domain:kvetch.substack.com
aqouta
29d ago
If you and someone else believe different things then this is the process of finding out where the underlying disagreement is. Seems pretty reasonable, if you're confident in your beliefs you should be able to object to the part of the hypothetical that is wrong. This is a perfectly fair way to investigate someone's beliefs.
FiveHourMarathon
Wawa Nationalist
29d ago
I don't really care because they've got skin in the game in the most literal way possible.
iprayiam3
29d ago
We're materially better off than ever. We're spiritually dead. We have more freedom than ever. We're trapped in our heads like anxious prisons. We solved hunger, and crippled ourselves with food.
Just wait to see what AI does here, when at best jobs really start getting replaced with UBI.
This is generally my argument against AI art. I’m not moved by the “look at the abundance! Look at what is now possible and accessible at scale!” Genre of argument, like the ones made a few threads down. Because exactly I don’t think they are net positive for any sense of flourishing. It’s a hedonic treadmill. Art thrives under constraint, and the human spirit works similarly.
Hadad
29d ago
Aw, thanks. Yeah, I gotta say, it always struck me that people really dramatize the requirements for a top post. If I can do it, anyone can.
I think that the US actually has an incredibly low level of political violence if you consider how easy it is to buy a gun here. Far from being a country rife with political violence, the US actually is a country where the vast, vast majority of people either don't care enough about politics to use violence, are not politically polarized enough to do political violence, are morally or ideologically against political violence, and/or simply don't want to get killed or spend decades in jail as a consequence of using political violence. I don't know what the relative significance of these different factors compared to each other is.
Surveillance and policing seem to have gotten to a point where it's very difficult to attempt an assassination and get away with it. Low-level unsolved murders of random ordinary people happen all the time, but the system takes political violence pretty seriously. See Mangione for example. And it turns out that very, very few Americans, no matter how politically outraged they are, are willing to throw their lives away for the sake of political violence. This goes for both the left and the right. It would be completely trivial for a leftist to get an assault rifle and go shoot up a young Republicans meeting, or for a right-winger to get an assault rifle and go shoot up a leftist protest. It requires no special planning, no careful strategy. Yet it almost never happens, even though there are hundreds of millions of guns in civilian hands in the US, and even if you don't have one it's usually pretty easy to get one.
Let's do a quick back-of-the-envelope estimate. Let's say that 1% of the adult US population would love to commit an assassination or several if they knew they would get away with it. That's already over 2 million people. Yet there are only a handful of political assassination attempts in the US every year. This shows that far from the US being rife with political violence (I know you're not arguing that it is, but just saying), the US actually has an almost shockingly, surprisingly low level of political violence, given how easy it is to attempt an assassination here against the average politician or corporate executive (successfully killing a President is very hard, but that isn't the case for the vast majority of politicians and corporate executives) and given how polarized the political discourse has become.
I do think that the "you'll almost certainly get caught if you try" factor is a very important one. It is part of the explanation for why actual political violence seems to so often be committed by mentally disturbed people instead of by fervent but largely mentally stable ideologues. The vast, vast majority of fervent ideologues in the US are not committed enough to their causes to throw their lives away for those causes' sake.
All that said, it does seem to me to be the case that the frequency of assassination attempts has been slowly increasing the last few years. Very very slowly and nowhere comparable to how polarized and frothing the political discourse has become in the last 20 years (the left and right regularly accusing each other of being fascists, pedophiles, and so on)... but still, very very slowly, increasing.
Two deaths. Other two victims are currently expected to recover.
One noteworthy bit’s that this is a little bit more sophisticated than the normal hradzka garbage person emotional spasm, not just in the police maskerade, but also hitting two separate politicians so quickly. Police are claiming he had a list with a number of other politicians included. This is pretty far from what I (or, presumably FCfromSSC) would think about, but it doesn’t take much more sophistication before it breaks the normal field tilt toward defense.
Another is that Washington’s ED: Minnesota's /ED state Senate is very close. They’re out of session and it will be a while til the next session, but change votes by a bullet is Very Bad to have as common knowledge.
