FCfromSSC
Nuclear levels of sour
No bio...
User ID: 675
There have been worse presidents than Trump, by and large our institutions have held against his efforts to get around them.
I would argue that the end of America was initiated by Trump's election, not because Trump is a uniquely bad president, but because his election is the point where the conflict/escalation spiral between reds and blues went from potential to actual in a self-sustaining way. What might be described as "efforts to get around" Trump are, to me, examples of institutions bending and blowing out under a level of values-stress they were incapable of surviving.
He'll be gone in a little over two and a half years. No successor to him has been really able to gain any kind of traction to his cult of personality.
I am a Trump supporter. I have continued to support Trump because it is obvious to me that all potential alternatives to Trump would have involved an unacceptably high chance of capitulation to Blues, of a "return to normal". And in fact, it seems obvious to me that steadfast support for Trump has in fact steadily eroded the "normal" my opponents wish to return to, such that when Trump is gone we have a much better chance of maintaining our movement as a coherent vehicle for our values and goals. We have in fact heavily reshaped the Republican party, and I would argue that we have even significantly reshaped the Democratic party and the American public sphere as well, in ways that I consider strongly net-positive. I am hopeful that our movement will transition to a new champion when Trump retires, without compromising the values it currently advances, and perhaps might even advance them better.
The US is able to handle the bumpy road of a bad presidency, SCOTUS court packing is a different animal as there is no foreseeable end it to.
What is a "forseeable end" in this context? I would imagine that it would involve a return to some sort of highly-stable base state, but it's not clear to me that such a base state has existed for some time. SCOTUS activism of the sort typified by Roe v Wade did not have a "forseeable end", did it? It made the court a partisan prize, triggering an escalation spiral as both sides fought over majority control of the Court, and when Reds won that fight sufficiently Blues escalated to ignoring SCOTUS rulings they did not like while simultaneously threatening to pack the court, among other strategies. And obviously, some escalations are bigger and more obvious than others, but it's the same incentive gradient all the way up the spiral.
The US is able to handle the bumpy road of a bad presidency, SCOTUS court packing is a different animal as there is no foreseeable end it to.
The methods employed to "handle the bumpy road of a bad presidency" have long-term consequences, which erode both the methods used and the legitimacy of those employing them. What is best is when such methods do not need to be employed at all, when there is no conflict because such conflict is seen as unproductive and pointless by a supermajority of the population. This was the status quo prior to Trump; a wide range of values and concerns had no representation and no obvious path to representation under the existing system, and consequently those in power believed they could be safely ignored. Trump was the point at which this range gained actual representation, and its opponents had to stop ignoring them and start actually fighting them, a fight it seems to me they have been steadily losing ever since.
America, as it has been commonly understood is not compatible with the sort of fight we now have, and so we see the proliferation of un-American behavior and ideas on both sides as the escalating conflict generates common knowledge of the failures throughout the population. When the conflict was only potential, the incompatibility of our values could be ignored or papered over. Now neither are an option, and we devolve toward straight power concepts. This process takes time, but it seems to me that it is obvious, irreversible, and deeply necessary.
We have been in worse culture war situations than now. Cooler heads must prevail.
I do not think we share a common understanding of what "cooler heads" means in this context. To me, "Cooler heads" means that my values and interests get fucked forever, that I am ruled badly by people who hate me and who have perfectly insulated themselves from any accountability for the harm they inflict, no matter how egregious. Why should I hope that such "cooler heads" prevail?
I also note that the internationally recognised government of Somalia has not controlled its internationally recognised territory for decades, meaning that de facto sovereignty was there for the taking. And the only people to take it were a group of locals who got their act together (Somaliland), pirates, and jihadis. And the pirates and jihadis aren't about freedom, they are about using "borrowed" Somali sovereignty as a base for predation.
Westerners tried projects of the sort you're implying here repeatedly in the ~60s-70s in various African nations. My understanding is that they stopped doing this when Western governments (that I think could be fairly described as "the UN") made it clear that they would not tolerate further such attempts. If those same western governments gave the green-light to private colonialism by their citizens, I think Somalia would have very different outcomes more or less immediately.
I actually also agree with the main thrust of his post, but orbital datacenters make zero sense unless you’re wrongly thinking “space = cold” instead of “space = vacuum”.
Have you actually done the math on this, or has someone else? My understanding is that it's totally doable with relatively modest radiators; I'm open to this guy not knowing what he's talking about, but all I've seen from the other side is sneering.
