SomethingMusic
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User ID: 181
SomethingMusic
5mo ago
I'm voting a hard no, I would no longer read this forum anymore. I'm here because I know people are taking the time to write and post their personal opinions. I believe Reddit is increasingly 'dead internet' thanks to AI and astroturfed subreddits controlled by superusers utilizing AI tools. I really don't want this place to go in the same direction.
SomethingMusic
5mo ago
I think 'move fast and break things' is something applied to Silicon Valley but is also something that should be applied to government as well. Bureaucracy slows things down so significantly, it's refreshing to see someone like Trump just go ahead and do it, damn the pearl clutching of teams of lawyers saying he shouldn't or can't.
SomethingMusic
8mo ago
Even though I've seen people here claim the 2024 election doesn't have the energy of 2016, I disagree. No one does this unless they're willing to have fun with it, and Trump is definitely having fun with it. It is a way to political points, sure, but it just sparks joy seeing these kinds of antics.
There is no election fraud in Ba Sing Se.
Many words on The Motte have been spilled about the lack of any real election fraud in the US and about the security of modern elections. The arguments against election fraud can be summarized as there being no election fraud as all audits in the election process have found no notable fraud. On the other hand, the actions of election committees, the opaque processes, strange and unexpected results, last minute rulings, and statistical anomalies has convinced many people that election fraud is much more widespread and commonplace than we are led to believe.
Recent news in Pennsylvania has shown that an election committee has caught approximately 2500 instances of fraudulent voter registration., with another 1500 fraudulent registrations in another county.
A large number of suspicious voter registration applications were dropped off at the county elections office near Monday's deadline, county officials said. An investigation by the district attorney's office found incorrect addresses, false identification information, false names and names that did not match Social Security information.
Adams said her investigators found problems with 60% of the registrations they have so far reviewed. She did not say how many of the 2,500 registrations had been investigated. She said applications came from people living in the city, as well as Columbia, Elizabethtown, Akron, Ephrata, Stevens and Strasburg.
The problem about fraud investigations is that they largely focused on where the ballots end up and not on their creation and submission. Like laundering money, mixing real with illegal votes becomes impossible to distinguish when you might only need 5000-10000 fake ballots of 200000 people to flip a county. The more legitimate and illegitimate votes combine, the harder it is to prove that there were fake registrations to begin with.
Even if it is from a lazy ballot collector half-assing their work to get paid, extrapolating from this limited data set is concerning. These are just one or two counties of a 67-county state, and it is incredibly difficult to prove fraudulent registrations once these ballots pass through. Lancaster County and York are historically red counties who are probably more vigilant than, say, Philadelphia in regard to election integrity. Also, these registration submissions were quite obvious, a mass drop off of 2500 right before the deadline. What's the likelihood there were other registration submissions that weren't caught during the submission time period?
There are some real questions that need to be raised about securing failure points regarding election integrity, and there's finally some concrete evidence indicating that there are attempts to manipulate the vote through fake voter registrations. I doubt any of this would have been caught if it wasn't for Trump's fight regarding election integrity in 2020.
SomethingMusic
11mo ago
The French Olympic ceremony is a travesty. The lack of rehearsal and disjointed segments swapping unceremoniously between live and made-for-TV videos, the ham-fisted DEI multiculturalism, and the overriding of historical French artists for modern Hollywood slop all imply the horrendous organization of this opening. Cameras have to constantly cut around to find something to show while most of the performers are largely walking around waiting for some unknown cues.
Dukas' Sorcerer's Apprentice getting prematurely cut off for an awful video featuring the Despicable Me's (tm) minions was, for me, the most poignant moment so far. Out with the traditionalism and that boring culture, in with the latest schlock to maximally consume product!
What is the breaking point? At what point does the logistics, infrastructure, and labor fail to support the bloated mass of the new? At what point will the cultures, artists, and creativity of Europe be crushed under a mass of a billion immigrants, a throng of unproductive mouths to feed? Will it go out in a bang or a whimper? Will it evolve and find a new way to thrive, or will it be absorbed and cannibalized into something unrecognizable?
At least the baroque counter tenor was a nice touch, even if it is framed in the modern nonbinary perspective.
