100ProofTollBooth
Dumber than a man, but faster than a dog.
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User ID: 2039
100ProofTollBooth
Dumber than a man, but faster than a dog.
7d ago
Did you intend to offer a serious reply, or just use my comment as a way to jerk the spotlight towards yourself?
100ProofTollBooth
Dumber than a man, but faster than a dog.
7d ago
AUTISMVILLE LOOKS LIT!!!!
100ProofTollBooth
Dumber than a man, but faster than a dog.
7d ago
For those of you too lazy to click on the link; the CBO has crunched the numbers and the net effect on income due to transfers (i.e. medicare, medicaid, SS, etc.) beings to be a net negative starting at the middle quintile.
Phrased differently: the top 60% of Americans have less income, on net, because of the massive transfers to the bottom 40%.
Culture war angle: Which quintiles are the sources of new business formation, full time employment, responsible family practices etc?
60+ years of Great Society-ism and horrific perverse incentives for family formation and work mean that we now have a situation where 40% of the population can be - indelicately - called a drag on growth and prosperity. 40%.
Even Sarah McLaughlin can't save this DOGE, and this DOGE can't save America.
100ProofTollBooth
Dumber than a man, but faster than a dog.
7d ago
One distinction: homosexual men and men who have sex with men (MSM) are different terms.
As a gay man who has only ever had sex with women, I appreciate this.
This is one of the artifacts of left thought that I find to be especially intellectually bankrupt. The idea that identity is only ever a personally applied label without dependency in the real world, especially behaviors. If I can identify as whatever I want despite hard counters by reality and/or a repeated behavioral pattern, then "identity" is as meaningful as fantasy LARPing; I'm gay, and also a level 40 dwarvish warlock. They're both made up and just fun things to goof around with!
But the problem is that we've imbued identity with the force of law. Protected class of people exist. Bostock v. Clayton County linked sexuality identity and gender identity to the 1964 Civil Rights Act --- what I "identify" as is literally as important, legally speaking, as age and pregnancy status - things that, for now at least, is still objectively measurable.
Either something is real and important or it isn't. If the only arbiter of my "identity" is my own self conception and subject to instant total revision based on nothing more than my mood, how can we ever approach something like equal protection under the law?
100ProofTollBooth
Dumber than a man, but faster than a dog.
7d ago
Unfortunately, this isn't how it all works - by law.
Congress approves various agencies budgets at various levels of detail. If, however, Congress is approving your funding line by line (most common in the Defense budget), you are not allowed, by law, to take funding from one line and apply it to another line without congress explicitly re-authorizing it.
Okay, so this must be pretty easy, right? When everyone agrees AIDS is super important to research, Congress just dashes off a little law saying "yeah, do it."
Well, no. In regular order, it would have to go through the committee of jurisdiction with all of the committee processes - markups, hearings, etc. Then, once it passes committee, it goes out to a floor vote.
Why not just skip to the floor vote? Because floor time is incredibly scarce and is controlled by party leadership. If you just go out and start introducing bills, you aren't even going to have a quorum to vote on them (which is why most bills introduced don't get passed and are "signalling" bills only).
I could go into more detail, but you get the point. The U.S. gov't is NOT like a corporation where you have budgets as guidelines for spending but, really, it's all coming from the same corporate account so just spend how you need to. The money not only has to exist, but has to be specifically slotted in for its purpose. If you don't obey those rules as an agency, you're violating federal law.
Yet another reason why state capacity is so fucked. We've created this arbitrary and capricious self-limitations that are blindingly obviously inefficient
100ProofTollBooth
Dumber than a man, but faster than a dog.
8d ago
If you're full time employed by a single employer at a company over 50 people, by law they are required to provide some level of health insurance. You might still have to pay some level of premiums out of pocket (in fact, most people do) but the cost is heavily deferred by the employer.
If you're making 100k or so per year on your own (self employed) you will have to pay out of pocket one way or another. I believe there are some small biz health insurance co-ops but it's still going to be painful.
To answer your question directly - I am not saying you should do anything. Personal choice is important! I'm say that, from a median financial expected return and risk perspective, at about 100k / year, yes, you should be buying health insurance.
