domain:felipec.substack.com
aceventura
23hr ago
This tweet was popular on my feed, but frankly I can't distinguish between the physiognomy he's criticizing and how he himself looks. If I didn't know who Dave Greene was already, I might guess he was one of the internet atheists he's mocking. I'll grant that the Antifa people look very odd, but a lot of the terminally online right-wing personalities don't look very different that the terminally online left-wing to me.
Are there differences in physical appearance between the online left and online right?
EdenicFaithful
Dark Wizard of Ravenclaw
19hr ago
So, what are you reading?
I'm picking up With and Without Galton, an open access book on Vasilii Florinskii and Russian eugenics, or as the author calls it, 'eugamics' (ie. well-married), as distinguished from Galton's eugenics.
quiet_NaN
16hr ago
The CW angle is that Trump and Doge downsized the National Weather Service. This made sense ideologically -- meteorologists are basically climate researchers, and thus likely to be more worried about climate change than immigrants, plus college-educated pronoun-bearers. And I am sure that some of the NWS people were installed there by previous administrations for political reasons (which I happen to be sympathize with). But separating the wheat from the chaff would require a scalpel, not the chainsaw of doge.
Anyhow, in this case, the Guardian reports that NWS cuts did not contribute to the tragedy:
Despite funding cuts and widespread staffing shortages implemented by the Trump administration, NWS forecasters in both the local San Angelo office and at the NWS national specialty center responsible for excessive rainfall provided a series of watches and warnings in the days and hours leading up to Friday’s flooding disaster.
The forecast office in San Angelo has two current vacancies – typical for the pre-Trump era and fewer than the current average staff shortage across the NWS – and has not been experiencing any lapses in weather balloon data collection that have plagued some other offices.
[...] In a final escalation, the NWS office in San Angelo issued a flash flood emergency about an hour before the water started rapidly rising beyond flood stage at the closest US Geological Survey river monitoring gauge.
SubstantialFrivolity
I'm not even supposed to be here today
23hr ago
I'm neither a veteran nor a dog owner, but I think we need to do something about fireworks because of the usual reason - jerks are ruining it for everyone. I would be perfectly okay with fireworks on July 4, stopping at a reasonable hour (say 10-11 pm) so as not to disturb those trying to sleep. Instead what we get is about 2 months of fireworks on either side of the holiday, frequently going past midnight.
I honestly don't know what to do - normally you might say "make it illegal", but the mortar fireworks are illegal in this state already. But since people can drive 4 hours to Wyoming to get fireworks there, the law doesn't accomplish anything. It's a shame, because I actually love fireworks and it would be really cool to have them in the neighborhood if people were responsible. And to be fair most people are. But as usual, the irresponsible minority is causing problems for everyone.
yunyun333
15hr ago
The bigger problem was that everyone was asleep. My phone does go off with a weather alert when anything worse than a thunderstorm pops up, but it probably wouldn't wake me up. If you live near a danger zone then you ought to install a dedicated warning app that's really loud.
RandomRanger
Just build nuclear plants!
14hr ago
I think rich countries shouldn't be building houses and infrastructure in flood plains without damming or proper measures to control the water. It's not impossible. The Netherlands has most of its economic activity below sea level, they eroded the North Sea.
There are big floods all the time in Britain and Australia that wreck people's houses. There ought to be a more aggressive stance taken towards the weather, bring it under control one way or another.
Alarm fatigue is a real thing. I know lots of people that have mentioned disabling alerts like this because they're tired of Amber Alerts (missing kids, often custody disputes) or Blue Alerts (for police getting fired at) from hundreds of miles away, or to be honest, even lots of NWS alerts, which IMO seem to have started appearing more often for less severe weather. I feel like I get weather alerts that are well meaning, but not surprising: "severe heat warning" for most of the South in summer isn't wrong, but I didn't need a klaxon to tell me that (uncertain if I've gotten one exactly like that, but not too far from it).
There is a tier of unblockable alerts, but we've only tested that once. I think we need to better-align the alerts with the people that need to see them.
No_one
18hr ago
The moment attitude to China changed from "how do we keep them in eternal poverty and civil war" to anything else, Americans lost.
It's that simple. They're mostly one people, they were backward for historical reasons. They are 1/2 of the world's high average IQ population.
Had US presidents read more Lothrop Stoddard, this would never have happened.
Fuck propping up the USSR to keep Chinese down would have made sense.
disposablehead
Hipster eugenicist
17hr ago
Does anyone have any good links to blogs or posts about how to use dating apps optimally? I figure someone has this stuff figured out
As a non-American, I find the notion that America should permanently kneecap anyone who might contest their dominance very off-putting. If America isn't clever enough, organised enough or stable enough to compete with China on an even footing, why should it be in charge of the globe?
