domain:doyourownresearch.substack.com
professorgerm
found a needlessly pedantic hill to die on
4d ago
There is no background check which can 100% assure you that someone is not abusive, or not a North Korean spy.
I don't expect 100% of background checks to be 100% perfect.
The guy in question has held at least 4 different jobs in four different districts (three different states plus DC). All four either didn't do a background or the background failed? Dude's got pretty good luck or the background check system school districts use is a farce.
crushedoranges
Can Marx explain the used panties market?
4d ago
When Esau sold his birthright for a bowl of lentil soup, it was supposed to be a parable about keeping safe one's inheritance and revering one's forefathers. You're not supposed to actually do it, or say that it's a good thing!
The_Nybbler
If you win the rat race you're still a rat. But you're also still a winner.
4d ago
12 inches to a foot, 3 feet to a yard (also 5280 feet to a mile though that isn't exactly everyday)
You can easily derive the 5280 feet from 3 feet to a yard, 440 yards to a quarter mile.
16 ounces to a pound, 2000 lbs to a ton
Except troy pounds which are 12 (slightly larger) ounces. Though if you're dealing with troy pounds you can hire someone to remember that. Also the ton can be the long ton of 2240 lbs.
3 tsp to one tbsp
And 2 tbsp to the fluid ounce.
Grant_us_eyes
4d ago
Being unkind, he's just not very smart.
Being alternatively unkind, he's smart but abusing the simplified mythology revolving around how most people understand immigration and how it occurred in the late 19th/early 20th century.
I find it amusing that he's trying to use Italians as an example. If we treated Muslims and Somalians the way we treated Italians back then, we'd have a large number of people loosing their minds over it.
BahRamYou
4d ago
The first is that it is impossible to get ethnic food with mass immigration from that country. That's obviously nonsense, with the internet and online shopping, you can buy basically any foodstuff in the developed world, regardless of whether your country has had immigration from where that food comes from.
(I'm assuming you meant "without mass immigration")
These days we in America have a different problem, where it's hard to get anyone at all to cook food in restaurants. The low pay and terrible work conditions just drive out any normal person with options, especially when you can make so much more in a tipped position like waitstaff. The only people doing it are either crazy people who couldn't get a job anywhere else, or immigrants. So in a way we do kinda need mass immigration to support those cheap restaurants and delivery services, and ethnic ones can get away with the most avoidance of immigration laws.
Of course we could also just cook for ourselves but who wants that.
100ProofTollBooth
Dumber than a man, but faster than a dog.
4d ago
Alright, so, for the rabid animal case, it's pretty much fend off the attacking zombie deer and then get my ass to the hospital for all of anti-rabies shots and whatnot?
Bleep
4d ago
there wasn't a national ID in 1954 and yet the Eisenhower administration expelled the vast majority of removable aliens they targeted
identifying illegals and removing them isn't difficult to accomplish because of a lack of national id, it's difficult to accomplish because the government and powerful interest groups don't want it to happen
it's not some big mystery where the vast bulk of illegals are in the US and it's relatively easy to identify the overwhelming vast bulk of them once they're encountered (race, language, documents)
the reason the right doesn't want national id is because it just gives even more power to the federal government which, for approx 80 years, may as well be structured specifically to harm the right
whether or not it's possible this increased power would make it marginally easier to id illegals doesn't matter because that's not what it would be used for and we know that because there are already on the books strict laws and requirements which are not followed or used
It's hard not to point at the God Shaped Hole in Yglesias' specific argument here.
When people point to the immigration "success" of Italians, Irish, Poles, Germans, Scandinavians, and Mexican and Central Americans of yesteryear, it's hard not to see the Pope in the background doing the Jeremiah Johnson nod of approval. Even for non-catholic groups, they were still Christian. That basic scaffolding is doing a lot of work; perhaps fueled by lasagna, I can't say.
@CrispyFriedBarnacles brings up the history of Jews in America below, and I think that's a really good argument against what Yglesias is trying to say here. Some Jews in America have fully assimilated. But there are dozens of communities that have not only no assimilated, they actively resist American ways of life to an extent that, I believe, is probably unconstitutional. How is Kiryas Joel, NY don't constantly fighting equal protection and/or discrimination cases?