Returning to the conclusion of my original post; Health Insurance in America is fucked up. Its cost only becomes reasonable once you're already a top 20% earner or if you have an generous employer who can afford to cover most of your premiums for you (and, perhaps, provides some sort of HSA for deductibles). But, by definition, this means that the big majority of Americans aren't in this position. So, the bottom 30% or so just defect. They don't buy insurance and when they need medical treatment they either skip out on the bill or (kind of) use government subsidies to get in the door...and then skip out on the bill anyway. For the middle ~30% percent, they pay crazy premiums, still get hit with deductibles that don't square with their savings capability, and receive substandard care. They lose in nearly all cases except for that rare medical emergency that happens in just the right way so that insurance does, in fact, pick it all up.
In this system, the people who "win" are those who don't need the system in the first place (the wealthy) or those who actively corrupt it (the non-insurance-having non-payers).
100ProofTollBooth
Dumber than a man, but faster than a dog.
9d ago
Sorry, I realize I made a very unclear presentation there.
It's either/or. You have $1m in liquid assets at an income of any level. Well, probably not poverty wages. Let's say any income at or above median household for your local area.
-OR-
You have approx $500k in annual income for your household. And it's a reliable and consistent income - betting big on a commission only sales role, or your crypto day trading does not count.
As an aside to your aside: You'd be surprised how many people in super high COL areas (NYC, SF, LA) have > $500k annual incomes with low single digit savings. Private schools and even modest "keeping up with the joneses" are wild.
100ProofTollBooth
Dumber than a man, but faster than a dog.
9d ago
I've been passively thinking about this for a few years now after a conversation with my parents. They actually kept the receipts and did the math - they would've been better off paying out of pocket for the last 40 years of medical expenses than having insurance (which they did have for everyday of their working lives without exception). At ours was not a family of indestructables; a sibling had four major surgeries over about an 8 year span, and both Mom and Dad have been on a variety of not-so-cheap prescriptions for 20+ years.
Especially considering the surgeries (which had approx 10 day hospital stays after, each time), I was totally blown away that the numbers still came out against the insurance. As a side note: To note let the insurance companies weasel out of some of the major costs for the surgeries, my Mom was spending up to 20 hours a week painstakingly collecting documentation from all necessary parties.
That's some background. Here are some numbers. This is better than back of envelope, but not perfect and, as usual, normal caveats; what's your risk tolerance? What's your family medical history etc.
Liquid assets: You should have $1m in liquid assets beyond your home. Income: 250-300k for an individual, 500k+ for a family of the usual size (1-3 kids)
With some smart negotiating, you can survive even the most catastrophic events so long as they don't cluster in an insanely unlikely scenario (i.e. you get into a car wreck driving home from your chemo appointment and the ambulance taking you to the hospital T-bones your poor spouse who is speeding to meet you there).
But, take a look at those numbers again. With that kind of wealth and income, you can afford to pay for a "cadillac" insurance plan. So, why not?
And here we confront the real decision about healthcare. It isn't so much about the cost - if you're rich, you don't need it and if you're rich you can pay for it. If you're not rich, you basically throw your money away for multiple decades a little bit at a time so that in the low probability change you need it, you do have it.
The real decision is; how do you feel about subsidizing a system that works BEST for people with horrible habits and defectors in the system? We've created a situation in which doing the "right thing" with health insurance and personal health habits makes you the sucker. The game theoretic optimal path of behavior is to smoke, drink, never workout, and then walkout on all of your medical bills.
Short of the Government mandating we inject ourselves with an untested substance lest we lose our basic rights (WAIT WHAT?!), I don't see how you could make a worse healthcare scenario.
100ProofTollBooth
Dumber than a man, but faster than a dog.
11d ago
I'm still hoping that something truly crazy happens and we get Athanasius Schneider as the next Pope.
Eijk or Erdo seem to have the best realistic shot of the "obvious" conservatives. Conservative American Catholics have the fever dream of Burke, but that's just not going to happen - the American Catholic church is a weird combination of too powerful, in long term decline, and far to schizophrenic within itself to get that brass ring of a Papacy.
