JTarrou
20hr ago
The larger trend is that representative bodies tend to divest themselves of power and turn to gridlock over time. This is part of the long term political cycle, seen over and over again throughout history. "Democracy" is what Oligarchy is called when it is in political power. "Tyranny" is when the populists, angry at gridlock and elite failure, get the best strongman they can to try to improve things. "Monarchy" is when one of the Oligarchs wins and breaks the "democratic" stasis.
JTarrou
21hr ago
Depends on what exactly you mean by "southern", but to a degree. Texas is wildly overrepresented, rural appalachia etc., though that includes West Virginia, Tennessee, parts of Pennsylvania etc. Virginia, Georgia, the Carolinas, Florida etc? Not so much. Don't know if I ever met a Louisiana boy in the infantry. OTOH, Virginia is the backbone of the Navy.
JTarrou
21hr ago
All of the confusion and anger and petulance about all this is just the natural state of human psychology. In the past, hormones, necessity and the needs of others usually overrode individual preferences re: children.
Consciousness experiences life in a random universe as pain. Here I quote the Princess Bride, "life is pain and anyone who tells you different is selling something". The anti-natalists only echo the poet "That which my father gave to me, but which I gave to no man.".
People, by and large, fear death much less than pain. Eternal pain is the nightmare, hell. And life, with all its pleasures and joys, is still on net painful for practically everyone. In fact, the pain is entirely incidental to the processes of life and disconnected from any real feedback mechanisms. Hence Camus' charge that the first question of philosophy is whether to continue living.
Some percentage of people don't think it's worth it, and should check out. A life dedicated to hedonism, social climbing or political activism is not a happy one. You can't outrun pain, it's inside your head. People externalize, wirehead, rage at the nature of things. Refuse to procreate. I don't think it's cell phones, it's just the natural progression of people without struggle or direction.
Or, you can accept a life you did not choose, take your place in the family tree, among your people and grow a few new branches. Normiemaxxing, as the kids might say. This is evolution. All of this civilization, the video and corruption and economy and all the religions, all of it is just humanity driving its own evolution. We progress by differential fertility.
One thing I should note is that most religious faiths encourage some form of non-reproductive service as a means of getting acolytes primarily loyal to the church and unable to pass any wealth/status down to offspring. Much of the form we se anti-natalism taking in our modern day is just the new eunuch class from a relatively recent heresy of a very old religion. "LBGTBBQUIAST(&*%^#)&^" is just monks in the new monasteries which are universities which are the old monasteries.
Just before Covid, a gun store was robbed in my town. I worked in a different gun store, so we got some of the inside scoop. Proprietor of the robbed store used to work on my computer whenever I fucked it up too badly. The shop was the shittiest one in the county, lodged in a former meat market. The robbers just pulled part of the roof off the building to get into the secure room.
Turned out to be the local high school football team. They stole around fifty guns, fifteen of which have been recovered some seven years later. The recovered guns have been used in at least three homicides so far. One was just recovered at a traffic stop this year, one killed a high school senior just after prom not two weeks ago. Perp there hasn't been identified or caught.
The kids who robbed the place were caught within days. It remains unclear exactly how many people were involved, at least two unnamed juveniles were processed, but shield laws prevent the public knowing anything. Three of the older kids were charged for the robbery, one got no time, other two got three and ten months respectively, despite not cooperating with police in the recovery of the firearms or identification of other perpetrators. Everyone involved was put into a youth criminal diversion program that released them without a criminal record.
The ringleader and one who got the most time, one Travontis (Drink!) Miller, was given the ten month sentence, but due to the protective nature of the diversion program, it will never be public knowledge that he plead guilty to multiple firearm felonies or how long he actually served of that jail term. What we do know is that he was out prior to December of 2021, because that's when he was arrested for a series of other crimes we're not entirely sure what happened.
He was charged with assault and battery (strangulation), robbery and domestic violence, but once again was given protected youth status despite being in his twenties by this point (the program runs until age 24). He also picked up charges of resisting arrest and being in possession of one of the stolen firearms from the original gun store case. These charges too were concealed under the diversion program.