I think it's harder to assimilate now because people are showing up with basic values structures that are either vastly different than even the most modernized (not progressive) pop culture American values or, more commonly, without a functional values system at all. If a new immigrant has the basic concept of "be a responsible member of the community" in place, the local society can gently pressure him or her to refine those to whatever particular style they want. But if people are showing up with nothing beyond "maximize personal utility" we're then in a situation of literally importing millions of game-theory defectors and free-riders.
I've seen some talking points from both left and right along the lines of "immigrants work so much harder! They take all the crappy jobs and they live jammed on top of each other!" Yeah, well, I don't want to be part of a society that has a median tending towards crappy jobs and over-code cohabitation. I like the idea of upskilling and of throwing automation efforts at the really dangerous jobs. I like the idea of a couple being able to afford their own - modest - home before they're 30 years old. People like to sneer at the white underclass because they're getting outcompeted by recent immigrants. To the extent that this is true (limited) it is only because a race to the bottom is happening and the undercutting of wages has led to a class level decline in standard of living.
faceh
4d ago
Always found it hilarious that they explored and conquered the entire globe in the hunt for spices then used exactly NONE of said spices in the food.
I don't really have this problem at all and I'm curious why you do. In not saying that everything I'm getting recommended is a hit but the vast majority is at least in my areas of interest and I don't really get recommended locally trending stuff. Could it perhaps be a difference between in how treat users based on how they make revenue from them?
I'm on YouTube premium. Are you using the free client? Possibly with an adblocker?
coffee_enjoyer
☕️
4d ago
Saw it go viral on Twitter. Does kind of read like a bot post but it’s just a cute 3d world game you can play in browser without signing up
birb_cromble
4d ago
I frequently carry a single stack 9mm loaded with hot SD ammo when I'm out hiking. I've run into enough mobile meth labs deep in the woods to be wary of what might happen if the owners are nearby.
I doubt it would drop a large rabid animal in one shot, but it beats harsh language.
The rabid animal case, specifically, is difficult, because anything short of rapid exsanguination or a CNS hit is likely to stop them. Unless you're a trained marksman with a lot of experience in stressful shooting, you're not likely to get either of those with pure shot placement in circumstances like that. Given that generality, you'd need a fairly large, heavy, high velocity bullet that creates a large wound cavity and potentially damages distant tissue via hydrostatic shock.
Unfortunately, anything that can do that is going to be large and heavy enough that it's going to be miserable to haul around for the 99.999999% of the time that you don't need it.
SkoomaDentist
4d ago
Instagram and YouTube both recommend me by far more overtly anti-Zionist and anti-Semitic content
I've found Youtube to be an unusable cesspool unless I heavily curate my recommendations. That means hitting hide on anything offtopic and removing anything remotely general interest from my watch history. Otherwise within a few days it degrades to such state that it starts pushing videos that are trending locally and you can imagine the result of that.
SecureSignals
4d ago
I'm not on Instagram, but YouTube has very thoroughly banned all right-wing content creators I would consider to be "anti-Semitic" even without posting that content on YouTube. Keith Woods recently had his YouTube account which had been running for years banned with 0 strikes because MediaMatters ran a piece on him calling him an anti-Semite. Same with Richard Spencer, Nick Fuentes has been banned although he of course did actually post anti-semitic content. American Renaissance/Jared Taylor is banned despite Taylor famously never engaging in anti-semitism. It's a totally closed platform for anti-Semitism and right-wing content altogether, although I'm assuming you call opposition to Israel's war "anti-Semitism", which comes frequently from the left, and presumably YouTube allows that to some degree. The only anti-semitism I've seen out of YouTube has come from the left wing as the right wing has all long-been totally banned.
I'm trying to be maximally charitable to both Matts, and its a bit weird in application because Yglesias is clearly not being charitable to Walsh. Not that I'd expect him to be, Yglesias is a hack, whereas Walsh is more your standard grifter.