I would also argue that even America benefits from having an actual rival that can go toe-to-toe with it. When America was competing with the USSR, it had to be focused and cohesive and attractive to its citizens. When the USSR died and the USA was left without rivals, it seems to me that it sickened and started to alternate between flailing around and infighting. (The same of course applies to China in reverse).
vorpa-glavo
23hr ago
After my reading on Renaissance humanism, I don't really think of the thing that makes our society work (to the extent that it does) as a "democracy", but as an attempt at an Aristotlean "politeia" or constitutional republic.
Many parts of this are tangled up in a system that also sells itself on everyone having a voice (the modern meaning of "democracy"), but I think the lynchpins that make things work are the fact that we brainwash most of the populace for 13 years via public schools and the media, and that we received the individualist-trending practices of Christian Europe (nuclear family, incest taboo, etc.)
It also doesn't hurt that we're the wealthiest, most technologically advanced and highest state capacity nation in history. Even if parts of your system rely on sanding off the rough edges of human nature, where you fail to do that, it is a nice consolation prize to have a system where almost no one is starving, dying of thirst, etc. People don't want to rebel against rulers that keep them materially comfortable, even if they can feel the friction of the society rubbing against their human instincts.
MathWizard
Good things are good
9hr ago
I hesitate to be the cold calculating math guy but.... no wait, I can't help myself, I am that guy: 80 people isn't actually that many. I mean, obviously every death is a tragedy for themselves and the people who knew them. But when you zoom out to the perspective of a country of 300 million people, it's tiny.
80 deaths 80 QALYS lost 365 2460 = 11 QALMS (Quality adjusted life minutes). That is, on average preventing a catastrophe of this magnitude is worth 11 minutes of life averaged over everybody in the country. If your proposed solutions of "don't let kids be kids anymore", "take time doing flood preparedness drills" and "spend lots of money damming every river everywhere" costs more than 11 minutes per person in terms of actual time and lessened enjoyment and life lived, then it won't be worth it. (though if you can get costs lower than that it is worth it).
Google says annual flood deaths in the U.S. are ~125, so ballpark this number is approximately right, you'd have to prevent this many deaths at that cost ratio consistently every year (and you'd actually have to reduce it by that much, across the entire country, not just Summer Camps).
I think we should let kids be kids, and we should sometimes consider the inherent risks acceptable. People die, it's a thing that happens. And it's bad that it happens, but if we don't have magic finger snapping powers that make it not happen for free, then we have to consider the costs and tradeoffs. And the thing nobody wants to admit is that, mathematically, there MUST be a point where the costs are no longer worth it. You can make arguments about where that point is, but the argument has to start with the assumption that there is such a point.
Jiro
17hr ago
If America isn't clever enough, organised enough or stable enough to compete with China on an even footing, why should it be in charge of the globe?
Because the comparison isn't America to some hypothetical perfect country. It's a comparison to China, and China's government is pretty shitty. If you have to choose between China and America and you're not in the Politburo, America is loads better even if you don't like some of the things America does.
Is it generally agreed that Western Europeans (and people of WE descent) are more attractive?
ArjinFerman
Tinfoil Gigachad
22hr ago
Okay... whatever our current system is, how would it solve the issue of everyone, from top to bottom, bring racist?
If you have to choose between China and America and you're not in the Politburo, America is loads better even if you don't like some of the things America does.
At the very least, this is not an indisputable fact. I've known various Chinese in and out of the country and I've visited briefly; China had much tighter security and much more overt control of information than America, but it was, basically, just another country. The people clearly didn't consider themselves to be living in a dystopia. Nor were they smiling and desperately terrified like somebody in North Korea.
Meanwhile @No_one is literally arguing that America should keep any potential competitors 'in eternal poverty and civil war'. That strikes me as pretty shitty! Like, probably America is still the country that most of us would prefer to win a battle of superpowers if it absolutely must come to that, but that calculus changes very quickly if America starts throwing its weight around even more than it already does.
Redditors are blaming Orange Man for DOGE's cuts to NOAA and NWS which they claimed contributed to the loss of life. I'd be less skeptical if this didn't sound almost exactly like the claims that Orange Man's cuts to the CDC caused grandma to die of Covid. From what I can tell, the flood deaths were mainly due to (1) the county not having a [modern?] warning system, (2) the camp leader not erring on the side of caution to evacuate [to be fair, this was a 100 year flood], and (3) the flood happening in the middle of the night. Did I miss anything?
Also, please say a quick prayer for the families of the victims if you're the praying type.
