domain:slatestarcodex.com
hydroacetylene
1m ago
Israel was, quite literally, the only* country which supported the apartheid government until the end.
*excluding bantustans, of course.
Amadan
Enjoying my short-lived victory
3m ago
This is basically all of FdB's articles lately. Lots of words to complain about how people care too much about things he doesn't care about, and like things he doesn't like. He's lost his edge worse than Scott.
SkookumTree
5m ago
If I had to guess at examples/exceptions, the Puritans would be pretty high on the list. The island of Inis Beag might've been too small for aristocracy.
Amadan
Enjoying my short-lived victory
8m ago
I know a lot more people on the spectrum who have decent relationships than I do people who've climbed Mt. Everest.
SkookumTree
9m ago
Yes. Very few people can be professional ballet dancers, either - and "Chad" is every bit as determined as any world-class athlete. His social gracefulness probably cannot be described in English, at least not the dialects any of us speak. It would take Paul Ekman and his team a hundred years to articulate what Chad can do - a microexpression held for a tenth of a second too long can communicate an entire sentence.
Amadan
Enjoying my short-lived victory
9m ago
They have frequently not engaged in good faith any more than the Palestinians, especially under PMs who really didn't want to make any kind of a deal and made noises about it only under US pressure. They have manipulated Palestinian leadership for political convenience and not to actually effect change in Palestine. And the West Bank settlers are particularly egregious. A lot of it boils down to fairly predictable radicalization (or at least lack of sympathy) after years of conflict. The Sabra and Shatila massacres in Lebanon, for example, were preventable had the Israelis given a fuck, but the Israeli military basically cheered it on because they were past giving a fuck.
EverythingIsFine
Well, is eventually fine
11m ago
Sorry and thank you, you're very right and right to call me out, I in fact do know better. I should have written "'no evidence' in the traditional sense* and expressed myself poorly.
Two things are true: in a Bayesian statistics sense most things count as evidence, and in an everyday sense people want to see some kind of fact to support an allegation. Zero were provided, as far as I see. Not even a cogent rationale was gestured at. I do try and consistently be charitable in my comments, I tried a bit in a follow-up comment above, but Trump's method of handling this gives virtually nothing to work with. (And as I stated, the former Trump-appointed commissioner sticking up for her is pretty large evidence against Trump's claim, even if you weight Trump's claims highly on a personal prior level)
SkookumTree
12m ago
Essentially, dating is a hock like challenge, good luck in the boreal forest and tundra.
hydroacetylene
13m ago
There was an increase in censorship?
I would, if forced to make the decision, prefer our country's violent nutjobs target insurance company CEOs(who can hire private security, spend time behind secured areas instead of in public[eg going out to eat at country clubs rather than the local steakhouse], etc) than schoolchildren. From a utilitarian perspective I hope Luigi has copycats because it will redirect potential mass shooters. I would, of course, rather that our nutjobs be sane, or failing that confine themselves to long, thought out, and incomprehensible youtube comments, and if they must act out in public it's best they be institutionalized. But none of those things are going to happen.
I haven't noted any wave of censorship, either.
SkookumTree
13m ago
If you're autistic and not otherwise impressive or a "supercrip" it's rather gross for you to want to be anything other than a celibate and prosocial monk. As for fashion: I suspect that the schlubby straight guy is countersignaling some kind of social grace stuff. At least in some places. At my hospital: the medical students dress better than the residents, who in turn dress better than the attendings. One attending I mistook for a janitor or laborer at first!
popocatepetl
14m ago
the best argument against Freddie deBoer isn't a bunch of words but just to point out that he suffers from severe mental illness and is desperately trying to shed that reputation
Chat, is this Bulverism?
Textbook case.
Fruck
Lacks all conviction
15m ago
I liked using the stochastic parrot idea as a shorthand for the way most of the public use llms. It gives non-computer savvy people a simple heuristic that greatly elevates their ability to use them. But having read this I feel a bit like Charlie and Mac when the gang wrestles.
Dennis: Can I stop you guys for one second? What you just described, now that just sounds like we are singing about about the lifestyle of an eagle.
Charlie: Yeah.
Mac: Mm-hmm.
Dennis: Well I was under the impression we were presenting ourselves as bird-MEN which, to me, is infinitely cooler than just sort of... being a bird.
SkookumTree
15m ago
Possible that they're extraordinarily charismatic and kind of...retired from the high-reward, high-stress lifestyle that you get when trying to monetize that. Like a guy with a math degree from Princeton undergrad working the counter at Subway, or the former investment banker working as a chef or cook at a small resort.
EverythingIsFine
Well, is eventually fine
17m ago
Staff organization stuff, I presume. Charitably, she (it was a woman) was in charge of approving methodological changes but presuming no such change happened, there's no reason to cast blame. That's what's so frustrating, there wasn't any specific allegation like, at all, that they released.
Well, no, that's not quite right: we can look at Trump's statement
Last weeks Job’s Report was RIGGED, just like the numbers prior to the Presidential Election were Rigged. That’s why, in both cases, there was massive, record setting revisions, in favor of the Radical Left Democrats. Those big adjustments were made to cover up, and level out, the FAKE political numbers that were CONCOCTED in order to make a great Republican Success look less stellar!!! I will pick an exceptional replacement. Thank you for your attention to this matter. MAGA!
