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UnopenedEnvilope
10hr ago
Your hypothesis is that we were close to civil war in the late 60s/early 70s? Disagree. Most young people weren’t hippies, let alone militant radicals. In the book Days of Rage it’s noted most NYers regarded the large number of bombings of mostly empty buildings as nuisances. The crazies can’t do it on their own.
I think Real™ Civil War is very unlikely from the civilian Left. Currently the Left's martial spirit, prowess, and capability are severely lacking. They have such little force projection that even terrorism would likely be kept within Democrat strongholds.
EverythingIsFine
Well, is eventually fine
10hr ago
I mean although this kind of violence is infamously contagious and prone to copy-cats, the optics here are pretty uniquely terrible. Not that it usually matters for terrorists that their actions frequently are counter-productive. The museum is already left-aligned in several ways (the website has a Native American land acknowledgement and an Equity and Justice statement about BIPOC people, hosts "LGBTJews" events, etc.), the man wasn't even Jewish he was a Christian although both were still Israeli embassy staff, and the couple was young and photogenic, famously about to get engaged within a week or two.
I don't see how this changes anything about partisan violence levels.
Tree
10hr ago
First, they are not people. And that’s not a dehumanizing comment about my opponents.
Second, the state constantly seizes real people’s shit, via the salami slicing technique.
Third, despite being considerably less than people, they are exempt from tax, so treated better than people.
ChickenOverlord
10hr ago
This isn't a new issue. Most infamous to me are the Smoot hearings. Note that Smoot himself was not a polygamist, so this was essentially at attempt to expel a senator over his beliefs: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reed_Smoot_hearings
ABigGuy4U
10hr ago
I’m not saying the Zizians would cause a civil war. I’m saying it’s some evidence that the crazies are starting to move.
UnopenedEnvilope
10hr ago
I cannot see most of the events you mentioned causing a civil war. If the J6ers had stopped the certification of the vote, kidnapped some congressmen, etc. that would rank the most probable. And they didn’t. The Zizians? What societal fault lines are the Zizians setting in motion? Who is calling for armed rebellion to avenge the landlord they killed?
roystgnr
10hr ago
Tuberculosis, a 'CURABLE DISEASE' !! kills 1.25 million every year.
This surprised me a bit: worldwide those deaths are from about 10M new cases every year, so you've got better than 10% odds of dying if you're infected ... but in the USA we still have 500-600 deaths from about 10K new cases every year, so you've still got better than 5% odds of dying if you're infected! Has antibiotic-resistant TB gotten that bad? Do people let TB infections get bad enough to be untreatable before seeking treatment?
It looks like most of our progress against TB predated the cure, too. 10K/340M cases per year is about 3/100K for the US, vs 10M/8B = 125/100K for the world as a whole, so at least we've had incredible success at making TB an avoidable disease... In 1900 the US death rate was nearly 200/100K, from God only knows what infection rate, but it steadily dropped to a fraction of that even before streptomycin was invented ... apparently mostly from better living conditions (less overcrowding and more ventilation, better quarantine of infected patients, less malnutrition making people vulnerable)?
self_made_human
Kai su, teknon?
10hr ago
I'm certainly not critiquing you for changing your mind! Imagine you had an interlocutor who you respected, yet who had always strongly pushed back against your claims. To have them suddenly adopt them, potentially even more strongly than yourself? That's a bemusing experience to say the least. It's as if the Pope recanted and became a Protestant, if not as drastic.
I am moderately depressed, and often feel shite about how life has been going recently (objectively not bad enough to warrant it). Yet I find strong comfort in knowing that in likely in one of the most interesting periods of human history. Leaving aside the 97 billion deceased anatomically modern humans, I feel a pang of sadness for every visionary, every proto-rationalist, singularitarian who dreamt of a transhumanist future, and yet died before they could see it.
In their honor, I intend to live to see wonders/horrors, and if the former, a lasting solution to every problem I've ever had. If the latter? Barring starving to death, it'll probably be quick and mostly painless. The future could be amazing, and I want to see it unfold. I'm sick of nothing ever happening.
Fruck
Lacks all conviction
10hr ago
We'll have one actor who is the leading man type, every time you see an AI playing Brad Pitt or Keanu Reeves you will know he's a leading man, every time you see Jason Statham or John Cena you know he's going to fight some people, every time you see Nicole Kidman you know she's going to be sexy and vulnerable and a little bit evil - regression to the 20th century. But we won't stop there - through cultural osmosis we'll start referring to those characters by the actor names - oh King Arthur is the Brad Pitt of the story and Guinevere is the Nicole Kidman. Then we'll go even further and use them to represent archetypes - 'ooh that dude is giving real Keanu vibes' and different ais will have different pantheons until we end up right back at 'Brad Pitt, of course, was sick of Nicole Kidman's nagging, so he turned into a sexy swan and seduced Leda.'
ABigGuy4U
10hr ago
Two Israeli embassy staff were shot dead late yesterday night as they were walking just outside the Capitol Jewish Museum. The Capitol Police have identified the suspect as one Elias Rodriguez of Chicago. Reportedly, Rodriguez shouted “Free Palestine” as he executed the couple, who were engaged to be married.
I have been meaning to write a “Civil War vibe-check” top-level post. My intuition was that the danger of such a nightmare scenario was receding, having peaked twice, with the mass-shooting at the Congressional baseball team practice game, and the George Floyd Riot/January Sixth Riot forming a stockbroker’s double blow-off top before a consistent decline in risk.
