domain:kvetch.substack.com
Armin
7hr ago
Imho; Nothing will ever change and nothing will ever happen. EPP is way more ideologically similar to the Greens than the other right wing groups, it will signal to the Left that maybe they will cooperate with the Right to acquire a bit more influence in the coalition, than it will form another big tent coalition and we will have for other 5 years to follow the policies of the Greens and the Socialists.
Harlequin5942
7hr ago
Men are fair (at least as regards this subject of evaluating the distribution of characteristics). Women are equivalently not.
In the sense of "fair" as a uniform probability distribution, I agree. And I think this creates enough social problems / advantages to think about. On the problem side, men often have a feeling of being valued only for what they do and provide in romance, which can create the feeling of being exploited. (The male counterpart of objectification, perhaps.) On the advantageous side, for most men, they must achieve something to be regarded as attractive; moreover, the more they achieve, the more opportunities they have; for mentally healthy men at least, this can serve as a motivation.
Silverdawn
I wake up ๐ There's another psyop
7hr ago
Somehow, it seems like most people like the slop that's produced?
I think it's less a case of 'this person likes this thing' and more a case of 'This person is used to this thing and not pissed off enough to switch yet'.
And the initial adoption window was because 'everyone is doing it'.
ApplesauceIrishCream
8hr ago
and also for saying that a police shooting was "technically" justified - being not sufficiently sympathetic to the police officer.
You're misrepresenting my criticism. My point was that your description of this specific situation was wrong, not the degree of sympathy you showed. It is in fact quite a big deal that people know where the line is between good behavior and bad, and saying that Wilson was "technically" in the clear is simply not true. In order to avoid further unjust treatment, it had to be proved that Wilson was innocent beyond a reasonable doubt--a complete inversion of the standards of criminal law--and he did so, meeting an unjust burden. Again, this was not a close case!
I don't know guys, I'm just trying to be neutral here!
Splitting the difference between the truth and a lie is not admirable.
I largely agree with your second paragraph; one of my biggest meta-problems with BLM at the time was that it would prevent meaningful, productive police reform for a generation. I was wrong in that assessment in my undue optimism--the fallout has been much worse than I anticipated.
I'm glad you brought up the question of "leftist" governance. One of the most insidious rhetorical tricks communists pulled (and there are many, as they are typified by such) was the invention of the concept of the "Lib-Left." Leftism is an inherently authoritarian ethos and this is evidenced by a simple looking at history. Since Marx, there has been no leftist political movement anywhere in the world that achieved majority power on the promise and subsequent delivery of a reduction in size of government. Leftism in all circumstances, again when in majority power, invariably strengthens itself. A state that seizes a child to trans them has identical spiritual power to the Soviets seizing Kulak land. In creating "Lib-Left" the trick was cemented with the two-axis political spectrum, thereby allowing leftists to deny any governance as left unless it were economically left, ie avowedly communist. Thus, all governments that failed to achieve communist utopia could be labeled "Auth-Left" and/or "not real communism", or even "Auth-Right", as everyday leftists were free to continue beating their drums in support of the most evil ideology ever conceived by man. We're swiftly approaching the final dissolution of political rhetoric into purely friend/enemy distinction, and I hope just as much that we are swiftly approaching the end of rightist political discourse entertaining the two-axis premise. Or at least until a new two-axis spectrum is likely conceived, but this one without the communist framing. To repeat just to be clear: I reject leftist framing as leftism requiring communist economic policy; leftism is about a powerful state, and the American state is very powerful indeed.
While I agree that leftism tends toward authoritarianism (and that "leftist libertarians" are mostly liars or useful idiots who would immediately be purged after their precious revolution, as seen in basically every leftist revolution in human history), I still disagree that this means that all authoritarianism is leftism. To me authoritarian leftism (at least in the sense of the leaders being genuinely more true believerish in leftism, or at least very credibly willing to signal that) still looks more like Mao Zedong or Stalin than the present American regime (which isn't to say that the present American regime isn't resembling those two more and more lately, but still). Though wokeism is a variety or at least an offshoot of leftism, and though it has infected the present regime to a significant degree and increasingly root and branch, I still feel that it's not quite absolutely embedded or fundamental enough to make leftism the absolute defining context of the present American regime yet (though it is absolutely of course still far more left-wing than right-wing). That is, regime hasn't quite entirely abandoned its military/bureaucracy coup on liberal, small government republic origins enough yet. (This is shown by the fact that it was willing to jettison wokeism in military advertising to try to achieve better recruitment numbers, which it couldn't do if it was its entire legitimacy narrative and raison d'รชtre. You would have never seen the Soviet Union go "Hey we're gonna relax on this whole socialism thing." to try to boost contributions to the Red Army, because in their whole political formula, the army only exists to defend socialism in the first place and without it there's nothing worth protecting.)
