domain:freddiedeboer.substack.com
nopie
1m ago
Approved vaccines are effective, they stop infections at least in 95% of cases on average for 10 years. Covid vaccine was tested in clinical trials which showed strong efficiency preventing infections.
That means that covid vaccines should be mandated to everyone, young and old and they will help to almost eliminate covid via heard immunity, right?
What went wrong with this reasoning? Despite vaccination most people got infected with covid anyway. The protection was short lasting (3-4 months at most). It reduced severity and hospitalizations in elderly though. Other people especially children were not that much affected anyway.
Biology is more complicated than we could infer from a simple graph.
I have no strong opinion about global warming but I am against trivialization of this science. Too many unknowns for me. How believable are the models? How warmer temperatures will affect us? I can see both negative and positive aspects? How much would it cost to prevent that versus to adapt to the change?
johnfabian
4m ago
Absolutely not. Don't even bother thinking about it again. They were out to scam you and you just got them first.
Folamh3
16m ago
I went into a shop to buy a blouse my girlfriend wanted. The cashier said "it's 10% off if you sign up to our mailing list". I said "sure" and she told me to scan the QR code. It brought me to a website in which I had to enter my email address. I quickly fired up temp-mail to generate a burner email address, entered that in the field, and showed the cashier that I'd signed up. 10% discount applied.
Have I done something morally wrong?
sarker
Where are the Snowdens of yesteryear?
19m ago
People who tend to be "this is the body of a person" when talking about a turkey or joint of beef on the dinner table are also likely to be "we must not impose our morals on others" when it comes to unconventional and non-Western beliefs and practices.
How do you know this? The vegans I've met don't hold non western cultures above criticism. Especially if we are talking about people posting on the ea forum who are likely more autistic than your average vegan.
I certainly don't know any vegans who are in favor of murder and cannibalism, though they might draw a distinction between that and eating a human who died for other reasons (as some of them do for eating a non human animal that wasn't slaughtered for the purpose of eating).
I doubt that the ethical vegans would stretch their ethics to condemnation of such cultures as being wrong, unnatural, etc. because that is Western colonialist thinking. They might condemn it on the grounds of all meat-eating being wrong, but not because humans are different or superior to animals.
Wait, you doubt that they would do this, but acknowledge that they might?
It sounds more like they might not condemn it for the reasons you think they should condemn it, and that seems like a much weaker argument indeed.
sun_the_second
20m ago
The research into Russian elections that's out there (percentage digit anomalies, turnout:percentages correlation anomalies) leads me in the direction of believing they're fake as in they don't count the ballots. They pick a number and say it's the result. At some voting stations there had been videos of what looked like ballot stuffing. Perhaps not in the latest election, but other ones.
Why would Putin do that if he can be confident he'd win? Extra control freaking? Local attempts to ensure the numbers look "correct"? 4D demoralization chess? Your guess is as good as mine.
TIRM
20m ago
shift hard and fast to the Right and mean it
This is not going to happen. But also I predict almost all American jews will not move to Israel. The author is really setting up a false choice here.
TIRM
25m ago
"Send the police at threm"? For what? Of you mean enforcing public camping bans, then I'm fine with that. Not clear in what other sense the police would be sent after them.
The_Nybbler
Does not have a yacht
35m ago
The normative "peace protestor" wasn't pledging allegiance to the USSR, but they were doing the Soviet's bidding just the same. Different players, same playbook.
jimm
41m ago
I've done nothing to even state the effectiveness of hypnosis other than pointing out one thing that is bog standard in erotic hypnosis circles -- which you seemed to agree with as possible, at least after I point it out?
I'm asking you questions about what you think the science says because I don't think you actually know what the science says despite actively taking a strong stance, and you immediately started back tracking and dodging. You apparently can't answer simple questions about how you interpret the science, and you're accusing me of a lack of scientific rigor? The projection is super strong here.
