domain:nunosempere.com
hydroacetylene
1yr ago
I mean, what are the broadly popular left-aligned ideas which are outside the overton window? Marijuana legalization is the only example I can think of in recent history, but I'm sure there must be other examples.
remzem
1yr ago
It was less about the Russian's ability to hit targets and more about what they were targeting.
https://www.ft.com/content/4d583259-7565-4cbc-972e-ea77f4a76175
Russia’s first aerial bombardment campaign in the winter of 2022-23 targeted the country’s electrical distribution grid — which could be repaired relatively easily, according to officials and experts. But the latest barrages are zeroing in on thermal and hydroelectric power plants which will be much harder and more expensive to fix, rebuild or replace, they said.
Went for distribution early which could be repaired relatively quickly, now they are targeting generation itself which will take years to fix.
EdenicFaithful
Dark Wizard of Ravenclaw
1yr ago
So, what are you reading?
I’m on Hülsmann’s Abundance, Generosity and the State, an attempt to understand gifts in the framework of Austrian economics. It was apparently inspired by Benedict XVI’s Caritas in veritate.
TequilaMockingbird
Brown-skinned Fascist MAGA boot-licker
1yr ago
I don't think it's "lack of discipline" so much as the DNC leadership hasn't really adjusted to the new normal. They're acting like they still have the capability to manufacture consent/consensus that they did 10 - 15 years ago, but the thing about burning trust for near tearm gains is that it inevitably screws you in the long term.
Like, @pigeonburger says below, they thought they could Jedi Mind-trick the public into seeing what they wanted them to see only for the public to pull a Watto.
yunyun333
1yr ago
France's left coalition NPF appears to have won the election, with Macron's party in 2nd and the RN 3rd.
https://www.bbc.com/news/live/ck7gydwgvy8t
I haven't faintest clue about how the french electoral system works but perhaps Macron was correct to call an early election.
SteveKirk
1yr ago
The NPF has promised to scrap the pension and immigration reforms passed by the current government, to set up a rescue agency for undocumented migrants and to facilitate visa applications.
It also wants to put caps on basic goods to combat the cost of living crisis and raise the minimum wage.
For all the "Europe surging to the right" scaremongering, it seems like the only outcome is always even more money for illegal migrants and leftists expanding their control over the state
FiveHourMarathon
Wawa Nationalist
1yr ago
What purchases have you been extremely satisfied with lately? Can be large, small, regular or extraordinary, for yourself or as a gift, whatever.
For me:
-- I love my 97lb kettlebell. I'm having so much fun.
-- I bought a NEBO cap light at the hardware store, although upon googling to find it for this I'm realizing I overpaid. It's really convenient, in the heat lately I've been trying to walk my dog for a long walk before the sun comes up and again after it comes down, I bought it to keep the red light on when I walk her to avoid getting hit by a car. I've never had a good clip light before, it's so far superior to a strap on headlamp.
-- I like cool mint Zyns on long drives. I don't use them daily, but I find them very nice when I'm tired and bored, the nicotine perks me up, and the flavor is sort of nice with a diet coke without eating anything.
-- Lately I've been living off of frozen fruit blended with cottage cheese in the vitamix. It hits my frozen treat desire in the summer while being fairly high protein.
What about you?
Rosencrantz2
1yr ago
But in this specific election, they only won because the opposition was fractured into two dueling parties.
You could argue that the left is more fractured than the right, even if they're not warring, and that in most UK elections it is actually the Tories who have regularly won due to the other side being fractured. Labour + Lib Dems + Greens + SNP makes a significantly bigger share of the vote than Tories + Reform, and similar equations would have given similar results in the past.
I think to try for PR, Labour would have to believe that the fracture between Reform and the Tories was likely to soon mend, but it's a pretty deep schism so I can't believe they would even notionally consider it till a possible second term.
FiveHourMarathon
Wawa Nationalist
1yr ago
I'm still on And the Band Played On. It is such an engaging, well written book, that among other things it is making me think of how much I hate writers who make everything depressing and grimdark all the god damn time. Shilts wrote ATBPO, about AIDS, while dying of AIDS, after most of his friends died of AIDS, and it is filled with humor, irony, wry observations and satires. It's hardly ligthhearted, but it maintains a lighthearted degree of readability.
Adding wide, convex rear-view mirrors (both interior and exterior) to your car makes changing lanes on the highway absolutely stress-free. This image is only slightly exaggerated: with a wide, convex interior rear-view mirror, you can watch through the rear window and through the right rear passenger window simultaneously (especially after removing the headrest from the front passenger seat).
Sizzle50
1yr ago
Memorably, Trump appointed as Ambassador to the EU in 2018 a hotel businessman named Gordon Sondland who had donated $1 Million to Trump’s Inaugural Committee
Sondland ended up being a key figure in the Ukraine impeachment imbroglio, which is the only reason this was considered notable. I remember thinking at the time that i) $1M is not all that much money and becoming an ambassador seems readily achievable; and ii) that absolutely nobody seemed to care about this obvious bribe (again, the payment was to the Inaugural Committee, not even the campaign)
sliders1234
1yr ago
Liz Cheney has a Dick Cheney problem. I don’t think she’s a good example.
At this point everyone knows Dick Cheney was planting false stories to the establishment media to sell the war to the American people. The same thing we know see on the left of funneling misinformation thru the Times.
And I am honestly not even against the Iraq War. I think it ended up ok. Probably could have been better executed if we worked with the Baathist and just cut the head of the snake. Saddam was pretending to have WMD and Cheney used the fact Saddam couldn’t deny having the WMD to sell the war.
Iraq was a mess then. Ideally we could have worked out some kind of deal for him to step down and then provide resources for a new stable regime.