confuciuscorndog
8hr ago
Yes, because the purpose of a steel man is to test & strengthen your own reasoning, not to score internet dunk points on your opponents.
I don't think it's strengthening your reasoning to go so far beyond what your opponents actually express that it's outside of the realm of what they might even actually believe.
Whether this is true or false, it's materially irrelevant to whether sexual urges that are focused on a 5 year old are abominable.
I'm glad you agree that bringing it up at all is materially irrelevant to what I'm talking about.
OliveTapenade
9hr ago
I'd caution you that maybe you don't know what I'm looking for in terms of my spiritual life or faith. I certainly don't perceive myself as looking for mere increasing physical mastery of the universe. On the contrary, that strikes me as a rather paltry prize.
At any rate, I don't see how anything that you've just mentioned demonstrates that any given religion is false. It's true that science is very productive, and has enabled humans to do many impressive things. None of that entails atheism or materialism or metaphysical naturalism. I'm just going to shrug and say, "so what?" You can't leap from any given scientific discovery to materialism. It's a non sequitur.
I don't underrate the value of scientific discovery, nor even the value of physical mastery of the universe. It's just not everything.
Anyway, I did not mention prayer, so I don't know why you're bringing that up. And if you think that the fact that keyboards work is 'proof of [your] world view', then... you're just wrong. "Keyboards therefore atheism" is just as wrong, and for just the same reason, as "tides therefore theism".
ArjinFerman
Tinfoil Gigachad
9hr ago
This is a fully generalizable argument against anybody deciding anything.
No, U. There's a spectrum between agency and coercion, I'm arguing that what the GAC doctors are doing is falling on the coercive side of the spectrum. If you wish to disagree about my assessment, that's fair game, but you're saying I'm denying the very possibility of someone having agency. This implies a strict binary (or hell, unary) worldview, where no shades of grey exist. It is you, therefore that is making a fully generalizable argument for the total invalidity of the concepts of manipulation and pressure. I wouldn't even mind, if you actually believed that, but as usual, I'm pretty sure you're only deploying this argument strategically. But I dunno man, surprise me. Show me your #MeToo era posts defending Harvey Weinstein.
You do not have to do what a doctor tells you, you can get a second opinion or a third
Why yes, if you don't like Dr. Freeman's opinion on the necessity of you getting a lobotomy, you can get a second opinion from Dr. Watts, and if you don't like his opinion either, you can always talk to Dr. Moniz.
Your right to get a second opinion does not absolve doctors from acting in an ethical way. The whole point of there being a licencing system to begin with, is so that people don't have to constantly keep "caveat emptor" in their mind, when they go visit a doctor. Now, if you want to argue for the total abolition of the licensing system (and no, "ho hum, I am not against relaxing the licensing a little" does not count), the conversation can progress, but as long as there is licensing, ethical rules must apply.
KMC
9hr ago
I might have some positive experiences at some point? Is that it?
Have you ever felt fulfilled, or full of love, or gratitude, or contentment? Have you ever felt hope, or joy, Would you like to experience that, but way more than you thought could be possible?
It's not just some positive experiences. It's more positive than anything else you're ever going to do, probably, and if you can't see that from outside I don't blame you, but I'm telling you anyway. It's just more. That's the best way I can describe it.
4bpp
ใใฎMOLOCHใ ๏ผ
9hr ago
Subtropical, surely; I'd climatically put the heartland at least in the same general class as Louisiana or the Mediterranean (east coast N hemisphere patterns suggest the former). If you go far enough back, every Japanese food of note is continental, but if you are willing to consider miso, soy sauce and fermented fish sufficiently native, those hardly make for bland fare. Generally, pickling and fermentation feature more in the older and lower-class dishes; "purity and fresh ingredients that stand on their own" sounds like copy for indulgences afforded by a modern society that has refrigeration and wants to flex it, not a tradition.