People who can justify their beliefs don't move goal posts and don't dodge questions. Why do you feel the need to?
coffee_enjoyer
☕️
41m ago
I don’t follow. The normative protestor is not pledging allegiance to Hamas, those are exceptional outliers.
coffee_enjoyer
☕️
42m ago
Wealthy Jewish donors are uniquely driven to withhold donations based on this combined ethnic, religious, and political interest (Israel + the Jewish people). No gentile donors are as motivated toward any issue because they lack this level of tribalism. Imagine if Bill Gates was concerned about the low number of white admits, or withdrew donations because of white identity politics, or etc. This is a prisoner’s dilemma problem, or even example of Popper’s paradox of tolerance. There is one group of Americans who have a maximal focus on their tribe; all other groups are pressured to focus on helping Americans generally. If only one group is hyper-focused on the Israel issue, then they effectively get to decide the mainstream narrative. Non-Jews either have to be okay with a perpetual Jewish “decisive vote” on matters regarding the Middle East and the anti-semitism topic, or they have to rebuke this level of tribalism.
Abbott
One his largest single donors is Jewish, Jeff Yass, who made the largest single donation in Texas history. Yass is also a big supporter of Israel and Zionism. Another big donor is Ken Fischer. There are other wealthy Jewish philanthropists in Texas who he may want donations from, like Michael Dell. If these donors are single-issue donors, then Abbott knows he can get millions by taking a hard stance on the protests. Evangelical interests need not factor in.
hydroacetylene
49m ago
Oh dear.
I encourage her to try the ‘fish are friends, not food, you’re actually a murderer’ line on someone fishing in the park. Just to show her what the actual likely reaction would be.
The pro-life movement has figured out that shrieking ‘you’re a murderer’ is not a successful tactic and they will push new members not to engage in it. The hardcore vegans have apparently not learnt this lesson.
"The law, in its majestic equality, forbids the rich as well as the poor to sleep under bridges, to beg in the streets, and to steal bread."
Less flippantly, my imagined progressive would say that there's no avoiding (at least some) zero-sum games in this world. Thus, the only question is who must win at the expense of whom. And since there must always be an oppressor and an oppressed in every such game, the only political question is how to decide who is oppressing whom in a given situation: to do so clear-sightedly, taking into account the relevant history and particular context, or to bury our heads in the sand and cling to the fiction of "universal principles" -- which is to say, to side with the oppressor?
The_Nybbler
Does not have a yacht
57m ago
Regular lefties think the vegetarians are morally superior, the actual vegetarians think the vegans are morally superior. So the scolding works, and if you don't provide vegetarian or vegan options it is you who is in the wrong, and pushing that to providing meat when there are vegans present isn't that hard. Whereas if you don't provide meat, the meat eaters are in the wrong for complaining.
The_Nybbler
Does not have a yacht
1hr ago
Some instances (almost always of non-affiliated / non-students outside of campus grounds) do not allow you to impugn a whole protest movement.
I can certainly impugn the whole protest movement, since it is a whole.
Celestial-body-NOS
🟦
1hr ago
Palestinians have a hostile nation occupying their territory
And what, in your opinion, constitutes 'their territory'?
2rafa
1hr ago
That wasn’t really my point, which was that I don’t think these protests increase the popularity of the dissident right policy platform at all, which is fundamentally hostile to the interests and politics of almost all these protestors.
Do you see the leftist DEI advocates and BLM fans protesting as ‘true’ rather than fake opposition now that they oppose Israel?
In liberal cities, colleges are calling the cops because they don’t want to lose Jewish donors. I think if we have an in-part privately funded university system it’s fair to say “I’m not going to continue to donate hundreds of millions of dollars to you if you tolerate X” and then the university can decide if that matters to them. If it does, that isn’t blackmail, it’s how almost all charity works. If you donate a few hundred million to the NY Phil you can probably finagle some influence over what’s played.
In red states like Texas it’s manifestly true that the much more heavy-handed response isn’t being driven by Jews but by gentile GOP politicians. Most of them are zionist to some extent, but I think in (for example) Abbott’s case, it’s more that there’s a very big ideological divide between the right and these progressive student protestors and this is a way to hurt the outgroup to the delight of the base. Pretty much no protesting student is going to vote for a Republican candidate, and a lot of Republican voters dislike leftist college students.
