domain:tracingwoodgrains.com
hydroacetylene
2d ago
I am opposed to this permaban.
Like it or not, class resentment drives a lot of what goes on in our world. It's very worth discussing.
kingofpol
2d ago
they convince talented Jews to accept much higher private sector salaries rather than work in politics(and they get replaced with incompetent and delusional shaniquas)
Or they get replaced by even more politically talented Brahmin->Islam converts like Mamdani while clearing out the traitors in their midst at the same time.
kingofpol
2d ago
This seems like cope.
Saying this is about Israel is as misleading as saying it is about DEI, or immigration in isolation. It about no one of these things- it's about the collection of progressive/democratic coalition shibboleths, any of which is sufficient for the goal.
No, it is about Israel because nobody is getting deported over DEI. Top federal officials aren't devoting their full attention to girls yelling at guys wearing USA shirts. Not a single person has had the book thrown at them for "anti-white racism".
I believe what the Trump Admin does, not what it says.
Both of these, in turn, put the Democratic coalition in conflict with itself, by putting the fiscal interests of democratic political machines (the establishment politicians who need federal money, but also want to stay out of jail) against the partisan interests of the progressives (who want the shibboleths and the money, but care less for the Democratic establishment). Given what's already been written about the ongoing Democratic civil war, and the mid-term prospects, the worse the conflict of interests in the Democratic Party, the better.
Of course, Trump also is pitting the interests of his Jewish donors against the interests of "America First" voters who didn't sign up for endless glazing of a foreign country. The Democrats didn't need any help to provoke a civil war, Joe Biden did that all on its own. By wading in he's provoking an avoidable Republican civil war instead.
This, in turn, aligns with the demonstrated practice of the last half year or so of how the Trump 2 administration has been baiting / luring political opponents into untenable positions, where it will happily gleefully enforce the laws against the opposition from a position of legal strength.
On the contrary, it looks like Trump is himself being baited into an untenable position by his donors/blackmailers. Unconditional support for Israel to the point of punishing American citizens is taking the 20 on a 80-20 issue.
hydroacetylene
2d ago
Yes. They are, uh, not the people who are likely to adopt gene editing.
hydroacetylene
2d ago
I'm sure there is a based tradcath
You called?
who can contextualize all of these follies of the modern world within the disaster that is the sexual revolution, but 'drastic' age gaps were, as far as my meme understanding of history goes, more common back in the day.
What do you mean by 'back in the day'? The youngest average female age at marriage since the middle ages was in the fifties.
It's true that teenaged marriage with large age gaps was viewed as more acceptable back in the day, and was more common than it is today- my own great grandparents were seventeen and thirty, marrying during the depression. But today that marriage is, contrary to the imaginings of progressives on the internet, sufficiently rare as to distantly aspire to be a rounding error on a lizardman's constant. IIRC married women under twenty have smaller average age gaps than married women in their early twenties.
The fifties were not trad; they were a social experiment that has been in many ways backed off from. In 1900 dating/courting was serious business for adult men ready to assume the responsibilities entailed in marriage and women who understood that this meant it was rather unlikely the man would be younger than about the mid twenties. Sometimes she was a teenager(Little House on the Prairie portrays this) but the average woman who married in 1890 was 23.
kingofpol
2d ago
Yet Trump never seems to apply this sort of reasoning to anyone except opponents of Israel.
I've yet to see a foreign student deported for criticizing Britain, or France, or even America.
It doesn't even make sense as a move against "political opponents" since in practice most anti-Israel protesters hate the Democrats and drag down their support, see the R+122 swing in Dearborn.
hydroacetylene
2d ago
I'm ignorant here. Can you shed light on this ? What were the numbers like pre-Trump ?
I don't have a link on hand but TL;DR is that there's a grant program for security at houses of worship(it is very common in America for churches/synagogues to hire off duty police officers as security with full police powers during peak hours- and this option is available and used by other organizations as well, it's not specifically a church thing, police are allowed to do security work with police powers when off duty for extra money and this is common at both high security facilities and at places that have regular and predictable peak hours like churches). This program is available to churches but most of it goes to synagogues because Jews are very well integrated in the NGO network that doles out grants. IIRC this is an old program that hasn't really changed over time and it's fairly bipartisan.
hydroacetylene
2d ago
I would further add that making democrats spend more effort on Israel-related matters will only benefit the republicans because they fight each other when they do that, they convince talented Jews to accept much higher private sector salaries rather than work in politics(and they get replaced with incompetent and delusional shaniquas), they make the progressive wing more prominent and demanding.
hydroacetylene
2d ago
As I've said before- the people drawing this stuff up are right wing Catholics(because that is who staffs conservative policy-making/writing) who do not believe there is anything special about Jews and are, currently, not fans of Israel due to some recent events in Gaza. This is about making democrats fight each other.