RandomRanger
Just build nuclear plants!
9hr ago
Let's look at it from another angle. Why is NATO so obsessed with the 2% of GDP figure?
Never in human history has a country lost a war to an abstract ratio. They lose to brigades, warships and aircraft. Why is it that NATO insists on a budgetary commitment when what they need is a target for strength? They need to work out how many brigades are needed, how many reservists, submarines and so on to meet their needs.
When you actually look at the ratio of strength, you see that even European NATO alone is not threatened by Russia. Europe has more and better of everything except tactical and strategic nukes. The big European countries have fairly large, modern armies and a much larger overall population than Russia. The big countries alone have about 500,000 professional soldiers, ignoring the little ones. That's much more than Russia prewar. It's the same story at sea and in the air, probably even better for Europe there. At least 3:1 advantage for Europe alone, ignoring the US. And they have the advantage of being on the defence. Dean will of course come in with some galaxy-brained reasoning for why the Russian military juggernaut is really so much more powerful than the decadent NATO pigs, despite also being a pale shadow of its former glory and losing Putin's idiotic war in Ukraine - the worst strategic disaster for Russia since 1941. But for those of us who live in the real world where Ukraine is much weaker than the entirety of Europe, it stands to reason that Europe can defend itself from Russia.
Thus there is no defensive rationale in further conventional militarization. They could not lose to Russia in a conventional war, not if they were prepared to station forces in the Baltics. Given modern satellite surveillance they should be able to foresee a Russian invasion of the Baltics and move forces there to defend them. They should already have forces there if they want to defend them (and they do to some extent). Why offer NATO membership to the Baltics? It's strategically ridiculous, those countries have negligible military potential and bad geography. But if you look at it from the point of view of Lockheed and BAE, it's genius. They can create threatening stories about the Suwalki gap and sell more hardware. Diplomats and statesmen can feel important, prestigious and patriotic standing up to Russia.
Problems arise if Russia goes nuclear, since that's the one place Russia does have advantages. Given their conventional weakness, it makes sense to go nuclear, that's the TLDR of escalate-to-deescalate. They have something like 10:1 in tactical nukes against all of NATO and a large, modern strategic force. Britain and France can still get their warheads off and destroy much of Russia. The US can destroy all of Russia. But why would Britain and France accept megadeaths to ensure that Poland or Lithuania are immolated rather than having to bend over for Russia? It doesn't make much sense but it's possible - Britain has made huge sacrifices for Poland before. They don't even have permissive action links on their nuclear subs, British submarine commanders might execute their own foreign policy.
Why would Putin risk nuclear war with NATO over irrelevant countries like the Baltics, does he even want Poland? The whole scenario is very strange. But if we imagine that Putin is this evil megalomaniacal conqueror, what Europe needs is H-bombs. Tactical and strategic nukes would actually ward off Russia. We can have little doubt that Poland doesn't want to bend over for Russia and would use nuclear weapons to defend themselves.
Who doesn't want European nuclearization? The US and Russia. Nuclearization increases European strategic autonomy, it lessens US influence in Europe. It means that Europeans won't buy overpriced US hardware to suck up to America, that they won't feel the need to show up to wars that don't help them. It means that other countries around the world will nuclearize and lessen US strategic flexibility.
Who wants Ukraine to be in NATO? It has very little defensive utility. The Ukrainian military adds more mass to NATOs but NATO has plenty of mass already. It pushes Russia in the Black Sea. It puts NATO missiles closer to Russia. It raises tensions dramatically, Putin repeatedly warned this was a red line. Nobody's security is enhanced, least of all Ukraine's. But it does sell a lot of weapons!
The mainstream argument seems to be 'Europe needs to produce more weapons to give to Ukraine so they can fight Russia'. But why? Why does Ukraine fighting Russia advance European interests? It hurts European interests, Russia is Europe's natural energy supplier. It would be silly for Europe to attack Azerbaijan for assaulting Armenia or to fight America over Iraq's independence. Don't join wars that don't advance your interests. But when the experts have a chance at lucrative spots on the board of Raytheon, when the decisionmakers want to look strong and patriotic...