I have an unverifiable theory that a lot of even more liberal Cardinals see Pope Francais as a failed experiment in promoting a "third worlder." Conservative or note, I would be heavily included to wager the next Pope is from Europe - and nowhere east of Berlin.
I think success for a new Pope is clarity in doctrine of the faith and a renewed evangelization focused on bedrock truths that are unanimous; real presence, the trinity, marian sinlessness etc. Defenders of Pope Francais can quibble about intent and outcome, but I think it's safe to say that the man has been unnecessarily vague on many issues ("Who am I to judge?" ... "We're not blessing the union of same sex couples, but just the individuals who may or may not be in those couples") and has neglected a lot of the basic near unanimous issues (real presence is, imho, one of those rallying cries).
I still don't know entirely what to Make of Vatican 2 from a purely theological perspective. I do believe strongly that Vatican 2 created an opening for beige Catholicism. Once you have a watered down liturgy with Father Friendly playing an acoustic guitar and preaching about The Buddy Christ, a lot of kids who grow up in these kind of parishes end up leaving pretty quickly because it all starts to seem, well, fake and gay.
But it all stems from the same original issue - spending too much time paying attention to highly modern concerns that aren't at the core of the Faith. This is an inversion. "Hmmm, we really need to tackle the Catholic approach to climate change because climate change is really important in the world right now." The Church should not be led around by the concern of The World. The whole point is that it's helping to prepare the faithful for the Kingdom of God without getting bogged down and distracted by worldly distractions, pleasures, concerns.
So, I'd like to see a Pope who makes Playing The Hits a big part of his time in The Big Chair. Focus - and get others to focus - on the 2000 year old bedrock stuff. Maybe get a little tough on the Orthodox about the Filioque or something. Get behind the Latin Mass in a big way. Make Nuns Great Again.
We need a clear and strong - perhaps, "based", as the kids say - Catholic leader to reinvigorate the Church.
100ProofTollBooth
Dumber than a man, but faster than a dog.
11d ago
I can tell you from being adjacent to the porn industry for a while
Respectful request for stories. You must have several good ones.
100ProofTollBooth
Dumber than a man, but faster than a dog.
17d ago
I really appreciate the first part of the post re: sports. I have a number of close friends who don't care about sports at all, and, although I bear them no animosity, I can't help but feel like they've missed this entire part of life that, if they engaged with it, would make every other part of their life better. My very best friends not only played and enjoy sports, they each have an attitude bordering on obsession with one or more professional or college teams. It means something. It means ... everything?
On conspiracy theories, I think people get tripped up in defining them. As @FirmWeird post indicates, sometimes what people call a "conspiracy theory" is really just the truth that one or more parties have attempted to conceal. If we don't get more specific, than a personal conspiracy can be as commonplace as telling your significant other a white lie about their appearance to preserve domestic bliss.
Therefore, my model of what makes something a conspiracy has more to do with the epistemic rubric people apply to any causal series of events. To be more direct about it, a "conspiracy theory" is a method of processing evidence wherein any counter-evidence is treated as, inversely, additional evidence that further proves the initial point.
"The Earth is flat"
"Here's a picture from space. It's a globe."
"OBVIOUSLY THAT'S A FAKED PHOTO THEY PRE-PRODUCED AS A PSYOP, WAKE UP, SHEEPLE"
In dealing with this epistemic rubric, there's simply no evidence, no matter how compelling, you can ever produce to change the other person's opinion. Note how this is actually distinct from confirmation bias in which confirming evidence is amplified 10x, and counter-evidence (sorry for that goofy phrase) is diminished 10x.
All the theories about the Luka trade, therefore, are NOT conspiracy theories until someone says something like "Lakers doc did Luka's physical and says he's fine" and the original conspirators respond with "Well, duh, the Lakers would never tell you the truth if he was injured."
A lot of the more enduring "conspiracy theories" (JFK comes to mind most easily) are fun because you can judge the available evidence pretty evenly and still find a lot of holes. Not believing in the Warren Commission report is nowhere near "lol tin foil hat alert!" I'd call it a kind of popular narrative agnosticism.