WhiningCoil
Ghost of Quokka's Future
2d ago
More to my original point it could very well be that tons of the recipients get Alzheimer’s or some other hitherto unknown condition way earlier and stronger. Causing chaos, and something animal studies didn’t pick up. Our science is not optimized to detect that kind of stuff. And would we really be patient enough to wait for the original test tube generation to fully age before we implement it for others?
Oh yeah, there are always the fears about pushing straight to production with our children. But honestly I think that's the least of it with how dysfunctional all our institutions are these days. We'd be lucky if all that happened was everyone developed generative disorders by 60 instead of living to 120 when you consider how horribly we'd fuck it up even if the technology worked flawlessly.
ChickenOverlord
2d ago
though not easy to follow unless the plausible threat of eternal damnation is attached
Or the threat of shotgun weddings.
odd_primes
2d ago
The similarity lies in the fact that they are both visibly indicated in a way the parents can use for social signalling. Right now prenatal screening is still not ubiquitous, so having a child with Down Syndrome is not necessarily a choice. Ironically that reduces its utility as a signalling mechanism. But in 10-20 years? The only people having a child with Down Syndrome will be doing so because they refused the screening, or deliberately ignored the results.
I don't think this trend will take off in progressive circles though, given how it's uncomfortably similar to evangelical Christian practice. Evangelicals will have staked out a position on this first just by being generally anti-abortion.
Supah_Schmendrick
2d ago
If your goal is the support of civilization - and particularly european-derived civilization - and the flourishing of european-descended individuals, that may not be the best example to cite.
Corvos
2d ago
I'm not saying they are correct, I am saying its a reasonable non evil position to hold.
Ah, apologies.
I personally think that the position’s semi-evilness comes from its reasonableness. It’s a perfectly reasonable chain of thought that ends up denying white people care because they aren’t yet dying in sufficient quantities.
Broadly I would say that the case of old versus young was so stark that it was ok to deprioritise them. And in general one is normally able to avoid such problems by having sufficient manufactured medicine.
But in general when things like this come up, I think that it is best to avoid temptation by not discriminating, to the extent possible.
Supah_Schmendrick
2d ago
Israel is a liberal & open democracy.
Ehhhhhhhh...it's definitely both of those things when compared to its regional neighbors, but in any sort of absolute ranking it has all sorts of problems; a crazy runaway judiciary, excessive military entanglement in politics, endemic public corruption, etc.
The_Nybbler
In the game of roller derby, women aren't just the opposing team; they're the ball.
2d ago
Trumps own former BLS chief himself doesn’t like it
So? That doesn't mean it's "without evidence".
And that quote isn't damning at all. The fact that the commissioner doesn't collect the numbers herself does not mean she is not responsible for doing so.
I'm 99% sure Trump's wrong and she wasn't cooking the numbers, and it's likely she wasn't doing a bad job.
Corvos
2d ago
Re: Avatar fiction, Semper Victoria is very good, although doesn’t take the transhumanist angle.
Rather, it just extrapolates directly from the end of the first film. The original mission has failed and Earth society is on the verge of ripping itself apart from cascading fuel shortages. So the UN does the only thing it can do: cobble together all the resources they can still access, send one more expedition in a Hail Mary flight across the stars, and promise Parker Selfridge immunity from prosecution if he agrees to act as advisor for the mission.
It’s very well written and the author does a great job of keeping the stakes high and the characters relatable and non-preachy. To quote them:
This is not going to be a "humans show up and curb-stomp the na'vi" kind of story. Nor is it "Humanity is perfect, na'vi aren't". I'm going to show humanity as we are, the good, the bad, the ugly. the noble and the savage, the idealist and the cynical, etc.
Even if you're a huge fan of the Na'vi, I think you can still enjoy my tale. Give it to the first few chapters at least and let me know what you think.
Dean
Flairless
2d ago
Israel didn't directly instigate Iraq 2 of course,
A bit of an understatement: the Israelis advocated against it, on the grounds that if any regime changing was to happen, it should prioritize Iran.
