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Soteriologian
6hr ago
A more "gloves-off" approach to online speech is a win for free expression, but its most visible result has been the normalization of unapologetic racism.
For me, as much as I've been infuriated with progressive activism the past decade, the censorship rollback has revealed that the leftists were, in fact, right about many of the rightoids. Many actually are racist -- not in the "oh, there may be group differences" sense, but in the "I hate colored people and I want them out of the country" sense.
Why we can't have a single group that has stable, high-IQ people in charge advocating for basic civic decency, responsibility, and functional society is beyond me. Yes, we can and should imprison colored people for committing violent crime. No, this is not racist. No, that does not mean we ship all the colored people away at gunpoint. As Bukele has so clearly demonstrated, even in a country quite literally full of brown people with a globally chart-topping murder rate, all you have to do is put the violent criminals in prison and the crime magically drops to levels of western Europe. It is, in fact, that simple.
Alas, this is all clearly too much to ask of the Americans.
zeke5123a
6hr ago
Perhaps racism evolved because it is useful? I’m not suggesting there are t terrible failure modes but if multiculturalism actually is bad, then maybe some soft racism is actually good?
5434a
6hr ago
The motto is Peace, Love, Unity, Respect (PLUR)
At best this is an aspiration. It's like BDSM heads talk about safe sane and consensual. Look at what you actually see. In a rave it's synthetic drugs and electronic drums, in BDSM it's sex and violence. Too cynical? Take raves and remove the drugs and drums but leave the PLUR. Does the result still look like raves?
Don't get me wrong, I like raves. I'm just tired of people using trite slogans to morally launder their deviancy and hedonism.
I don't know how to dance with other people, especially how to dance up to a girl to get her attention. Any advice here? I often find myself dancing faster than everyone else.
Raves are not partner dances. Raves can be a place for being expressive, playful and a bit childish, so you can try something like miming. I once saw a guy miming out a full shopping trip to a supermarket. You could try something interactive like bouncing an imaginary basketball and passing it to the people who catch on, then build up the interaction from there - celebrate scoring a half court three pointer, draw them up on a foul/travelling, send them to time out, then if it's a cute girl you could joke about their team's uniform and rib them for not having showered after the match. Just make stuff up. Drugs help. Even if it's not for the women it's a fun change from trying to be all serious. But if you're looking to dance with a partner you should go to partner dances.
Capital_Room
rather dementor-like
6hr ago
What else would even be the point?
To destroy enemy centers of power.
RandomRanger
Just build nuclear plants!
6hr ago
Almost all asteroids are worse sources of metals
Yeah but some of them are much better source of minerals than any mine on earth. Iridium is hard to acquire here for one thing.
Apparently this one is pretty rich: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/(6178)_1986_DA
The asteroid achieved its most notable recognition when scientists revealed that it contained over "10,000 tons of gold and 100,000 tons of platinum", or an approximate value at the time of its discovery of "$90 billion for the gold and a cool trillion dollars for the platinum, plus loose change for the asteroid's 10 billion tons of iron and a billion tons of nickel."[10] In 2024 the estimated value of 100,000 tons of platinum was worth approximately 3.4 trillion US dollars. The delta-v for a spacecraft rendezvous with this asteroid from low Earth orbit is 7.1 km/s.[11]
Even Australian production of iron ore is barely a billion tonnes per year, that's a lot of iron. Iron is at least digestible by the world economy whereas there'd be a glut of gold and platinum.
I have no problem with waiting. Personally I think that leaving Earth's orbit pre-fusion propulsion is silly. But with fusion propulsion lots of opportunities are opened up, one scarcely needs to worry about delta-v within the solar system.
I mean this is just ridiculous:
On 28 February 2020, NASA awarded SpaceX a US$117 million contract to launch the Psyche spacecraft, and two smallsat secondary missions, on a Falcon Heavy rocket.[48] The spacecraft was successfully launched on 13 October 2023, at 14:19 UTC,[49] with an expected arrival in 2029.
6 years! And by the time you get there nothing can be done, chemical rockets are the astronomical cuck chair. You just get to watch the asteroid tumble on.
Amadan
Enjoying my short-lived victory
6hr ago
someone working in the upper echelons of the Israeli government and reporting directly to Benjamin Netanyahu
You seem to have knee-jerked a reply without actually paying attention to the details under discussion.
We're talking about the AG of Nevada. Not an Israeli government official.
And assuming all Jews are Zionists is SS's position, not mine.
thejdizzler
6hr ago
Ahh I see. It is a lot better than what I'm used to, which is just idle theorizing usually. At least couzens tries to support his ideas with "something". But you're right, it's not very rigorous. Thanks for the explanation.
thejdizzler
6hr ago
My understanding is there is a large metabolic and structural component. Heart disease is still the #1 killer and this is almost entirely due to a break down in how the circulatory system functions. There is a genetic component but ti's not like fixing people's DNA will really help
JTarrou
7hr ago
I too am terrified that if we deport more Guatemalans not enough Indians will come here and do the jobs Americans just won't do (for less than minimum wage).