So when people tell me that what we really need to cut down on gun violence in this country is to ensure that every state has a different magazine limit, or force used gun sales into stores, or ban AR-15s, or not allow gun companies to advertise, it makes me irrationally angry. This dude, when he hits 25, will have no criminal record and will be able to pass a background check to buy a firearm legally. At least until his next felony, which I don't expect to take long.
Below are two quote sets for those who didn't read the articles, first the prosecution in the original case:
At the June sentencing, Stevenson objected to Borrello’s indication that he would grant the defendants HYTA status.
“In this case, the defendants stole 50 guns from Showtime Guns,” Stevenson said. “Fifty guns. Only 14 of those firearms have been recovered as of April 8 of this year. And no surprise, Judge, all of them have been found in the hands of convicted felons. In fact, one of those firearms was used in a homicide in December in which an 87-year-old grandmother was shot in the face and killed.”
The judge wasn't interested, and had The Science on his side.
"It’s very clear science, evidence-based conclusions that the brain isn’t fully developed in young men until roughly around the age of the mid 20s,” Borrello said. “These gentlemen allegedly committed these crimes when they were teenagers, not even adults. If I learned one thing in handling juvenile lifers, it’s that we have to look at these things a little bit differently than we look at adults making the same poor decisions that these gentlemen may have made.”
But sure, the problem with gun violence in the US is that Billy Bob put a giggle trigger on his PSA.
Edit: added/fixed links
JTarrou
2d ago
Standards are as standards function. If whatever outlet you dislike routinely reports details of incidents that your media silo doesn't, it may behoove you to pay attention, or find something else to fill that information gap. You can usually do this via X, some of these racists are remarkably precise.
JTarrou
5d ago
1: We're talking about juries here, not retail
2: No, your outfit isn't "fun".
3: Men are afraid to do what? Wear pink? My knee supports for BJJ are pink, cancer thing for one of our people. Choking a sweaty dude in spandex, now that's fun.
JTarrou
6d ago
Yeah, there's no way of getting reliable information anymore, so it's all going to be seen in retrospect.
JTarrou
6d ago
And you figure you can hang your hat on his word? You have more faith in the man than I do.
JTarrou
7d ago
Maybe, or maybe because the negotiations have an end in sight and the battlefield doesn't. Hard to say, we know nothing of the diplomacy and due to misinformation, less than nothing about the military state of things.
JTarrou
7d ago
How badly has it gone? The US has decimated their leadership, owns their skies, is blockading their sea access, taken single-digit casualties and the best they can do is raise insurance rates on shipping and the price of oil a dollar a gallon. I don't know your background in military history, but that is not traditionally the sort of outcome seen as a loss.
At the same time, there has been a major realignment of the Sunni nations against Iran and toward rapprochement with Israel and the US. This has been partially long in the works, partially due to Trump's specific policies, and partly due to Iran bombing everyone in the middle east in their hissy fit over not being able to do shit against the US air force. Even if the Iran campaign isn't decisive, this realignment might be the biggest setback Iran has experienced in their modern foreign policy. The Shia crescent is broken. And somehow, people keep telling me how badly Trump is doing. Enlighten me!
JTarrou
7d ago
After two weeks of getting passed over, you may be right. Can you believe these scrubs don't want the venerable JTarrou to judge their cases? I bet they're intimidated by my intellect!
JTarrou
7d ago
For me, within the first half hour maybe. The conversation felt like the sort of thing I wouldn't mind doing for a long time. Knew pretty quickly I wanted to try for a relationship, see how it went. Second date I told her I wanted a relationship, within a couple months I told her I wanted the relationship to be indefinite. That's when she let me know about her infertility. Great for me, but could have easily been unacceptable.
Broadly, I'd say my gut was pretty correct pretty quickly. Certainly the first night I met her, before we ever went on a date. Wasn't so much "amg soulmates" as "I can work with this".
JTarrou
7d ago
JTarrou
7d ago
Once again, your entire theory is based on a lot of wild assumptions using as evidence things you can't possibly know (i.e. how long the Iran war was "planned", which is not in any way how military operations planning works.) You assume that Trump is incompetent because you think the timeline was different to what has happened, which you know because of your seat on the National Security Council, presumably? Assuming Trump wasn't lying that time? Assuming whatever you based this on was reported accurately and without bias, as any article about Trump always is?