More recently, this is exactly how I felt about the lab leak theory. I couldn't give you a full, evidence laden dossier on why I felt unsure about the wet market hypothesis, or why I gave some credibility to the lab leak theory. I just kind of felt that way. What's more, nobody could offer me any sort of counter-evidence totally falsifying the lab leak theory. Instead, it was just an endless, yet vague, appeal to authority. "Jeepers! No serious SCIENTIST believes the lab leak theory. Get over it, man! A pangolin fucked a bat and now we can't hug grandma. That's just how life is sometimes!"
At the same time, you had John Stewart (of all people!), putting the regime on notice in real time. Wild.
In terms of conspiracy theory filter up / trick down, I think the key variable is mostly how an individual views information as a commodity. Meaning, when I encounter a new piece of information on anything, what's my initial reaction to it before I even process it. Is it "well, here's some data, I ought to consider it vis-a-vis my existing model." Is it "Someone obviously put this here for me to find. Let met try to discern this unknown person's motivations." Is it "I will begin with the assumption that, whatever this new piece of data is, it's wrong until proven right (or vice versa).
A smarter person than I might have some sort of snappy label for this (metabias? omni-priors?). The point remains the same; people are going to have attitudes about information even before they have enough information to justify having an attitude.
100ProofTollBooth
Dumber than a man, but faster than a dog.
18d ago
My response is as follows:
Read all of Pslam 17.
Replace God/The Lord, with "Chiefs".
Remember that all Chiefs haters;
They close up their callous hearts,
and their mouths speak with arrogance.
Red Kingdom, Baby.
100ProofTollBooth
Dumber than a man, but faster than a dog.
18d ago
I agree. It might even fail to rise to the low bar of "performance art." This is a publicity stunt and one that a Kanye affiliated lady has done already!.
When women don't have clothes on, people take notice. It isn't just attractive or famous women. All over the world, every single day, men pay out inordinate amounts of cash simply to see women with less or no clothing on. Sexual interaction need not be present. I'm talking about topless bars / strip clubs / what have you. Let's also remember that men continue to do this when endless explicit sexual content is freely instantly available in digital form. In 2025, more people have access to endless free porn than clean drinking water - and men are still literally throwing cash at IRL women on the daily.
So, Kanye, a person who has made his money in the pop culture entertainment industry, knows that "tits = eyeballs" and that this will be the same today, tomorrow, and forever.
There is nothing more and nothing less to the story.
100ProofTollBooth
Dumber than a man, but faster than a dog.
24d ago
We should close the borders AND restructure large parts of the economy.
Specifically, labor laws; see this previous post from yours truly.
American consumers are simply not going to want to pay US citizen level wages to fruit pickers and landscapers
This is a self-inflicted wound that we could be corrected overnight. Again, read my earlier post. Our employment laws cause so much friction in hiring (and firing) that the entire reason we have this indentured servant class of illegal workers is because their very lack of citizenship is a competitive advantage in the marketplace. If you want to see what it looks like when a government screws over its own citizens, look no further than American employment law.
Predictions about rapid price inflation of basic groceries due to border enforcement paper over the fact that the American working class is already unable to afford their own lives because they can't get jobs quickly enough. Some simple math with reasonable assumptions;
- Job search length; 1 - 3 months
- Offer to first day; 2 - 4 weeks
- First day to first paycheck; 2 weeks.
All in, we're talking anywhere from 2.5 - 4.5 months between paychecks for a typical lost-job-need-new-job scenario. You can see how untenable this would be for a single person (let alone a family) living paycheck to paycheck. Lost my job at Waffle House? Oh, no problem, I've got four months of cash savings, right?
Contrast this to off the books cash labor which can and routinely does find work (and payment!) within a single week.
American agriculture is the product of hundreds of years of compounding laws and regulations. I've done a little research into the economics of "family farms" and have discovered that your median small farmer is technically a multi-millionaire, but with both assets and debts backed by oceans of Federal dollars. They pay cash for F-350s and also supplement their groceries with SNAP benefits. It's wild, but, with enough over-regulation, anything is possible!
And that's what we're really talking about. Horrible shit-ass legislation in one area (employment law) has created a wholly separate awful situation in another area (immigration). So it isn't about X or Y, but how X and Y interact.
