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WhiningCoil
Ghost of Quokka's Future
16hr ago
Who said anything about concentration camps? All most people want is to be left alone. Stop taking my money to provide for them, leave them to their own devices, stop creating a dependent population with excessive charity, and the problem, if it doesn't go away on it's own, will at least develop some sort of homeostatic boundaries.
But if we insist on having a welfare state... well... then we need to pretty aggressively determine who deserves to be a part of it.
Crowstep
16hr ago
I do think there is highly significant asymmetry of discomfort between a woman being catcalled and a pious man seeing some legging-clad ass
An asymmetry, sure, but I'm not so sure we can definitively come down on either side. I find catcalling at best trashy and at worst threatening, and I like seeing semi-naked women on the street, but then I'm a guy who got laid when he was younger so I expect that affects it.
But for a lot of men I imagine seeing a semi-naked woman is like a homeless guy seeing me light a cigarette with a 20 dollar bill. Sure, I'm not hurting him, and he's not entitled to my money, but I can see how it would be painful for the homeless guy. In the same vein, rare is the woman who is relieved when she reaches middle age and men stop paying attention to her. Instead she desperately clings on to her youth and tries to stave off invisibility.
I think it's a mistake to see dressing in provactive clothing as a passive act, which is how a lot of women frame it. It's an act with plausible deniability, perhaps, but when a woman dresses like this she does so in the full knowledge of the effect it is going to have on men. All men, not just the ones she's interested in.
My suspicion is that a large part of the dislike of cat-calling (at least among adult women) is the offence that a trashy low-class man thinks he has a shot, as opposed to fear of violence, although certainly that's going to be common, particularly for teenage girls. What I really want is a truthful survey (probably impossible) on how many women feel like this.
voters-eliot-azure
patently unbiased
16hr ago
Is there a law mandating that women-owned businesses must be X% of businesses?
Yes / no. In the YIMBY / NIMBY realm that I'm active in, a housing project will only receive funding (tax breaks, grants, etc.) if it can prove that a certain number of its contractors are women-owned businesses. So while it's not a law per se, it's the direct result of legislative action. You will miss out on business if you're not female-owned, which leads to the cliche loophole of wife-owns-husband's business.
My point is that this^ type of legislative action is different than creating scholarships for women that help them get the credentials that are seen as barriers for entry into leadership positions. Ends vs. means. Grouping all of it together as DEI is too broad of a brushstroke for me to not argue against it.
A lot of rural welfare users simply don't vote. It's extremely common.
The rural poor also understand that they're a peasant class and hate everyone who's in line ahead of them, which to be clear is most people. Given the economics of rural areas these people are a lot more dependent on local elites(who are very solidly republican) than the poor elsewhere; and a condition of that dependency is voting correctly.
WhiningCoil
Ghost of Quokka's Future
16hr ago
voters-eliot-azure
patently unbiased
16hr ago
How is this different from general misanthropy?
I could also define my own measure of utility for a person a declare anyone under a certain threshold as "dragging us down". My measure wouldn't be by skin color, of course, so it would be a lot harder to implement punitive measures for anyone below that threshold. E.g. I could say that all obese people have an extreme negative impact on the public welfare, but that doesn't trigger our tribal primate brains so no one is out there blackbagging obese citizens to alliteratively-named concentration camps.
hydroacetylene
16hr ago
Rural republicans are mostly people who are stuck 'in the gap' where they don't have medicaid to begin with- they make too much. Rural medicaid users might vote republican if they voted, but alas, they do not.
You are forgetting that medicaid is not actually universal healthcare. It's entirely possible to go without healthcare in the US because you don't qualify for welfare. There are some pretty brutal benefits cliffs.
hydroacetylene
16hr ago
But Nestle and coca-cola are already losing a fight with the Trump admin; obviously someone can outcompete them if need be.
While they're not currently a net positive financially, there's a lot of invisible societal gains even for thin people.
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Less fat people in general means a better looking world. You'll see less chubby kids with chubby parents while at the mall or the park or other public spaces and more attractive looking people. You'll have more hot women and men available for dating, no longer having to settle as much on looks for someone with a good personality match.
