domain:imgur.com
Bartender_Venator
12hr ago
From my limited reading on the Wars of the Roses, this was also a factor there - Henry IV's usurpation of the throne meant that all the various cadet branches of the Plantagenets felt they had some kind of a claim.
Pongalh
12hr ago
Definitely messier, but that's what happens when you relax rules of expression. I for one like the democratization of ads. So random now, showing Americans' quirky idiosyncrasies in all their guy-or-girl-next-door glory.
Disclosure: I'm a proud producer of what is arguably definitely AI slop. (Check out my cheeky YT shorts channel, in fact: https://youtube.com/@ShockJonesy/shorts)
ArjinFerman
Tinfoil Gigachad
12hr ago
And where did "this one thing" come from? It didn't fall out from the sky, it wasn't a preexisting institution that managed to resist takeover by happenstance, it was built from scratch. If progressive propaganda was limitlessly effective this wouldn't happen in the first place, and they wouldn't be pulling their hair out at their inability to reproduce it.
nopie
13hr ago
Not true. There have been times when printing money was correct policy, for example, after big crises of 2008.
ChickenOverlord
13hr ago
Isn’t the solution to reduce executive power so whoever wins the next election can’t just destroy whatever’s been built? On the other hand, much of what restrained the executive was convention and tradition, which has been razed in the last 10ish years.
10 years? Try 200. There hasn't been any real appetite in the general public (nor amongst elected officials) to reduce the power of the executive since Andrew Jackson. Jackson, Lincoln, and FDR are some of the starkest examples of executive power increasing significantly (and never really decreasing after).
AnonymousActuary
13hr ago
I think the argument would be that the deficit will eventually trigger some sort of economic death spiral that would be very unpleasant. So if your party can be reasonable, it might postpone said death spiral a few more years.
nopie
13hr ago
Inflate? It doesn't work mathematically. Sorry, you are not making any sense.
AnonymousActuary
13hr ago
because the cost of social security benefits and the cost of medical spending are growing at two very different rates.
Chrisprattalpharaptr
Ave Imperaptor
13hr ago
Canada used to be seen as a “nicer America”, an uncontroversially well-running state.
No, it didn't. Or if it was, it was by ignorant people living half a world away teaching your high school geography class. This is so far from Canadians' self-conception that at least on this point, I can confidently say that you have no idea what you're talking about.
phailyoor
13hr ago
Transing Afghans didn't exactly work out. Seems like bringing in lgbt and feminism just made them hate us more.
phailyoor
13hr ago
True in some degree, but it was the Democrats who spearheaded billions in weapons for Ukraine.
ChickenOverlord
13hr ago
Defense spending in the US (about $800 billion) is about 1/3 the dollar amount spent on Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid (about $1.9 trillion). Even if the US spent closer to what a typical country spends on defense (about 1.9% of GDP as opposed to the US's 3.4% of GDP) it would still spend about $450 billion on defense. Right-wing love of defense spending doesn't even hold a candle to left-wing love of entitlement spending.
PokerPirate
13hr ago
There's a reason there's no Oakland Amish.
There's no Amish, but there are self-declared pacifists. See for example https://oaklandcatholicworker.org.
This is not an argument against the values described, just a note on their evident limitations.
I disagree this is a limitation of pacifism. No body wants to live in "Oakland" (which I'm assuming is metonymy for any violent place). I claim that pacifism has better outcomes than non-pacifism for someone who must live in such a place. I don't think these are always strictly better outcomes for the individual, but that these better outcomes are society-wide.
Pacifism works when you live with other committed pacifists.
You imply that it doesn't work around non-pacifists, which I disagree with. Although the disagreement is probably about the aims that we should be working towards.
Distance can replace walls and spears.
Most reasonable people would prefer to be away from violence. So I don't think this is a unique jab at pacifism.
