DelendaEst
No bio...
User ID: 1199
DelendaEst
4mo ago
Yeah. "You can think those guys are nuts and everything they think is bs, but just don't say that to them and don't be a dick about it," is what the ask used to be, and I think most people are happy enough to accept that. Now it is, "you must actively affirm our bs and act in all ways as though it were true and having your own opinion will be met with consequences" which is fighting words.
DelendaEst
5mo ago
I think its a little bit the system. I think first past the post combined with primaries distorts things towards polorization in a way that RCV and multi member districts would somewhat alleviate. Like most things where there is a large and persistent problem there is a good chance that perverse incentives are the issue and a difference system with different incentives could help.
DelendaEst
5mo ago
A lot of that is path dependant though. 20 years ago you could control costs by keeping with cheap low level accommodations and facilities and declining to build luxury. But now, the luxury is built. What are you gonna do, demolish it to build shitty dorms? You can stop building more luxury and try to bend the curve back down, but you are starting from the new high level, getting back to old low level may be impossible at this point.
DelendaEst
6mo ago
But I don't think PTB blackbag ops are the real threat, I think it is culture warriors who have been convinced that the other side winning is Armageddon and they have to Do Something! Killing Trump would be a big win for those people, but he has massive SS protection at all times, and if the outcome is just Trumps VP takes office its not as big a difference maker as it could be. But the Supremes are much softer targets and would have a big effect if you could kill a coupe and Biden replaces them with lefties. Normally you'd think that Dems would actually balk at taking advantage of such a situation as that would be seen as endorsing assassins, but Dems also think several seats were stolen in one way or another, and Thomas while not a stolen seat is uniquely vile.
DelendaEst
6mo ago
I don't think Trump will get assassinated. If I were ranking potential assassination risks my top would be that if Biden is elected and has a Senate majority (even 50/50 with VP as tie breaker) the value of killing a right leaning SCJ would be very high in certain eyes.
DelendaEst
7mo ago
The charitable answer (extremely charitable IMHO, but I'm sure accurate for at least a few of them) is that they do have some non-zero chance of influencing US policy, specifically the amount of aid we give to Israel, the conditions we put upon it, and the tenor of our relations with Israel. If they can change the tenor of relations even slightly from "We got your back" to "Reign it in a bit, our support isn't unconditional" they could see that as a win.
DelendaEst
7mo ago
I would also add that Scalia and RGB actually did seem like high Value Over Replacement Justices, much more influential than the other justices of their team on the court, whereas Sotomayor does not seem to be. So I'd say that I think RGB might have even been correct to hold on because of her intrinsic value, but Sotomayor would be more valuable to her team by gaming the retirement to ensure her seat is a permeant Dem possession no matter how elections go.
I'd also say THAT is probably the main argument against overly strategic retirements. If that Chesterton's Fence gets knocked down then the composition of the court gets locked in to whatever it is now unless one party can get a seriously long string of victories to wait the justices out or the justices suffer untimely sudden deaths (RGB was a cancer survivor and might have seen it coming and planned ahead, Scalia's death seemed out of left field). And if the only way the composition changes is untimely justice death that sets up a mighty strong incentive for assassinations.
DelendaEst
7mo ago
But part of the truth of HBD is that there is variation within the races even as there are clear patterns of difference between them. It says that a highly intelligent person is much more likely to be jewish than black, not that there are zero intelligent black people. Convincing people of the truth of HBD means getting them to accept that a 99th percentile black person might only equal a 90th percentile jew means there will be way more jews than blacks at high achieving levels, but also that it means the 99th percentile black is EQUAL to the 90th percentile jew.
Honestly, the only reason a black executive or Harvard grad is assumed lesser than any other person with the same qualifications is because everyone knows affirmative action and other DEI interventions exist. If we didn't have them then we would see vastly fewer black Harvard grads, but the ones we did see would be judged more as Harvard grads than as generic black people because the former trait would not be mediated by the later.
DelendaEst
7mo ago
My first guess is that a lot of this is urban/rural just because of the fact of public transit. When I visit my sister in DC I walk and take the subway, while when I am at home I drive everywhere, just because of the material realities of where I am. So urban populations will, all things being equal, probably have a more active default lifestyle just because of this and thus I would expect they have lower levels of obesity even if both have the same diet and inclination to exercise.
DelendaEst
8mo ago
I could not agree more.
I can think of very few world views I fight more hostile than one which boils down to "Other people have every right to do self destructive hedonism, but no responsibility to reap the obvious consequences. And you have no right to try to stop them, and total responsibility to deal with the consequences for them." It is the ethos of the spoiled child writ large.
DelendaEst
8mo ago
Underlying material conditions are changing way faster than evolution can keep up with though. Even if current settings are fine for a preindustrialized civilization, and evolution in theory would adjust for this in time, it hasn't had time to do that yet.
DelendaEst
8mo ago
Remember, in real time conversations people are going to put on the spot. Either agree that this is bad, or double down. And given that giving even an inch on something that has been sold to them as a moral imperative which only hateful book burning nazis could possibly endorse, giving that inch is a big ask, and very few people will be willing to do that on the spot. That doesn't mean that you didn't put a crack in the wall and move them a little closer to being willing to admit that maybe the very worst stuff is not appropriate in schools, even if you hateful book burners are wrong about 90% of it.
