domain:noahpinion.blog
The_Nybbler
In the game of roller derby, women aren't just the opposing team; they're the ball.
13hr ago
The thing about housing is that, except for the interests of existing homeowners (about the only thing that gets negative publicity), nearly everything blocking it is supported more by the Democrats or has been for most of its existence. Zoning and building codes, unions and labor laws, urban growth boundaries, environmental considerations, affordable housing mandates, etc. This makes it very hard for Democrats to build housing because the only problem they can see is "existing homeowners".
ccc
14hr ago
The discussion surrounding this is a never ending source of amusement. Ezra says "please just let the government build shit and stop getting in the way", and then leftists say "what do you mean? I'm not getting in the way? but also, did you stop to consider... [words words words]" It's beyond parody. I'm impressed they don't ever see the irony.
If there's one thing the leftists get right, it's that this is a political nonstarter. The whole reason they're in this mess in the first place is that populists are fundamentally opposed to progress. Populists want handouts and they want their enemies destroyed. Higher principles are of no particular interest. And the Dem coalition is only getting more and more populist in the wake of Biden's presidency, despite its legislative successes, failing to build anything or deliver real results for the poor and stupid and over-socialized -- a case that Ezra made quite well in his book. Leftists look at Trump and don't think there's anything particularly wrong with having a retarded president (and why would they? they tried non-retards and got no handouts and no enemies destroyed), they just wish it was their retard.
Can we really blame the average left-leaning voter for feeling this way? It wasn't given a name until recently, but this whole "housing theory of everything" idea has been floating around in wonky circles for at least 15 years now and totally ignored by Dem lawmakers. People have been griping about the cost of housing since the Occupy protests. Obama could have, in the popular imagination, been the president who builds instead of the president who bailed out wall street, if he were so inclined and better advised, but it wasn't on his radar in the slightest. In what sense do Dems deserve the mantle of technocrats when they're so behind the game? Being right in this case doesn't really matter when the median voter can barely read.
George_E_Hale
insufferable blowhard
14hr ago
Don't leave very young kids alone in bath tubs that have any amount of water in them.
I came home first after walking from Elementary school and just opened the door because it was unlocked almost all the time. We never had a break-in.
Lest this seem too idyllic, my parents did start locking up when an old woman up the street was murdered in a home invasion.
Owlify
14hr ago
I am not saying either. Ofcourse there are people who have been a net negative to society throughout their lives. It's good to know that you abhor violence, but your initial statement didn't come across that way. I am saying that even the people who are a net negative to society and are psychopaths are still human (not animals) and don't deserve to be murdered ("put down"). I believe it is immoral to kill people except as a last resort (for self-defense). There are many other things we could do with these people instead of killing them that will still make society safer.
Owlify
14hr ago
Yeah but not having lust isn't preventing them from having sex, asexuals don't lack the ability to do so. And even if they did, since many people live excellent lives after foregoing sex, I don't think they are missing out on something crucial. I don't see how they are a cripple. Maybe they wouldn't understand sexual desire in their fellow human beings as well, but I don't see any other negative effect.
I said excessive lust since gluttony is already the word for eating in excess. Not having hunger signals is not bad, people can still live a good life without feeling hungry. Also, I believe anger is bad in all amounts. I will say lust as an emotion is neutral in moderation. Saying excessive lust is bad doesn't imply that having no lust is bad.
I will also note that people who choose to live like monks, priests, nuns, etc. do everything in their capacity to train their mind to stop feeling lust in the first place (and also other emotions like wrath). And I believe that it does work, since brains are neuroplastic, habits are powerful and in my own experience I have almost eliminated anger as an emotion after trying. Even in the rare times you start experiencing the emotions you are avoiding, you learn to immediately notice it and let it go. I agree that if someone did not feel these emotions in the first place, then not acting upon them is not a moral virtue like it is to intentionally choose to resist and forego those emotions. Considering that people make it a goal to stop feeling lust and acting upon it and view that as a good outcome, I am not convinced that not feeling it at all makes someone a cripple.
2rafa
14hr ago
Anyone with financial means fled them like they were radioactive as soon as it was feasible to do so. They transformed into crime-ridden slums with horrible public schools.
That didn’t happen because of the invention of the suburbs. Dense inner suburbs in New York City like Brooklyn Heights have some of America’s most desirable and expensive real estate even though their residents could easily afford huge McMansions further out into the (20th century) suburbs. In Paris and London they likewise remain extremely expensive and desirable real estate even though - again - their residents could easily move out to the modern suburbs and live in much larger houses with big gardens etc.
The factors that turned the inner suburbs of Baltimore and Philadelphia into shitholes have nothing to do with some inherent issues with that urban housing layout. There were indeed intractable problems with dense urban and particularly tenement housing until the mid-19th century but modern sewage, plumbing, hygiene and other innovations mean they were no longer relevant a century ago, let alone today.