SomethingMusic
11mo ago
I dislike discord. Not just because of the discord -> degeneracy meme, but because so much tech specific knowledge is now hidden in a generally unsearchable archive where the only way to find it is BY joining and searching various discords. At least forums have a single post buried in the google archives from 15 years ago. With discord suddenly a huge amount of information is gated, and short of 'joining the community' it's impossible to locate the information now.
A problem that took me two days to iron out could have been done in 15 minutes if I simply remembered that Discord = information. However, my general use of discord means that connection in my mind doesn't take place.
SomethingMusic
5mo ago
I'm surprised no one has pointed out that Trump is putting on his best Javier Milei impression and trying to make as wide sweeping cancellations of government spending as possible. If he framed is as 'interest expense is a top 3 government expense and I'm trying to put it in the bottom quartile' he might have a bit more success than being relatively inscrutable, but we'll see how it pans out.
SomethingMusic
8mo ago
I'm not surprised. One of the most effective things Trump did to stabilize the middle east was cut off Iran's funding who is directly funding Hezbollah and anti-israeli sentiment in the middle east. When Biden reinstated Iran's nuclear deal and lifted sanctions on Iran, Iran then had funding to fund Palestine and Hezbollah which led to the Palestinian-Israeli conflict going on today.
With this background, I wouldn't be surprised that Iran sees Trumps rise as a threat to their economic stability and their anti-Israeli agenda. A dead Trump is much better for them than a Trump regime in the presidency.
SomethingMusic
8mo ago
I firmly believe the 2020 elections were the least secure ever and definitely opened opportunities for voter fraud, while 2024 has probably been one of the most secure elections due to the amount of R oversight funded by the Republican party and coordinated with modern R leadership.
That being said, 2020 was also a referendum on Trump and COVID response - something that was largely unpopular in how it was handled and was the worst administrative goof of Trump's previous tenure as president by far. On top of that, the multiple investigations, the constant drama and controversies of the Trump cabinet (and Trump himself) heavily motivated voters, including old school conservatives, to buck the party line in a hope old Joe would bring some semblance of 'normalcy' to the presidency.
So, the larger question which will never be answered is how many votes were potentially voter fraud, and how many were motivated by unpopular administrative actions.
SomethingMusic
7mo ago
May I ask why you think conservatives are stupid for denying public insurance options? As someone who has experience in both (consumer side) private and public insurance, the only reason why public insurance is affordable is because expenses are shifted to taxpayers instead of the individual insurer. The actual price per service is no different: collective bargaining does not give the government any particular advantage in negotiating prices for services. Almost all public health services have massive budget overages and increased costs which are expected to increase as time continues as well as having issues with patient backlogs.
In the US, Medicare (for elderly and for certain qualified disabilities) accounts for 17% of the national budget. Once again, the only reason for affordability is due to the taxpayer shouldering the costs whose base is dwindling. This isn't even accounting for standard government inefficiency as the US government is incoherently cost insensitive and unable to make sensible budgetary decisions.
So while I agree that private health insurance has many issues, it at least is self-maintaining and doesn't have the large macro issues that government health programs are currently facing.
SomethingMusic
8mo ago
Even if normies can only get through 15-20 minutes, for a voter who gets their information about only the most outrageous and bifurcating statements, any exposure to humanize himself is an incredibly positive move. Going on the podcast circuit was a genius idea supposedly pushed by Baron, and this type of forward thinking really sets himself as a trendsetter instead of an evil bogeyman. It's much harder for the media to discredit his personality when there's a 3-hour long form podcast, even if the interview is fairly benign compared to the interviews by legacy media.
I slightly agree with number 8, at this point the battlelines are largely drawn. I voted before the interview even came out.
Also, I'd like to point that the 18 million views with Rogan is just on Youtube. This doesn't include Spotify or any other media platform where this interview may have been shared.
SomethingMusic
4mo ago
Definitely technological black holes. Youtube, TV, maybe vidya.
Remember that part of Lent is also doing something good. I might stretch my neck out and do food service at a local church, it depends on what time I have.
SomethingMusic
5mo ago
Imagine the change to the GDP of Mississippi if we decided to move the entire federal government over there.
SomethingMusic
11mo ago
I think there's a difference of presenting something untrue as fact and questioning someone's willingness to rebrand themselves the instant the winds change. If you interpret "Is she black" as a racial statement rather one of cultural alignment than that's your movie screen. "Is she black" is a relevant question to Black America - is she truly someone who aligns herself to the plights of impoverished Black Americans, or is she conveniently emphasizing her Blackness as a way to procure votes? It's mudslinging, sure, but also has an element of truth asking people to analyze her character beyond simple racial solidarity.