That's the entire allegation. Note that the claim is much stronger than a mere claim that methodologies were changed or that the standards were relaxed or whatever. Nope, "concocted" and "rigged" mean something pretty clear. M-W definition for "concoct" is "devise, fabricate"; Cambridge has "to invent an excuse, explanation, or story in order to deceive someone". In other words, intentional manipulation. This would mean something along the lines of entirely inventing a number, or deliberately skewing your sample, or spontaneously cherry-picking a methodology, or something like that.
If this were true (obviously is not) than you wouldn't be firing the commissioner, you'd be firing normal-level staff too, or doing an actual investigation, right? You might fire the commissioner only if their people-leading skills were poor or their methodological direction was faulty, but that's not the case and not what's alleged.
It's nakedly anti-truth, and that's not a TDS thing to say. No need to defend Trump in every instance, this is just straight up wrong per the info we have access to, as it seems to be a top-down doubt on the numbers rather than a bottom-up, facts based one.
SkookumTree
19m ago
If you're on the spectrum, a relationship with someone who isn't morbidly obese, works a job, and isn't addicted to hard drugs or an otherwise terrible human being - as in "strangling their 10-year-old daughter over an argument" terrible is about as hard as climbing Everest. Or maybe Denali.
These days, Everest isn't that hard; the big obstacle for most reading this would be funding.
Jiro
20m ago
I gave you several decisions. "Funding", "authorized" and "the president counts as commander in chief" applies to both the army and navy, so we don't need to decide. "Has a 2 year funding limit" doesn't apply to the navy; it reasonably is because the navy has equipment that needs to be maintained, which would also apply to the Air Force.
At any rate, it doesn't matter. I agree that it's not possible to give a logically tight reason that explains whether the Air Force counts as an army or navy in every single situation. But I wouldn't call this a problem. The fact that you can argue whether it counts as an army or navy, and that there's sometimes no definite answer, doesn't mean that the Constitution allows you to do anything whatsoever with it. "Has to be treated like the army or navy" is still a serious restriction on what it's permitted to be.
thrownaway24e89172
Death is the inevitable and only true freedom
21m ago
The Army is an army and a land force. The Air Force was originally part of the Army, ergo it too is an army and a land force. I apparently misunderstand your disagreement then, because I thought your classification was due to how its forces work, which was why I brought up the land-based nature of its assets.
SkookumTree
21m ago
Drug addiction - especially if illegal - is a reasonable thing to have as a dealbreaker. For one, it smells like legal trouble and perhaps felony convictions. The rest aren't, really, unless they get people killed, maimed, or jailed.
SkookumTree
23m ago
My vote, naturally, is the Hock. If you can't or won't Hock, maybe you can do something equally challenging to prove yourself worthy.
SkookumTree
25m ago
Being in a relationship with a woman that is able to do basic hygiene, won't get you killed maimed or imprisoned, and can legally consent is not terribly difficult. If you add "not morbidly obese" and "can work a job" it becomes around as hard as Rainier in winter, as part of a team - not insurmountable by any means.
SkookumTree
26m ago
I mean - yes, being in a relationship as a man is difficult. Mostly because if you are middle-class or better and don't have significant experience in healthcare, law enforcement, social work, or corrections you do NOT see the roughly five percent of people that are in and out of institutions for one reason or another, nor do you develop a sense of gratitude and appreciation for things like "My partner can do basic hygiene" or "Can hold a conversation" or "Can stock shelves at WalMart" or an eye for the kinds of catastrophic failures that can come when people cannot do these things.
If young men became genuinely grateful for partners that weren't likely to get them killed, maimed, or chucked in jail, a lot would change for the better.
Brgp12
41m ago
Yeah the Culture is definitely a very small-l liberal society. The gender stuff jumps out the most in that sense, but to me it never comes off as making really political points - it just presents a post-scarcity society with super high levels of technology where doing whatever you want all the time is accepted.
To some extent I guess I'm just shoehorning my own beliefs into the books. It never struck me reading Player of Games that the market economy was the fundamentally bad thing about that society. The greed, hate, warlike nature, and as you point out, all the other - isms. But to read that as fundamentally leftist seems to need to to either connect these things to an anti-capitalist message (which I see the fans do a lot) or I guess just have knowledge of Banks intent - otherwise to me it just comes off as a crooked-timber-of-humanity sort of thing. That scene in Player of Games where they go through the slums of the city could just as easily have been some kind of failed socialist nightmare.
I'm guessing Banks was pretty vocal about his liberalism tho. I get annoyed by that stuff sometimes. People were talking about Watchmen here recently - to me Moore has such a silly take on his own character Rorschach!
Have you just considered scaring the ever-loving shit out of them, coupled with describing organization and neatness as a moral virtue - and the opposite as a MORAL failing? I am reasonably sure that a sufficiently extreme level of shame, fear, and valorization of neatness and organization could make most boys well-organized. If we see a teenage boy's messy room as an indicator of moral failure and potential evil, rather than a common peccadillo? Teenage boys will have cleaner rooms.
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