Some reporting is claiming the shooter has been caught and identified as someone with ties to the Dem political sphere (Walz, morbidly). I’d like to see confirmation that a) that’s the guy and b) it’s not some schmuck with too common a name before doing any deeper analysis publicly, though. EDIT: Confirmed “no kings” rally fliers in vehicle, dunno if motivation or target.
ulyssessword
29d ago
The point of the turn signal is to signal, it's pointless to do when nobody's around so if you're completely certain, there is no need. It's hard to be completely certain however, so lean on doing it all the time to build habit.
A common story element among those with poor awareness: "I was driving along, then this car comes out of nowhere and..." No, aliens didn't teleport a car next to you. The car drove to that location and you weren't paying enough attention to note blind entry points and/or track their approach. (also, you didn't realize that the story would cast you in a negative light).
Signalling 100% of the time is the way to go, for exactly the reasons you laid out.
Hoffmeister25
American Bukelismo Enthusiast
29d ago
b) it’s not some schmuck with too common a name before doing any deeper analysis publicly, though.
I mean, “Vance Luther Boelter” is absolutely not a common name. No component of the name is remotely common; I can’t comment on the probability of this guy being wrongly accused/apprehended, but the odds of him getting mixed up with another individual with the same name are vanishingly low.
Hadad
29d ago
I think that the US actually has an incredibly low level of political violence if you consider how easy it is to buy a gun here.
I agree. I wouldn't say we have a political violence problem yet. But I do believe we're seeing a rise in political violence, both in actual perpetration and in rhetorical support from the masses. This is what I'd imagine the period before the American Troubles would look like. I'm not wary of the situation right now.. just worried about the direction it's trending.
I also suspect it's going to become easier to get away with this as it continues. In normal contexts, you pretty much have to be a wacky fucko to risk your entire life on a mad crusade to kill a famous person - especially since it's unlikely, even if you kill them, to have a meaningful change on the system as a whole. So killers and would-be John Wicks have primarily drawn themselves from a host of impulsive, low capital, and frequently mentally unwell people.
But if it's normalized? As in, if it starts being done by normal but pissed off people? That changes it. I'm not inclined to murder, but I'm reasonably sure it's actually very easy to do it, provided you're careful and adequately random in your targeting. And I'm not an especially bright or competent man. Get someone motivated, trained, someone ready..
Well. Like I said, it's the trending line that worries me, not the current status quo.
Hadad
29d ago
I'm not worried about AI art, myself. Those with a transcendent message to share will still be around. Everyone else gets to make fun pictures, or characters, etc.
FistfullOfCrows
29d ago
No Aryan ever called me a Goy
FCfromSSC
Nuclear levels of sour
29d ago
Hadad
29d ago
+1 to that post. I remember it, and most of what you write. The sides are getting better at hurting the outgroup and minimizing trouble.
TIRM
29d ago
I've been to China plenty. Their driving norms are hard to take. Someone on a scooter making an illegal left hand turn starting from the right side of the road through multiple lanes of traffic. I'm cringing watch him weave through cars going both ways.
City busses don't slow down for or avoid pedestrians. You need to proactively get out of the bus's way. I've seen a few people almost get hit by busses. They don't have our very American understanding of pedestrian right of way.
People driving with no seat belt and pulling it across their body as they approach the seat belt cameras, then letting it go when past the cameras. More effort than just wearing a seat belt.
Taxi drivers aren't the person on the taxi license. One was clearly underaged and smoking.
erwgv3g34
29d ago
orthoxerox
If you can read this, you're using a custom theme
29d ago
"What was the coach even thinking?" and "They keep trying to walk it in this year", but I'd appreciate more personalized advice to shake the trail.
There's also "Did you see that ludicrous display last night?"
wayfarer
29d ago
Farm labour could be in theory much more profitable but it is in general low-skill, replaceable workers, minimal starting costs to switch workers and so on. So it will go toward low-cost workers.
In theory it could pay two or three times more, but relevant food prices would increase (note: it would not affect all food, for example grain production in developed countries is highly mechanized, but strawberries picked manually one by one would noticeably increase in price).