There's one major factory company left in mid-Michigan, but they hire their engineering and technical staff entirely from the subcontinent. Now, because I've seen the unemployment numbers and because this used to be a manufacturing hub, I don't think this is because there aren't enough locals to do the job. It just costs more when you can't ship them back after their visa is up. Every hotel in fifty miles smells like curry, but at least Dow doesn't hire Americans for jobs outside the warehouse.
It would be a real tragedy if those indians were so enraged by anti-black racism they see on the internet that they no longer wanted to come here. Why, companies might have to pay real wages and benefits, and not be able to hold a work visa over their recruits' heads, and that would be bad. Our economy cannot survive without a constant stream of immigrants, because we have laws that force employers to meet certain minimum criteria when hiring Americans, and that's bad.
I quite liked KSR as a kid but Aurora completely ruined him for me, it's fractally bad.
In particular the nonsense about insular dwarfism which crops up very early and makes it obvious that he does not understand the first thing about biology. He repeatedly states that the ship's genetic screening/controlled breeding system is working fine and there is no inbreeding or loss of genetic diversity, then insists that this is pointless and they are doomed because they didn't take the zoo/island effect into account. There's no attempt to find a mechanism by which that might operate despite the genetic diversity being fine, and I don't think KSR realised he needed one.
The morality is even more confused: it builds its anti-space argument around the deep immorality of generation ships, with endless discussion of the inhuman cruelty of condemning future generations to live and die in a ship for your ambition, climaxing with the protagonist attacking would-be space explorers on earth, denouncing them for a crime which none of them have or plan to commit and which she already has. Literally Freya is the only character in the entire book who we see launch a generation ship, and she uses the immorality of her own actions to condemn space exploration as a whole. KSR brushes off this hypocricy, yet he's obviously aware of it because he uses the cryosleep deux ex machina to let Freya give the speech directly instead of dictating it to the grandchildren she condemned to die in space.
Also it's a much pettier issue but I couldn't get over the fact that the ship's closed-loop ecosystem is not only divided into a bunch of different ecoregions with non-overlapping fauna but that most of them have predators including miniature bears and wolves. I half-wish the Snakes on a Plane people would option it for a sequel.
EilonwyPrydain
7hr ago
AuDHD. Interesting you mention the father thing because he's exactly like his dad, which is what scares me sometimes. We're divorced because he couldn't reign in his emotions. They both get extremely frustrated when there's a task they're having trouble with.
Society doesn't seem to have the right model for it. "Oh, he's an abusive husband because he yells and throws things, he's using his emotions to control you." I don't think it was that calculated (and for the record, he never laid a hand on me). I would describe his outbursts as panic attacks - just really accelerated breathing and heart rate and this kind of spiral of escalation that he seemed unable to break out of.
Anyway with the teen, we're trying to figure out the right mix of medication and talk therapy approaches. His school has a 504 with him and we're working on an IEP. Overall they've really tried to work with us. I just have some discomfort around the idea that we're pathologizing what to him is a normal emotional reaction, and making him feel somehow broken. But it does need to be addressed because living with his dad was volatile and unstable. I hope Junior can find a better way to manage it all.
George_E_Hale
insufferable blowhard
7hr ago
Well certainly avoid physical confrontation or violence of any kind, though perhaps that's the idea--you'd like to be violent but the repercussions would be unavoidable.
Hard to answer without much more specific descriptions, unless you're casting about for permission to use manipulation and subterfuge to undermine this person. I'd personally avoid that route as well, though such strategies tend to get results. I'd argue the cost is one's soul but I tend toward dramatic statements, especially when sitting in a hospital waiting room for hours, as I'm doing now. (I'm not sick.)
George_E_Hale
insufferable blowhard
7hr ago
Well normally I'd suggest a gin and tonic at this time of year, but the other comments are probably going to give a peace of mind with a more robust shelf life.
pbmonster
8hr ago
there are many competing ideologies and it isn’t clear to me which KSR thinks are the right ones.
To me it seemed that he design the gift economy some of the Martians end up with to be pretty utopian. But yes, he does't dwell on it, or even elaborate very much.
thrownaway24e89172
Death is the inevitable and only true freedom
8hr ago
How do you define a "principled liberal"? Liberals typically have principles beyond "freedom of speech" and recognize that important principles sometimes conflict. Does being "principled" require a naive "Rank principles in order of importance and act based on that ranking." method of conflict resolution?
Dean
Flairless
8hr ago
Is there a reason to believe a cross-section of the society that has been causing the replication crisis for the professional careers of most of its members is 'quality?'
George_E_Hale
insufferable blowhard
8hr ago
Two things I might offer.
-
a question. You mention he is "neurodivergent." That could mean many things, and you do not have to tell me any of them. But do you suspect this is what's the root of the issue, and that his anger is an artifact of this? That he is acting out anger in inappropriate ways due to an overreaction to stimuli that a less neurodivergent person would react to differently ? If so, that's a tougher issue.