George_E_Hale
insufferable blowhard
15hr ago
Three stories in. It's interesting because Chambers (the author) took the Ambrose Bierce idea of Carcosa, and developed it into his story cycle, but then I think because of Chambers doing this then Carcosa was later used by other writers including Lovecraft, Gaiman, and even George RR Martin (as well as Nic Pizzolatto in True Detective season 1). The stories so far are not bad but more freaky and evocative than anything else.
sun_the_second
15hr ago
When did they show that Strange could do that? All I recall is him reversing time for specific objects, making clones sounds like it would be something that makes things worse even if he could do it, such as by creating Homestuck-esque "doomed timelines".
If he returns to the past with the time stone it just means quickload, not Ctrl X Ctrl V.
Later on, when they timetravel with Pym Particles it's explicit that they travel to alternate past, not their own.
Fruck
Lacks all conviction
15hr ago
Lol that's the most elaborate version of that meme I've ever seen. I wonder what the zoomer version is, does anyone know?
mid-density inner suburbs
Yes, pre-car America had dense walkable 'streetcar suburbs'. Not a modern lower density SFH car-based suburb, but a proper extension of the city. Some small houses mixed in with big apartment buildings. Just hop on the trolley to go to work.
Anyone with financial means fled them like they were radioactive as soon as it was feasible to do so. They transformed into crime-ridden slums with horrible public schools. Exactly the sorts of places I pay to not live in. We were in the New Urbanist Garden of Eden and voluntarily left with great haste.
Google tells me Europe was 5-10% urban circa 1700. And that's really straining the definition of 'urban' to include towns of a few thousand people. I don't think that special Chinese-only DNA makes Singapore function. But they have a certain set of social norms and types of people we don't much have in the US. Their ways aren't and won't be ours. Given the wildly different situations (ethnically Chinese ruled modern city-state vs much more pluralistic continent-spanning world power), I'd even say shouldn't.
TitaniumButterfly
15hr ago
Stated versus revealed, etc. In real life it's extraordinarily rare for a friendship to 'blossom' into a romantic relationship without at least a long period of separation in-between.
Bartender_Venator
15hr ago
This is so easy a dunk as to not be worth posting, but do you honestly think people on the left believe that Darwinian evolution applies to the human brain? I'm not seeing any major political faction which meaningfully believes in evolution.
anti_dan
15hr ago
Housing needs to be expensive to be useful though, because there's no other way to keep out the undesirables.
Bartender_Venator
15hr ago
iirc during the Africa/America section the narrator is also losing the plot somewhat
TIRM
15hr ago
Yes, and their lifestyles are inferior to mine. Yet another indication of their enormous poverty relative to a professional American.
2rafa
15hr ago
They are 100% urban and 76% ethnic Chinese.
Europeans (the supermajority population in most American suburbs) have lived in dense urban towns and cities for thousands of years too.
The American preference for suburbs also is less organic than many conservatives online suggest. Zoning laws effectively prevent mid-density inner suburbs of the European or even traditional American kind.
TIRM
15hr ago
bullets instead of dollars
I always liked the pithy Spanish "plata o plomo". Finally an equivalent English bon mot.
ulyssessword
16hr ago
I think "believe in" is the proper breakdown, as from Pratchett:
It’s hard to believe in the gods, he thought, when certain people are never struck by lightning. Why doesn’t it happen? If the gods wanted people to believe in them, they’d show themselves occasionally. That’s the whole point.
After all, you never needed faith in the postman. You just knew the postman would come, rain or shine, and deliver the mail. You didn’t have to believe in him. He was just there.
It was the same with the gods. They were just there, too, and you didn’t have to believe in them any more than you had to believe in the sky. You just knew they were there.
And if you didn’t believe in something, then it couldn’t help you.
By that standard, most biologists don't "believe in" evolution, it's simply there. My guess would be that someone who "believes in" Darwinian evolution uses it as a guiding principle and might do things like driving increased competition or having a lot of children. Or maybe a completely different set of beliefs. It's not like social movements stick close to their namesakes.
anti_dan
16hr ago
My experience with Mexican and South American gangs indicates that, largely, there is no reason to form a rape gang. The culture tolerates, and often encourages, sex with any girl who has reached puberty. And the only disqualifying thing is inability to support the children. So if you are a gang member, no one is going to report your harem of 13 year olds as long as the babies aren't literally starving to death.
TIRM
16hr ago
When in doubt, copy Singapore
They are 100% urban and 76% ethnic Chinese.
69% of Americans choose to live in suburbs. Ultra-urban state planning (even if competent!) won't work on us. It isn't relevant to our wants and inclinations.
This is like people who say America should be more like Japan because of their great health outcomes. On one hand, yes. On the other hand, we just aren't Japanese and a bunch of fat white people severely underperform them on health outcomes. There's no path from us to them.
TIRM
16hr ago
No expensive consultants who charge by the hour running rings around bureaucrats who have no idea what they're doing
If California made such a state-owned housing corporation, this is just what would happen. They'd make housing as quickly and as cheaply as they are making that bullet train. Endless quantities of taxpayer money would be set aflame in the furnace of consultant payments.
They'd in-house the cost disease.
Not dense like modern Asian cities, or even modern European ones. I'm right now in a "city" in Europe that's less dense than the suburb (of NYC) I live in at home. For being a city it's surprisingly civilized; just not having so many damned people is a major advantage.
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