Each major Jewish donor or lobbyist who leaves the left because of its anti-Israel activism, even if they merely become politically neutral rather than center-right (let alone hard right, let alone far right) is a win for conservatives. Richard Hanania made this point more eloquently.
The Dissident Right is not a Conservative. One major point made by the Dissident Right, which is in fact emblematic in these protests, is that there is a false opposition. The Jews are "on top" of both sides of the protest. They are the most important representatives of the anti-war side and the most important representatives of the war side.
The DR perceives a similar paradigm on the left/right spectrum. Ben Shapiro vs Woke Jew is ultimately a false opposition. A Trotskyite can become a Neoconservative because Stalin has turned against Jews, but that doesn't make him change his stripes or become any more pro-white. And the neocons were not pro-White at all, they were pro-Israel and they made being right-wing about being pro-Israel.
A more Jewish-dominated right-wing movement is not something the DR wants, so I have no problem whatsoever gatekeeping former Jewish progressives from what is an ascending post-liberal Right-wing movement. It's a feature not a bug. There are Righteous Jews like Ron Unz who are truly allies, but "I'm no longer progressive because the left has turned against Israel, now I'm an edgy right-winger who shares racist memes and supports based Israel" is something to be vigilant against, not something to support. It leads towards more fake opposition.
crushedoranges
1hr ago
But, seeing as it is functionally a non-universal principle that must be adjudicated based on arbitrary definitions of oppressed and oppressor, isn't it just post-hoc rationalization? (Adolf Hitler, great advocate of social justice: taking from the Jewish bourgoise oppressors and giving to the German proletariat.)
thasero
1hr ago
I would second a recommendation to go to the onsen, especially an outdoors one - it's a sensory experience just as much as good food and good drink, and particularly in the winter, after a day of winter sports. It's the cap to an active day, not an alternative.
Also, try some different teas while you're there, possibly paired with Japanese sweets. Traditional Japanese sweets are low-sugar, frequently containing a bean paste where a Western pastry would put a fruit filling, and often meant to pair with a cup of tea. The "afternoon snack" is just as valid a gourmet goal as the lunch and dinner. I picked up a taste for green tea from my time in Fukuoka.
I think this enemies put him under more pressure than a man can reasonably be expected to bear, and eventually it was too much. I still vividly remember the Cathy Newman (Channel 4) interview: I have never seen an interviewer more clearly intent on ruining someone. He won that bout, but enduring that over and over again would wreck anybody.
In case it's not obvious, I have a lot of sympathy for Peterson. Many influencers are indeed obnoxious grifters, but Peterson really does seem to have been a good man who was trying his best. Having people come after you like that changes the way you look at the world. I had a much smaller, more intimate experience along the same lines and it definitely radicalised me in many ways.
Stefferi
Chief Suomiposter
1hr ago
Well, the Tories are hardly in a position to propose a solution to expensive real estate, as (as far as I've understood) their chief constituency still continues to be the sort of middle-class types who have owned their home for decades (perhaps specifically because of Thatcher and right-to-buy). If you're in such a situation, housing prices skyrocketing are a feature, not a bug. I don't know much about the Reform Party, but my impression is Tories but even more Brexit-y, and the Brexit, in addition to doing nothing about the housing problem (especially now that we know that the reduction in EU immigrants just led to replacement with non-EU immigrants with dividends), is generally massively unpopular with the youth, perhaps making a certain generation gone for good (or gone without massive efforts) for the Tories.
Also, even more speculatively, housing is an issue that can be exploited both by the left and the right, and I'd guess that the left-wing housing voters would be the ones who have managed to snag a place for rent in a major city and now want rent control to keep the rent from skyrocketing out of their reach, and the right-wing ones would be the ones who are living in a remote suburb or a dying rural region, want to move to a city, and want less immigrants so that the waiting list would eventually reach their number. Maybe the green belts mean there are less such suburban housing voters? Are the green belts even a thing any more?
The problem for the Tories is that they have been sitting in the driver’s seat for the past 15 years. Which makes it pretty hard to blame the housing/immigration/economic situation on the other guys. AfD doesn’t have that problem.
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