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RandomRanger
Just build nuclear plants!
3m ago
In the Northern Territory (tropical, desert wasteland for the most part) and parts of Queensland there are tribes with some significant level of continuity from elder to elder. The last uncontacted ones were only found in the 1950s I believe. But that's not really the case down in the populated, developed south east of the country. American tribes were much more organized, they had chiefs who could negotiate treaties whereas the aboriginals never really got that far, it was all a very collaborative, collectivist, longhouse kind of society.
Part of the slogan we hear so often, at almost every event and in many meetings is some variation of:
acknowledges Traditional Owners of Country throughout Australia and recognises the continuing connection to lands, waters and communities. We pay our respect to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander cultures; and to Elders past and present.
At one point it was elders, past, present and emerging. But nobody really knows who is an emerging elder, so apparently the progressive thing to do is to take out the 'emerging'. There's not really any way of determining who is aboriginal, indigenous or first nations either. That's because the mostly or nearly-all white people who claim to be indigenous are naturally the most charismatic and well-organized in the moment (they're the people graduating good universities as doctors), while the most indigenous and blackest out in rural, remote parts of the country are the least educated, least charismatic and generally criminal sort.
You'll also observe that it's Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders too, the Torres Strait Islanders totally refuse to be lumped in with the rest. It's a huge mess.
urquan
Every one who exalts himself will be humbled, but he who humbles himself will be exalted.
7m ago
I regularly visit now-technically-Cherokee territory in northeastern Oklahoma(a major rad trad religious site is built there, and the locals- both tribal and white[not that you can really tell the difference]- are totally OK with it).
In the Tulsa area? Connected to St. Mary’s up in Kansas, I presume?
They look whiter than your average Mexican(who looks whiter than you'd think) and work normal jobs.
To be fair, this is mostly because they’ve intermarried with white people at high rates, particularly the Cherokee. Basically every white Oklahoman has some story about how great-aunt somebody or other was Cherokee and great-uncle sonofabitch didn’t let her sign up for the tribal roll.
I’m convinced this is mostly grifting — wouldn’t it be so nice if we could get some of that sweet oil casino money? But when Elizabeth Warren’s claims started to come under scrutiny, I never believed them, and I also thought it was really funny how she believed the grifting family legend enough to humiliate herself by taking a DNA test. Her pretendian thing isn’t weird, or unique — she’s just a white lady from Oklahoma.
I have cousins through adoption and marriage who are on tribal rolls. They’re ahem rednecks same as any rural white people.
hydroacetylene
13m ago
The average daily wage for unskilled labor in the US, even flyover, is higher than a good weekly salary in Mexico, even the DF or Noreste. I don't think you can stop notoriously risk averse unskilled laborers from trying to take advantage of that. You can probably stop them from sticking around though.
hydroacetylene
17m ago
Illegals don't really have the amounts of property that make that worth it. The processing costs on possessing their cars probably exceed the sales price, because they drive beatermobiles, and they live in shitbox apartments in the ghetto that somebody else owns and will just rent out for below market rates(you ain't gettin' full market rent for that). Is ICE supposed to be making a killing off some Android phones with cracked screens and jeans with holes in them? Heavily used work boots? A half-smoked pack of cigarettes?
hydroacetylene
22m ago
Observed warming has generally been less than models predict and has not had the disastrous effects that climate 'science'(read- ideologically driven anti-people crusade) says even the smaller amounts of warming we actually see should cause. Instead the extremely well funded and staffed climate alarmism apparatus is stuck pointing to recurring, predictable phenomena which predate warming like the el nino as 'devastating effects of climate change'.
hydroacetylene
27m ago
Yes, people like impressionism.
My pick of Fra Angelico was more 'random talented old painter' than anything specific to him. I think if shown a cubist painting and a random piece of 15th century religious art, most people would pick the religious art- although I'll agree that people certainly like the cachet of namedropping Picasso. People like well done representation; that's the core definition of 'art'.
MaiqTheTrue
Renrijra Krin
30m ago
I’m not going to disagree on the zoo-society hypothesis. This is true. But it’s also true that humans are not just social but hierarchical. That’s been true from the start of civilization. And so no matter what the specific shape the government officially takes, it’s always those with power and wealth calling the shots. And while some forms of government might be more open for those on the bottom, but at best it’s illusions. They’re lead to believe they’re deciding the direction of the country, but the decisions are not made at the ballot box, they were made before the election even took place.
faceh
36m ago
Might be.
But you'd expect low performers to end up on the receiving end of the oppression more often than not.
Lykurg
We're all living in Amerika
36m ago
It's fine to just liberate Chinamen or Ashkenazim
Looking at the current geopolitical situation, there may have been other downsides.
hydroacetylene
40m ago
To add to this, I regularly visit now-technically-Cherokee territory in northeastern Oklahoma(a major rad trad religious site is built there, and the locals- both tribal and white[not that you can really tell the difference]- are totally OK with it). It's just... rural Oklahoma. There's no added racial tensions. There's probably some legal weirdness in the event of a felony but we're not committing those, or dealing with them against us. Not a lot of people really care.
