domain:parrhesia.substack.com
hydroacetylene
10hr ago
I can well understand how the demographic you're describing supports nimby with welfare to try to make up for it, and doesn't realize the circle gets squared by rationing, but there's simply not enough of them to explain the politically relevant forces we see in eg Germany, Australia, etc.
hydroacetylene
11hr ago
You are thinking like someone who does actual work. This is not a green party member or voter.
I'm being flippant, but this was never a labor party with union support. It was always champagne socialists- the wokest demo today, and the wokest demo then. Bluntly they expect to be on top of the pyramid because that's where they are now, and while feminism is a bad match for the military aristocracy who rule pre-industrial societies they don't face the same demands as the peasantry to drastically limit opportunities, force a high tfr, etc.
IGI-111
God was a dream of good government.
11hr ago
Much as I'll respect Obama for trying, I don't think that deal did anything to stabilize the region. Like much of the US policy vis à vis Iran since, it was just a half measure to throw the whole problem under the rug for the next POTUS to deal with. Trump's "Mission Accomplished" moment is that too.
If the US was willing to codify the spheres of influence of Iran and Israel and enforce peace on both of them, that might be something, but short of that any accord is just throwing the war between the two into the shadows, for a time.
The whole situation bears an ironic ressemblance to the Israelo-Palestinian conflict where nobody is allowed to win, so it's all spycraft and buildup broken up by effusions that GPs have to quell.
The_Golem101
12hr ago
I'm skeptical on that number, though I'm sure there are reasonable costs higher than the direct aid due to the sanctions etc you can't take all inflation as a cost and put it all due to the Ukraine war, that guy's speech in 2023 to Singapore isn't exactly a knock down argument...
The_Golem101
12hr ago
I am personally acquainted with several dozen Ukrainians, and know several fighting. They're of the exact opposite opinion - I'm not sure how you came to meet so many that seem to support a Russian talking point? I'm genuinely curious, what's their background?
And propaganda or not, they think that Russia is taking far more causalities than they are, and no one seems to be talking about half a million deaths?
The Ukrainian narratives that I know are that they chose to stand up to Russia, are very happy with countries that helped them with equipment (very pro UK for example), and are confused why America is so hot and cold with shipments but still broadly pro US. They were going to fight with or without US/NATO weapons, at the big defeats Russia experienced at the start were mostly with Ukrainian gear, it was much later till the tanks, IFVs, aircraft and static AA started arriving, which allowed them to continue. They are also of the opinion that if Zelensky capitulates (or is seen to) he's gone next election, he was seen as soft on Russia pre war and is being outflanked by more popular warhawks.
Corvos
12hr ago
I was thinking of the SNP (Scottish National Party) myself. They got rid of male Salmond in favour of hip female Nicola sturgeon.
The_Golem101
12hr ago
Interdiction means that a percentage of logistics entering the town are destroyed/disabled, or can only move under poor weather, at night etc. You don't need running water or electricity to keep a fighting position supplied, you can truck/carry in their water, ammo, etc. but if part of that is being interdicted your logistic burden is just that much higher, X% is lost, alongside Y lives per tonne needed to sustain fighting.
The Russians are naturally going out of their way to starve out every town/fighting position they can, which is often a matter of ammunition not food or water of course.
Lorian_Aristedes
12hr ago
Well, nothing really. It sounds insane but it was the fact that he criticised a previous move by the party of booting a female member of parliament for what they perceived as transphobic.
The fuse was lit by a row in Victoria in 2022 over the sacking of state convener Linda Gale for advocating, in an internal discussion paper she wrote three years earlier, that the party revisit its position on gender. In NSW, feminist lawyer Anna Kerr had her membership terminated for what were alleged to be transphobic views.
Mr Hutton criticised both moves as authoritarian and anti-democratic in three posts on his private Facebook page. The Queensland Greens’ constitution and arbitration committee subsequently dismissed a complaint that he had denigrated transgender women but found he provided a platform for others to do so after he refused to delete a number of comments on the page, citing freedom of speech.