George_E_Hale
insufferable blowhard
19hr ago
What's with beards these days? I feel like beards came back hard over the last 10-15 years.
vorpa-glavo
22hr ago
I mean, I think we've already created a society where humans aren't "from top to bottom" racist.
Humans will always be tribal, but I think that different circumstances can turn the dial of how much that tribalism affects their behavior in practice. Having a food-rich, water-rich society is a great starting point for interracial harmony. Adding men with guns forcing people not to act racist, and a set of societal institutions that are designed to brainwash people to be even less racist, and I think you've got the "best" possible form of sanding that bit of human nature off.
You can't change human tribalism, but you can make it less salient depending on how you constitute society.
hydroacetylene
22hr ago
Meh. Where I live there are four days a year when it’s legal to shoot fireworks(two state independence days, fourth, and new years). There will be fireworks shot off the day before and after, of course, but not for months at a time. Not worth worrying about.
HighResolutionSleep
16hr ago
Similar to how I've advised previously with x.com, I'd advise others to consider blacklisting reddit.com in their machine's hosts file. There is utility in refusing to allow the darkest thoughts of the most troubled people into your mind space.
Imagining Mother Earth opening up and swallowing the children of your enemies as some kind of quasi-divine retribution for opposing your preferred flavor of government spending is insane. It's good to remember that quipping about how the "finding out phase is beginning" in response to little children dying at a real dinner party would earn you some pretty thick stares regardless of how blue the company.
ArjinFerman
Tinfoil Gigachad
22hr ago
So why is the inability to solve bigotry running from top to bottom of the entire society a point against libertarianism, but not against the system you support?
faceh
13hr ago
End of day you really can't account for every variable, or conditions that are far outside the 'expected' normal range.
Weather in particular is a chaotic system. Some days the conditions just happen to coincide to make things more severe than expected.
Remember just about a month ago a Swiss village got swept away by an avalanche. What are we to do about this risk? Engineer every mountain to be stable?
Or Volcanic eruptions. We don't HAVE an engineering solution to those!
The arguably better solution in many cases is to build the houses and infrastructure as cheaply as can reasonably be done so they can be more easily rebuilt, and spend the extra money on early warning and evacuation efforts.
coffee_enjoyer
☕️
18hr ago
Nuclear threats are for deterrence. You want the other country afraid to risk it. Israel’s highly religious minority cannot risk the grounds of the Temple Mount becoming contaminated, because it is unequivocally essential for their end of times prophecies. The entire religion is predicated on the Messiah returning and the Temple being rebuilt on these grounds. Some Haredi even believe that the Shechina is especially found at the Western Wall:
The real reason why the Western Wall was not destroyed was not the one that counts midrash – the reality is that the general assigned to demolish it was incapable of doing so. O midrash reveals that the Western Wall remained standing thanks to an oath from G-d promising its eternal survival. And, in fact, it teaches that the Divine Presence never withdrew from the Western Wall
When nuclear weapons are being launched, no one cares about offending someone’s sensibilities (lol). The threat may be enough to cause the ultra religious population of Israel to take a more diplomatic approach to Iran, unless their foolishness is the thing that causes the impossibility of their religious prophecy. That would be a big deal. An example of how serious they treat this stuff — the infamous tunnel under Chabad in NYC was to fulfill Rebbe Schneerson’s wish to attach two buildings together. So the literal world Chabad headquarters built a secret tunnel underneath Manhattan to connect the two buildings, and rioted when the police put an end to it, in order to fulfill the will of the Rebbe.
Iran should obviously see their current predicament as one of civilizational survival. Are they going to surrender to Israel for the rest of time, having no ability to ever fight back because of the pace of technological development, or are they going to try to retain sovereignty over their land? I know that if I were Iran, i would be nuke-maxxing and doing whatever it takes to ensure I have sovereignty in my country. Even if it is “offensive”
80+ dead and rising in Central Texas floods.
Kerr County is the Summer Camp capital of Texas. It's rugged hill country terrain and proximity to the Guadelupe River is perfect for exotic adventures outdoors, and it is close enough to major population centers to be convenient for parents to drop-off their children.
The downside is that low-lying cabins get completely wiped out in flood events. Camp Mystic for girls has double-digit casualties alone.
It is a common refrain to bemoan the fact that, "we don't let kids be kids anymore," and that may be true, but a big part of it is that we as a society simply don't consider the inherent risks acceptable anymore. I shudder to think about making 10-year-olds sit through a 30-minute site-specific emergency preparedness seminar, but that's where this is going, and given what's happened, I'm not entirely sure it would be a bad thing.
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