100ProofTollBooth
Dumber than a man, but faster than a dog.
25d ago
is on the brink of descending into tranny.
Epic freudian typo.
100ProofTollBooth
Dumber than a man, but faster than a dog.
1mo ago
and consent is necessary but insufficient to guarantee an ethical sexual encounter.
The sufficient level of consent might be a highly expensive (in terms of social capital both now and in the future) public ceremony of consent that also indirectly involves your closest family members.
That's right; marriage.
While I personally think it's goofy, I can at least understand the idea that a breathy "yes" in the middle of buttons unbuttoning and belts unbelting during a steamy makeout session is, perhaps, rushed and ill-considered. Not so in a multi-hour (or day) ceremony with religious overtones and even clergy present all while grandma and grandpa look on with (dis?)approval.
I don't think a marriage certificate ought to be required for sex, and I don't think we should be imprisoning people for the crimes of fornication or adultery. But I'd love to see a culture where casual sex is once again considered a weirdo fringe thing much like married couple swinging still is.
If I'm a young person dating right now, there is a constant suspicion that the other person is not entirely exclusive and that, due to that fact, I may be less than number 1 on their list. So dating turns into this exercise in competitive mistrust and a prisoners dilemma of commitment-investment, rather than a steadily progressing exercise in value and life ambition matching and bonding.
100ProofTollBooth
Dumber than a man, but faster than a dog.
1mo ago
The idea of an agency bell curve is intriguing. It seems to make a lot of intuitive sense when one acknowledges that IQ is a bell curve and that people also have broadly identifiable personality traits - neuroticism, openness etc.
I do not want to see the State, however, making decisions in relation to the agency bell curve. IMHO, the State dictates the limits to the playing field - laws are, mostly, what you can't do at the outer extremes. No killing, no theft of property, you have to conform to contracts you've entered into. Other than that, let culture and subculture take precedence.
If you want to adhere to cultural norms that place no penalty on pre-marital promiscuity, this is fine. If you feel you ought to have your father's consent before you are married, that's also fine. Cultures and subcultures that do a better job of fostering pro-social systems and reinforcement loops should, naturally, win out over time.
I think one of the meta-narratives on the Motte is that when the State thumbs the scale on one side or the other of the culture war, that's always bad.
100ProofTollBooth
Dumber than a man, but faster than a dog.
1mo ago
Yeah, I don't think Elon ranks up there with William Wallace and Maximus Decimus Meridius in terms of being able to stir the hearts and souls of men. Plenty of folks have decided to give their whole mind and heart over to him, though.
100ProofTollBooth
Dumber than a man, but faster than a dog.
1mo ago
Tangent:
Let's say we get the MacGuffin that extends everyone to 130+ with ease. Does the Pope-At-The-Time allow for suicide after 120?
I like these longer book reviews that turn into a kind of discussion about the meta-themes and the authors themselves. Thank you.
Transgressive and satirical fiction is always a double mind fuck - even moreso if its good. I read American Psycho and was blown away by how perceptive Ellis was as an author. Then, I looked up his bio and had an "oh shit, is this dude ok?" moment.
According to my quick search on Tulathimutte, he has a double Stanford degree in something called symbolic systems. He appears to have been a tech bro who became disillusioned with tech bro'ing and so started writing. That you tell us a lot of his writing is about misanthropic tech bro stuff (and, you know, porn) makes so much sense as to be a second-hand "oh shit, is this dude ok?" moment for me.
EDIT: Further research has revealed that a lot of the most loathsome Haute Literarti magazines really like this guy Tulathimutte. My concern for him has waned considerably.
100ProofTollBooth
Dumber than a man, but faster than a dog.
1mo ago
Carl Panzram and dealers choice twice.
"hurry up and bring on your electric chair I want to leave here and take a nose-dive into the next world just to see if that one is as lousy as is this ball of mud and meanness. I am sorry for only two things. These two things are I am sorry that I have mistreated some few animals in my life-time and I am sorry that I am unable to murder the whole damned human race. "
100ProofTollBooth
Dumber than a man, but faster than a dog.