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Less fat people gives gains elsewhere like not ending up sitting next to a fat guy on a plane or being able to do physical activities with your formally fat friend. All sorts of little small annoyances and issues that will be alleviated by a thinner world.
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Resources can benefit even more from economy of scale when we can start assuming people are within a certain size range more often. For example clothing stores can offer larger selections in your size and not have to spend as much space on having XLs and XXLs and the like because the market demand for those will be much smaller.
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Your family and friends who are fat will be healthier and prettier and that's just a good thing too if you care about your family and friends.
And that's just on top of not currently a net positive financially. We might be able to improve on it more and get to the point where we have a world of thin hot people for cheap.
mildly_obsolete
16hr ago
Side note, but the paradox communities' acceptance of "save scumming" as an acceptable part of the game, but console commands as "cheating" absolutely sends me.
Depths of stupidity on brand for Paradox paypigs. Console permits you to tailor the experience to your liking, resolve balance issues, and save AI from itself mechanically, tactically and strategically. Imagine not using it.
magicalkittycat
16hr ago
and nobody other than the local residents has given a shit.
That's not true at all, there's programs like the rural health fund and the the start of rural emergency hospitals program in 2023 and stuff like that being created to help keep them open and functioning.
Rural healthcare struggles to break even yet alone turn a profit, even more would be shutting down if it wasn't for Medicaid/Medicare and programs like that.
And there's extra benefits even within these programs like how sole community hospitals get higher rates
Sole community hospitals (SCHs) are hospitals that are the only source of short-term, acute inpatient care in a region. Medicare reimburses some SCHs at higher rates than they would have received under IPPS, including based on historical costs. Since 2006, CMS has also increased OPPS rates for rural SCHs. SCHs receive $0.8 billion in higher payments annually (including low-volume adjustments to SCHs) according to a 2022 MedPAC report.
It's arguably not enough, but it's definitely helping rural healthcare stay afloat when they're literally just given more money.
Could you explain how this is different and why I should be more concerned?
It's not different, we are doing stuff to try to help our rural hospitals already and we should keep doing that stuff and help more.
Or, for that matter, why people who aren't from here and didn't care then should care now?
Rural communities and urban communities depend on each other. Urban zones might be the main money areas but they need things from the rural areas still like food or that high quality quartz.
Also ya know, empathy, religious duty, etc other general reasons to help out others in need.
Also keep in mind these cuts aren't impacting just the rural areas anyway. Less funds for mental institutions and the like will have an impact on the urban areas.
roystgnr
16hr ago
This will probably be the Chinese when they eventually realize how easy it is to increase TFR.
Easy ... how?
Countries have tried in both recent and historic times, but AFAIK the only time a national policy has significantly increased TFR (from sub-replacement to above 3) was in Ceausescu's Romania, via "outlawing abortion and contraception, routine pregnancy tests for women, taxes on childlessness, and legal discrimination against childless people". Lots of countries have tried various "carrots" to little effect; it seems like only such big "sticks" work. You'd think China would be uniquely positioned to be that oppressive today, but even for them it might not be possible soon - they only ended the One-Child Policy a decade ago, and it'll be embarrassing (and hence politically risky) for the old guard when they have to admit that continuing it so long was a mistake big enough to require a similarly hard push in the opposite direction.
Even in Romania, fertility didn't stay above 3 for long, though - it was below 2.5 in a few years, and dipping below replacement again well before the policies ended - though it plummeted to 1.5 after, so it's not like the polices weren't still doing something, they just weren't doing enough.
The strongest correlate to fertility is probably the inverse correlation with years of education for females, but I don't know if China is the type of brutal to try fiddling with that. They're certainly not a gender equality utopia, but in higher education women there now outnumber men, despite solidly outnumbered by men in that age range.
3472094371
16hr ago
I'm curious how easy this riddle I recently found myself spending days to solve would be for professional software developers.