The American response was allegedly that Iran would be next. Which actually makes a fair bit of sense if you are planning to take down both, since it's easier to drive from Kuwait and Saudi into Iraq than do a cross-Hormuz amphibious invasion, but no one exactly remembers them of being good planners.
professorgerm
You shall love your crooked neighbor, with your crooked heart
2d ago
Never thought before about how culturally informative it might be to ask what kind of beans go with rice or that you have for dinner.
it wasn't as good as half a can of tomato soup made with milk and a bunch of crackers
Mmm, a little margarine on the crackers when you can? Delicious.
Dean
Flairless
2d ago
The US has given similar amount in aid to Egypt. Both use the money to immediately buy American weapons. At least Israel operates in tight lockstep with the American military. What does the US get by sending money to Egypt ?
An end to semi-regular wars along the Suez Canal and degrading the arms-supplier influence nexus to Egypt from major American geopolitical rivals?
EverythingIsFine
Well, is eventually fine
2d ago
I mean, I’m picturing something like an extra 20 years of useful life, 10 years of not so functional life, and maybe an IQ gain of 5-10. I am not an expert but would doubt you could realistically get much more than this. Laying aside the race stuff and caustic negativism, I don’t imagine that would be too societally chaotic. I’d imagine lifespan differences wouldn’t become obvious until the 50s. So I could imagine some strife within families when your child is 50 and you are maybe 80 and it’s becoming obvious that your child will live longer and already has a higher QoL than you did at that age. Families already get a bit dysfunctional around wills and such at that age so that to me is the bigger concern or plausible source of tension. Like Boomer resentment multiplied, flipped, and personalized. Disease resistance as well (if it even works) is largely invisible on a personal level so I don’t think that figures too much.
More to my original point it could very well be that tons of the recipients get Alzheimer’s or some other hitherto unknown condition way earlier and stronger. Causing chaos, and something animal studies didn’t pick up. Our science is not optimized to detect that kind of stuff. And would we really be patient enough to wait for the original test tube generation to fully age before we implement it for others?
SSCReader
2d ago
Absolutely. And that is a reasonable critique of the position. Especially if you pointed out significant parts of the poor health is behavioural! I'm not saying they are correct, I am saying its a reasonable non evil position to hold. With scarce resources some people are not going to be treated. But note that is also the basic decision we came to with age. Younger people had to wait to get vaccinated. So were we punishing young people for being too healthy? Or is it simply the pragmatic choice to try and equalize death rates between different age groups? We did deprive young people of care they would have got in an age blind society then presumably. Is that ok but race skewing isn't? Or are neither ok?
Like I said in the other thread its not just about race, its also age, and class and job role. Should you vaccinate a farmer or a barista? The farmer is likely to be more important to food security, but a barista is likely to be exposed to and expose many more people. Depending on your goals/priorities you can make a reasonable case for either.
Dean
Flairless
2d ago
You have re-cited one of three distinct conditionals that would enable the Trump administration to lawfully act against its political opponents breaking the law, as a response to a post arguing that any of the three conditionals would meet the probable intent of seeking to lawfully act against political opponents breaking the law.
RobertLiguori
2d ago
If they aren't, and it is ever possible that someone other than the Author-Empowered God Stand-In ever claims (or even challenges) that power, then there is not just no story, but no possibility of a story, because the superintelligence would just turn off the laws of physics that permit its enemies to have ever existed. A superintelligence would need to derive a benefit from the existence of a non-sterile galaxy commensurate with the risk of another superintelligence popping up in it and saying "Fuck you and the light-cone you rode in on."; even if it doesn't go full paperclip-maximizer, shouldn't a superintelligence be like "Hey, the fact that failure is a dramatic possibility means that we should pre-empt this?"
It's just unsatisfying to me, and more so to pretend that being able to change the INT_MAX global variable is anything other than either evidence of pure simulationism or about as sci-fi as the Force. It's a conceit I was able to go along with when I read one of the books, but what was trying to come across as mysterious just felt half-baked to me. Like, what if I invent blargle-snarfing, which is applying reason and inference to data available to me but not actually thought? How is 'thought' defined and gatekept?
Sure like I say, by the numbers they might be wrong. But presumably that means you accept the principle that if say 25yo black Americans were dying at the same rate as 85yo white people from Covid then it might have been reasonable at the outset to reserve vaccines for white people over 65 and black people over 25, befoe you start expanding it to white people 45 and so on. That if the difference was as stark as age turned out to be, that their argument would have been justified.
Which means i think its hard to call it evil. At least for me. But thats value not fact dependent, so certainly arguable.
More options
Context Copy link