domain:drmanhattan16.substack.com
raakaa
6m ago
FWIW, I didn’t bring those numbers up to make some point like “my side could beat your side in a civil war”, like a schoolboy going “my dad could beat up your dad”. I was trying to say that targeting 50% of the population creates conditions of total war far more than targeting 1% of the population.
The context of OP's comment didn't involve considering academics in a vacuum, but measured up against a conservative majority.
When considered in strict relation to each other, there's definitely a fact of the matter when it comes to quality.
FirmWeird
Randomly Generated Reddit Username
32m ago
let alone subverted the law on behalf of another Jew.
This is the part I was specifically referring to - Tom is the "another Jew" in question. This is what I objected to - it doesn't matter what ethnicity Tom is (based solely on name and physiognomy he really does seem like one of those fake russian jews anyway) - what matters is that he's highly involved in the government of Israel. A zionist, someone manifestly devoted to ensuring the continuity of the state of Israel, intervening on behalf of a high-ranking individual in the state of Israel, is a serious issue and would remain a serious issue even if Tom was ethnically Japanese. Reducing it to a matter of ethnicity as opposed to direct political allegiance makes his argument weaker, which is what I was concerned with.
netstack
Texas is freedom land
1hr ago
Worried about? Ha. Ha ha.
Any plan which relies on our state Democrats is probably less effective than shooting myself. At least with that strategy, I’d reduce our share of the next census.
Gerrymandering every four years instead of every ten is obviously not the end of democracy. It’s just another thing made shittier to score a couple points in the here and now. You’d think I might be used to it by now.
PokerPirate
1hr ago
Arguing over the definition of "lawyer-brained" is about the most lawyer-brained thing there is. I legitimately can't tell if you're trying to satirize yourself here. Either way, I love it.
netstack
Texas is freedom land
1hr ago
Look, I’d absolutely prefer a norm of independent redistricting. Sweep away the decades of bullshit. Make everyone fight for their seats.
Divorcing redistricting from the census is going in the wrong direction. It is strictly worse to have the winners of each election clamoring to entrench their lead. But Trump and Newsom think they can score some points by mashing the big Defect button, so that’s what we get. It’s like calling a snap election. It’s chicanery.
If a party gets too strong, and too unrepresentative, people will successfully organize to take it down a notch.
Gerrymandering is sustainable in the sense it's not a catastrophic disruption to the function of government. It is still less than ideal. Safe seats lead to more important primaries which leads to more important primary voters. Primary voters skew radical, older, and more influenced by interests. It is poorly representative practice, but not in any positive "the King knows best" sort of way.
The pendulum is a comforting idea. It's also not an Iron Law of democracy. Political machines entrench themselves and last much longer than they should because people don't successfully organize to take them down a notch. Chicago has been poorly governed by a political machine for a long time. I consider competition closer to an Iron Law of Good in democracy, and gerrymandering reduces it.
That said, if we want to stop arguing about gerrymandering we need a new system. I'd choose a limited form of proportional representation for the house. Limit the number of parties represented with thresholds to preclude 1% parties. I don't know how other places do that, but pick whatever is the best I'm sure it's easy. Keep the senate as is to preserve the contract of the Union. Oh, I guess we have to start by killing all current representatives to not slow or obstruct the reform process. Tree of liberty, etc.
TitaniumButterfly
1hr ago
There are worlds in books, and I care to return to visit some of those on occasion. Why ever re-visit a place you've traveled when there are other places?
I think we have been trained to associate the word 'hate' with low status, by people who have much to gain from our reflexive aversion to it. Those whom we should hate, i.e.
Ademonera
1hr ago
Thank you for the thoughtful response. Agreed that arguing from the perspective of what you would find compelling makes sense, as it's the only way to find the real weak points.
On Point 1, your proposed solution is interesting. That idea of a negotiated peace is pragmatic. It frames the problem as a failure of mutually assured destruction and suggests restoring it. If people saw that bad behavior was being addressed universally instead of just selectively, they might actually buy into the system again. However, I think the cat is out of the bag now. The decadent 2010s seem to have ruined any chance of this working. The 90s feel like the last time there was a real effort towards a color-blind society where character matters most. Things are too tribal for that to work nowadays. There are literally advanced degrees for studying how persecuted X group is. We get worked up over unfair treatment of our own group and are convinced other groups are getting away with it / getting a better deal, generally speaking.
On point 2, it seems we’re in agreement. These ideas have moved from the comment section to the core of the debate. Not necessarily a bad thing, but I feel it’s harder to make progress when the ‘real’ arguments are more antagonistic than Ken Bone saying we can all get along.
