.
Gaashk
3hr ago
You are mostly talking about Big 5 trait agreeableness. There's a good Jordan Peterson lecture about it from before he became politicized. It's convenient for a person's managers, husband (if they're into that), and infants. It's more of a mixed bag for the people possessing it, as you mentioned.
These are almost universally positive traits unless you happen to enjoy arguments and rambunctious trouble-making and think such a person would be boring.
Two highly agreeable people together can be quite annoying. They don't get high quality feedback about each other's preferences, and end up playing guessing games about what the other person wants. They have a bad time raising older children. I can't remember it well enough to find it, but there was a Less Wrong post about how it is actually an onerous imposition to one's host to flaccidly say that whatever they want to do is great, they're totally happy with anything, because this makes more work for the host -- maybe they don't like making a bunch of decisions.
urquan
Hold! What you are doing to us is wrong! Why do you do this thing?
3hr ago
I place about a 20% probability on a default and/or civil war in the next 20 years, but Christ is King so who cares?
My mother and I were driving on the highway last night and talking about how the world seems to be going crazy, and half of young people aren’t even vaguely interested in family formation, and no one seems connected to any one any more.
And then the rain cleared and we saw a double rainbow, and she quoted from Genesis: “I have set my bow in the sky.” She continued, “We were just talking about how the world feels crazy, but God’s in control.”
urquan
Hold! What you are doing to us is wrong! Why do you do this thing?
3hr ago
I think domestic life will be bad, in the sense that people will grow more atomized, disconnected, and lonely, while housing and health costs will continue to absorb more and more of people’s wealth, and the division between the haves and the have-nots grows even more intense.
I think both the left and the right realize this is our destiny, it just depends on how you frame it which side starts cheering and which side starts going, “well, actually…”
TheAntipopulist
Formerly Ben___Garrison
3hr ago
Is there a reason you're modding a post made by one of the few consistently left-leaning posters, while not modding posts like this? Arguably this post and this post are borderline too. If the issue with this post is that it's making a generalization of a group in a somewhat mean way, then there'd be plenty of posts the mods ought to come down on even in just the past few days. There's also WhiningCoil's post comparing nonwhites to "virulent invasive species" that's been sitting for over 24h without mod action, although you said up above that you weren't equipped to handle that one so OK I guess, as long as it eventually gets handled.
If the issue is that other people are getting triggered and snapping at him, they should be the ones to pay the price alone. Otherwise it's just an informal rule of "anyone who goes against the dominant ideology on this forum (i.e. leftists) gets banned eventually when people get mad at them". The 3 borderline posts I linked don't have this problem because they're going with the dominant ideology.
My personal opinion is that none of these should be warned/banned, except for maybe WhiningCoil's that's a little too egregious.
EverythingIsFine
Well, is eventually fine
3hr ago
Bad comparisons. Religions, for example, have hierarchies of categorization. The modern Western understanding of race does not. Religions, to continue the example, have literal self-imposed structures inherent to their organization (OK, to be fair, at least most do). No inherent bright delineations exist when it comes to ethnicity. One reason I prefer the term "ethnicity" to "race" is that it's more localized/specific - partly due to connotation, but not entirely. Languages... eh, kinda, but still mostly no? Although it's true that languages intermix on a broad scale, and drift as the rule instead of the exception, the mechanism through which languages change and drift is by definition on a group level. Two individuals speaking different languages don't really create their own language. However, every human no matter their race or heritage can interbreed. Their children exist, and ruin the categories.
but there's been no mass political movement to try and convince the public that these things "don't really exist"
There isn't a mass political movement to paint race is something that doesn't exist, though? I'm one of the few people saying it, and I'm a strong minority in that sense (no pun intended). It's sort of like the gender-queer debate. "Liberals" (for lack of a better term) can't decide whether gender roles exist, but are bad, or whether gender is a construct, and thus doesn't matter. This indecision leads to a weak foundation. When it comes to race, they are trying to have it both ways, and this also means there's a weak foundation. This contradiction is true even for supposed "academics" in the liberal arts! Insofar as "woke" counts a mass political movement, woke never consistently claimed that race didn't exist, and still doesn't.
My whole comment is pointing out that "race" as currently understood in the West is ahistorical and has accumulated a bunch of recent baggage. The commenter above directly claimed that racism is the default state of humanity, and that's wrong. You quite obviously can't have racism without a conception of race. If the commenter above had said something more general, like "humans always discriminate against outgroups and foreigners" then we might have more of a real conversation based on truth, but they didn't, and I'm calling that out.
SSCReader
3hr ago
The difference is with kids is that someone has to raise them. We don't eradicate them like we do knotweed or whatever. For the good of the kid and society efforts must be made to get them to adulthood. A group home is unlikely to do as good a job as a family with resources. It may well be horrible and difficult for that family, but it must be done by someone. Which is why we don't force people to adopt or foster generally. It's going to be tough in a lot of ways.
It's supererogatory work, so it's not very helpful to talk about these kids as invasive species. In addition the whole rant about nature vs nurture is flawed. by the time a kid is an infant in need of adoption from a poor area like a ghetto, almost always nature has been confounded by maternal alcohol or drug use, maternal or infant malnutrition, you have lead exposure in pipes, a high stress environment for the mother, quite probable early birth and low birth weight. Likely lack of doctor's care and feeding post-birth. Possible neglect and abuse post-birth. Because if they had those things or were looked after properly, they are unlikely to be put up for adoption in the first place. May not make their behavior as they age any better for the parents of course. But it isn't possible to declare it nature and therefore the behavior of an invasive species.