MadMonzer
Temporarily embarrassed liberal elite
12hr ago
How did this happen? By forcing diglossia (widespread bilingualism) on Singapore. After independence most people spoke some either Chinese dialect at home, Malay or Tamil. The schools taught English, what is a foreign language to everyone.
LKY imposed widespread trilingualism on Singapore. Most Singapore Chinese spoke Hokkien at home, a substantial minority spoke Cantonese, and very few spoke Mandarin. The "Chinese" that is the second official language of Singapore and an effectively compulsory school subject for ethnic-Chinese Singaporeans is Mandarin. So a plurality of Singaporeans growing up post-independence needed to speak Hokkien, Mandarin and English. My understanding is that Singapore Hokkien has now been reduced to a minority language spoken by elderly working class people.
With all due respect, Singaporeans in general don't speak proper English. They speak Singlish, which is a pidgin English with a fair amount of Chinese grammar and vocabulary baked in
Singaporeans born after about 1980 are almost all capable of speaking Standard Singapore English (which is effective British English with slightly more Chinese and Malay loanwords, and a lot more uncles). Singlish is a choice - in much the same way that most native English speakers code-switch between a local dialect and standard British/American English depending on the context.
FtttG
12hr ago
Hutton was embroiled in drama from a twitter post (what else could cause so much drama) made over a year ago, which led to him being labelled a trans-phobe
What did he say?
Grauwacht
12hr ago
I'm in favor of anything that shifts power from women to men in the dating market. Women have had such an absurd amount of power over men both historically and today. Really think about it. How is it reasonable that in order to have access to sex, a man must go on his knees and promise to protect and provide for another person? Nowadays women even want that you BOTH provide for them AND go 50/50 on child care! That's monopoly pricing and usury! I can't wait for the giga sexbots 3000 to arrive, so you can actually have a relationship with women on an even playing field. I predict that a lot of the things we currently see as normal in relationships will vanish. There is little reason why the man must pay for things, the woman's feelings must matter more than man's, "happy wife, happy life" is a thing, the woman complains about stuff much more than the man, etc. Once men have a strong outside option, women will need to learn how to provide values besides offering up their bodies. Of course, they don't like this and will fight this tooth and nail to retain their sexual monopoly. But ultimately, technology always prevails.
jfx
12hr ago
Im currently dieting around similar numbers as you are. IMHO you should invest more energy of your process into the mindset. Why are you dieting in the first place? It seems you are training towards a marathon whilst also lifting? Things that people usually enjoy in a diet:
- better sleep quality (unless you are deep into a cut and go to bed hungry)
- performance in calisthenics - pullups just feel amazing for me in a diet
- enjoyment of food
- looks when naked (at least after this first 'flatness' hump)
philosoraptor
13hr ago
Please do bear in mind that most people who wanted Ukraine to win thought they were going to lose in weeks/months, and were pleasantly surprised that the Russians proved so incompetent at modern maneuver warfare, and the Ukrainians so resilient. This includes the bulk of Western military/geopolitical analysts.
I do distinctly remember saying at the time - not here, but to friends and coworkers - that Ukraine's best scenario (that was realistic without the US or EU doing most of the heavy lifting) was creating a Vietnam-style quagmire. In broad strokes, it seems to me that's what's happened.
FiveHourMarathon
Wawa Nationalist
13hr ago
It's not, but it explains why someone might empirically think it is. Someone who eliminates hfcs from their diet will likely see various improvements in health.
Armin
13hr ago
Gotcha
I think that there is too much digital ink used in explaining why and how modern western parties behave in an almost erratic way, about philosophy, material reasons or political doctrines etc, when the usual explanation and the one that we use in a Occam's razor way is women dominate them.
Armin
13hr ago
Because of demographics. They are basically women's parties, and women organise along intersectionalist ways because of their inherent egualitarism and mean girl culture. Analysis about material society or industrialism or whatever are nonsensycal because they are social clubs about what is ick and what is not.