FCfromSSC
Nuclear levels of sour
1d ago
I don't see how a court packing does not signal the beginning of the end of the US
We have pretty clearly initiated the beginning of the end of the US some years ago, arguably with the election of Trump in 2016.
The Dems would have to lock out the Reps from power for at least a generation or face a retaliatory court pack the second the Reps return to power
Obviously, and this is pretty clearly the plan, at least arguably on both sides. Blues and Reds do not share sufficient compatibility of values to make cooperation possible, so the only remaining options are separation or war. Legacy social institutions obstruct these natural solutions, and so we observe the culture war blastwave striking, bending, and blowing out those institutions in sequence as it propagates through society. SCOTUS won't be able to hold it back any more than Free Speech Principles or Liberalism or the Courts or Academia was; things made by humans can be unmade by other humans.
FCfromSSC
Nuclear levels of sour
1d ago
Could you elaborate your point? Is it that they've tried and failed, and so are likely to try more in future, or that they've tried and failed, and so are unlikely to succeed in the future?
FCfromSSC
Nuclear levels of sour
1d ago
This is true, and as a consequence Trump is currently President. This does not mean that a decisive Blue Tribe victory is not possible, nor that significant effort will not be expended (and norms/cohesion burned) in pursuit of such a victory.
It does not appear to me that we are off the escalation spiral.
FCfromSSC
Nuclear levels of sour
2d ago
Interesting that you can see the case for the collapse of SpaceX, but not the implosion of the Democratic Party as a nationally competitive entity. The national party is losing the fundraising race badly
- fundraising does not determine the outcome of elections.
- Measurements of formal political fundraising foes not capture partisan political cashflows or their effects. Sizable portions of the federal budget and national GDP are locked up in explicit or implicit subsidies to partisan Blue Tribe institutions and populations, and this seems unlikely to change in at least the short to medium term.
- The Democratic party is large, entrenched and diversified to an incredible degree, and is quite lindy besides.
I am fairly confident that our current democratic party is well-positioned to outlive America as a coherent sociopolitical entity.
FCfromSSC
Nuclear levels of sour
2d ago
"harder" is not "impossible" or even "sufficiently hard to successfully deter the motivated", and it seems to me that the Democrats and Blue Tribe generally are at this point highly motivated.
Packing the court is likely to happen soon in any case.
Loss of actual capabilities is not a significant obstacle; the federal government is very comfortable wallowing in infrastructure and technology mediocrity for indefinite periods of time.
I would not be comfortable betting my freedom and well-being on Presidential Pardons being the norm that shall forever stand, but I'll grant that a pardon is likely and should offer at least some protection short-term.
What would be the obstacle to a federal wealth tax aimed exclusively at trillionaires?
And of course, straightforward murder is always an option.
FCfromSSC
Nuclear levels of sour
2d ago
High on hype? Come on, make an argument. My argument is bounded by the theory that the US Government will bail out SpaceX in the worst case because it's important to a generation of American military power, and that SpaceX will be extremely economically productive in the medium case
The democrats are going to get back in office at some point, and they are almost certainly going to try to permanently remove Musk's access to anything resembling wealth or power when they do so. This creates an obvious avenue for generating a fiscal crisis for SpaceX correlated with an obvious obstacle for the sort of bailout you're suggesting. At a minimum, I would expect a "bailout" under such conditions to require the removal of Musk and all Musk loyalists from the company's leadership, and the installation of people deemed politically reliable. I would expect such a "bailout" to effectively destroy the company.
FCfromSSC
Nuclear levels of sour
2d ago
Ms. Reade’s accusation was taken very seriously and thoroughly investigated. One deep investigation concluded the “rape”, as described by Ms. Reade, was not feasible.
Do you agree with that investigation's conclusions? Could you quote the parts of the linked article that you consider authoritative?
Whether it was necessary to go to that depth to prove Biden’s innocence is another question for another day.
What standard of evidence do you believe an investigation of such accusations against someone of Biden's stature should have applied? What do you think of prominent proposals for other standards, or the people championing them?
FCfromSSC
Nuclear levels of sour
8d ago
Yeah. When I heard that the jury in Karmelo Anthony's case was 'all white' I could only imagine 12 obese Mexicans in buttoned up shirts with white cowboy hats sitting in the courtroom sweating profusely under the Texas sun.
