Corvos
6hr ago
I think this is downstream of American Revolution/Independence hagiography and then Civil Rights.
For historical reasons, the US is very sensitive to the optics of putting down riots. It’s supposed to be done by the nasty people that America was made to get away from. So if it’s not serious enough to start shooting, nothing should be done.
Corvos
8hr ago
My point is that you are excluding the vast majority of what people consider 'tyranny' from your list and then saying there isn't very much tyranny in the world. If we include the Gestapo, the KGB, COVID lockdowns, anti-Catholic burnings during the Reformation, the Terror in revolutionary France, Jim Crow etc. then it's still broadly true that people underweight the harms of anarchy compared to 'you can get along as long as you don't do anything to upset the government', but the picture is more complex than 'really there are only two tyrannies in the world and they're both tiny'.
While I sympathise with your broader point, I don’t think that you’re making the argument well. People are afraid of living with the equivalent of the Gestapo or the KGB, so saying that they weren’t real tyranny is just going to get ‘well, I don’t want not-real-tyranny either thank you’.
And indeed one of the problems with tyranny is that it can coexist perfectly happily with anarchy.
Corvos
1d ago
"Ah, but I have White Privilege and since society is Systemically Racist and set up to support White Privilege, nothing bad can happen to me, white person, so I can use my superpower for good!"
Noblesse oblige.
Corvos
1d ago
Everyone is aware of that, that's the point. When you are holding a deadly weapon and the other guy isn't, then "We respect your sovereignty and would never do that" isn't a threat, "I'll use this if I have to" is absolutely 100% a threat.
All true, but I'm a simple man. I liked the original Dead Space and I wanted to see what they could do with modern lighting systems. And to be fair they made non-graphical improvements as well: Kendra's character is much improved, and the weapons feel better too. I preferred the old zero-grav sections though.
I loved that bit! Very much 'we're saved!' and then the slow realisation that you've really, really fucked up. Plus it makes total sense to me that
Dead Space Remake. I'm a wuss so I play on easy - the scares are enough excitement for me already, I don't need to be constantly fretting about ammo or surviving by the skin of my teeth at the same time.
In general I've been re-discovering easy mode lately. I love Dark Souls and similar soulslikes, and got very into the 'if it weren't so hard to get to the next area, it wouldn't have nearly the same emotional weight' way of thinking about games. It's a good philosophy but especially for games that aren't as tight as Miyazaki-san's stuff, it can really suck the fun out of what's supposed to be an enjoyable experience.
For example I was regretting buying Pacific Drive until I bumped the difficulty way down. Once I was getting new upgrades and story almost every trip, I got much more immersed in the story and started really enjoying it. Of course it was over soon but 13h of fun is way better than 40h of pain.
showing far too much leg in 34F temperatures
You get this in the UK for both men and women: Geordie of the Antarctic. (Geordie means someone from Newcastle up north.)
I would hope that if a couple is committing to a monogamous relationship i.e. to only ever taking sexual pleasure from each other from now on, then both sides would work hard to make sure that the other is feeling satisfied, which maybe sometimes means at least trying things. Partly out of obligation, partly because it would make someone who they hopefully care about happy. For the woman maybe sometimes it means blowjobs, for the man maybe it means roleplaying Mr. Darcy or Poldark or something else they find hideously embarrassing. And one would hope that equally each side would respect when their partner really doesn't want to do something. But a pre-emptive 'we're never doing that and don't you ask me again' seems a poor way to treat a partner.
Or to put it another way, sure, porn gives people more ideas of how to give their partner pleasure, some of which will turn out to be good in real life and some won't. This sounds like broadly a good thing to me if approached with care and affection, and I don't see what this has to do with promiscuity outside the relationship.
I'm trying to tease out the difference between a powerful, confident country deliberately deciding not to exert control over its provinces in a formal manner vs. failing to keep them in line, so no it doesn't count.
The former I think is almost unique to Anglo countries (America historically, Canada historically?, maybe devolution in the UK) and rare within those. I'm looking for examples proving that theory wrong. If the theory is right then you cannot get to more intensive federalism by integrating other countries into the USA as per @FiveHourMarathon's proposal, unless it weakens America so much that federal government collapses.