2rafa
13hr ago
Sure, but how is that relevant to replacing hfcs with cane sugar in Coca Cola?
2rafa
13hr ago
Very true but it is also true that after the good faith effort by Obama (against Israel’s wishes) to sign a deal that had a clear pathway to full integration with the Western economy / markets on trade - the main economic goal Iran has sought for decades - with the sole price being (easily cheated) checks by nuclear monitors, the Iranians continued to funnel billions into regional Shia militias in Yemen and Lebanon (as well as Syria and Iraq) that fought against US allies and whose funding was solely intended to prolong conflicts with Saudi Arabia, Israel and others as part of the ongoing plan since 1979 to make the Islamic Republic the moral and spiritual center of the Ummah’s collective consciousness and to serve Iranian foreign policy.
Primaprimaprima
...something all admit only "TRUMP", and the Trump Administration, can do.
13hr ago
If someone’s leaving because “I didn’t know people would get so angry when I asked them questions” then it’s possible that they could acclimate after getting used to the general tone of discussion here.
If someone’s leaving because “I didn’t know racism was allowed here” I would tell them to not let the door hit them on the way out.
aldomilyar
13hr ago
They're definitely mutually intelligible but I hear a lot of comments from Malaysian Mandarin speakers that they find Mainlanders tricky to understand/phrasing things differently and vice-versa. Part of it's the Malaysian chinese vocabulary picking up a lot of loanwords from English/Malay/dialect
sun_the_second
could survive a COD lobby and a gay furry discord server
13hr ago
but that something changed and now (to make up some numbers) 20% of the games are classic instead of 60%.
How many games were there released per year in the 90s, and how many are released now?
My impression is that there are, to put it simply, a metric fuckton of games now and even if a smaller proportion of them are good, that still means way more good games than in the 90s.
Green parties in Europe reflect the policy priorities of highly-educated, middle class but not rich rich hippies.
This is true in Germany, in Britain and elsewhere. In practice their policies typically involve:
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Limiting new housing construction on ecological grounds (good for NIMBYs and accepted by progressive students who think all pricing problems in housing have nothing to do with demand and are just because of ‘evil landlords’, who the Greens promise to deal with in vague terms).
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Limiting any infrastructure development (especially airports and roads) - again good for NIMBYs / BANANAs and supported idiotically by young progressive college graduates who imagine cancelling this funding is some blow against the nebulous ‘rich’ who are both greedy and destroying the environment for sport.
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Generic progressive positions on immigration, race, foreign policy etc as adapted to the circumstances of the broad left in their country and region, with none of the pesky non-college-going native working class who are still present in the established center-left parties.
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Welfareism targeted specifically towards the young(ish). Greens certainly aren’t opposed to welfare for the old (pensions / social security) or children (tax credits etc), but will focus on growing the welfare state to cater more to college students and graduates, especially those destined for low wage careers.
Essentially they are parties for people who rarely encounter the underclass, and so have no resentment for them, but do often encounter the affluent as well as fellow young people on upwardly mobile career trajectories toward whom they bear a great deal of resentment.
For example, a typical Green-voting family in the Anglosphere:
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Two highly educated parents, possibly retired, one [formerly] a publisher at an academic press or a teacher, the other one an academic in the humanities or soft social sciences or a therapist with a client list of middle aged women. Live a comfortable life in an outer suburban affluent town in a house they bought in 1992, now asset rich, cash OK but enough to vacation regularly and support their kids a little.
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Their two kids; one a NEET / part time barista in a band who studied music at a conservatory for a few years before dropping out; the other a college graduate junior project manager at an NGO reliant on a government ministry for funding working on wildlife protection legislation that is itself funded by a levy on construction companies. Both kids rent is ‘supported’ by their parents, who are worried about them ever becoming self-sufficient and think the state should step in rather than letting all those fat cat bankers and lawyers take all the money.