A fictionalized description of the situation: I'm in charge of a cadre of robots, whose working shift is from 6 am to 5.50 am next day. Every time they assemble a batch of Dyson swarm units, a database entry with the size of the newly born batch is created, amounting to hundreds of rows per robot per shift. To report on the process, by midday I need to submit a table on the previous shift numbers, but unfortunately my interface only supports exporting data from 00:00 to 23:59 of a given day. Nobody pays much attention to the shift tail end's results, because even robots slack after midnight, but the results for the previous day, which actually matter, are seriously truncated after downloading, let's say 20% of the expected amount of data. After random messing with filters in the interface, turning something off, maybe turning it on again, I am able to download something looking like the full data set.
I reverse engineer the REST API of the web interface, and try to replicate that random tinkering in a script. For example, exclude those robots assigned to assemble catgirl bots instead of Dyson bots, or do two downloads, of the robots painted red seperately of the robots painted blue, or some other even more convoluted approaches. Each approach works exactly once, as if there is somebody on the other side of the API, blocking every approach he encounters.
What was (apparently) happening and how did I (hopefully) prevail?
Rov_Scam
17hr ago
Luckily it didn't escape everyone's notice: https://theonion.com/sherwin-williams-triumphantly-reports-nearly-half-the-p-1819566493/
The_Nybbler
If you win the rat race you're still a rat. But you're also still a winner.
17hr ago
I am not sure that it will still be true at the end of his administration, depending on how bad his policies will get.
You're assuming the horror stories about the effects of Trump's policies are going to be both true and one-sided. This may not be the case. If his policies hurt Republican "takers" but help the working class (according to their own perceptions), that's probably a net win for Republicans. Republican takers are probably one of the least-reliable voting blocs (especially since Republicans lack the ground game to get them to the polls), and the working class has only recently turned Republican.
So, the problem I've run into with partners in industry, and you'll see this in the github issue I linked, they read the GPS_RAW_INT.alt_ellipsoid field, thinking it's the height above the WGS84 ellipsoid. It is not. It's the height above the EGM96 geoid. MAVLINK does not consider this a bug. It results in a lot of confusion over and over and over again with people insisting adamantly that they are providing the "raw WGS84 height above ellipsoid from the GPS unit".
I keep that github link handy to escape the endless cycle of "But it's the alt_ellipsoid field!" Which is understandable. If I were reading a field called alt_ellipsoid I'd assume it was the altitude over the ellipsoid as well. This is usually caught when they are 100' off a known ground level.
theincompetencetheorist
17hr ago
The question if GLP-1 drugs are a net positive financially for the medical system is extremely cynical.
Well I agree that it is cynical. But I also find the view that it is a pure plutocratic exercise of who has the most lobbying dollars as equally cynical. Those who are interested profiting the issue that Semaglutide solves is not only McDonalds. It is is a whole host of US domestic companies that extract profits by providing both the cause and management of the symptoms as a result. A weekly shot from a Danish company is a threat to the bottom line of fast food, healthcare providers recurring visits and lifelong medication by domestic pharma. Maybe the politicians gives patriotic rebate to the lobbyists?
quiet_NaN
18hr ago
I do not think a significant number of Republican voters believe that bad things (for them) will result from Trump's policies and are willing to suffer for them. You can tell because Trump doesn't talk that way, more or less ever. They think that the policies Trump is pursuing will result in the instant improvement of their lives.
This might have been true at the beginning of the year, and still be true for a majority of people who will be badly affected by his policies. I am not sure that it will still be true at the end of his administration, depending on how bad his policies will get. He got a trade deal with the EU which will increase revenue and not directly hurt US industry (but I am less optimistic about the long term effects for the US hegemony). However, a trade war with China still has the potential to wreck the economy. Likewise, cutting medicare has the potential to be ruinous for a lot of his voters.
Most people have some awareness of their relative economic situation under different administrations. They suck at attributing it to specific policies (and often make off-by-one errors when policies take long to yield results) and economic effects unrelated to government policies, but they will notice if they are better or worse off. A few idiots will double down on their partisan preferences when things go badly for them, but I am hopeful that many will not vote for the leopard eating people's face party after having their face eaten for 3.5 years.