After 9/11 having a guy pretending to be a little crazy with weapons wasn’t something we wanted. Setting up something like the Saudis relationship would have been great.
TowardsPanna
1yr ago
Peter Lynch's One Up on Wall Street. It's pretty good. Earnestly informative and funny too. I think someone here recommended it. :)
...And even amongst the people with nice jobs and nice houses there are plenty who live in "Red" areas.
I feel like there's a tendency here to forget that there are tech jobs outside of FAANG and Silicon Valley startups, and that there is serious engineering work being done in states like Tennessee and Texas.
But as you say, voting is a game for the masses, and perhaps this is why the democrats suddenly seem so keen to "protect" democracy from bad outcomes. Ie things the masses might vote for.
TequilaMockingbird
Brown-skinned Fascist MAGA boot-licker
1yr ago
You weren't supposed to notice that. ;-)
FiveHourMarathon
Wawa Nationalist
1yr ago
Huh. That's pretty neat.
pusher_robot
PLEASE GO STAND BY THE STAIRS
1yr ago
I enjoyed the unstated premise in Andor that computer technology in that universe had largely not advanced beyond early 80's human capabilities, excepting the droids which I am now convinced are actually cyborgs.
AhhhTheFrench
We will sell no wine before its time
1yr ago
Seafoam fuel additive. I have always thought everything like this was bullshit...I was wrong. Seafoam will fix engines. I've recently used it on two lawnmowers, one riding tractor, and a generator that I would have otherwise had to take apart, one of the lawnmowers I did take apart and clean the carb etc...the seafoam pushed it over the edge afterwards into a useful machine. It is now on my list of mechanical must haves.
ABigGuy4U
1yr ago
If you are a Democrat, you would probably be better off sitting this one out and letting Biden lose. If he wins, it just sends the message to the Democratic Party that they can run more and more brazen and unqualified neoliberal establishment ghouls that won’t give you anything close to the policies you actually want. You need to show them that you will draw the line somewhere, and that they actually need to give you something to win your vote. Even if you find Trump distasteful and scary I think you can look back at the four years of his last term and see that a lot of the fretted-about nightmare scenarios your side was concerned about never actually happened.
Outlaw83
1yr ago
I mean, I get not liking it, but a coalition that gets 50% of the seats and around ~50% of the votes is not anti-democratic.
If the people who voted for those parties don't like the fact they made a grand coalition, they can vote for other parties who won't do that, until the far-right gains enough support a grand coalition isn't possible.
stolen_brawnze
I am the way Sia says "batteries" in that one song.
1yr ago
I know there was a sense of, "wtf..." when she died, but surely her legacy wasn't tarnished to the extent Biden's might be. At worst, her legacy has only been significantly diminished in degree what with the whole abortion thing.
Well the president’s power does not include the power to receive a bribe.
No, but if the bribe-service isn't admissible in evidence, then there is no way to distinguish a bribe from a gift.
By the way cushy ambassadorships are already sold off for donors.
Legally, there is an important distinction beween a donation to a politician's campaign, and a cash payment to the politician. We can argue about how relevant this is, but it is the law and it does reflect the way the American political elite behaves. I don't think the existence of unofficial quid pro quos for campaign donations is a good argument for legalising direct bribery.
Outlaw83
1yr ago
I mean, here's the issue for the far-right - there is majority support for their harsh treatment of immigrants (and I say that openly as a dirty soft hearted liberal), but even in Europe, the far-right is dominated by weirdoes and people with reactionary social views people don't want to vote for.
An actual successful anti-immigration party would be basically be moderate to center-left or center-right on most issues, while also being wildly far-right on immigration, but of course, most of the people who deeply care about immigration are also right-wing on other issues.
campfire
1yr ago
What has your experience been with SSC/ACX or SSC-adjacent communities in your area? What are your thoughts on the future of the scene at large, online and offline?
Went to a local informal ACX meetup recently and was pleasantly surprised by the group. The members were all interesting in their own way: most had niche intellectual interests they could discuss at length (including ones they had written about on their substacks or elsewhere online), some had studied at elite universities, others had met many in the greater Lesswrong-Bay Area rationalist scene. At 25 I was one of the younger members, but not the youngest, and everyone was <31 (in this meetup at least). This got me wondering about the state of the rat/rat-adjacent community (side note: is there any sort of official name for this space? I think most of us are familiar with the scene I'm describing here but I'm not sure what to label it) at large. Do meetups happen regularly in your area? What's the turnout like, and are you regularly seeing newer/younger members joining? Has anything interesting come of them: like a business/organization started or the groups achieving any sort of collective goals?
I've always found it interesting how this space manages to naturally attract smart, open-minded, and intellectually curious people. And it does so because (I think) reading LessWrong/SSC selects for these qualities in a way that an open forum that sells itself on fostering them probably wouldn't, such a place would probably just revert to the median subreddit-level discourse. I've seen comments suggesting it's on the decline. For example: that this site's weekly threads get less activity than the subreddit's did at its peak. I guess this site in particular will struggle in the long-term to find new posters to replace the ones that leave or just post less frequently without Reddit to promote it. At the same time, I wouldn't, for the reasons I described, want to just advertise it to the masses. But the SSC subreddit doesn't seem as active as it once was either.
Related question: are there any new/younger writers in the space? Scott recommends Ricki Heicklen who graduated from undergrad in 2019 but she hasn't posted in a while.
Sure, I don’t dispute that, but even that article suggests that in many of the most important departments like State, 30-35%+ of employees are Republicans. Also, since Dems in the federal government are likely more committed than Republicans it doesn’t tell us everything about the ratio of employees.
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