Walsh's argument appears to be "These folks do NOT share critical factors that make for idealized American citizens, and if they don't assimilate, this is clearly going to degrade the shared experience of other Americans in their area and make the country worse for everyone else, on net."
That is, having an entire (local) government run by people who don't share your ideals, and having their ideals prioritized over that of the locals is going to inflict some low level misery on the citizens who were there first, in the best case scenario.
Then Walsh pushes the scare line "if these norms become widespread it'll degrade the entire country from its founding ideals."
Which doesn't have to be an argument that it is going to happen, I interpret it as "imagine it happening to you and consider if you want to allow it to continue."
Same reason we're supposed to empathize with Iryna aruska. No, there's not going to be an epidemic of crazed hoboes stabbing people on public transport. But we should clearly not prefer crazed hoboes stabbing people on public transport as a public policy matter, right?
There is NOTHING in Walsh's post that actually implies that this WILL be America in 50 years.
In contrast, Yglesias is basically implying that Italians assimilated (although its such a spurious comparison for the reason the OP intimated) and it didn't result in America becoming Italian, therefore Muslim enclaves are objectively a good thing if we just let them become Americanized.
Which is great if you believe that American Culture is coherent and pervasive enough to overpower a culture that is much, much larger by geography, population, historical tradition, and, ultimately, successful resistance to assimilation/co-opting by outsiders.
I mean, yes, the local Muslim population is tiny, but would anyone argue they're NOT plugged in to the hundreds of millions of other Muslims throughout the globe?
The smaller irony is that we can look FURTHER back in history to compare what happens when Italians conquer a place vs. when Muslim Arabs conquer a place: the Roman and Ottoman empires, respectively.
As a matter of history, Rome's approach to ruling is quite permissive if the conquered territory kicked back its taxes and was willing to pitch in to defend the place from other powers.
Ottomans were a bit less permissive, up to and including Forced Conversion to Islam.
It turns out that the cultural norms a given nation or people hold dearest has huge implications for how these cultures will propagate and interact with other cultures they encounter, and you can't ignore that when predicting future paths.
(I'm not pushing this forward as a knockdown argument)
In other words, Matt Yglesias' flippant reduction of cultural differences to merely additional food choices is pretty laughable as a response, when the larger point Matt Walsh is making is that there are features of culture that are critical to a nation's cohesion, and cultural differences can include features that make assimilation less likely and co-existence less desirable.
Food choice is an utter Red Herring. Pun sort of intended.
Italians, via proof by demonstration, didn't have those assimilation-resistant features. It does NOT stand to reason that Muslims will thus assimilate too. Indeed, we can see from the example of Orthodox Jews that it is entirely possible to maintain a religious community very much separated from the larger overculture. But of course, Orthodox Jews don't seek to convert others to grow their ranks. Muslims do.
There's two fallacies here. The first is that it is impossible to get ethnic food without mass immigration from that country. That's obviously nonsense, with the internet and online shopping, you can buy basically any foodstuff in the developed world, regardless of whether your country has had immigration from where that food comes from.
The second is that 'assimilation' is magic and can make everyone behave like white Americans (or even better, Asian Americans). The existence of a dysfunctional African American underclass that has existed for 400 years in spite of the end of slavery, legal equality, affirmative action and astonishing wealth (African Americans are richer than Europeans in Europe) puts paid to that.
I do wonder why Yglesias would make bad arguments like this though. I thought all the liberals were supposed to be secretly reading Steve Sailer? Maybe he genuinely has no intellectual curiosity as to why different ethnic groups have such vastly different outcomes.
2rafa
4d ago
Maybe the TikTok algorithm is advanced enough to know I’m Jewish (I’m not even kidding), but Instagram and YouTube both recommend me by far more overtly anti-Zionist and anti-Semitic content than TikTok does. If anything, I think the Chinese - to avoid entangling themselves not only in foreign conflicts with America but with various other countries besides - have overtly toned down political content on TikTok, whereas Meta and Alphabet (both still controlled by their Jewish founders in terms of voting rights and in Meta’s case day to day leadership) don’t care and no doubt just prioritize by engagement, which necessarily favors political content.