But yes, it is not going to happen any time soon.
TIRM
29d ago
I live in a suburb. Almost all roads are 1 lane each way. A few major roads are 2 lane each way with 3rd turning lanes at intersections. I have never in my life even second hand known someone who died walking around a suburb. American pedestrian deaths due to cars has exploded in the past few years, it has reached a peak of 0.0000220 likelihood per person per year of dying by being hit by a car while walking.
Our road infrastructure is not that overwhelming. The freeways are 4 lanes each way.
FistfullOfCrows
29d ago
Yes, Iran sponsors terrorists and a reduction in sanctions would have made them more able to do so
Oh no, Iran sponsors terrorists? How awful, I'm sure the US didn't literally hand out ground to ground anti-tank missiles to "the good kind of terrorists" in Syria. Terrorism? Really? Is anyone left in 2025 who gives any weight these words?
Primaprimaprima
...something all admit only "TRUMP", and the Trump Administration, can do.
29d ago
As I have said, you really need to reevaluate the claim that you are "2 sigma" beyond the depth and breadth of emotions that most people are experiencing.
I'm always open to evaluating new evidence to the contrary. But this claim of mine has been confirmed time and again in my experience. In particular, I'm quite confident that I'm more of a doe-eyed hopeless romantic than you are.
It appears I have been largely unsuccessful in communicating my views on love. I would recommend reading Kierkegaard's Fear and Trembling if you want to understand my views on love better.
The book describes the dialectical stages of the development of Abraham's faith when he is asked by God to sacrifice Isaac. We begin at "mere" faith, a mere unreflective belief -- his mode of relation to his faith is unmediated immediacy, because this faith has not yet been subjected to critical inquiry. We proceed through doubt, despair, and resignation, until finally arriving at a faith that is identical to the faith we started with, and yet somehow not the same at all. He's back exactly where he started, and yet everything is different. His faith is now a mediated immediacy, mediated by the preceding dialectical development; he no longer believes in spite of the absurd, he believes because it is absurd to believe, the absurd is his reason for believing.
In brief: there is no such thing as authentic love until you have realized the impossibility of love.
Love is impossible. But its impossibility is what makes it beautiful. If it weren't impossible, it would have no value.
I'll just link to the comment I made on @Dirty_DemSoc 's "WHY BOTHER" post. Since its relevant to the protests AND the assassinations.
Quote:
And yet we know that democratic elections don't completely avert violence, or else Mexico's most recent election wouldn't have been so damn bloody. Turns out that violence is also a way to influence outcomes in a democracy, when you don't expect the votes to go your way 'organically.' So there's a bit of a feedback loop.
Right now we're in a phase where a minority faction is fomenting chaos for want of being able to achieve their goals via electoral process.
In a sense, this is ALSO one faction that is demonstrating that it has motivated, competent shooters on its side, so if something real DID pop off they are at least capable of carrying out deadly violence. The capacity for this violence is no longer just theoretical.
Of course the basic motives will be more complex than that, but the goal of having mass protests is ALSO to demonstrate "we are numerous, we are organized, and we could turn violent if things don't change in our favor!"
But we had a spate of lefty-coded assassination/killing attempts going back at least to Trump's earshot, and THAT trend is a bit scarier because the people of his tribe either ignore it (tacitly approving, I'd say), line up in support like with Luigi, or actually denounce it and try to lower the temperature and root out the radicals among them who are willing to get froggy.
Anything other than the last option will mean MORE attempts going forward. I'm waiting with a TON of consternation for the first FPV drone-based assassination that succeeds.
PLEASE try lowering the temperature, Dems.
Primaprimaprima
...something all admit only "TRUMP", and the Trump Administration, can do.
29d ago
I'm not blowing you off; I just don't have the time in the day to keep responding to everyone for now. I may take some select points here and respond to them in a future top level post.
Note: top-level post about breaking event. Basically just a summary of what happened, but with the poster's own thoughts about it. Not a huge effortpost, no brilliantly original ideas. Just some musings on current events and enough to hang a discussion on.
It's not hard, folks. We don't ask for more than this.
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