FCfromSSC
Nuclear levels of sour
3hr ago
Blender Adventures: I had a low-poly machine pistol model I was working on, an original design of my own. I've been working on a high-poly model to do the full texturing workflow, and got bogged down learning sub-D best practices on a detail-heavy helical magazine. That's pretty well done at this point, but I think I'm going to need to learn retopo and sculpting for the grip, and how to do clean intersecting curves in geometry for the complicated suppressor design. All of that's been on break for the last few weeks; while I'm teaching drawing lessons and a bible class at a Christian summer camp. I'm back home this weekend, and should be back to Blender shenanigans next week, doing retopo for the grip and getting into blender sculpting.
MathWizard
Good things are good
3hr ago
How do I respond without sounding like an asshole....?
It's a combination of things which just make life easier. The positive traits, near-synonyms but not quite, are things like being kind, generous, quiet, agreeable, un-argumentative, untroublemaking. These are almost universally positive traits unless you happen to enjoy arguments and rambunctious trouble-making and think such a person would be boring. I find them to be wonderful traits, some of which I share in common.
The riskier way of putting it, and I caveat this by saying she was already this way when I met her and not beaten or threatened into this, is that I can always get my way. In more wholesome cases this is simply her being indecisive and not having strong preferences, so when we go shopping for food she wants me to choose what we're going to cook that week. Both because she wants me to like, and so that she doesn't have to make up her mind. She'll still veto things that she doesn't like or we've already had recently, but then she wants me to think of something else. When we want to play a game she wants me to decide what we're going to play. Again, when she has a preference she'll speak up, but the majority of time she's just happy if I'm happy so I can do stuff.
In more conflicting scenarios, she's is afraid of conflict and will typically end up backing down given any level of pushback on any idea. Now, she's at a level of submissiveness that's unhealthily too far, we've been working through building her self-confidence and getting her to stand up for herself, both to me and to others. But when push comes to shove I can, at any time I choose, put my foot down and win any argument simply by insisting. Calmly and rationally, I don't have to get mad and threaten, I try really hard not to take advantage of this and only do it when I genuinely think I'm right and my decision will be best for both of us. The only real example I can think of is one time she wanted to get this giant tattoo on her back and I though it looked kind of tacky and gross, and although it's her body I was going to be the one to see it the most often, more often even than her, so I said I didn't like it and she shouldn't get it. While the argument was not pleasant for either of us, she didn't get the tattoo, and I'm still confident that was the right choice for both of us. And, importantly, it's not a recurring argument that keeps coming up with her harassing me about how I won't let her do what she wants or something.
And such scenarios are incredibly rare because we rarely argue in the first place. Because she naturally inherently wants to please me and it makes her happy when I'm happy and make decisions for us. It's just convenient and simple and easy. And she's still a person with preferences, she runs around decorating the house with flowers and animal-shaped pots and dragon figurines. But the docile is about... voluntary hierarchy. I did not ever ask to be put at the top, in charge of the household. I didn't ever even ask or attempt to be there. She does not feel comfortable or safe unless someone is above her to make the important decisions when she gets to stressed out to think clearly, and I comfortably slot into that role. Once there, having a clear and mutually acceptable hierarchy clearly established leads to a lot less ambiguity or conflict that other couples seem to have as both of them jockey for top position. You can't have a Democracy with two equal citizens: someone has to break ties.
birb_cromble
4hr ago
It's all second and third order connections, but it's a suspiciously large number of second and third order connections.
RandomRanger
Just build nuclear plants!
4hr ago
Small phased array radar is going to bring down thunder and fire on you. If you're spewing out EM emissions on the front lines of a modern battlefield you're going to be in trouble. Better off with electro-optical or infra-red, something passive.
What if they come in like a flock, 5 or 10 or 20 from multiple angles to overwhelm the turret? I've seen videos of that happening against even these up-armoured, orky looking vehicles. They achieve mission-kill eventually, then the crew have to flee because they're stuck. Then they die. 5 or 10 or 20 FPV drones won't cost that much compared to the minigun CIWS integration, especially if AI guided. And the drones kill not just the CIWS but the vehicle as well.
TitaniumButterfly
4hr ago
Have you ever read an account of an adoption gone wrong?
I feel so gross for asking but could you please share some especially-lurid ones?
clo
4hr ago
Not again, let's not have the HBD discussion for the billionth time again, here's the cliffs notes:
HBD is trivially true, what decisions, policies, actions are taken as a result of that are up to you, but you need to be aware that they exist because sooner or later you will run into physical reality. You can continue to run from it, you can plan around it, you can even make giant state sponsored psyops to make sure that the hoi polloi don't notice and to prevent them from slaughtering each other. Value judgements about what heritable traits are preferable are again, up to you. Maybe evolution will decide intelligence is the Great Filter and the morons will inherit the earth, what the fuck ever.
Racism depends on how you define it, I don't like Swedish food and I dislike the French but I'd struggle with anyone calling it racism, especially since the definition of what racism is has expanded vastly over the last decade to include the default state of literally every Southeast Asian who has to live around other ethnicities
Biden was not uniformly coherent in 2020. He did accomplish stepping up in a few select debates and appearances, probably as a result of extremely planned napping schedules and drug dosing. It was obvious to anyone who wasn't on his side or influenced by mainstream media that he was already severely impaired. The tale of 2024 is that his impairment became so ridiculous that it was not possible to conceal.
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