domain:astralcodexten.substack.com
The_Nybbler
Does not have a yacht
36m ago
Another strategy is to pursue extreme policy while also convincing the moderate voters that your opponent would totally end democracy.
quiet_NaN
37m ago
And if you go back far enough, every human outside Africa is an immigrant from Africa.
No_one
48m ago
Nixon did find a way of turning a vast electoral victory into a way to lose - but that was staging the Watergate burglary in the first place. That is what I don't understand - why did he do it?
Is there a reason to rule out the possibility the burglary was staged on the orders of someone else-probably someone high at CIA since the people involved were CIA in order to frame Nixon ?
2rafa
49m ago
True, and they all immigrated over the land bridge at some time. The point is that though nationhood is to some extent arbitrary, that doesn’t make it less real. You can close the doors at any time just because you want to.
SubstantialFrivolity
I'm not even supposed to be here today
56m ago
That's kind of ironic, considering that the AA games are all about drawing elaborate conclusions from scant evidence lol.
quiet_NaN
56m ago
I think one strategy is to pursue mainstream policy while also convincing your base that your opponent would totally end democracy.
KMC
1hr ago
I watched the first episode and completely lost it when the wops said, "oh shit, it's serious?"
Good show, I'll watch this week.
The_Nybbler
Does not have a yacht
1hr ago
America is a settler country; all of us except the natives were ‘immigrants once’ (even if before independence).
Not except for the natives; the ancestors of the modern tribes (the Clovis people) killed and/or drove out an earlier wave of settlement.
2rafa
1hr ago
America is a settler country; all of us except the natives were ‘immigrants once’ (even if before independence). But it is fair for a settler country to decide that permanent settlement is finished. That involves no contradiction or hypocrisy. Manifest destiny is over. The only remaining land is either worthless or protected for nature. 330 million is enough.
coffee_enjoyer
☕️
1hr ago
Of course they looked at the bosom, and of course Susanna was painted with temptation in mind. But that is what makes it so intelligent, no? You identify either with Susanna, the virtuous woman about to be wrongfully propositioned, or you identify with the status exemplars, about to use their high status to impugn a virtuous woman. You want this kind of association seared in your mind, that when you consider lust you remember the near-tragedy of Susanna and the righteousness of God. Art wasn’t divorced from the religious culture at the time, so everyone knew the story of Susanna and Daniel. It’s not like today where it’s just a vague story you need to pull from the recesses of your mind. It would have been brought up half a dozen times a year in sermons, made a special lesson in school, made an allusion in high class conversations. You have Handel writing operas about it and Mozart riffing his character in Figaro off her. It’s casually mentioned in Shakespeare and 1001 Nights. It’s anachronistic to interpret the nude as just a nude.
And consider: some of the best of these paintings were commissioned by queens and bishops. And if you were a wealthy aristocrat with your own painter, you could just have him paint a nude that doesn’t have such a looming moral threat above it. For pure nudes, just request the Greek nymphs or something else, right? They would essentially be cursing themselves / giving themselves bad vibes by purposefully commissioning Susanna just for her nudity when there were hundreds of different ways to procure a nude scene. But I guess the modern person would excuse all this and say that the queen was a lesbian and the bishop was horny.
Awarenesss
1hr ago
Are there comprehensive resources on psychic’s techniques to make their readings appear more accurate (e.g., Barnum statements, background research on the client via the internet, etc)? Anything and everything is appreciated
Background: A friend’s mother went to a psychic and was told things she (supposedly) didn’t know about her dead father (she asked her still-alive mother about it and the info was confirmed). She claims to not have let anything slip and that the things were completely unprompted, but I’m a bit skeptical.
The_Nybbler
Does not have a yacht
1hr ago
Western Europeans are largely descended from people in one or two of those places, however.
non_radical_centrist
1hr ago
Do any other languages have a swear like the n-word, where there's one taboo word that's far more taboo than any other? Even other slurs like cunt, jap, or faggot, while more taboo than fuck or shit, aren't on the level of nigger
Pasha
Defend Kebab
1hr ago
What are the best nature hikes you have ever done? (Bonus points if it’s not in the US since visa is difficult lol)
The_Nybbler
Does not have a yacht
1hr ago
When "bringing the problem forward" means "Democratic supermajority now" instead of "Democratic Supermajority later", it's a damn big difference. (because maybe the horse will learn to sing)
ToaKraka
Dislikes you
2hr ago
It's worth noting that the administrator of Kiwi Farms is hostile to people who join the forum solely for arguing about politics rather than for the forum's actual purpose of laughing at lolcows.