I would also posit that many a cat-caller does it not just because they think someone is hot, but because they enjoy the fact they get to flex "power" over someone by making them uncomfortable with no recourse against them (dovetails nicely with everyone's discussion about lower class men, they don't get to flex power often).
I'm not especially sympathetic to the "sex as a power trip" narrative, but assuming it is basically correct--isn't women dressing in revealing clothing also often an opportunity for them to enjoy flexing their power over men? I think maybe part of what leads you here--
I'm unconvinced cat calling should be an indictable offense, but comparing it to skimpy clothing is ridiculous.
--is a background Western assumption that men have power, and that power is what men have. I occasionally see feminists (especially, "sex positive" feminists) move past this decidedly mid-20th century "Second Sex" narrative into a more postmodern, Foucaultian "women's power is different" narrative. Men may dominate physically, but women dominate socially; men may gatekeep the levers of action, but women gatekeep the levers of status. Occasionally in these "catcalling debates" women will decide to flip the script and start catcalling men; this never works out because men love this shit. Not the truly aggressive and negative stuff--honking at pedestrians, shouting insults--that might well get you punched in the face! But "CHECK THE GUNS ON THIS GUY" is going to put a smile on his face for days.
Putting on a skimpy swimsuit is the psychologically female equivalent of a man looming over someone and saying, "hey, you wanna feel my muscles?"
And sure, you might not find this totally persuasive, but I think it's a long way from ridiculous. Except in the sense that ridicule itself is a way of socially signaling; countenancing the idea that women may have just as much power over men, as men have over women--just in different ways and contexts--is very low status, at present! It's the kind of thing you might expect to hear some "beta cucks huffing as copium," in the parlance of the iPad youths.
Finally, while I agree that society is teaching and reinforcing women to be far more paranoid than is warranted, the Venn diagram between "is willing to break social norms by cat calling" and "is willing to go for a cheeky bottom pinch or other form of personal assault" has overlap, there is a small but credible possibility of violence from that person. The Venn diagram of "has ass out in Lululemon" and "will grab your dick through your shorts" is 0, unfortunately.
The Venn diagram between "is willing to ask you out" and "is willing to rape you at the first opportunity" has overlap, too. Women are wise to be cautious of men! That's clearly true, and surely of importance in this discussion. One of the reasons I started it is because, like other posters have more explicitly suggested, I think there is a kind of person who will feel unsure about the Surrey stings until they see the color of the perpetrator's skin! Or two kinds, if we want to separate them out--people who will only be mad if this is enforced against non-whites and immigrants, and people who will only be mad if it is enforced against native whites outside otherwise-criminally-problematic neighborhoods. As an anti-identitarian I think both of these perspectives are avoiding a real substantive issue, namely, the regulation of interpersonal behaviors in public spaces shared between individuals with diverse and not entirely compatible interests. Likewise, treating women's interests in public space interaction as weightier than men's interests in the same, is identitarian rather than appropriately considerate of all the issues involved.
(One solution some cultures implement is to simply segregate the disparate interests; men from women, white from black, whatever. That is a workable solution in many cases but the West has rejected it, and as a liberal myself I think it is both possible and desirable for people with disparate interests to share public spaces without significant conflict. So I set this solution aside, but I know not everyone does.)
Somewhere downstream from catcalling is a slightly different thing: the cold open. Most people here are not old enough to remember the Clinton years, but a phrase that got kicked around a lot (with direct reference to Clinton's own behavior) was, "it doesn't hurt to ask!" Meaning: the First Amendment protects men asking women if they'd like to go out on a date--or even have sex! Even if those women are strangers! Even if 99.995% of women are going to say no!
We don't seem to actually live in that world anymore; we punish men for even asking, in almost any setting, and so they have in many cases just stopped asking. Norms are forcing these conversations out of almost every environment, onto dating apps that optimize for something other than flourishing. All in the interest of preventing women from ever being put in an uncomfortable position in public--while allowing them to put men into uncomfortable positions through comparable, albeit not identical, practices, like dressing provocatively* while immune from any kind of interpersonal or societal response.