Recently multiple events have made me question this. The Zizian cult killings, the suicide bombing in Palm Springs over the weekend, and now this, make me feel like something is perhaps coming. Maybe not a full Syrian Civil War, but at least another Days of Rage similar to the period in the 1970s after the great wave broke and began to recede. I would appreciate hearing anyone’s thoughts.
self_made_human
Kai su, teknon?
10hr ago
I'm young(ish) and in otherwise good health, so they were never that bad. My first and last confirmed bouts were the worst, being somewhat worse than the average cold. The others were indistinguishable from the same. Just a few days moping around in bed waiting for the worst of it to pass, barely even a fever. It's possible I caught it more than 4 times, but I stopped bothering to get tested a long time ago.
SkoomaDentist
10hr ago
In related news Trump administration just revoked Harvard's ability to enroll international students by terminating the Harvard University’s Student and Exchange Visitor Program certification. Apparently this will also force their current exchange students to transfer to other schools or lose their legal status.
Fruck
Lacks all conviction
10hr ago
Stop there, go no further, turn back now. That is the antilife equation.
ABigGuy4U
11hr ago
@FiveHourMarathon The tax exemption also makes many churches incredibly cowardly, as they have to refrain from doing or preaching anything that could harm the precious tax exemption.
ABigGuy4U
11hr ago
Untouched by you, I mean. Thin men and thick women pay themselves sinecures from the ill-gotten treasure. Worse, these janitors conspire to turn it against the state.
I’m not sure I agree with this reasoning. If these people receive payment, then definitionally, they cannot be janitors.
VoxelVexillologist
Multidimensional Radical Centrist
11hr ago
They stopped naming COVID variants after Greek letters right when they got to 'Xi'.
roystgnr
11hr ago
I think it helps me to be old enough to have become aware of the seriousness of the Cold War before the end of the Cold War. I still remember the library shelves where little-me found a book explaining Mutually Assured Destruction, warhead and missile counts, warhead blast radii, etc. We didn't know about all the actual close calls yet, but there was enough there to make it quite clear that at any moment I could be 45 minutes away from incineration, with so little I could do about it that there wasn't even any point to anxiety.
In an objective sense this is much worse than that, because even an all-out nuclear exchange would have left us (well, humanity, anyway; everyone I knew personally would also have been incinerated) with billions of survivors and a viable (at least in some countries) civilization to rebuild from, whereas if Superintelligence actually turns out to be obtainable while Friendliness remains distant and Corrigibility remains intractable then that's the end of that. But for my subjective well-being I think it's good that my reaction to a bit of creeping existential dread is "Hey, I remember you. Long time no see."
lagrangian
11hr ago
There's a data quality issue in here, and I'm not sure on which side. Scott's "annual deaths" graph shows a sharp uptick for Covid. Yours does not.
There's also the "harvesting" effect - many people who died from Covid did not have long left. I am most interested in what effect Covid has on the 10 year moving average of total deaths.
MaiqTheTrue
Renrijra Krin
11hr ago
I don’t see feelings as bad, I see a hyper-focused fixation of the modern world on getting their feelings right first, of making decisions based on feelings, to not only be a dead end, but often make building a good life impossible because building a good life doesn’t always match up to doing what feels good. It might feel good to cut out everything that makes you unhappy in the moment often means cutting yourself off from other people (who are imperfect) opportunities (that often have trade-offs or require hard work to realize), experiences (that might be uncomfortable in the moment, but lead to better things). It just seems to be a way to end up stuck, bitter, alone, and wallowing in bad feelings. Properly dealing with your feelings does matter, but I don’t think focusing on how you feel above duty, above growth, or above being a good person is a good thing.
I’ll agree that apart from God and Godly advice it ends mostly in bad places. I think a lot of terrible things have been done because a person had become bitter about people or situations, let it fester, and turned on others.
hydroacetylene
11hr ago
‘White south Africans shouldn’t be granted refugee status’ is an argument that took a significant blow when the South African government published a statement saying that they were attempting to escape justice by fleeing. What the South African government itself says about its treatment of whites is, well, suspect in that light.
But Trump also clearly cares about this for some reason.
hydroacetylene
11hr ago
Several possible reasons- skin color and public prominence come to mind.
2rafa
11hr ago
I’m very flawed, in that I’m often arrogant, prone to making things up, dismissive. But I like to think that when the evidence is there, I can adapt, change my view. The evidence is here - even a simpleton can extrapolate. It’s easy to be scared but, when I am, I think of all the scientists and philosophers and inventors who one day imagined a moment like this, but who never got to see it. That is also a privilege, even if the outcome is a poor one.
jkf
12hr ago
I'm not so sure on "jabs" -- AFAIK this is good idiomatic British English, but much less so in North America. It feels like the sudden memetic adoption (particularly on the part of medical authorities, which I'd expect to use more formal language as a rule) of this word here in particular has something more behind it than brevity.
"Shots" of course I buy -- "getting the dog his shots" is a fine thing to say; "getting the dog jabbed" would be very weird (in North America). Doubly so if the speaker were my veterinarian.
What intelligence did the Germans have and bury? I see the BND performed a 2020 analysis that came to pro-lab-leak conclusions only and got revealed in 2025, but (at least at the "why do we trust reporters with the first draft of history, exactly?" level of perfunctory research) I'm not seeing that their analysis was founded on any information that only they knew.
Nor do I see what their motive for a coverup would be. They were contemptuous of and butting heads with President Trump, and their most recent big interaction with China was signing on to a condemnation of the treatment of the Uyghurs. I can see why some people in China and the US might want a coverup, but it's hard to see how a revelation of "A Chinese lab working with Americans leaked the pandemic" would cause German intelligence any suffering worse than an overdose of schadenfreude. Does the German secret service publish many of their analyses openly, such that this one was an exception?
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