I mean, it's silly but hard to get worked up over. Women are always trying to bully men into emasculating themselves, if you've reached adulthood without the ability to resist that.......I got nothin for you. This is kindergarten stuff.
If anyone is confused or autistic, try a warm smile and the word "no". It's the most beautiful word in the language. Let it roll off your tongue. Let it flow through you. "No". Do not explain. Do not apologize. Do not elaborate. Never adorn your "no" with anything further. Say it cheerfully, as if someone offered you a drink you don't like. "No". You aren't in school anymore. You are an adult, a free person. Tell them no. Choose, and communicate.
Don't whine that you didn't have the intestinal fortitude to resist the social pressure of a middle-aged woman. And certainly don't whine that culture and the government didn't tell you it was ok to resist the social pressure of a middle-aged woman. You don't need them, you've got me. Tell them no. It really is just that easy!
edit: By hilarious happenstance, I'm on jury duty this week, haven't been picked yet. We'll see how it goes, but I guaranfuckentee I won't be in a costume by the end.
JTarrou
7d ago
I left plenty of space in that napkin math to account. I stand by my wild-ass-guess.
If this is so detrimental to Europe and obviously incompetent, why is Kier Starmer easing the same sanctions?
The defunct Tories pounce:
The Conservative leader, Kemi Badenoch, posted on X: “After 18 months of ‘standing up to Putin’ the Labour govt quietly issued a licence allowing imports of Russian oil refined in third countries.
“Yesterday Labour MPs voted against UK oil and gas licences. We are now importing from Russia instead of drilling in the North Sea. Insane.”
JTarrou
7d ago
My experience is that most girls have a very horny section of the dating cycle, that often exceeds the male at that particular time. This in no way means women are hornier than men on average and over time.
Most people call it the "honeymoon period" or whatever. For me, it generally started about a month into the relationship and lasted six to nine months. If you stay together, this usually dies down pretty quickly and pretty drastically. Or you can break up and start over, trying again and again to experience that new-relationship feeling.
If you've had multiple 2+ year relationships in which the women were still hornier than you at the end, I'd guess you have a lower-than-average male sex drive, or you have the special Sex Panther pheromones.
JTarrou
7d ago
just being not fat or actively ugly gets you to a 4 in a lot of markets as a woman.
Roughly two thirds of women 18-35 are overweight. Just being not fat gets you to at least a five, probably a six. A non-fat, non-ugly girl in that age range is in the top 25% of available women.
JTarrou
8d ago
I'll grant you every single one of those, triple the results, double that just for fun and 40 year olds are still not as horny as teenagers. Anyone telling you that is lying and you need to be asking yourself why. You also need to be asking yourself why you would want to believe something so obviously and provably false? What sort of mental hill is that getting you over? What benefit could it possibly be to anyone to delude themselves about such basic natural phenomena?
JTarrou
8d ago
https://finance.yahoo.com/news/doj-eliminates-obama-era-slush-200100938.html
The practice of directing funds to nonprofits with a mission somehow related to the harm done by the accused was adopted under the Obama administration. The practice resulted in millions of dollars being funneled to social service agencies and advocacy groups especially when it came to settlements with large financial institutions.
Just the nature of politics given a long enough timeline. The chinese say "the empire long divided must unite, the empire long united must divide". No form of government is stable long term. There is no "end of history" highest form, there is only the waves of politics abstracted through society and available technology.
In the US we can see this trend strongly, and it has to do with the same thing that sunk the Athenian oligarchy and the Roman one. It succeeded. The US went from being a regional power to superpower/international trade guarantor/hegemon in a generation. Since that time, congress has steadily ceded power to the bureaucracy, the courts and the executive. A century and change ago real politicians didn't run for president, because the power was in congress. Now, congress is for people who aren't interested in governing. The power of the presidency grows, until one day someone notices that hey, isn't he basically an emperor? Let's remember Augustus made every effort to make it seem like the Senate still had influence, while stripping the last vestiges of it.
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