-
Dad is a model of manhood, for better or worse. Many men I know consciously try to be UNlike their fathers (in my mind they fail mostly). But I for example try to be a lot like my dad in terms of temperament. I can remember what would set him off and when. He never really lost his temper--where I have regularly lost mine. I have shown anger in front of my sons in ways he never did, but I have his model to sort of steer me back to how I would like to be. But if 1) is the issue my 2) might again be less relevant. If your son is overreacting to benign stimuli that's going to take more work. I will say that you as the mother are not the model, so there's that. You're more the model of how he will view women.
Heavy exercise is great, sports are great ways to exhaust the body and vent. I agree with whoever already said that. I have two teenage boys.
Finally, I can't comment on your school system in any way but the most vague generalizations, but school has been in some ways always stifling of boys, to varying degrees. Your write-up isn't specific enough for me to know if that's what's going on. I'm pulled back to the word neurodivergent however and wonder if there's more going on.
Also I think that terraforming Mars is a red herring. Are we really short of lebensraum on Earth? Easier to build cities and extract resources in Canada, Antarctica, the deep oceans, Russia, the Sahara.
All near-future space stories have this "problem". There's no good reason for humans to go live in space (besides escaping the "single planet trap" which hedges against catastrophes that are extremely unlikely, many of which would still leave the surviving humans on earth better of than the humans surviving in our potential colonies). The technology required to teraform Mars or building O'Neill cylinders would also fix most problems on earth, just orders of magnitude cheaper.
Let's get offworld certainly, advance as a civilization, secure Mars... but only with good reason. The costs must be outweighed by the benefits
What benefits?
What about Mercury, is there not a tonne of solar power there?
Around twice the delta-V of a Mars mission, if you start from Earth orbit. And for what, 7x the solar irradiance of Earth? Just built 7x the amount of panels here. That's going to be cheaper than shipping the panels (or the panel factories) to Mercury for a very, very long time. Also, once you have heavy industry on Mercury, you need to ship the... heavy goods back out, quickly depleting what little water there is on Mercury.
There are resources in the asteroids, let's get them.
Almost all asteroids are worse sources of metals than a decent mine on earth. So you get into a chicken-or-egg problem with asteroid mining: the only reason why you'd want to do it is because those resources are already in space. But if the only thing to built in space is infrastructure for getting resources, you can just skip the entire space-headache and do your project on Earth for a fraction of the cost!
In the end, it's an awesome scenario for stories, and we like telling stories. Either for entertainment, or for inspiration. But realistically/economically, I don't see a case for human space flight at all. And if you want to build cool/inspirational stuff, you can do a whole lot just with our moon and the space around it.
Dean
Flairless
9hr ago
Do you have any reason to think that @magicalkittycat is not, in fact, just a principled liberal?
Sure. Principled liberals have battle scars from running into reality, and magicalkittycat is neither indicating or claiming any, while repeatedly rejecting other people's observations on sophistic grounds in ways that classical liberals aren't exactly known for, even as he denies or ignores historical dynamics that principled liberals were publicly conceding for decades.
MKC speaks as a leftist assuming the mantle of a liberal, which has been a standard dynamic for decades, not as a classical liberal.
BahRamYou
9hr ago
That's my suspicion. Its like people have taken the prestige from the entire field of mathematics and awarded it all to this one guy, because they need a single person to be the face. No one cares about the number 2, even if he's also super smart and successful.
RenOS
something is wrong
9hr ago
I fear that in certain fields, the opposite might even be the case - that the science regresses one funeral at a time. It's not that the older scientists have no biases whatsoever, but it really isn't rare that younger academics (can't really call them scientists in good conscience, tbf) are much more strictly dogmatic and don't even pretend to be interested in the pursuit of truth if it goes against their beliefs.
BahRamYou
9hr ago
There's also the Mathew Effect, where people give credit to the most famous scientist just because it adds prestige. But can sometimes lead to people like Einstein getting solo credit for things he just briefly mentioned.
Dean
Flairless
9hr ago
You avoided the question, since you did not identify what free speech right is now being targeted by the government by the government not providing monetary grants.
The government was already- as in, for decades pre-Trump- using Title IX against universities for what individuals were doing. This has repeatedly withstood the scrutiny of courts, bipartisan elected official review, and even the approval of academics like Terence Tao. Your own citation concedes that 'Real discrimination deserves a real response,' it merely quibbles what [real discrimination] should be bounded at, while presenting a false dilemma that has already come to pass.
BahRamYou
9hr ago
See i see anecdotes like that, and I think "cool, what did he say that's so smart it made a highly respected professor feel awe? Can i see it too? Maybe I can't understand it but Id like to try. "
With Einstein, there's tons of famous quotes from him, and a ton of pop science designed to help regular people understand his work. Because he did interesting work that we want to understand. Scott Aaronson has a nifty blog helping regular people understand his own work in quantum computing. Ive never seen anyone try to do that for Terence Tao. It just seems like hyper abstract academic stuff that only mathematicians would care about.
They’re not. All you’re seeing is a “10 steps forward, 2 steps back” kind of situation.
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