100ProofTollBooth
Dumber than a man, but faster than a dog.
4d ago
I've been hiking a lot again. At least one day long hike per week and, thankfully, I've even engaged in a few 2 - 3 day overnights. Wonderful stuff.
Question for the motte; what are your thoughts on being "armed" on the trail. I put "armed" in quotations because this could mean one or more of;
- Pocket knife
- Large pointy stick
- Inconvenient and heavy rambo style "survival" knife
- Pistol
- Shotgun / rifle toting.
Bear in mind I am specifically asking about a non-hunting situation. While I am experienced enough to agree with the adage that the most dangerous critters you will encounter are the two-legged kind, I sometimes have these intrusive thoughts about encountering something like a rabies ridden buck. That would be frightening.
So, open question. Not looking for advice per se, just everyone's thoughts.
fmac
Ask me about bike lanes
4d ago
How many prompters are going to painstakingly describe every detail they just don't have the painting skill to put on canvas, and how many are going to go "hot woman in cyberpunk armor, in the style of studio ghibli" or whatever?
Very few, but who cares? The person who has the hot cyberpunk studio Ghibli waifu picture is now happier than they were before. Maybe 1 in a million will be so inspired (or so good) by this that they'll get super into prompting and become a legitimately good "chimera" artist who blends AI gen and human taste to make actually great art. That's a (tiny) win for the human race as a whole.
I have no interest in seeing their stupid waifu, but I also don't go on DeviantArt or whatever so this won't effect me at all. Maybe I'll see their great art 15 years later in an art exhibition on AI digital art.
I agree this will lead to massive explosion in slop, but human-generated slop was already at functionally infinite levels prior to AI, so I'm not sure if there's a net loss here.
MadMonzer
Epstein Files must have done something really awful for so many libs to want him released.
4d ago
It is also possible to order Italian staples in the wrong regions and get mediocre food. Ordering pizza in Rome or carbonara in Bologna is like ordering a well-done steak in Paris - it's a signal to the kitchen that you don't care about food quality.
sarker
It isn't happening, and if it is, it's a bad thing
4d ago
Code review has a paper trail. It's easy to make a paper trail for reviewing your teammate's performance too.
You're not thinking outside the box.
TheBailey
soapy mop
4d ago
Odds are very strong that I'll empty the thing before I die
Even if you expect to exhaust your HSA before you die, my proposed strategy still either beats or ties the “shoebox strategy” as long as you anticipate your HSA lasting through age 60, you're currently under 59, and you're not currently maxing out your Roth contributions.
If your older-than-60 self incurs medical expenses at least 7.5% of your gross income and itemizes, those expenses can be deducted—unless you used them as an excuse to make a tax-free HSA withdrawal. So if your future self is going to need the growth on today's existing HSA dollars to pay for medical expenses, you will still be better off burning any at-hand receipts to make HSA withdrawals today and coincidentally making Roth contributions of an equal amount. (And during years your future self is spending less than 7.5% of gross income on medical expenses, or fails to itemize, my proposed strategy does no worse than the “shoebox strategy”—you're still making 100% tax-free withdrawals from growth on money your past self had put into an HSA.)
ChickenOverlord
4d ago
Thanks! I'll probably wait for the buyout then
WhiningCoil
Ghost of Quokka's Future
4d ago
The price you get in a buyout is the price agreed upon in the deal. Which looks to be $210/share in cash. With the price being 202-ish right now, you are only looking at an $8 premium on waiting for the deal to conclude.
So yeah, if you just wait, you'll get paid out $210 per share. Why wouldn't you wait? Well, there could be legal challenges to draw the process out, or maybe stop it entirely. Maybe you have an investment you want to make right now that you think has a better return on investment. I had shares in Activision during Microsoft's buying, and I think I bailed at something like 90-95% of the buyout price because the lawsuits were just dragging out forever, and I wanted to take my money and run.
I expect the ratio of slop:epic to rise by at least an order of magnitude and I do consider that a loss.
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