It is the Democrats who dragged Trump through the mud with legitimately false claims such as the Steele Dossier. I find Trump's 'lies', 'hyperbole', or 'political mudslinging' positively refreshing compared to the gaslighting Democrats have shown themselves willing to do on an international level for the past 8 years.
SomethingMusic
1yr ago
The breaking of social covenant and the rise of selfish societies
Recently in the news, Red Lobster is reporting an 11 million dollar loss, which is forcing the company to close many restaurants and possible file for chapter 11. The problem? Their '$20 all you can eat shrimp' deal was too good. Some anecdotal evidence indicates that large tables would order one or two orders of the never-ending deal, causing huge losses as large parties would share a single plate for $20, causing significant restaurant losses.
In the past few years, NYC has seen significant increases in retail theft, with stores facing many millions of dollar losses, with the estimate of retail theft being up to 4.4 billion dollars for the state alone. The cost of thefts cause a cyclical cycle, it forces stores to raise prices to cover the loss of the theft, which in turn prices people out of purchasing goods, which again raises theft. So far, the plans the governor has been trying to put into place seems to have done little to curtail any theft.
A 2024 jobs report shows a massive shortage of manufacturing labor, with 770,000 manufacturing jobs open. Labor participation has not recovered from the COVID crisis, with participation at 63.3% just before corvid and around 62.5% from the most recent report. Labor participation was highest before the 2008 housing crisis during the Bush admin around 67%. 7.5 million men have dropped out of America's workforce, meaning that they are not job seeking and therefore wouldn't be tracked as part of unemployment in FRED data.
There's a lot of words spilled on the internet on 'high trust societies'. Places like Japan where a lost item will be much more likely returned to its owner than, say, Detroit. Or rural America, where people will pay money at an unattended farm stand for fresh fruits and/or vegetables. However, trust doesn't fully cover what's going on in the west. /u/johnfabian's post is not about trust, but rather the breaking down of the covenant between constituents and their governments that keep a society basically functions. These social functions are much more simple than trust. It's about not running a red light, not driving the wrong way down a highway, or waiting in line for a train rather than trying to crowd on regardless of capacity.
Western society flourishing was largely predicated on this tacit understood social covenant: on an individual level, each person does their best to contribute through labor - be it stocking shelves to software development to entrepreneurship. In turn, the government upholds the status quo and optimizes legislation for stability and prosperity for the working class.
However in recent times this has changed. I'm not sure if the western governments decided they can have it's cake and eat it, too, or that the only way to perpetuate power is finding a new voter base, but the recent focus on marginalized groups has significantly eroded the trust away from indigenous constituents. It doesn't take a genius to tell that demographic groups are being treated, litigated, and policed based off of completely different rule books, and this type of treatment always creates division and resentment. The covenant between government and the constituencies broke, which changed the payoff matrix. As governments pick and choose which demographics to control, people become more selfish, as the ability to create value from freer markets diminish.
This is why 'selfish societies' is a better term than 'low trust' societies. As much as people love to yell at corporations for perusing short term gains, individuals pursue selfish gains at the cost of others even more as shown from my examples alone. Trust does not fully explain how people behave in the aforementioned examples, but selfishness does. Low male employment, antiwork, and the rise of NEET-dom has nothing to do with trust, but selfishness adequately describes the motivations for the ideological positions they hold. Obesity isn't a trust issue, it's a selfish issue, where people would rather eat themselves into oblivion instead of finding a healthy balance and self restraint. Even the declining birthrate is a result of selfishness; people would prefer to have the increased income and enjoyment of consequence-free fornication instead of laying an effective and positive groundwork for future generations.
The question, then, is it possible for a government to regain the respect of its constituents, and can the people understand that there needs to be some amount of selflessness to create an environment to nurture the next generation?
SomethingMusic
10mo ago
You know the media's successfully pigeonholed reality when no one is mentioning that Trump was shot at and very nearly killed at a rally. Don't you think that would negatively damage ones ability to rally?
SomethingMusic
11mo ago
Lots of young women would like to be able to get abortions in case they get pregnant while having fun casual sex. Why is the male version of this something cool and fun while the female version of this cat lady hectoring?
