Lewis2
14hr ago
Eh, I know a number of Lutheran clergy who speak multiple languages fluently and additionally have a reading and sometimes writing knowledge of several more. It’s not at all uncommon to come across pastors who speak fluent English, German, and one or more of Spanish, Italian, one of the Scandinavian languages, Afrikaans, Russian, Japanese, etc. These same guys can generally also read Koine Greek without much difficulty, maybe ancient Hebrew (if they retained it after graduating from the seminary), and frequently also Latin.
The ministry is one of the few professions that still heavily emphasizes the learning of foreign languages, so it’s not altogether surprising that it attracts people with a propensity in that direction.
Lewis2
15hr ago
I used to have a neighbor (not a Boomer, a Gen Xer) who mowed his yard a minimum of three times per week, and sometimes even daily. I’d occasionally come home and find that he’d mowed my yard for me, having apparently decided that I was letting it get a bit too long. (I think he also knew that I didn’t care for yard work, so I always appreciated his donated time and expense.)
Lewis2
2d ago
I appreciate this comment, but I do have one historical nit:
We didn't see this behavior from the Jews themselves when they were occupied by Rome
As I mentioned during a previous discussion, this isn’t true. After the fall of Jerusalem, the Jews’ treatment of the Greeks and Romans was rather similar to modern-day Palestinians’ treatment of Israelis, except far more deadly.
Quoting my previous comment:
If the ancient Roman historians who wrote about the war are to be believed, the Jews went far beyond just rebelling, they outright slaughtered the Greeks and Romans wherever they could.
The Jews… waged war on the inhabitants throughout Libya in the most savage fashion, and to such an extent was the country wasted that, its cultivators having been slain, it’s land would have remained utterly depopulated, had not Emperor Hadrian gathered settlers from other places and sent them thither, for the inhabitants had been wiped out.
Dio Cassius also records that they gruesomely murdered 220,000 Greeks and Romans in the area, while Synesius writes in one of his letters that the Jews were “fully convinced of the piety of sending to Hades as many Greeks as possible.”
This is something akin to the Haitian genocide, not a mere rebellion.
Lewis2
3d ago
As @NewCharlesInCharge pointed out, the law appears to have originally been passed to attack the KKK, an organization whose existence is probably in itself “a sign of a sick, low-trust society.”
Lewis2
4d ago
And since no one with power is even willing to hand out 5 year jail sentences, how is it remotely possible that a bill allowing drivers to hit pedestrians would ever be passed? The reason the protestors get away with it is that the powers that be are generally sympathetic to, if not outright supportive of, the protestors and their cause. The minute an anti-immigrant group tried the same tactic, the police and courts would magically stiffen their resolve and start handing out the lengthiest sentences permitted by law. It’s all “who, whom.”
Lewis2
10d 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.
Lewis2
15d ago
I was formerly the board chair of a local non-profit daycare. Even with free facilities, only a couple of full-time staff, a bunch of part-time high school and college students making barely above minimum wage (this was pre-Covid), and zero excess funds most years, we still were barely cheaper than many of the other local daycares. At least where I live, childcare is a highly competitive field. Any conspiracy to artificially inflate costs would need to include every daycare run by a non-profit, university, church, stay-at-home mom, large employer, etc., including every new entrant into the business, of which there are many. A sinister cabal is just not possible.
Lewis2
11d ago
I just wish modern day news sources would reintroduce the old TLDR-style series of cascading headlines.
Lewis2
7d ago
If you currently have housemates (presumably already vetted), why not just continue to rent to them? Increase their rent as necessary to cover your expenses, and then rest easy knowing you’re renting to responsible people.
Lewis2
15d ago
Oh, you’re absolutely right. I remember raising the minimum wage for the part-timers to $8/hour ten or twelve years ago. The last I heard, the new starting wage at the same daycare was something like $15–$17/hour, and this isn’t even in an urban area, let alone a major one. I don’t know of any white collar jobs that saw a 100% increase in salary over the same time period.