4bpp
ใใฎMOLOCHใ ๏ผ
10hr ago
So are you in fact intending to talk about the Ukraine war, or is there a cleaner question you would like to ask hidden in there? In the former case, I think your analogies are all over the place, and to begin with the invocation of the "defensive alliance" line is more than a little inflammatory to us rare anti-NATO readers (as we tend to see it as pure "dare to contradict me if you think you can get away with it" trolling in the vein of workplace neopronouns since the invasion of Serbia at the latest).
Silverdawn
I wake up ๐ There's another psyop
10hr ago
Friends I cannot stress this enough: have kids.
People talk about loss of meaning and loss of rigid rites of passage that take you from being a child to being a man.
It's kids. It's always been kids.
Having kids is really hard (I apparently phrased this poorly since people are responding to it as if I am saying the opposite. My point is that you will find that the following things are the things you end of loving, and you will find the idea that these should ever have prevented you from having kids to be childish): your house will constantly be a filthy mess. They will keep you from sleeping, they will make it impossible to go out to dinner or to go to parties, and they make travel really difficult. Any of the dreams of adventure that you had before you had kids will be pushed back by 10 years.
And NONE of that will matter once you have them. You'll find the idea that you ever cared about any of this stuff laughable.
I remember asking my parents why they had created me when I was about 12. They told me something to the effect of 'You'll get it when you're older and have your own children.'
22 years have passed since and absolutely nothing has changed about my perspective. I see a lot of negatives: less free time, less money, interruptions during sleep, horrible noises and messes to clean up. The potential that I might have to spend the rest of my life as the caretaker for a human with brain damage or some other deformity. And so on and on.
And what are the upsides? I might have some positive experiences at some point? Is that it? I've seen a lot of what I would hesitantly call 'pro-natalism' but I haven't seen any real reasoning or logic. Maybe it's just a hormonal thing and that part of me was damaged or never formed because I legitimately don't understand people who want to be parents.
As far as 'Just trust me, it'll be worth it'. My answer is, sorry but no. I have been guided towards bad decisions far too many times already and this one in particular seems especially horrible in terms of possible consequences.
SubstantialFrivolity
I'm not even supposed to be here today
10hr ago
You spoke earlier of incoherence, but this seems to me to be completely incoherent. How on earth can there be moral culpability for something which you did not have any say in? If indeed the choices you made were set in stone from the moment of your birth (by your genes, by the environment you were raised in, and so on) - there can be no possible moral culpability. You have not, in that event, done anything to be culpable for! The very idea of deterministic outcomes, but with moral culpability for your choices (which they really weren't, but simply the inevitable result of prior circumstance) is incoherent in my opinion.
In any case, as I started this comment, what is freedom of choice?
I quite honestly have no idea what you are driving at nor how to answer your question. The matter is self-evident, it requires no explanation (nor could I provide one without going in circles, because it is so fundamental).
TIRM
10hr ago
If I was in a swing state I would care. Of course I'm not given the few major cities my employers choose to build offices in. My vote truly doesn't count.
I'll vote down ballot. Libertarian candidate is worse than usual so I'm not sure who I'm going to vote for president. But it doesn't matter.
NewCharlesInCharge
10hr ago
A whole lot of them are dumb enough to make their membership in criminal gangs public in other ways, like social media posts and rap songs.
But we can't even criminalize gang loitering, see Chicago v. Morales. Mere membership is likely going to be a protected First Amendment right to association. Bukele doesn't have this problem.
self_made_human
Kai su, teknon?
10hr ago
does low fertility select for a higher percentage of multiple births/twins?
If their fertility is low enough to warrant IVF, then yes, absolutely, the incidence of multiple pregnancy for those undergoing it approaches 30%. Which is great, it's an expensive procedure, so who ought to complain at the chance to get twice the bang/baby for the buck?
DradisPing
11hr ago
I'd disagree on both counts. Kamala Harris was cleverly picked by Biden because she was unpopular enough that party insiders couldn't try to force him to resign, while at the same time they can't block or force out the first black woman VP. Imagine if Spiro Agnew couldn't have been removed. Nixon would have finished his term.
Sarah Palin was viciously attacked because she was the only thing propping up McCain's lacklustre campaign and potentially blocking the first black president. If McCain had picked someone like Paul Ryan then Obama would have won by ten points.
If somehow the VP candidates are Gavin Newsom and Tim Scott I'd bet money against either Trump or Biden being president by 2026.