RenOS
something is wrong
14hr ago
My impression based on left-leaning friends & acquaintances (of which I have very, very many) is twofold:
The first is a general aesthetic. When people draw images for the green future, it's just a really nice-looking, organic neighbourhood, farms with happy animals, it's clean, people still live in modern-style housing right next to a beautiful forest. On the other side, when climate change and fossil fuels are shown, it's dirty, it's ugly same-looking cities with large heavy industry, animals in pain from ugly, pustulous wounds, people in cramped apartments far away from any green (which probably is dead anyway). On that level, it really is just the good ol' politics of in-favor-of-everything-good-against-everything-bad; If given the choice, absolutely everyone would take the former over the latter, if there are no other ramifications (which at least aren't shown nor talked about). Woke is mostly the same; It generally sells itself first and foremost on extremely benign-sounding slogans and tries to just ignore, talk away and suppress the mention of any and all problems. Of course trans is just about letting a small minority live as they please, of course women's rights are only about not being taken advantage of by evil men, of course anti-racism/colonialism is just about giving formerly oppressed groups their freedom back, etc. And the - primarily - women who make up the bulk of the support really aren't unpleasant for the most part, often the opposite, they just want everyone to get along, everyone to work towards the obvious, common good and to exclude the minority of evil men. If you just avoid calling their politics into question - which in daily life will be 99% irrelevant anyway - they are usually exceptionally helpful and pro-social. But, of course, they have a massive, noble-lie shaped hole (and also, they can be irritating busybodies, but that's more manageable).
The second is a general distrust of the profit motive. Several of my (mostly male) friends who are much more successful than me (managing-your-own-company or high-tier BigCorp middle-manager successful) have had more than enough personal experience of engaging in what they perceive as anti-social behaviour just to keep their company/section afloat (stuff like cutting out a newly emerging competitor with legally grey tactics, deliberately hiring badly-paid interns with the promise of a permanent position over and over, actively managing a funnel into addictive behaviour for your freemium game, etc.). They genuinely feel bad about this and want to restructure society so that this isn't done anymore in the future. They're rarely communists and are aware of its failure modes, they want markets, but their experience makes them believe that a many of the arguments against renewables are as bullshit as the old pro-smoking arguments; If you put up just the right limits on the market, we will have a great, green future!
Tbh the latter isn't even that far from my own position; It's just that I'm much more suspicious of government intervention blocking progress and protecting old, wasteful structures in an unholy BigState BigCorp marriage (also frequently called the cathedral).
There is definitely not a slope, and were there a slope, it definitely would not be slippery.
I'm a social conservative, and the new orthodox faith of the One, True, Catholic Church of Trans Rights is not convincing me to shift on that. All the former gay rights activism that successfully sold the line "if you're not gay, this will have no effect on your life" to the mainstream and the trans activism that piggy-backed on this ("why are those bigoted conservatives so obsessed with bathrooms? no trans person has ever said anything about bathrooms, it's all them!") couldn't maintain the facade. Never mind "bake the cake, bigot", we're now in "um, aren't pregnant people women?/die, heretic! leper outcast unclean!" territory.
Yes, you too can be barred for life from the party you co-founded because you questioned a previous banning for life for not being 200% onboard with "we need this inclusive terminology so trans men and non-binary persons won't feel all oppressed and persecuted when turning up for their pre-natal appointments. Sure, maybe they're only 1% if that of people who turn up to maternity hospitals, but won't the 99% who are women be just overjoyed to make this teeny little change in being referred to not as a mother but a 'pregnant person'? And if they're not thrilled, too bad for them. They better know to keep their mouths shut, the transphobic bigots!"
Believe it or not, I want to be charitable to people who are unhappy with their bodies. I don't want to kick up a fuss about the changes. I'm not even that outraged about bathrooms. But when we're getting to the point of witch-burning someone for just being in the general vicinity of a witch, tell me how this makes society better for us all?
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