DelendaEst
1yr ago
I think the term has value, but I also think most people who would unironically use it are in fact NPCs.
The useful Motte version of the term is someone who thinks not at all about issues and just regurgitates whatever talking points they have gotten from their side, such that they seem to be saying the same canned dialogue as everyone else in town, ala an NPC from a video game. This is a real phenomenon, and it is annoying to see. Even when people are not literally saying the same thing it is a ton of people saying basically the same thing. And it is particularly vexing that the things that tend to become NPC dialogue are the pithiest and least interesting things, and never the interesting content I wouldn't mind becoming widely talked about. Most commonly this is an insult which can be thoughtlessly deployed to explain why you don't need to actually engage with anything someone on the other side has said.
However, people who use the term have basically just received an insulting pithy meme about the left which they deploy as a thoughtless way to dismiss left wingers who disagree with them. Again, I think the Motte of this term is useful, and once it is explained you will see it in the wild, and it has explanatory power, and thinking about how to address the issue would be valuable. But I don't think I have ever seen it used except in the most blatant Baily fashion imaginable.
DelendaEst
1yr ago
Pedro's character was white in the original source material though.
DelendaEst
1yr ago
I hadn't heard anything about that, how are they reacting?
DelendaEst
1yr ago
For what its worth it is still controversial with me. I really liked ultimate spiderman, and Bendis (the writer) specifically said that he had the idea to add a black spiderman and decided that just adding him in with Pete still around wouldn't really work and so he started looking for a way to kill Parker off, which really was in my view incredibly brazen and the fact that he felt comfortable saying it and everyone else seemed to applaud him for it blew my mind.
However I am also not surprised that it worked out as well as it did, as there were many factors working in its favor.
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This was in Ultimate Spiderman, not the main universe book. That didn't help me, I liked USM more, but the Ultimate universe was always an alternate universe where lots of bold/edgy takes on characters could be played with in a frankly low stakes way. That made killing White Spiderman explicitly so he could be replaced with Black/Hispanic Spiderman somewhat less of a provocation.
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In the interview where he said he killed Peter explicitly so he could replace him Bendis said he'd had that idea years ago and had been looking for a good time to kill Peter, which means he waiting until a time where the death would be more set up and more epic, and critically less jarring and less obviously forced.
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Timing. This was not part of a clear trend to replace white or male characters with more progressive versions so it was able to be judged more on its own merits. Unlike a few years ago when Hulk, Captain America, Thor, and a few other characters were all replaced with ethnic/female options at the same time. Once is happenstance, twice is coincidence, three times is enemy action. If something occurs in isolation it gets more benefit of the doubt.
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Quality, obviously the most important part. If quality is maintained people with forgive most sins. I dropped the book when they did this switch (I'd considered keeping on with it before the "yes this was done for racial replacement reasons" interview) so I cannot say first hand that the book was good, but Bendis is very talented (though he was on the downslope at the time he was still well above average) and this was one of his babies, and general opinion was pretty high on the change (hard to be sure how real that kind of thing is since anyone saying it sucks gets called racist and their opinion buried and every positive opinion signal boosted, but having been through this kind of thing a bunch of times this one certainly seemed very genuine). The thing with fan favorites in the current comic book market which has veered SUPER woke over the past decade is that fans who don't like it drop out (as I did with this move) which leaves the remainder people who by definition do like it, but this was an early enough move that I think for the most part it was in fact very well received.
DelendaEst
1yr ago
The thing is that BT has existed for 35 years and used to be a thing everyone could participate in. One of the authors of some of the old books got cancelled for being too right wing a few years ago, so its not like conservatives didn't try to make our own things (the biggest BT author from back in the day is pretty woke though, this was a bi-partisan institution IMO). But now that the previous thing that everyone had and which conservatives did contribute to is taken over now we need to make our own thing.
How come that didn't apply to the left? How come the left gets to take all the previously neutral stuff instead of being told to fuck off from that and make a left wing BT? Cause this is ALWAYS how it goes. Frankly, when one side takes a previously jointly held territory and then replies to complaints with "just make your own thing without any of the history and existing buy in" that is such an obviously hostile comment that I cannot believe you actually think its fair. Its bullshit. And based on everything we have seen the result will inevitably be that if the new rightwing thing is at all good the left will either do their best to colonize that ALSO or they will use their control over other previously neutral ground to cut the legs out from under it.
DelendaEst
1yr ago
The new sub removed a photo of some mechs painted up in police colors as police are hostile to pride and so posting that in pride month right after a pride related kerfuffle was considered unacceptable. There is nothing but excess in the way the pride people work and if it weren't for double standards they wouldn't have any standards at all.
The problem is that both are correct. A good majority of the people who are homeless during their lives are homeless for a reasonably short period of time before they get their shit together. Just giving those people more resources would plausibly help them reduce their time as homeless, reduce how much they suffer during that time by a lot, and be a reasonable use of resources.
However a majority of the homeless at any given time are the problem sort who won't accept the help you give them, will destroy any housing you provide them, and are responsible for basically all of the negative externalities.
As with most things, the ability to identify the groups is hard, and a mechanism to provide services to the first group and harsh discipline to the second is harder and probably illegal. So instead both sides pretend the whole homeless population is one that deserves their preferred solution and I think about All Debates Are Bravery Debates.
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