The implication is that pacifists cannot strategically interact with violence in a way that achieves their aims. But there are plenty of pacifists who would strategically reduce their distance to conflict in order to effect change that cannot be accomplished with spears. The AFSC ambulance units that helped combatants and non-combats on all sides in WWI and WWII is a standard example. In my own life, I've lived in North Korea trying to reduce conflict between them and the US.
phailyoor
13hr ago
Tax cuts are far more fiscally responsible than an equivalent amount of deficit spending. With tax cuts, you can always raise taxes later and people will grumble and accept it. But god forbid you try to take away someone's gibs. Remember that Elon literally killed over 300,000 people by cutting usaid.
dasfoo
13hr ago
In the best possible case that I can see, we would be expending our political power to create stable economic conditions for our opponents to then rule.
You just explained why any party that campaigns on cutting spending will never do it.
OracleOutlook
Fiat justitia ruat caelum
13hr ago
Usually punishment is confinement to her room for X amount of time, the worst was for two days in a row when she was suspended from school.
We tried spanking for a span when she was four, but it didn't have any effect. Confining her to her room doesn't really have an effect either, except giving her space to calm down.
My mom just recommends taking the next treat away, but the behavior is so continuous, disruptive, and unsafe that we're at the point where we don't do treats. We don't get to go to parties, play dates or movies. We take away the next trip to Costco.
professorgerm
You shall love your crooked neighbor, with your crooked heart
13hr ago
it seems quite likely that transing a neutral country will bring it culturally closer to the American universal culture fold
Surely Coca-cola and McDonald's have been doing a better job for decades with less risk of cultural backlash? Or does it need to be specifically government-funded imperial initiatives that count?
Chrisprattalpharaptr
Ave Imperaptor
13hr ago
If either or both of them dedicate significant resources to striking at each other, then that will confirm that the breach is serious in nature, and that will bode extremely ill for my faction.
...why? I mean, firstly, 'significant resources' is load-bearing here in a way that's difficult to falsify. Secondly, I recoil at the use of 'my faction' (where's the guy who was trying to address the address the hate in his heart with his pastor, or something like that?) but I guess that ship has sailed. Thirdly, what does it matter to you whether Trump cancels Elon's contracts or Elon doesn't show up for republicans next election? Your coalition is the same, the people who vote for guns and the people who vote for abortion and the people who vote for whatever else will turn out in 2028.
Either way, I'll go way out on a limb and predict that the presidency goes D in 2028, without knowing who either candidate will be. In the grand scheme of things, Elon-Trump beef is irrelevant.
this would be evidence that our leadership is fundamentally dysfunctional, and I would expect that to manifest in other ways in relatively short order.
Again, why? Obviously your leadership is fundamentally dysfunctional - how can you read what Elon and Trump are tweeting at each other and conclude anything else? Would you ever behave that way, let alone behave that way if you were representing a nation? They're just dysfunctional in ways that you or your 'faction' approves of.
What updates beyond this would you recommend?
You should probably update on at least the stability of Elon. Whether the drug of choice is ketamine or culture war, something degraded significantly in the last couple years, and I say that as a papa Elon fanboy.
I'd say you should probably update on Trump as well, but I expect you already think he's bonkers and love him anyways or you'll never change your opinion, so that's probably not a worthwhile conversation.
thinly-veiled
Was this meant to link to a pop song? If so, the reference went over my head.
Where do you expect the thinly-veiled minecraft references to be directed?
From Trump supporters, towards Elon.
oats_son
13hr ago
It makes sense to me that different things framed differently can get more or less popular at different rates. With the amount of media coverage being dedicated to transgenders, it is likely more normie-coded than wearing assless leather out in public, giving cover to anyone undertaking the transgender path. I'd argue a huge part of the discourse is in trying to present an obviously sexual thing as not sexual at all. The way it's presented is "transgenders are just normal people like you and me trying to navigate their mental illness (even though dysphoria isn't actually a requirement in the public eye anymore), so most restrictions are hateful." I think that kind of framing would have a big impact on uptake of any paraphilia, or any trend at all, like T-shirt wearing or membership in a gun club or motorcycling.