Rov_Scam
2hr ago
If only the United States had the foresight to institute such a system a century and a half ago, before the immigrant problem got out of hand. Then they could have just used my great-grandfather's labor in the mines until he decided to retire (coincidentally right around the time Pittsburgh Seam coal started running low), and then deported him back to Galicia just in time for the German invasion. Another great-grandfather would have been shipped back to Calabria some time in the late 40s or early 50s. I don't want to think what the consequences for your family would have been. I'm not sure what the downside was of their being allowed to stay.
hydroacetylene
2hr ago
Yes. Twitter, 4chan, kiwifarms, and rdrama. /r9k/ is probably your best bet if you want it to go viral because people stalk it for things worth screenshotting to discuss on other platforms.
hydroacetylene
2hr ago
Because the south wanted to keep its slaves and then lost a war.
Primaprimaprima
Bigfoot is an interdimensional being
2hr ago
Definitely 4chan. Some boards are jannied a lot, some none at all.
Rov_Scam
2hr ago
You're giving these people too much credit. When you said "Progressive Art Scene" I thought at first you may be talking about gallery openings or legitimate theater or modern classical music. Instead you were talking about the horrible "scene kids". These are usually punk bands that have only perfunctory instrumental talent and virtually no songwriting talent who latch onto the "scene" because they know that they're too untalented to become professional musicians. They usually put a high value on vague concepts like "authenticity" and "selling out" and look for reasons to create internal drama and ostracize people. You know you're at a "scene show" if, say, you go to a show at a venue in the city one night and then a couple weeks later you go to a show in an exurb 30 miles way and the audience is composed of almost entirely the same people. They mostly play the same circuit, though, because these bars are owned by scene people themselves. If it were a self-contained community of people who just wanted to play locally it would be no problem; less popular styles like jazz and bluegrass are usually like this. The trouble is that these people all have aspirations of playing music full-time, which makes the stakes higher and introduces a lot of stress. It's almost like a combination of Orthodox Judaism and Old Order Amish, where there's a comprehensive Mosaic law you're expected to follow with shunning the consequence of violating it. It's a breeding ground for drama.
Everyone in that thread may have differing politics but they all seem to buy into the scene mentality; their problem is that it's placing emphasis where they don't want it placed. The fact that politics plays a more prominent role isn't surprising but it could honestly just as easily be right-wing politics as left-wing — it just so happens that most of the participants were already lefties so that's the natural direction it took. In the grand scheme of things, though, it's beside the point. These people are rank amateurs involved in a circle jerk, and their bullshit has about as much influence on the broader culture as what's going on in some random subreddit.
Jiro
2hr ago
I'm not convinced that that has anything to do with HBD, actually. First of all, Africa has ethnic boundaries that often don't match borders very well, and not much tradition of nationalism outside ethnic boundaries. Second, it's just hard to get out of dictatorship once you're in it. One group can't suddenly decide to be noncorrupt all on hts own, and the power needed to stop corruption by fiat enables corruption by the group with the power. There's also the familiar poverty trap where you have to help your family members rather than save for yourself, which also leads to "you have to be corrupt because your family members will require that you use your position to their benefit".
Defining Greenpeace as part of traditionalism/conservatism, like Hlynkas redefinitions, moves us to a position of less understanding and unnecessary confusion.
I don't think it's a surprise that countries defined by liberalism, specifically France, treats Greenpeace the way they do.
Highly liberal USA doesn't do so. Liberal Britain is following zero carbon targets even under the Torries, who aren't a conservative party. Liberal Germany has strong Green party and anti nuclear policies. So it is clearly false that this is due to liberalism. Rather than blaming conservatism and praising liberalism for what Greenpeace a group that liberals are more sympathetic towards, the reality is that the French are more pro nuclear than many other peoples and they appreciate better that it worked well for them. You could say that French in general including French liberals might be more pro nuclear, and more hostile towards Greenpeace, but you can't praise liberalism and blame conservatism in general.
Walterodim
Only equals speak the truth, that’s my thought on’t
2hr ago
I saw Chris Murphy speaking on the matter yesterday and he seemed very comfortable framing the issue as needing solving, but from a different angle than where you're coming at - he's selling the idea that the real problem is that the system is so jammed up that these people can't even get a fair hearing on their asylum claims. Let's get something done, get some more judges and lawyers to make sure people get admitted legally, that kind of thing. Basically, illegal immigration is a problem and the solution is to make all of these people legal immigrants. This is easy enough to sell to his constituents, particularly when he can point to those dastardly Republicans that just want to keep these innocent asylum seekers illegal for purely political reasons.
Now I'm imagining a future in which Americans have to find almost all their doctors, engineers, and scientists among people born in the US rather than just importing the necessary high-quality human stock from overseas, while meanwhile some other country adopts current America-style attitudes toward high-skill immigration and starts to benefit from all the brain drain that America currently benefits from.
The results might not be as pretty as American nativists imagine.
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