On point three, I completely agree that America has/had a unique "secret sauce" for getting things done. My contention is that it's part of a feedback loop. Our culture of ambition creates opportunities, which attracts the world's top talent. That talent reinforces and evolves the culture, starting new companies, creating new norms, and building towards the next thing.
I’m sure it’s been talked to death here but I had a professor in college who talked about how Japan will likely never have a magnificent growth period again because their reluctance to accept immigrants, combined with their demographic cliff, means they're stuck on the sidelines (in terms of real growth at least). They have a productive culture, but they're starved of new talent.
I visited Guangzhou about 10 years ago and saw the opposite problem. Their immigrant population comes largely from very poor areas in Africa. They're treated like second-class citizens, are watched constantly, and frankly, fit Trump’s language about immigrants more than the hard-working people in America. There’s no real chance for them to work hard, integrate, and have their kids become strong citizens.
That's why I think our system is so special and powerful. We have the culture that Japan lacks the people for and we offer the opportunity that China denies to its immigrants. We have the ability to give people a chance to join our hard-working culture and succeed. When we send signals that they're no longer welcome, I feel we're choosing to break the most powerful engine for prosperity the world has ever known
netstack
Texas is freedom land
1hr ago
Once you fire this spray of plutonium salts, it keeps going till it hits something. That can be a ship, or the planet behind that ship. It might go off into deep space and hit somebody else in ten thousand years. If you pull the throttle on this, you're ruining someone's day, somewhere and sometime.
…now get to it.
What an awesome concept, though.
MathWizard
Good things are good
1hr ago
The best partner is both, imo. Half my jokes are silly stupid nonsense (I can't even count the number of times my wife and I have accused each other of being a "Sneef Snorf") and the other half are clever and elaborate constructions designed to sound like something reasonable and/or intelligent until they think about it for several moments and untangle the hidden meaning: which turns out to be silly stupid nonsense. I once wrote a two page short story with seemingly arbitrary fantasy and fairy tale features all to build up to the conclusion which was a sentence consisting of weird typos my wife (then girlfriend) had sent me while drunk the previous night.
I suppose someone less intelligent could still have appreciated the goof, but probably not to the same extent. Or wouldn't have taken the teasing in as much fun, as part of the embarrassment at her misspelling is because she ordinarily spells things correctly while sober. And someone less intelligent probably wouldn't have been able to respond to my hack MSPaint "photoshops" of our cat's head onto movie characters with an even higher quality photoshop of her own. And someone who took themselves seriously just wouldn't have appreciated the goofs at all.
You need both.
Iconochasm
2. Bootstrap the rest of the fucking omnipotence.
1hr ago
The tiger is an active threat. The deer is not. Hate walls off the vile spark that spares the foe. And if you were at risk of starving, I bet you'd muster up the courage to hate that deer - for your family's sake.
madeofmeat
1hr ago
There's a good Nick Land essay about this where he argues that space exploration is really about planetary disassembly by posthuman intelligences rather than domestead frontier LARPing. But the true vision can't be sold to the voters and politicians since it's too Nietzschean. Alas I cannot find it.
hydroacetylene
2hr ago
'Not very smart' in the sense of unexceptional or in the sense of actually retarded? Like they are two different things.
hydroacetylene
2hr ago
and organize with state Democrats to undermine Republican rule by adopting a more Texan-palatable local platform
Hahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha
I've heard less realistic jokes, but not many. Texas democrats exist to expend out of state donor money on various retarded bullshit, not to win elections.
There are hundreds of slightly radioactive buildings in Northern Mexico because one guy sold a dismantled cobalt-60 radiotherapy machine to a scrap metal company.
I recall a similar apartment building somewhere in SE Asia that wound up providing decently strong evidence (for a given value of "strong"; low-level exposures tend to have weak effects regardless of which side of the debate one is on) for opponents of LNT; that is, cancer rates were lower in the irradiated apartment building than its neighbors, despite similar demographics.
Edit: it was in fact Cobalt-60 contamination in Taiwan:
Based on the investigation conducted by the RSPAT,[10] the total number of cancer deaths among these residents is only 7 in 200,000 person-years or 3.5 deaths per 100,000 person-years—only 3% of the rate (i.e., 116) expected for the general population
gattsuru
3hr ago
Traditionally, redistricted has been restricted to the years immediately after a census, with outliers being driven by judicial command (or the results of recent judicial command, like the 2005 Georgia redistricting being driven by Cox v. Larios). In this case, the charitable motivation is downstream of the serious errors by the 2020 Census; the less charitable explanation is just politics.
Whether this difference matters or is anything but an ex post rationalization is left as an exercise for the reader; as long as it's a compelling and coherent rationalization the difference is pretty academic.