Lewis2
15d ago
In modern mass culture, the middle-age dads of tweens and teens are also portrayed as out of touch laughingstocks. At least the moms are portrayed as competent. As for older women, yes, there’s the stereotype of the overbearing mother (or mother-in-law), but there’s also the great respect shown to grandmothers. Just think about the messaging during Covid. Everyone was told to mask and get vaccinated in order to save grandma, but no one even thought to be concerned about grandpa.
Either way, I’m pretty sure dasfoo was talking about the traditional views under the bad old patriarchy, not modern views.
Lewis2
1mo ago
Here is the article immediately before it was merged, and here is the article as it appeared in March of 2021, before an activist editor significantly changed it, summarizing his changes as follows: “Per talk page request, adding content to reduce bias in the article toward Hajnal'a theory, as well as to mention the racialist history of this research.”
This editor’s Wikipedia user page gives some insight into his views and editing motivations: “I am primarily interested in the documented history and photography of American small towns and railroads. Most of my activity on Wikipedia would consist of edits of that nature; if it weren't for the fact that I seem to find myself entrenched in lengthy disputes over culture-related articles; typically with trolls. I adamantly oppose the rise of racism, HBD, bio'truth', nationalism and jingoism, and I consider these to be the most compelling threats of our time to human dignity and safety.”
Lewis2
17d ago
I think they’d be equally ravenous to seize the reins of power regardless. They’re just authoritarians. It’s like asking if the early Nazis would have been more zealous if they were up against a strict communist government instead of the relatively liberal Weimar one. I think their zeal would have been undiminished either way. Same goes for the fervent anti-meat crowd.
Lewis2
14d ago
Doesn’t that likely have something to do with the Labour Party under Corbin being pretty openly antisemitic? The numbers might have been different otherwise.
Lewis2
1mo ago
Couples get fat together. There is never one obese one and one skinny one.
I’m surprised at this assertion, as I personally know several mismatched pairings, and I’ve witnessed quite a few more. I know a few fat man/skinny woman couples, but, perhaps unfortunately for you, I see far more fit man/fat woman couples.
Lewis2
1mo ago
I’ve also seen plenty of old people complain that the concomitant rise in property taxes is increasingly burdensome, especially for those on a fixed income. Sure, their kids may see more money when they die (realistically, the nursing home will probably eat most of the proceeds), but that does nothing to help them here and now.
Lewis2
2mo ago
I had to take a BS cultural diversity class in college. The professor was a black female adjunct who started off day one by trying unsuccessfully to create racial and sex-based divisions between the students. In day three or four, she snapped at me in class for “questioning” her and thereby “undermining her authority.” I was frankly stunned. I pretty regularly asked questions in other classes if something sounded off to my ears and even directly argued with professors. In all those previous classes, the professors loved it (at least I was engaged, which couldn’t be said for many of my classmates). After I challenged her for including inaccurate information in her presentations, she stopped uploading them to the class site. These were insane errors too, like claiming that Max Weber, close friend and colleague of Martin Luther, invented the Protestant Work Ethic as a way to discriminate against Jews and Catholics, which in turn served as a model for later Jim Crow laws (I swear I’m not making any of that up). Her final straw was when she said something blatantly wrong in class, and one of the other students turned around to me and asked, “Is that right?” The fire in the prof’s eyes was quite a sight to behold. She naturally failed me, but fortunately, I’d been meeting with my advisor after every class to document the issues, so I was able to get the grade overturned on appeal.
That’s the kind of bullshit that these diversity classes make people put up with. If you have even the slightest inkling that the professors teaching those classes will treat students fairly or allow multiple points of view, you need to spend more time with The Nybbler. Maybe some his cynicism will rub off.
Lewis2
1mo ago
the US for not letting Ukraine negotiate a peace
To what does this refer? It seems to me that the Ukrainians are no more eager for a negotiated settlement than the U.S. is. Now, it might be in their national interests to negotiate a peace, but they still have to want it to go down that route.