I've never understood this argument. It's not cool and fun when men engage in casual "fun" sex, nor is it cool when women do it. The more we treat sex as something separate from a person emotionally, physically, and spiritually, the more it become commodified and exposed to a 'free market' exchange of sex, in which selfishness is prioritized instead of mutual building. Suddenly we have an increase of single parents which is well documented to lead to worse behavioral outcomes for men, which even the politically washed Bing-GPT still spits out:
Male children of single parents face unique challenges and experiences. Here are some key points:
Demographics: A growing number of single-parent households are headed by fathers. As of recent data, 16.1% of single-parent households are led by fathers, up from 12.5% in 2007 1.
Educational and Behavioral Outcomes: Studies show that boys raised in single-parent households may face more behavioral and academic challenges compared to those in two-parent households. However, the presence of a supportive and involved parent can mitigate many of these issues2.
Economic Factors: Single-parent households, especially those led by mothers, are more likely to experience financial difficulties. This can impact the resources available for the child’s education and extracurricular activities2.
Emotional and Social Development: Boys in single-parent households might experience different social dynamics. They may take on more responsibilities at home and develop a strong bond with the custodial parent1.
Role Models: The absence of a male role model can be a concern, but many single mothers and fathers actively seek out positive male influences for their sons through family, friends, and community programs3.
SomethingMusic
8mo ago
I'm not so sure about that. Most millennials and zoomers grew up on 'comedy politics' as their primary method of political indoctrination in high school through college, be it "last week tonight" with John Oliver, 'The Colbert Report' with Stephan Colbert, 'The Daily Show' with John Stewart, etc. Political comedy has been around for the past 70 years and has been an important part of at least informing, if not indoctrinating, the past few generations.
SomethingMusic
8mo ago
I certainly am in the 'it ain't over til it's over' crowd. If looking at statistics and probability, since Trump just needs to win one state he's more likely to come out ahead than Harris. That being said, I wouldn't be surprised of midnight shenanigans.
SomethingMusic
11mo ago
People have been begging the past 8 years for a 'return to normalcy' and believe that Kamala, whose sycophants are scouring the internet in an attempt to rebrand her as a moderate Democrat, will most likely represent this return. Trump can never brand himself as status quo by the sheer nature of his personality. The media is guaranteeing that upon reelection the media is promising 4 years of obsessive hatred and hit pieces against the man.
The best thing Kamala can do is shut up, hide, and let the Democratic machine work their propaganda. The less she says and the less she's in the spotlight the more likely the strategy can work. As soon as she comes on stage and exposes herself the jig will be up. The Democrats only hope is that their spin overwhelms anything she the person excretes.
SomethingMusic
10mo ago
I believe the polling is accurate. President Trump is uniquely polarizing and is considered the catalyst that got us into the culture war dynamics of the past 8+ years. The central organization points of the 2016 Trump campaign have been banned and ostracized from the internet beyond Truth social, who supposedly has 2 million users and 600k active users (I never tried it, and it seems a pale comparison to twitter or other platforms. Even Gab supposedly has more registered and active users and I haven't tried their site since 2017 at the latest). The assassination was great PR for Trump but also obviously psychologically damaged Trump, who seems a lot more cautious of making public appearances which has been historically his greatest strength. Vice President Kamala's coordination with establishment and new corporate medias has allowed them to block out Republican messaging and boost her "Vibes based" messaging.
This is most represented by her website. Her website is devoid of everything a normal presidential run consists of. Whay are her policy positions? Interviews? Pressers? Tours? Kamala's history as a political radical has been washed from the internet. When is her last TV interview? Presser? Zoom rally? The silence has to be deliberate; anyone position she holds, or historically held, has been scoured from search engines.
President Trump needs more eyes on him for him to sway voters. Vice President Kamala needs the opposite.
SomethingMusic
1yr ago
Why America's social policy is not helping the poor
There's a section of Youtube lately that is focusing on the faces of poverty in America. Not in a predatory way like 'get rich quick' influences, crypto scammers, and redpill adjacent-sphere individuals like Andrew Tate who are looking to exploit the desperate poor to make profit, but rather to shine a light on the mindset of poverty in America.
