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.
Lewis2
9d 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
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
2mo ago
He probably had that Buddhist monk who self-immolated in the 1960s in mind. This picture was in my high school history textbook, and I remember him being portrayed as stunning and brave.
He’s also not the only man to set himself on fire for dubious reasons recently. Some guy did it on SCOTUS’s front steps two years ago to protest climate change. It seems like the sort of thing that could be memed into greater popularity given the right conditions.
Lewis2
3mo ago
Here, though, the paper isn’t making any claim. They’re just reporting what Western officials said. They could remove “without citing evidence” without impacting the paper one bit.
I’m not knowledgeable enough about potential electoral fraud to get into much of a debate, but it does seem to me that any fraud should tend to favor Democrats over Republicans simply because it’s easier for Democrats to cheat.
As @SwordOfOccam pointed out, “the best check on election fraud at any scale is that people of various ideologies and parties make up the officials and volunteers in any given area, and all it takes is one witness to expose something.” The trouble is, that’s just not the case in all urban districts. In 2012, for example, 59 voting precincts in Philadelphia alone voted 100% for Obama. The linked article notes that precincts in Chicago and Atlanta did the same in 2008. It would be much easier to run up the tally in those areas, either via fraudulent votes or fraudulent tallies, than it would be in even the reddist of Republican precincts, since Republicans don’t cluster up in the same way that urban Democrats do, and there are always at least a few Democrats in the strongest Republican strongholds.
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
2mo ago
The problem is not just that you’re paying for them; it’s also that it’s impossible to get many jobs without a college diploma, and in a world where almost all of the universities are staffed nearly exclusively with radical leftists, it becomes impossible for conservatives to even think of entering many well-paid, influential, and/or important professions. It would take more than defunding the colleges to solve that problem. At a minimum, you’d also need to remove college degrees from state licensing requirements. If the conservatives cede all the law schools but the state governments maintain the requirement that you must graduate from a law school in order to take the bar exam, the conservatives will have suddenly ceded the entire legal profession, even more than they have already. Ideally, in a world where conservatives give up on the universities, they should also make it illegal to inquire about job candidates’ educational background, just as it is currently illegal to inquire about marital status or religious affiliation.
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.
Lewis2
2mo ago
There are shortcuts. Come in with a membership transfer from your local church, Masonic temple, Elks lodge, or the like, and you’ll be accepted and welcomed like some long-lost relative. Get involved in the local community and demonstrate that you’re hard-working, reliable, and not a complete ass, and within a couple of years (or sooner), you’ll have people trying to set you up with their female friends and relations.
Lewis2
3mo ago
Really? People don’t routinely go at least ten over on highways and rural roads where you live? We have vastly different experiences then. In the city where I work, even the timed lights require you to go about five MPH over the speed limit to avoid hitting a red light.
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
My Republican governor was happy to impose onerous Covid restrictions on the state (while of course violating them himself). The rules imposed in my state weren’t as long-lasting as they were in many blue states, but they were still intolerable to me and to many Republicans throughout the state. In response, the Libertarian candidate for governor received a record high number of votes in the following gubernatorial race.
I think you’re seeing party politicization where none exists.
Lewis2
3mo ago
My point was mostly that @ymeskhout’s first point was not necessarily correct—that I would expect the background level of fraud to favor Democrats in any given election due to ease of opportunity.
As for a grand, national conspiracy to change election results, while I do think that is a threat due to most states’ remarkably poor election security practices, I don’t think it’s the only, or even primary, threat model to be worried about. Instead, I would think a distributed conspiracy would be far more likely, with low-level participants each working independently and without any direction from on high, but all from the same motive.
Take sex abuse conspiracies by way of analogy. The Catholic sex abuse scandal was a grand international conspiracy, with almost all members of the hierarchy implicated in some way or another in moving priests around and preventing them from being prosecuted. The conspiracy naturally eventually leaked, and it caused a huge scandal. By contrast, every time some Baptist minister abused a girl in his church in the past 50 years, the elders just quietly removed him, sent him away to counseling, and didn’t say anything when they learned he was serving another church a year later. You had pretty much the same actions in both cases, but for the Catholics, the conspiracy was (naturally) a top-down one, while for the Baptists, it was (naturally) bottom-up, without any coordination from congregation to congregation. A bottom-up conspiracy of people individually choosing to fill out absentee ballots for their mentally incompetent relatives, poll workers in safe areas slightly inflating their numbers, and the like, would be very difficult to prove, since there would be essentially no coordination among participants or even knowledge that anyone else is doing anything similar. Just about the only thing they’d have in common would be opposition to rules that make voting more secure, which is a position that’s remarkably more common in one party than the other.
Lewis2
3mo ago
Maybe my small sample size is skewed. But I would say that the illegals I’ve known who came here a couple of decades or more ago are hard-working, ambitious, and respectable. The second generation is a mixed bag: some are model citizens (including one whom I greatly respect), but far too many are net negatives to society, content to commit petty crimes, soak up government handouts, and, especially among the women, jump on the “we need compensation for putting up with this racist and sexist American society” bandwagon. I don’t know if that’s due to regression to the mean, poor cultural influences, or some other factor, but it’s a pattern I’ve noticed. In addition, more recent illegal immigrants haven’t really impressed me. Again, though, my sample is small and may be skewed. Considering your location and general line of work, I’m sure you interact with far more illegals than I do.
Lewis2
14d 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.
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
3mo ago
You’re nitpicking the analogy without really addressing my point. Your previous comment pointed out that it would be extremely difficult for a coordinated group of national conspirators to fraudulently alter the election results in enough swing states to change the election. I’m saying there wouldn’t need to be a grand conspiracy. Recent elections have hinged on only a few tens of thousands of votes in the right places. With such small margins, all it would take to tip the scales is one side having either more motive or more opportunity to cheat than the other. I’m not even saying that necessarily happened in 2020. Thanks to insecure vote by mail procedures coupled with the secret ballot, it would be almost impossible to tell one way or the other. (For the record, I support the secret ballot, but I’m opposed to vote by mail except perhaps with the narrowest of exceptions.)
Lewis2
1d 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
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
1mo ago
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.
All that said, I’m not sure that most modern Jews know much at all about that particular rebellion, let alone celebrate it.
Lewis2
2mo ago
Reminds me of Alexander Pope:
Happy the man, whose wish and care
A few paternal acres bound,
Content to breathe his native air,
In his own ground.
Whose herds with milk, whose fields with bread,
Whose flocks supply him with attire,
Whose trees in summer yield him shade,
In winter fire.
Blest, who can unconcernedly find
Hours, days, and years slide soft away,
In health of body, peace of mind,
Quiet by day,
Sound sleep by night; study and ease,
Together mixed; sweet recreation;
And innocence, which most does please,
With meditation.
Thus let me live, unseen, unknown;
Thus unlamented let me die;
Steal from the world, and not a stone
Tell where I lie.
Lewis2
3mo ago
Do British drivers actually abide by the speed limits? US drivers routinely drive at least ten MPH over.
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.
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