EDIT: the main counterexample is probably Switzerland. GPT suggests also modern Germany (which doesn't sound right to me, plus their constitution was heavily influenced by America rather than arising from native proclivities) and Austria.
Corvos
3d ago
Ha! I wrote Avril, then reread @MadMonzer's comment and 'corrected' mine :P
Corvos
4d ago
I hope to start reading actual native level news articles, mining every word I need to to be able to comprehend the article.
Me again but how would you feel about doubling up on this? Maybe having a mini discussion group or swapping points on a Google Doc or something? I've been meaning to read the newspaper more (I tried reading Yomiuri a couple of times) and it would be great to have a buddy.
Corvos
4d ago
Re: scales, make sure you use something does a rolling average e.g. Happy Scales app. The measurements jump around day by day due to changes in water + feces etc. and the only time I ever lost significant weight it was by being laser-focused on the downward progress of the average even when there were big day-by-day spikes.
Corvos
4d ago
What odds Greenland as a satrapy of the USA?
I admit to being very amused by British newspapers saying sternly (paraphrased), "We stand against imperialism. The future of Greenland is a matter for Denmark to decide."
Corvos
4d ago
Nasal saline rinse. Flush out any secondary infection hiding in your tubes.
(Not sure you can do much about the chest cough though).
I watched a Sabrina Carpenter video (Espress) and then an Avril Lavigne video (Complicated), to see the contrast. The thing that really stood out to me was that in the Sabrina Carpenter videos men are either servants (holding her up, massaging her, doing her feet), eye candy, or threats (handcuffing her, putting her in a police car while she rolls her eyes) while the April Lavigne video is full of her having fun with her male friends.
I'm reminded of a comment made here a while back that men like female characters who have a close relationship with at least one man who is not their love interest. A father, a friend, a brother, whatever. It's a strong signal that they like at least some men for their own sake, and that they wouldn't be a complete bitch to you if you ever met them just because they don't find you hot.
I'm not sure how far to extrapolate or reverse this. Women often go for sausage-fest cast shows like Sherlock, or the Avengers, where there are no women and/or the main character is actively hostile to any female characters. Likewise men go for cute girls doing cute things and magical girl genres which have no men at all.
I see your line of thought, but federalism has only decreased in the last century of high immigration, moving towards machine politics at first (gibs for specific ethnic groups, major jobs assigned by ethnicity, corruption) and then towards straightforward centralising absolutism. I think that you would be gambling big to assume the pattern wouldn't repeat itself.
How many federal countries are there / have there been in history when the federal element had the ability to control the states but refused to do so? (So excluding e.g. the Holy Roman Empire where control just wasn't practical).
Sir Humphrey Appleby: A tiny mistake. The sort that anyone can make.
Hacker: A tiny mistake?! [...] Give me an example of a big mistake.
Sir Humphrey Appleby: Letting people find out about it.
Corvos
5d ago
Basically what @Bartender_Venator said. Integrating foreign polities into your empire means more than a few extra senators hanging around the place.
Corvos
5d ago
Point taken, though these are fake numbers in any case and 'properly classified' is not something you can judge with any refinement. More broadly, if you could put in place a program that 'properly' classified 3m more people but required everybody to be whipped every morning, one might conclude it probably wasn't worth it. There are tradeoffs here.
Corvos
5d ago
Yes, but that only works in refined circles. It still makes people snigger in public so they changed it in the UK.
Corvos
5d ago
But you realise that this also means adding their voters and dealing with their opinions/needs, right? At least, unless America goes full-hog imperial.
Corvos
5d ago
You're not wrong, but that's natural IMO.
Your job is perhaps the thing that determines most about your life. What job you have is very very important to you in the short, medium and long terms. The outputs of other people's jobs are only important in an indirect and long term manner.
I also observe quite a lot of 1 but with a racial tint: the only possible reason not to want to have open borders is a dislike of foreigners, and therefore anything short of open borders is racist. And any rational non-racist argument against non-maximally-open-borders is just a covers for the racist argument (not always wrong!).
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