It had no black people, but it did have asians, hispanics, etc, as was frequently pointed out. The people claiming it was "all white" were lying for their immediate social advantage; this proves nothing about how assimilation operates in the general context.
FCfromSSC
Nuclear levels of sour
10d ago
high-res photo of a bunch of stamps on mail
3d-model the stamp's shape
3d-print the stamp in a rubbery material with a resin printer, so no layer lines.
gently weather/age the stamp.
...would be one obvious and probably undetectable method. You could use this to match an existing stamp's "unique" flaws/weathering, or use it to create a plausible stamp that doesn't match known stamps, whichever is more useful.
FCfromSSC
Nuclear levels of sour
11d ago
Another layer is that Jonah himself is not destroyed. Even after doing as God commanded, he still wishes to see Nineveh destroyed, and is angry when it is not. The story ends with God attempting to reason with him, rather than simply smiting him for his rebellious attitude.
FCfromSSC
Nuclear levels of sour
11d ago
The comment above yours is still filtered.
Fixed.
That's one of the fundamental questions on the American right at present: Does classical liberalism necessarily produce a level of pluralism it cannot survive?
Speaking for myself, straightforwardly, obviously, unavoidably, yes.
Classical liberalism as it is commonly understood and described is built on axiomatic assumptions about the possible range of human values, and those assumptions are observably wrong because the observable range of human values is significantly wider. You can track the obvious cross-sectional ways in which those assumptions have decayed by degrees across our entire society over time, and how our institutions and social structures have decayed with them.
Classical Liberalism increases tolerance. Increased tolerance creates values-diversity, and then values-incoherence. Values incoherence creates conflict, which reduces tolerance. Perhaps this cycle can be retarded or bypassed in some ways or in some circumstances, but certainly classical liberalism cannot do it because it cannot even begin to adequately frame the problem. It believes tolerance is a moral precept, axiomatically, but Tolerance Is Not A Moral Precept.
FCfromSSC
Nuclear levels of sour
11d ago
....I think one of us is misunderstanding something here.
My understanding is that algae eat phosphate to grow, and therefore an algae bloom should reduce phosphate levels, not elevate them. Algae do not need elevated phosphate to bloom, but will bloom a lot more in the presence of elevated phosphate. further, my understanding is that the most common source of elevated phosphate in water is from fertilizer runoff.
Again, this seems like a pretty straightforward question of fact to me. CNN is reporting elevated phosphate levels in the pool; it seems a reasonable inference that these levels are elevated versus the water that's being pumped into the pool, but if I'm wrong about that, I welcome correction. If the water in the pool has more phosphate than the water being added to the pool, then phosphate is being added to the pool somehow. Given that there is an ongoing vandalism campaign being conducted with relation to the pool and its surroundings, it seems logical to me that the phosphate is being added by the vandals.
FCfromSSC
Nuclear levels of sour
12d ago
Why do we need a conspiracy here? Hasn't there been algae in this pool all the time?
Because it's not just the algae, it's the water having elevated phosphate levels feeding the algae, per CNN, at the same time that people are definitely intentionally vandalizing the nearby green, and also definitely intentionally damaging the new liner material. Again, I'm open to other explanations, but those explanations really ought to account for the observable evidence.
It's actually worse than that.
Aztec blood sacrifice is a legitimate religion. How should freedom of religion operate for people who wish to adhere to that religion? The answer, speaking plainly, is that it doesn't and can't, right here and now, not in some hypothetical "someday" far in the future. If we have a significant population that wants to seize outsiders and rip their hearts out, there's no way we're going to be able to coexist with that population long-term. Nor is there any principled distinction between their claim to toleration of religious practice or mine; there is, in fact, no objective definition of "harm", and yet there is no way to maintain society without enforcement against those inflicting harm; this enforcement will be both necessarily subjective and entirely indispensable.
The logic of the First Amendment assumes that the range of religions is much narrower than the observable range of religions, just as it assumes that the range of ideologies and of values is much narrower than the observable range of ideologies and values. When you get out past the borders of the range it was built for, the logic it runs on simply stops working. The fact is that you cannot actually run even a minimally-cohesive society if your population is too values-diverse to cooperate.
FCfromSSC
Nuclear levels of sour
13d ago
Is that how the water system in question works? If so, I'd have thought I'd have heard of it by now, but again, I'm willing to be corrected if there's clear facts available.