Supah_Schmendrick
3hr ago
Wonderful. Another norm for the shredder. At least this time it’s closer to a tenuous gentleman’s agreement than settled law, right? Right?
What part of "the most gerrymandered states in the union are all blue; there is no more gerrymandering blue can do here" don't you understand? The norm goes into the shredder when the first side defects, not when the patsy notices and finally decides to fight back.
WandererintheWilderness
3hr ago
psychologically refer back to that seeking of ends as a terminal value
I think that's a very lacking definition of "hate". I would associate that word with an obsessive, rage-filled state of mind - which is both unpleasant for whoever feels it, and more likely to cloud one's judgement than to help with the task at hand. You don't need to hate a deer to successfully hunt and kill it; why should the tiger be any different?
ArjinFerman
Tinfoil Gigachad
3hr ago
Ok so what do you feel about a member of the Trump admin saying on video that he desires to ban pornography across the entire nation?
I'm happy to discuss this, but you can't expect me to answer another your questions, if you've been dodging mine for half a dozen posts.
but don't carve out the same thing for "them"?
Who told you that? I'm perfectly willing to do so, if I can see that they actively thought for free speech during progressive dominance the same way I thought for it during the last gasps of conservatism. You'll notice I never criticized FIRE, but if you're going to tell me they're in any way representative of academia writ large... well, that would just be a lie, simple as.
The_Nybbler
If you win the rat race you're still a rat. But you're also still a winner.
3hr ago
Norm. LOL. Here is the New Jersey map. District 10 is a triskellion. District 6 is your classic salamander. District 3 for some reason has a dagger through the heart of Monmouth County. District 11 is a Republican area plus just enough of deep blue Essex to flip it Democratic. And District 8 is just WTF.
The only "norm" broken here is the Republicans are doing it loudly instead of the Democrats in a back room.
Iconochasm
2. Bootstrap the rest of the fucking omnipotence.
4hr ago
The tiger, like a political opponent and unlike gravity, is a problem that you can at least theoretically end. And once you've made that decision to seek it's end, it is an adaptive simplification to just psychologically refer back to that seeking of ends as a terminal value.
Thus, it makes perfect sense to hate the tiger.
self_made_human
Sajjano durjano bhūyāt, durjano badhyatāṃ sadā, baddho'nyān nibandhāyet
4hr ago
That is a possibility that I can't rule out with any real certainty, I did just date her casually over a few months. However, I still think that's unlikely. She's not a bad person, from my perspective, she's doing everything she can to help herself, just severely handicapped by not being smart.
He stayed with her for a year, took the idea of marriage seriously, indirectly asked for a dowry. That's not really the behavior of someone who doesn't want her, even if a combination of pride and adherence to protocol means he isn't willing to follow through. I still think that his ego getting in the way is the most parsimonious explanation, he's definitely not reading articles on the heredity of intelligence and taking them seriously.
No need to run. A walk at active pace for an hour or two is more than enough
Also, I don't recommend treating dating like a job interview, which you seem to be doing by having an extensive lists of prerequisites you're forcing yourself to get done before even trying. You're definitely on the right path in improving yourself, you definitely should keep going, not for the sake of dating but for yourself. Change the mindset from "I'm lifting because I want a girlfriend" to "I'm lifting because I want to be healthy" or because "lift heavy rock make bad thought in my ape head go away". Reason why I say all this is because with online dating, you're bound to fail many times. You'll be meeting complete strangers, failure rate is high. It will discourage you from improving yourself because your framing will be that you did all this work yet you still haven't achieved your goal. People with bad eyesight and poor sleep still date, don't wait on fixing this.
don't beat yourself up about this too much. Can actually turn this into a positive for yourself. Everyone under 30 is doomscrolling for hours too, girls you will meet will be brainrotted to the core just as much as you (unless you're doomscrolling autistic sites which is highly likely since we're on the motte, you should hide that stuff on first few dates lol).
Lastly, once you actually start going on dates here's my final advice. Like I said earlier, failure rate is very high and you should expect most dates to not work out, but still make the best of them. And you do that by going in with minimal expectations. My favorite thing to do is doing some kind of activity that I was going to do anyway. New exhibition at the museum? Get a quick bite then go see the exhibition. That way I kill two birds with one stone, have a date and visit the museum. Even if the date goes bad, at least I visited the exhibition I wanted to see anyway. Any other mindset would have me stressing because 'OMG I'm about to go out with potentially my future wife I gotta put my best foot down and be on my best behavior', but that just puts way too much unnecessary pressure, so I just treat it like a hangout with a friend. Don't take this advice too far, you still gotta flirt and show interest, otherwise the girl will not get the spark or feel like you're not into her but don't worry about this too much because dealing with that will come with experience
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