ActuallyATleilaxuGhola
Axolotl Tank Class of '21
11hr ago
I've heard of it before, and if I had the chance I would definitely try it! I had fermented skate in Korea once. It had a very unique and pungent taste.
George_E_Hale
insufferable blowhard
11hr ago
I'm afraid I'm not the guy to ask, but I can ask around.
JulianRota
11hr ago
I find it amusing that in this thread, I'm being taken to task both for saying that most people shot by cops "had it coming" - being not sufficiently sympathetic to the suspect, and also for saying that a police shooting was "technically" justified - being not sufficiently sympathetic to the police officer. I don't know guys, I'm just trying to be neutral here!
My actual position is more like, I believe both that there is significant police misconduct and that the vast majority of actual police shootings are fully justified. Misconduct takes place more in the smaller stuff, like excessive force and hostility. Felony car stops for paperwork errors, SWAT raids on houses based on flimsy evidence of minor crimes, raiding the wrong house entirely, destructive searches with flimsy justification, etc.
RandomRanger
Just build nuclear plants!
11hr ago
The key thing is that the US isn't indispensable here. The Houthis aren't blocking shipping generally, they're targeting Western-aligned shipping because there's a global struggle for power between two power blocs. The US does the exact same thing as the Houthis with sanctions against its enemies. Sometimes they seize the ships as opposed to flinging missiles at them but the result is basically the same.
It's not that the US pulls back and the whole thing collapses into anarchy. If the US pulls back, other powers will replace America in setting rules and norms. That's why the US isn't pulling back. There are great advantages in being the strongest great power. The buying power of the USD is propped up by American military power. We have the Washington Consensus (named because the World Bank and IMF are based in Washington) the UN based in NY. The US is clearly very concerned about far-flung places like Ukraine or Taiwan. The former isn't important to US interests but it is important for US prestige and dominance in world affairs. The latter is very important for US interests, losing Taiwan and possibly South Korea would be catastrophic for America.
America has gotten used to importing cheap manufactured goods from China and exporting little bits of paper to pay for them. America has gotten used to sanctioning everyone else for poor behaviour, attacking countries without facing serious consequences. That's not baked into the universe, that's an arrangement based on changeable power distributions. The British used to set rules and control the seas. The US took over that role. China could take that role, they have a much bigger maritime industry than the US does. They're the biggest trading nation, they're naturally interested in controlling sea lanes and trade routes.
I have yet to see evidence that this actually works
Highly religious groups have high fertility, this is pretty straightforward!
The alternate thesis isn't 'growing number of elderly people soaking up resources doesn't cause problems' but 'states will take action to prevent elderly people consuming the resources'. Eventually people will break out of the neoliberal fantasy that fiddling with subsidies will raise fertility, or that universal basic income is solely reserved for the old.
DuplexFields
Ask me how the FairTax proposal works. All four Political Compass quadrants should love it.
11hr ago
His Chronicles of Narnia and Sci-Fi Trilogy also give hypothetical answers for the problem of the existence of nonhuman sapients in a God-created world, which is a variety of theodicy.
He portrays in Narnia a multiversal God the Son who may incarnate as a different representative of sapience in any universe created for sapients, in a multiverse where Jesus of Nazareth had already been wrongly crucified as an innocent as a sacrifice for the fallen and resurrected three days later.
In the SF Trilogy, he posits that Satan may be ruler of this world for a time, but that Adversary might be limited to one planet by divine fiat.
My own take is that each sapient species is given a prime metaphor for their relationship with God; for humans, itโs the husband/wife/offspring paradigm, thus how every sin against fruitfulness and multiplying is considered abominable. God may give aliens another prime metaphor entirely.
CanofWorms
11hr ago
It's not a fixation. There are women who get pregnant who want/need to have an abortion who no longer can. That is a direct consequence of selecting Trump for president in 2016. This shouldn't be a controversial/questionable statement.
The big tent coalitions haven't formally included the Greens thus far.
Nevertheless, it's looking like now that the great coalition - EPP, S&D, Renew, will continue. It's familiar to them, and it still bears remembering how much most the EPP considers the maintenance and expansion of the European integration project to override all other concepts, barring cooperation with more hardline euroskeptics and making it uncomfortable with even the more moderate ones.
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