I have relatives living near the only reservation in Louisiana. The locals are grateful for the casino money(there aren't enough working-age Indians left on the reservation to staff it) but the Indians aren't different enough from the locals for anyone to care about. The white/black(and on top of it, the creole black/economic migrant black) distinction dominates the local racial division to the exclusion of all else.
There's a pop culture portrayal of Indians as these brown-skinned sages with long hair, who may or may not be oppressed but probably have special powers. Lol. They look whiter than your average Mexican(who looks whiter than you'd think) and work normal jobs. Some of them have unusual superstitions(when I worked construction I had a Cherokee coworker who wouldn't pick up sharp objects unless he knew who owned them) but they're pretty average.
hydroacetylene
56m ago
The real lesson is actually 'if you oppress a group of low performers you must never stop. If you grow tired of oppression then leave no survivors, but only if they are low performers. It's fine to just liberate Chinamen or Ashkenazim because they'll catch up without really needing the help their more unhinged activists demand.'
stuckinbathroom
1hr ago
When religious leaders reveal that a proclamation of doctrine (e.g. a fatwa or encyclical) was just a ruse to mislead the unbelievers, they are making a mockery of the religion
On the contrary, lying about one’s true beliefs for the purpose of self-preservation is explicitly permitted in Twelver Shia jurisprudence.
The_Nybbler
In the game of roller derby, women aren't just the opposing team; they're the ball.
1hr ago
I think there would be no warning until some very important Israeli infrastructure just all of a sudden disappears.
Useless to Iran, because Israel and the US will know damn well who provided the bomb. I don't know what happens if a country starts a nuclear war, but the other nuclear powers of the world going "Oooh, aren't you tough, we'll just give you whatever you want" is not going to be on the table.
The point is to nullify the strategic advantage Israel has because it has enough bombs to check Iran (and outside US intervention is the only reason they haven't been conquered yet)
Israel's nukes aren't really doing much with respect to Iran. Because Israel can't start a nuclear war without the shit hitting the fan any more than Iran can, they can only be used in a retaliatory manner. And there's no need for that, because Israel is conventionally strong enough to defeat all comers. (Whether you think that's because of the US or not)
The_Nybbler
In the game of roller derby, women aren't just the opposing team; they're the ball.
1hr ago
Useful climate science looks like trying to make specific predictions about specific areas on a specific time scale in the context of an extant model, so that human infrastructure can anticipate and adapt to disruptions to established patterns.
That would only be useful if the models were accurate enough to make such specific predictions accurately.
The_Nybbler
In the game of roller derby, women aren't just the opposing team; they're the ball.
1hr ago
There are people who have called Elon Musk, who is much pastier in skin color an African American before!
Yes, it's a common joke. But everyone knows it's a joke, and Musk didn't fill out any official forms claiming to be African American, at least not that anyone knows.
If every other category we use for ethnicity and race is fuzzy and ambiguous, how is that not relevant?
Because the existence of ambiguities at the edges of categories does not mean there aren't unambiguous cases. Especially ambiguities in DIFFERENT categories.
This argument still doesn't address the elephant in the room, it is patently obvious that the term "African American" for darker skinned people doesn't make sense when a light skinned person whose family has lived for generations in Africa and practices local traditions does not count when they move to the US but a dark skin person whose family has lived in France for generations and has no African cultural identity does.
There's no elephant. Mere darkness of the skin is not sufficient. Culture has relevance to Hispanic ethnicity, but not the racial categories. And Mamdani's family hasn't lived for generations in Africa; both his parents were born in India, and his mother grew up in India.
netstack
Texas is freedom land
1hr ago
There’s nothing wrong with saying that you find a comparison ludicrous, but we ask that you leverage a more substantial complaint than “TDS.”
ThisIsSin
Cainanites and Abelists
1hr ago
If Iran threatens to provide Hamas a bomb
I don't think they'd going to threaten to do it, I think there would be no warning until some very important Israeli infrastructure just all of a sudden disappears. Besides, Israel "doesn't have" that kind of bomb anyway.
The point is to nullify the strategic advantage Israel has because it has enough bombs to check Iran (and outside US intervention is the only reason they haven't been conquered yet), and a smaller blatantly suicidal people are just the delivery vehicle Iran needs to do that. It doesn't matter if Israel then goes full Old Testament and kills every last Hamasi in the area (and maybe the US stops them, or maybe they don't, but if they stop they'll absolutely try it again)- the attack went off, that's what matters.
All the better if it hits something actually important (like, say, where Israel gets its water from), and while Hamas is surely too stupid to manage that... well, what if they aren't?
ThisIsSin
Cainanites and Abelists
2hr ago
Couldn't your conclusion that 'If Hamas manages to get an attack off it's the entire host nations problem as well' apply to Iran giving them a nuke in the first place?