*I here leave aside the tiresome conversations about what counts as provocative, as of course different cultures will have inculcated different views on the matter; as a rule, people know what "sexy" clothing is for people in their sociocultural environment, even if they try to ignore the actual biological implications of the word "sexy."
roystgnr
18hr ago
I've upvoted this, of course, but it irks me that I can't figure out whether I'm upvoting a really good suggestion or a really good joke.
BreakerofHorsesandMen
Sweet Sejenus
18hr ago
I was passed by a Sherwin-Williams truck earlier today and noted something unusual that had escaped my notice surely dozens of times before.
Their slogan is “Cover the Earth” and it is accompanied by a graphic depicting paint pouring out of a bucket over a globe.
Is there any other company anyone is aware of that is quite so up front about their corporate commitment to instantiating apocalyptic end-of-the-world scenarios? I’m choosing to call the Sherwin-Williams situation an ecru-goo doomsday.
coffee_enjoyer
☕️
18hr ago
It requires empathy to care about civilization. Because it means understanding that there are people just like yourself who will be living in the far future, though they do not yet exist, and they matter as if they were your friend or cousin. Humans come equipped with an interest in securing the wellbeing of those who are like themselves, though there have been some mutations which express other inclinations usually deemed antisocial. If civilization, then their happiness is secured. If barbarism, then doom —
cursed is the ground because of you; in pain you shall eat of it all the days of your life; thorns and thistles it shall bring forth for you; and you shall eat the plants of the field. By the sweat of your face you shall eat bread, till you return to the ground, for out of it you were taken; for you are dust, and to dust you shall return.
Also, interest in civilization is usually a proxy for intergroup competition. The failure for your group to be fruitful simply means that another group will dominate yours. This will probably be the Chinese when they eventually realize how easy it is to increase TFR. All of your descendants will be less happy, just as the celts were less happy when the Anglo-Saxons ruled over them. Many of their descendants will beg and prostitute themselves. A well-tuned empathy makes you feel about future members of your tribe in the same way you feel about your own child. This is why Kings with paternal feelings toward his subjects were beloved in history; it is probably evolution’s favored form of governance, given that the primates the dominant member shares food and protects the lesser members.
If you truly
get that it feels different if you have kids
you would recognize there is a chain of empathy descending from “caring about someone who has kids”, to “caring about their kids”, to “caring about their grandkids”, all the way down. Because if you care about them then you also have some care for their terminal values, which is going to be their children. Our present happiness is related to our future predictions, so it’s reasonable to feel unhappy if your civilization is trending toward doom.
birb_cromble
18hr ago
we suffer either way, but at least this way we get to wipe the smug grins off the city-dwellers' faces
I genuinely believe what you call city-dwellers have absolutely no idea how strong that impulse is in a lot of rural Americans.
If I asked ten of my neighbors if they'd do something that harmed themselves if it hurt the nearest city twice as bad, I think twelve of them would say yes.
Trump's election in 2016 and 2024 represent the apex of this phenomenon, but it's not the only one.
birb_cromble
18hr ago
This is also Republicans possibly losing their rural hospital
At least here in the Appalachians, those rural hospitals have been closing down since at least 2010 and nobody other than the local residents has given a shit.
Could you explain how this is different and why I should be more concerned? Or, for that matter, why people who aren't from here and didn't care then should care now?
... That's not all that big of a gap. The average person would probably have difficult reliably telling those ages apart, and especially so when looking at Hollywood actors who presumably take good care of themselves. A 43yo playing a 27yo, or 53yo playing 40yo, would start to be more obvious.
Also, I had to look up who he is, because apparently Chris Evans, Chris Pine, and Chris Hemsworth are all different people but my brain had combined them.
I wonder how much control a director (vs the studio) has over this kind of thing (that is, the casting of the main actors). A movie about romantic love with two leads with no chemistry is quite the miss.
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