domain:freddiedeboer.substack.com
Bleep
2hr ago
You still haven't mentioned a single specific thing which the bill does to force a reduction in immigration; are you just not interested in talking about specifics of the actual bill?
no, my comment does not claim the bill makes things easier for a friendly administration
the bill makes it easier for a hostile executive to legally release migrants into the US and formalizes/codifies the regulatory scheme and legal interpretations of the Biden administration who have repeatedly been losing in court because the current laws make what they're doing illegal for whatever that's worth
it gives tools to a friendly administration which will not meaningfully reduces immigration beyond what is available under current law and in addition actually hamstrings a friendly administration in what they can do with immigration in some ways
the bill is worse than the status quo
the fundamental problem is the GOP are clowns, the Democrats realized under the Obama administration that their threats are empty, and this is why they've pushed the accelerator to the floor as soon as they got back into explicit power and the GOP can't even manage to stop expanding programs which explicitly fund Democrats to do it
KMC
2hr ago
Thank you, I agree. Lately I've been listening to books while I work in the yard. Black berries and blue bells won't pull themselves out.
My favorites are animal-based children's stories. Hank the Cowdog is a classic, as those books on tape are about 2-3 hours, just long enough to get some good progress going. Right now I'm working through Mattimeo, which is holds some interest now that I have children, rather than being the child when I first read it.
I like action, powerful main characters that kick ass, and fantasy worlds that mostly don't resemble our world at all.
I would suggest Undying Mercenaries by BV Larson. Not really fantasy, more like sci-fi, but James McGill does little else but kick ass and die violently (see, undying).
jkf
2hr ago
Nothing I’ve seen suggests that Trump was innocent, or that a random citizen could get away with doing the same thing.
Probably not a random person, but every other President in history -- which does seem a bit unfair?
hydroacetylene
2hr ago
Wikipedia says their black population is 10%, i.e. a smaller percentage than what the US has.
But Brazilian pardos have much more African ancestry than mestizos elsewhere in latin America, including many who would be called black in the USA. Only those with entirely black ancestry- which isn’t the majority of the AADOS population- are considered negros(the Brazilian term; ‘black’ is considered offensive there).
There’s no magic dirt, but mesoamericans assimilate much better than anyone else does. Culture matters. Just go look at Russia- high average IQ, culture that inhibits fixing institutions.
freemcflurry
2hr ago
If you're already into paradox games you may as well try EU4, covers the entire planet for 400 years so it's pretty large in scale. Best way to get started is to buy the subscription for a month so you have all the DLC.
netstack
Texas is freedom land
2hr ago
I was really tempted to play this after reading this logistics guide. It just seemed so crunchy! But when I read more about the metagame, I got the impression that it led to some weird strategy. I’d been hoping the model would result in something closer to the historical strategy.
So…did you play Hearts of Iron IV? Same engine as Stellaris, but much more focus on war and war production.
The smallest thing you’ll control will be air wings with dozens of planes. Troops are organized at the division, army, or theater level rather than as squads. That means strategic maneuvers like rolling over the entirety of Belgium to get at Paris. You’re also responsible for equipping them, which means asking questions like “can I afford to switch my production lines to this new tank design?” or “why the hell are there no rifles in all of France?”
It does a bunch of stuff that really sells the scale. The simulation isn’t nearly as sophisticated as War in the East or Shadow Empire, but in return you get something which just feels enormous.
Edit: you mention being cold on WWII below. Oops. At least HoI4 has outrageous mods! Alt-history, Cold War, Fallout (though that technically reduces the scale). Ponies. I think it’s the perfect engine for a Star Wars game, and I know there have been attempts, but I’m not sure I’ve ever heard one praised.
freemcflurry
2hr ago
The Battle Barista.
Bleep
2hr ago
It's telling your standard for an alternative for this terrible bill, which you continue to essentially ignore any specifics of and vaguely handwave that it would reduce immigration or even if it doesn't under a hostile administration it would arm a friendly one to do more than is currently possible without making a specific argument for how it would ever do that, is that:
The only two things that would do “more” than this bill would be a meaningful end to most illegal inflows
it has to "meaningful end to most illegal inflows"? This bill doesn't do any of that. It doesn't get close to that. It doesn't remotely address birth-right citizenship or any of that. It's even easier to legally (even if we assume a hostile admin would follow the law which they have demonstrably not for over 3 decades) release migrants into the US interior and it provides billions in public dollars to help them do it in addition to providing billions to the web of NGOs which facilitate the migrant inflow straight to the US border. It provides money to finish the Border wall, something which Trump made meaningful progress with, but the bill allows border migrants to knock on the door of the wall and be let in the US legally and doesn't even require a hostile admin to build the wall anyway. The bill may as well be called "Pay Democrats to Import Foreigners Act of 2023."
this bill doesn't even sniff the standard you have set out for what Trump? or whoever must deliver for you to even consider it "a plan," and in doing so you're just revealing this is some isolated demand for rigor for Trump, who is like evil and the worst or whatever, or other plans for reasons we're just left to speculate about
as if the GOP for the last 50 years has been even equal let alone better in addressing this issue; the problem was Democrats figured out Republicans are absolute clowns, called their bluff when they realized the GOP isn't actually going to do anything, and so they illegally imported 15m people in <4 years and the GOP couldn't even muster the fortitude to stop funding it; immigration and a wall wouldn't have even been a serious topic of the 2016 election if Trump didn't make it that way
for those who want to reduce immigration, if this bill is "the plan," then they may as well just admit total defeat and slam the acceleration pedal to the floor because this bill is terrible
cjet79
2hr ago
Game looks kinda interesting, but I doubt I'll make it over the steep learning curve.