1mo ago
Look, I'm no DEI fan at all. My previous comment literally said I was going through the exercise of steelman-ing.
When you say things like "Your job under DEI is to hire and promote incompetent people who hate you" you're demonstrating that you don't want to think through the other side's position, you just want to yell at it - which is exactly one of the core criticisms of DEI.
This is what's at the heart of the Motte - this community demands more than "boo outgroup." This is why there's literally the boo outgroup reporting button.
I tried to come up with a rational market explanation for DEI. It could very well be wrong. Your counter, however, was "no, actually DEI is just stupid and evil."
100ProofTollBooth
Dumber than a man, but faster than a dog.
1mo ago
There's an economics paper to be written about this.
Start up valuations are mostly a game until they're not. Signaling is a big part of it. If I'm raising at any stage (pre-seed, seed, series A, B, C etc.) I have to look around at the other companies who are raising at the same time, I have to figure out what VC firms are expecting over the next several years, I have to look at the IPO markets. That is how I create my own valuation, not my internal metrics (cashflow, margin, customer churn etc. etc.) The game of it is building a narrative that takes your internal metrics and creates a direct path to the du jour valuations.
If I don't do that and ask for less money, I am inadvertently signalling that I am not as high growth as the other companies I'm competing with. If I do that, no one will invest in me. Sure, you're going to say "but a real value investor---" No, that's not how big time VC works. Now, there are under the radar investors (I hesitate to call them VCs because they're too smart for that label) who purposefully try to find companies at good prices and don't care about the competitive pricing environment. But, the VC world being highly relationship and network driven, it's not like any company can flee to these "smart" investors. If you don't know them already, you don't knew they even exist.
So, most companies, especially those with first time founders, are playing the Big VC game. Investors will quite literally tell you "You have to take 5 million, even though you only asked for 3 million. If you don't, we're walking away. Also, make sure you spend all of that - we can't have a bunch of extra cash."
Why tho?
Because the VCs themselves have to make their fund performance metrics work; their IRR, their Multiples. A funny thing developed over the past two decades, however. This article is legendary for explaining it; deploying capital really fast creates its own outperformance even up to billions of dollars. So, if I am a VC with no particular investing talent but a lot of money (which is most of them) I want to find as many companies as I can (the later the stage the better, up to about Series C) and just cram huge amounts of money into their face. Because it works.
Even if it doesn't make any sense.
100ProofTollBooth
Dumber than a man, but faster than a dog.
1mo ago
Wow, this was a lightbulb post for me.
I've been critical of Elon in the past because something about the guy rubs me the wrong way. I've never doubted his intelligence or capability, but my spidey sense always goes off whenever I see him in long interviews and, definitely, when scrolling through his twitter posts. I've rooted against him, I've just been very suspicious.
And this is why - going all in on Elon may indeed be heroic / brave what have you, but it's going to lead to ruin. Sure, that could be "glorious" ruin or whatever but, still - you gon' die!
So, yes, let's be Thielists in this case - not on Elon's side all-in per se, but also definitely not betting against him.
So, I'm not talking about earmark at all. Try to be less stupid.
Here's a CRS report on NIH funding for instance
To the basically literate eye, one would find a table with the following budget authorities:
Institutes/Centers
Cancer Institute (NCI) Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute (NHLBI) Dental/Craniofacial Research (NIDCR) Diabetes/Digestive/Kidney (NIDDK) Neurological Disorders/Stroke (NINDS) Allergy/Infectious Diseases (NIAID) General Medical Sciences (NIGMS) Child Health/Human Development (NICHD) National Eye Institute (NEI) Environmental Health Sciences (NIEHS)
Those aren't the only ones. There are more, but it's easy enough to understand the breakdown.
Moving money from NCI to NIGMS, for instance, would require congressional approval. How money within NIGMS is spent is more discretionary, sure. But your contention is either a deliberate misunderstanding of my original outline of the problem, or a weird semantic gotcha. Either way, it betrays a profound level of ignorance (intentional or otherwise) of how Congressional appropriations work. But I repeat myself. Your use of the term "earmark" in a wildly inappropriate manner betrays you.
Fraud is generally not covered by Congressional appropriations.
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