Ioper
13hr ago
So it isn't a problem because you plan to cut entitlements and raise taxes? How does that make it different from any other unfunded entitlement?
professorgerm
You shall love your crooked neighbor, with your crooked heart
13hr ago
One of the ChatGPT image-generation things going around Twitter is to ask it to create an image how it feels about you. Goblinodds has a cool one and features more in the replies. So I gave it a shot and the results are... underwhelming. At least it gets the melancholy right but I don't think my shoulders can pull off that mourning dress.
I think it overindexed on characters I previously generated to accompany a writing project and decided that my "self-portrait" needed to look along the same lines. Or since I'm a freeloader I'm not getting the fun, creative version; I notice the settings are more restrictive for the free tier recently.
Anyone else having fun with image generators? Or more generally, doing anything fun and non-programmer with generative llms? I like skimming Zvi's updates but so much of supposed usefulness is for programmers, where do I find the normie's guide to interesting things to do?
wlxd
13hr ago
Please, do the math. Get some data on how many wealthy people are there, how much you expect to get from each, multiply one figure by the other, and get surprised about how paltry it is.
As it happens, US already has the most progressive tax system of all developed countries. In US, it is disproportionately the wealthy how pay the bulk of the taxes. In contrast to that, in Europe, the bulk of the taxes is paid by the middle class. For example: in US, you only enter the 32% tax bracket once you’re above $192k/year. In France, and I shit you not, you start paying 30% tax starting from 27.5k EUR. On top of that, when you actually try to spend whatever you’re left with, you pay 20% VAT, whereas in US, the highest sales tax rarely exceeded 10-11%.
The result is that people making 60k EUR/year are the backbone of French budget, whereas in US, if you make $60k, you barely pay any tax at all, considering deductions, EITC, etc.
Seriously, just do the math.
mrvanillasky
Indo Aryan Thot Leader
13hr ago
mrvanillaskys guide to rural India
I finally stepped foot in the village my mother comes from today. It's an hour away from hier small town in my last weeks update and the problems of the city are not as apparent there as the entire village is one km in radius or two if you are generous, so if you walk for t10 minutes and so without stepping on the animal waste, you will find yourself surrounded by proto bali like crops on slopes that are not super impressive compared to bali but still pretty interesting.
My moms family ran the entire village and a few centuries ago one of our ancestors saw Shiva in a dream, where he was told to go to a tree, uproot it and make a shiva temple with the Shiva Linga found there, he did just that and the most important temple in that small region of a few villages was built on that site. I feel great whenever I go there. The problems of poverty and a lack of resources, general helplessnes plague the people, unlike the city, you dont see rivers of open sewage, the air is cleaner. I felt quite out of place too, I was introduced to some of my distant relatives and it was nice to see that they were studying real things like biology or math in college as the arts here are just bad.
My familys house there has close to 80 something rooms, built more than a century ago, the most important person being my uncle, one of them, the youngest one, though all are older than my mom who was the youngest and the only girl. His wife got a PhD in psychosomatic disorders and has been trying her hardest to make the place go beyond plain agriculture by getting people to open shops up that provide some regular cash. She moved back to the village because of my uncle and renovated parts of our huge house. I felt quite a bit of peace going through the narrow paths that cujt through fields and semi arid forests. You apprecaite and also dislike the large city you live in.
People were quite short, pretty dark and very simple minded. There were some marriages happening, marriages are gneerally happy times in the grim setting that rural India is. People vist the temple my family built and everyone knows everyone. We had giant monekys that have a black face entre the house daily which led to my aunt and uncle using their air gun a bunch of times. What did surprise me was tha availability of ultra procesed food and smartphone addiction. Everyone is 2 feet away from shops that sell soft drinks, potato chips, ice creams and everyones always on thier phones, much less than a city. I wish to visit the place soon, hopefully as a better man.
My understanding is that he intentionally drove into a crowd of pedestrians, but it wasn't political or a nihilistic mass murder: he was just on a lot of drugs. It doesn't appear to have been an accident.
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