Lewis2
2hr ago
a substantial number or people on the right who believe that Biden is a Mao or Stalin
Does anyone on the right actually believe that? I only ever hear complaints that Biden is old, senile, and obviously being puppeted around by various other figures in his administration. In other words, he is personally weak and pathetic, something even their worst detractors can’t say about Stalin and Mao.
zeke5123a
2hr ago
What about the fraud case? Or the Rico case?
And have you read some of the unredacted statements coming up in the Florida case? It suggests some degree of set up (and typical Trump stupidity)
cjet79
2hr ago
I maybe should go back and play some old Total War games. The Warhammer ones have been leaving me unfulfilled. I don't think I like the magic spells that were added for battles, and the single units that are powerhouses.
I have no particular interest in WWII, but it does seem like the genre of games I'm interested in are all set in that time period.
WhiningCoil
2hr ago
I may have to add that to my list.
I'm still slowly making my way through Crime & Punishment. I'm some way through Part II. I am enjoying it, but I just haven't felt a lot of motivation to read lately. Was on a huge gaming kick playing through Unicorn Overlord, which I highly recommend. But that's over, so I've been getting back to it a bit.
Sometimes my wife and I have conversations about the human condition, and I use that exact phrase a lot, the "human condition". I don't know when that specific phrase was coined, but it's a subject matter that's been at the core of nearly every enduring work. And Crime & Punishment is rich with it. Although the author has a funny habit of crafting each chapter as a pseudo monologue. Perhaps with a bit of brief narrative to move a character from point A to point B, and once there, we enjoy another 10 to 20 page monologue. Not that it bothers me. These monologues serve as interesting, if unsubtle, character studies. The one a few chapters in where Raskolnikov encounters an alcoholic that opines how he ruined his wife and daughter's lives for love of drink is fairly on the nose.
But it's supposed to be one of the greatest novels ever written, so if you are a Crime & Punishment stan, you can ignore my ignorant impressions of such a great and unimpeachable work.
ToaKraka
Dislikes you
2hr ago
dsfewr
2hr ago
You seem to be describing the Total War series.
What about other Paradox games?
Wargames from Matrix/Slitherine might also scratch that itch. I would recommend Strategic Command or War Plan, if you're into WW2.
Hoffmeister25
American Bukelismo Enthusiast
2hr ago
Yes, there’s a bit in Stephen Sondheim’s musical Assassins where people sing a patriotic campaign song calling him “Bill McKinley”.
I’ve tried to find out if during McKinley’s life, people actually did refer to him familiarly as “Bill”. The only concrete example I’ve found is that during the Battle of Antietam, McKinley drove a supply wagon carrying, among other things, coffee, and that this led to political opponents later in his career derisively referring to him as “Coffee Bill”.
cjet79
2hr ago
I'm looking for a strategy game that is BIG. Stellaris kinda scratches the itch, but I've played the hell out of it too many times. I want the sense of massive armies movies, and not just fighting battles, but fighting wars.
There seems to be a glut of strategy games lately that are on a small scale with a few dozen people or a hundred or so people fighting. I'm not entirely opposed to a game like this, but they often just feel so tiny. I don't like having to care about individual units, but so many games seem to make that a selling point. They Are Billions is a "smaller" scale game that I still find enjoyable, because at least the scale of your enemies feels massive. I'd be happy playing that game again if there were maps that were five to ten times larger, as it currently is you are failing on the harder maps if you don't cover the entire thing with defenses by the end.
Recursive_Enlightenment
3hr ago
The real games the powers-that-be care about are foreign policy and the distribution of money. The Supreme Court mainly handles the cultural wars kayfabe stuff that keeps the masses entertained.
Bartender_Venator
3hr ago
It's a beautiful book. I recommend Joseph Roth, if you haven't read him, for similar treatment of that subject matter (from a slightly different class position, less elite than Zweig).
Recursive_Enlightenment
3hr ago
sliders1234
3hr ago
Is Tiberius Gracchus someone we are expected to know here as common knowledge? I’ve actually read Gibbons huge book and can’t place him a long time ago. I assume I am just expected to be smart enough to google and hit Wikipedia.
No random person could be in Trump's position vis-a-vis the classified documents, so "every other President in history" is really one of the few reasonable comparisons.
That is, no one who wasn't in high political office could actually receive classified documents in the way that Trump is alleged to.
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