FCfromSSC
Nuclear levels of sour
13d ago
I'm entirely willing to accept that interpretation, and in fact this is my interpretation of the culture war as a whole: we no longer have a cohesive society, and so attempting to pool resources or coordinate effort or share institutions in any way cannot be expected to work. You cannot build or even maintain memorials in a society that fundamentally cannot agree on what should be memorialized. Ditto for public schools, public libraries, public justice systems...
FCfromSSC
Nuclear levels of sour
13d ago
State bans on CNC aren't preventing the import of auto-sears for criminals by the containerload, and they can't prevent me from constructing a functional bump-stock out of cardboard and hot glue. The law, at this point, mostly functions in an attempt to keep people from talking about what a failure it is to actually exert meaningful control in the real world.
And sure, this allows people in blue areas to be oppressed, so long as the vast majority of people are willing to cooperate with maintaining the system. This balance is not stable, and cannot be maintained in the face of even a small number of people sincerely wishing otherwise. You are correct that neither I nor anyone else has a way to give you current society, only less oppression for you. But if you are willing to let go of current society, the oppression can also go, and speedily.
FCfromSSC
Nuclear levels of sour
13d ago
Here's CNN reporting that the water in the pool has elevated phosphate. My understanding is that one of the more straightforward ways you'd get elevated phosphate in the water is by dumping phosphate fertilizer into the water. Given the other evidence of deliberate vandalism, I'm not sure why incompetence or corruption are supposed to be the leading hypothesis here.
I'm open to being corrected if there's some other explanation.
My understanding, perhaps out of date, was that legal manufacture of new select-fire firearms was still banned by the 1986 act.
"Full-Auto" as a legal term means multiple shots fired with a single pull of the trigger. Forced-Reset Triggers force the trigger fully-forward again during the firing cycle, which is then immediately pulled again by the trigger finger in a distinct mechanical action. Legally, they are semi-auto, just semi-auto at 600-800 RPM. Semi-auto's legal viability has never depended on how fast the trigger is being pulled previously, and indeed many shooters have demonstrated the ability to fire semi-auto firearms and even revolvers at speeds equivalent to machine guns with no legal repercussion. Likewise, mechanical aids such as crank-fire have also been legally-permitted methods for generating rapid fire for roughly as long as we've had gun laws. FRTs merely make this easier to do. They are "select fire" in the sense that they have a selector switch with safe/semi/rapid fire settings. They are not "select fire" in the sense that they do not have a legally-recognized "full auto" setting, only a setting that allows the shooter to fire legally-semi-auto at a consistent rate of hundreds of rounds a minute with no significant effort.
FCfromSSC
Nuclear levels of sour
13d ago
I too dabble in necromancy.
Anyway, I don't think this is what Exhalation thinks its own point is: it spends about ten times as long explaining entropy.
That is not my recollection at all. Everything in the story converges on the scientist's exploration of his own brain, and that exploration terminates at the idea of a manufactured mechanical system that is nonetheless entirely intractable from within a given material frame.
Eh, is it really more inaccessible than a program running on ram without a disk installed? If ram loses power, whatever it stores is gone, just like their brains.
But the point isn't just that a destroyed brain is lost, but rather that an intact brain is nonetheless intractable. The scientist figures that his mind is a machine, and thus that he should be able to interact with it in machine-like ways; gears can be assembled, valves can be opened and closed. But in fact his mind is not the machine, it is the air moving through the machine, and the exponential complexity is intractable. RAM/disks and microscopic air currents are both intuition pumps, but the latter leads in a very different direction than the former.
Entropy as a theme circles back to the same idea: our control over ourselves and the world around us is limited, and almost certainly always will be, in ways that we are very bad at recognizing for reasons similar to those related in the story. This is, in my view, a really good message to communicate.
From the analysis I heard, Farage pulled this stunt because he is probably going to be censured by Parliament, and that censure would trigger an automatic by-election. His goal was to trigger a by-election of his own, win it, and thus moot the censure. Now, though, he has a slim chance of actually losing this election to a joke candidate, and even if he wins it, his opponents in parliament can credibly claim that it wasn't a "real" election anyway since he ran "unopposed", and thus proceed with the censure and a second by-election that they can actually contest in a serious manner. The miscalculation on Farage's part seems quite severe.
Restore, the insurgent party running to Farage's right, seem disinclined to come to his aid, percieving him to be an obstacle between themselves and mainstream legitimacy on the Right.
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