One of the most recent videos is by Andrew Callaghan interview and documentary about the Kia Boys, a group of young teenagers around New Haven notorious for stealing and lifting Kia's and Hyundais who had a vulnerability in their system allowing easy theft. It's a fascinating watch, but what's most interesting is how they want to spend the money they earn from carjacking. Not to support their families, not to pay for college or to get a GED, but rather to consume the latest fashion trends and to aspire to selfish hedonism.
Another youtuber is tackling American consumer debt and looks at how consumer choices end them in significant, and often insurmountable debt without extreme lifestyle and person changes. Caleb Hammer interviews people (in a fairly obnoxious and click-baity style) in significant loan and credit card debt, breaks down their finances, and tries to get them on a budget with a varying amount of success. The most common factor of the guests he has on his show is eating out- for most of his guests, almost 33% of most of their monthly income is eating out at various establishments and other spending that does not significantly increase their quality of life. Many of his guests would have significant personal income if they could have some self-control in their consumptive habits.
The problem America is currently facing is not entirely related to HBD, which is a low hanging fruit for discussing antisocial behavior. Rather, it is the culmination of various American policies which have created an underclass which sucks endless resources and only returns crime. It is plenty possible to gainfully employ low intelligence people into socially acceptable positions even as technology improves and our AI overlords come near. In fact, it would probably significantly increase the quality of life of many jobs having lower intelligence people working menial tasks to the best of their ability alongside more trained and capable individuals. The problem is that we have created a society in which there is not enough incentive or will to create the stability necessary to turn around these neighborhoods and communities.
This is the same problem America had in the occupation of Afganistan. A true occupation and social change would need significant more support and time than what the American politics around. It would probably need a full generation to be educated as well as an extreme prejudice to crackdown on Islamic extremism for Afganistan to actually significantly change, maybe 40-60 years.
Unfettered illegal immigration further strangles poverty-stricken America. The social resources are stretched thinner, to the point our politicians decided it's better to serve incoming illegals than their own constituents on the off-chance they're willing to work the menial jobs for well below livable wage for the area. Of course it helps the government are subsidizing migrants to the tune of $350 per day, or $127,750 per year per migrant which would launch them almost into the top 10% of earners in the United States.
So the question remains, what can be done? It's quite possible liberal policy is somewhat correct but doesn't go far enough. Instead of social security checks, benefits should be more tied between work programs and corporations. Imagine that individuals in section housing have to work at Amazon fulfilment centers. Perhaps the government and Amazon could strike up a deal that with enough workers, Amazon could lower the throughput per worker (to increase livability) in exchange for a tax subsidy to offset the cost of having to hire a non-optimum amount of workers. People in section housing could be bussed to the job, and also have regular police presence and social workers more intimately involved in their lives along with people helping them understand budgeting. It would require insane amounts of manpower, but it would also be the first step in actually beginning to address the problems of the slums.
SomethingMusic
11mo ago
The whole point of no term limits on supreme judges is so they remove the incentive of selling out to interest groups to maximize their income or social interested during their tenure. Unless there's evidence that long standing judges do in fact profit more than, say, congressmen in the nature of their duration as supreme court judges, #2 is pure culture war and could end up backfiring spectacularly.
#1 is from what I've read on this from here and other places, is a way to push things through this through disingenuous reading of the ruling and ignores the nuance of what the judges put forth. The only reason to put this into the reform is to go after an ex-president legally, and if it doesn't go through is a way to blame "those wiley Republicans are preventing the rule of law, what power hungry hypocrites!" It's pure dog-whistle for Democrats.
#3 is too open ended and essentially is a way to perpetuate those in power by hemming in the presidency. The liked president who toes the party line will get a pass, the unliked or controversial president will be hamstrung by 'morality' and 'ethics' which will mean whatever people want it to mean at the time.
SomethingMusic
10mo ago
Conflating Canton with Cleveland is a misnomer, Canton is about an hour drive away and doesn't share any local government services with Cleveland . The likelihood of any significant cross pollination between impoverished Clevelanders and Cantoners(?) is pretty minimal unless Cleveland is buying a one-way bus ticket for the mentally ill.
While I agree experts tend to "motte" their public statements over the impact of any possible change from the status quo, I'm having a hard time trying to figure out what Trump is trying to accomplish. I'm okay with short term pain for longer term rewards, but I don't know what that reward is and what it would look like when we finally see it.
I'm glad I just bought everything for a computer upgrade for the next few years, though. Time to figure out what other assets and goods I should purchase before prices start waffling around.
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