Lewis2
1mo ago
Everyone's got a story about how they read so much back in the 90's/00's. But they pick up a book now, and... it's just not entertaining.
I see similar comments on sites like this from time to time—“Oh, I hardly ever read anymore, no matter how hard I try”—and I always wonder if the speakers just discount reading Internet content for some reason. I also don’t read books like I did in the ’90s, but I spend an average of 5–6 hours per day reading on my phone, plus whatever additional time I spend reading on my computer.
Lewis2
1mo ago
This one happened a few years before, during the whole NYT SSC fiasco. Very shortly after Scott took SSC offline, a group of regular participants in SSC’s open threads converged on bean’s Naval Gazing blog and decided to spin up a replacement community, since it wasn’t clear how long SSC would be dark. By the time Scott started ACX, the group had enough momentum to keep going as a separate site. Like this place, the userbase is generally pretty anti-leftist but is at the same time far from being a conservative echo-chamber. At least a few people regularly participate on both sites.
Lewis2
1mo ago
45% of your fellow citizens becoming obese in a century can't be explained by their bad moral character. You are mostly fit because of your genetics, like any other fit person.
This objection doesn’t seem to hold. If fitness were determined by genetics, then ~45% of the population should have been obese a century ago, unless obese people have a massively higher fertility rate than healthy people, which seems doubtful. Whereas if the rise in obesity is more about lifestyle choices (e.g., eating way too many carbs, never walking more than 1,000 steps per day, and never even dreaming of exercising), well, those are all personal choices deserving of scorn.
This isn’t to deny that some people have an easier time losing weight than others, but the unprecedented rise in obesity pretty clearly shows that there are factors other than genetics at play.
Im going to plant my flag in the ground and say that dresses as a general class are awesome, and I would wear them in a heartbeat if it were socially acceptable to do so. By “general class,” I would include things like robes, kilts, togas, vestments, opera capes, and so forth. These are all much more aesthetically pleasing than modern clothing, even if they’re not always as practical. I hadn’t ever thought about it before, but your comment makes me wonder if some transgender people (those on the transvestite end of things) just feel the same itch and find that women’s dresses help them to scratch it. If so, it’s just too bad that wearing clothing styles of 200+ years ago just makes you look like a twat.
Actually, a second thought on that point: men used to enjoy dressing up in fancy dress in the Masons, Shriners, Knights of Columbus, etc., but now young men have no such outlet. Maybe they should.
Lewis2
1mo ago
Islam is dying. Just as Christianity is. Sunnis and Shi'ites in fight, Pakistan has problems with the Taliban. They are not united.
I don’t have an opinion on the future of Islam, but the end of this paragraph seems to contradict the beginning. Islam is disunited precisely because it isn’t dead. The Shiites and Sunnis, and ISIS and the Taliban, all care so deeply about their religion and about the proper interpretation of it, that they are willing to physically fight and die for it. Citing that as evidence that Islam is dying is like citing the Thirty Years’ War as evidence that Christianity was dying 400 years ago.
Lewis2
3mo ago
An appraisal will tell you roughly what the market value of a property is. An assessment will tell you what the government values the property at for tax purposes. You might think that those should be the same, but in many, if not most, jurisdictions, they aren’t. Some city and county assessors even provide separate assessment and appraisal values each year.
The last time we discussed this, I gave the example of farmland in my area, which is pretty much universally assessed at around $2,000 per acre, even though the sale price of farmland is typically close to $20,000 per acre. The counties choose to assess farmland at a far lesser rate than its market value in order to keep farming financially viable in the area. It’s essentially a sort of hidden subsidy. Some jurisdictions also cap the rate at which property taxes can rise from year to year, which can eventually cause assessments to fall far behind appraisal values, even if they were once fairly close.
Yes, I am actively involved in one ethnic heritage organization and occasionally help out with a couple of others. Each one is having trouble gaining new, younger members (if they’re even trying), so I’m not hugely optimistic about their futures. I sometimes wonder if I’m wasting my time by getting involved at all.
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