No, because Iran is the only one capable of retaliating (in a nuclear fashion) hard enough to discourage that. And Israel doesn't need to go nuclear if this happens; a conventional war would be just as destructive for these nations and peoples. Perhaps that is part of why the neighboring countries are unwilling to host the Hamasi as refugees.
Couldn't Israel just state preemptively they will regard any use of nukes by hamas as use by Iran
Maybe, but I don't think Israel can win a war with Iran (hence the emphasis on keeping them down/contained). They're sufficiently equipped to wreck any country Iran allies with outside of that lovely mountain range that defines the western Iranian border, but unless the Americans want to put their boots on the ground and suffer the 3:1 attacker casualty rates to conquer Iran then Israel can't really touch them. Israel doesn't have those numbers, Iran's a peer nation (except for the nuclear weapons), and if either tries in the future are the Israel-hating Blues (and even Reds; Israeli influence might not be as stable in an era of Red reforms) even going to lift a finger?
Remember, the ultimate problem Israel is fighting is that, absent Rome/Europe/Washington and its religious fixation on holding Jerusalem, it is the natural geopolitical state of Judea to be in the Persian orbit. Hence the rhyme with Biblical times- Jews evict the Canaanites, then the Persians conquer the Jews.
No_one
2hr ago
But it still ended up shaping a decade of US politics, because people care more about this kind of things than deaths from traffic.
It shaped politics that much because it was basically a godsend, a moment some of the PNAC crowd have been secretly praying for.
Further, the process of transformation, even if it brings revolutionary change, is likely to be a long one, absent some catastrophic and catalyzing event – like a new Pearl Harbor. Domestic politics and industrial policy will shape the pace and content of transformation as much as the requirements of current missions. A decision to suspend or terminate aircraft carrier production, as recommended by this report and as justified by the clear direction of military technology, will cause great upheaval.
Funny:
Absent a rigorous program of experimentation to investigate the nature of the revolution in military affairs as it applies to war at sea, the Navy might face a future Pearl Harbor – as unprepared for war in the post-carrier era as it was unprepared for war at the dawn of the carrier age.
They were actually not that stupid and wanted to axe new carrier construction, but did not manage to do so.
Thanks all! Lotta dirty vehicles on TheMotte! ...I'll go back to considering whether I should hand wash mine slightly less often now...
(I'm currently scheduled to wash it every 6 weeks. Wax once a year. I do the jambs maybe every second or third wash; dirty jambs really annoy me. Nice weather here, garage at home, but getting driven even more now; pretty much daily.)
ControlsFreak
2hr ago
Even if it turns out net positive in the end, it needs to be anticipated and planned for in order to mitigate the damaging side-effects of the disruption itself.
Not really. There's a large timescale separation. The dynamics of economic/political/etc systems are significantly faster. I know it's a technical term, and it mostly only applies neatly to second-order systems, but there's a concept of "natural frequency" in dynamics, and it gives you some sense of it. What I'd like to observe about this term is that it is, in a sense, "natural" to the system, itself. It is not something that we need to really plan for in a feedforward fashion. The 'inner' loop is a wayyyyy faster optimization process; it won't be all that affected by a slow parametric change.
No_one
2hr ago
It's mostly a film plot thing and also a way to get nuked. What would be the point ?
but the Temple Mount actually needs to be the place of construction for the Third Temple.
I've got a gut feeling that blasting Temple Mount into a shallow crater would make most Jews horrified but secretly relieved.
They've been Jews this long and had God wanted them to rebuild the temple, there'd have been a sign.
No_one
2hr ago
So why did they build it? Is it just a stepping stone to the hydrogen bomb?
Yeah, pretty much.
Capital_Room
rather dementor-like
2hr ago
And there's little or no calls for expanded reparations programs and land acknowledgements are rather rare; black political activism sucks all the oxygen out of the air for anything like that, and for a lot of people the situation for American Indians is basically "out of sight, out of mind."
Land acknowledgments are becoming slightly more common, but only among progressive activist groups, and essentially never with actual native involvement: there's no American equivalent to "welcome to country."
That may be how it is in the Lower 48, but not so much here in Alaska. At least partially because the [Native corporations](Alaska Native Regional Corporations) serve as loci for activism, as well as helping maintain the individual tribal identities, but also that we have the highest population percent Native at 20.7%, and, further, we already have a precedent for reparations in ANCSA (even if it was meant to settle all such future claims, it hasn't stopped activists from seeking more).
I’m a traditional Christian so I’m not goin* to Wade in the waters of your particular religion or traditions. But to me, having a pillar of “at least I know this is true” (and again mine is traditional Christianity) does allow you to not be sure about the rest without going crazy and being cynical about everything. I know that the Bible and the early Christian tradition is true, and whether or not anything else is lies, I at least have that. Maybe we’re headed to world war, maybe not. Maybe Trump is our Putin or Orbán, or maybe not. Maybe Covid was a deadly virus that killed people or maybe it’s just a flu bug. Let the chips fall.
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