JarJarJedi
Streamlined derailments and counteridea reeducation
User ID: 1118
JarJarJedi
11d ago
I am not saying "Elon can do no wrong". I am saying "Elon is our only hope". That's quite different. I don't know if Elon can get us to the moon. Maybe yes, maybe not. I know NASA bullshiters can't. And won't be for a while. Yes, Elon has a lot of failures, you don't need to bother listing every one of them, I am fully aware. That doesn't change my point even a little bit - either Elon succeeds, however flawed and problematic his plan is, or nobody does. That's the only two realistic options. I can not influence the outcome in any way of form, but for people who can, I think fighting against Elon is just betting on US losing. Again, maybe it will benefit the US in the long run, but certainly not anytime soon.
Nobody has wanted that anywhere.
That's not true of course. The whole woke blue tribe wanted it and still wants it. We could have a long discussion as to why they want it, but for the purposes of now, it's enough to notice they exist and are politically active and influential - in fact, in the West, they own the majority of the media, the academia and significant part of government apparatus. It is not the case in Ukraine. Yes, there are some voices in Ukraine aping the woke slogans, but they are mostly doing it because they want their European friends to like them, and neither them themselves are not truly woke nor there are any significant woke tribes in Ukrainian politics. Ukrainian politics is a tangled and ugly mess, but woke is not a significant part of it. The situation if very different there, so trying to apply what you see in, say, Germany or Holland, to Ukraine is completely useless.
JarJarJedi
11d ago
They survived Russian Empire at the peak of its might, and the USSR - twice. And USSR is not known for its gentle approach to conquering people. By Lindy's law, I estimate their chance on surviving Putin as pretty decent.
JarJarJedi
11d ago
Except that whatever things Blue Tribe did, they still did not graduate - at least in the US - to actually engineering a nationwide famine that cost millions of lives, with the explicit purpose of subjugating Red Tribe. Shit like that tends to be remembered.
JarJarJedi
11d ago
There's no such thing as "historically Poland" and these areas had been everything. These lands were conquered and re-conquered by a variety of states, which bore variety of names, many of them sounding like modern states (e.g. Grand Duchy of Lithuania) but being very different from them. Taking a random moment out of 1000 years of chaotic warfare and conquest, fixating on it as "historical" and claiming that's the "true" state of things is just nonsense. Russian official propaganda does it all the time - if any particular piece of land had been conquered by Russians even for a day over the centuries, it's "historically Russian land", from the time of Creation till the end of the Universe. Of course, if you believe silly stuff like that you may as well start doing land acknowledgments and move back to Africa since that's where "historically" humans lived.
JarJarJedi
11d ago
I mean I understand the process of being conquered is violent and deadly, but post surrender, what are they afraid of?
Being dead, some of them. Being subject to the same treatment as inhabitants of medieval city would be after being conquered by a foreign army (pillage, rape, all that stuff). Of course, we're in civilized time, so most pillage would not be in the form of literally Russian soldiers going door to door and taking all valuable stuff. I mean, that happened too, many times, but there's just too many doors. The main pillage would be that Russians would own everything and you would have to pay them for being their bitch. And Russia has a flourishing prison culture - in fact, most of Russian culture by now is quasi-prison-culture or heavily influenced by it - so they know very well how to make somebody their bitch and how to extract maximum value from that. If you read the history of the 90s in Russia, it happened all over - until Putin took over. In fact, one of the reasons why it was so easy for Putin to take over was because the shit that's was going on was so bad, people were thinking anything that is going to stop it would be better. So, that's what would happen to Ukraine - and since its the conquered land, it won't stop for a long while. Plus, of course, anybody who has any genuinely Ukrainian nationalist sentiment, would be ruthlessly eliminated.
The only hope the Ukrainian people have of surviving as a people
There's no chance of Ukrainians surviving as "people" - collectively - as opposed to just collection of humans with no common identity, if Russia wins this war (by wins I mean full victory, capturing Kiev, overthrowing the government, etc). The whole premise of the war is that there's no such thing as Ukrainian people - it's just some Russians that are stupid enough to speak in weird broken Russian and sell out to the West, and it's time to put a stop to it. And if Russians win, they definitely will put a full stop to it. I mean, they won't murder everyone, it's not Africa, and they may allow people to call themselves "Ukrainians" if they behave, but no idea of having anything like a nation with independent identity would not be tolerated. Some Ukrainians find it unacceptable. If you want to understand why Ukrainians fight, you need to understand them, as they are, and not some weird caricature existing only in your mind.
If they stuck with Western Europe their Jewish President will just adopt a program of flooding them with 3rd worlders as "Replacement Migration" and they'd be ethnically cleansed inside 50 years anyways
That's complete nonsense. I mean, if you know only about problems in a handful of Western European countries, you could conclude every country is like that, but it's not. Ukraine has completely different problems and Zelensky has no intention and no inclination to do any of that, neither did any Ukrainian politicians. I realize how you want to present it as another case of evil Joos doing evil Joo stuff, but that's just ignorant nonsense, not discussing real facts on the ground.
JarJarJedi
11d ago
I don't think this is an argument for Elon Musk. If anything, Elon Musk is the only person who is preventing this outcome - if not Musk, it would be correct to conclude that the race is definitely lost and it's just a matter of time before the structural collapse reveals itself in a way that is obvious to the public (and if we're very lucky, it would not have a body count attached). As it were with the case of USSR, by that time it would be way too late to do anything - and in fact, it may be already too late to do anything 30 years before that. Not that anybody is inclined to do anything. To start thinking about change, you need to either a strong wake up call - like losing the space race - or have a person that is completely crazy and just decides to do something which had been proven many times it can't be done, and then does it. But we don't know yet which of the ways the future would go. Maybe Musk would lose and we go the wake up call way. A lot of people in the US are certainly rooting for that way, because Musk hurt their feelings and there's nothing more Hitler than that. But I am also afraid that the wake up call may arrive when there's nobody left to be woken up (insert a pun about "woke" here, I'm too lazy to follow through).
I think "consensus building" is not the best term. I'd like everybody to think that the things I think are true and moral and good are indeed true and moral and good. I would argue with people and tell them why I think is is the case, and try to convince them to agree with me. On some, very rare occasions, I would succeed. If I were smarter and better at this, I would succeed a lot, and thus there would be a consensus building around those things. I don't think doing this is bad and the result of it is bad.
And I don't think this is what the rule about "consensus building" is against. I think they target the behavior where you pretend the consensus already exists, and, moreover, if you're not a part of it, it's because there's something fundamentally wrong with you and your position, per se, prior to any argument, is illegitimate. There can be no proper discussion when one of the sides presupposes only their side has a legitimate position.
I think it's legitimate to refuse to argue with a position that one considers utterly ridiculous. Nobody owes anyone else the discussion, it should be a product of mutual engagement. So if I think some person is not worth my time to engage, I would not. I like arguing, but I have my limits. For some positions, I am going to just block that person and ignore them forever (for me, it's antisemites, but everybody may have their preferences). But I also recognize explicitly that this is the opposite of discussion, and try to use this approach only sparingly. If there is a discussion, then presupposing the opponent can not have a legitimate argument should not be a part of it. I think that's what "no consensus building" rule is about, or it should be.
JarJarJedi
11d ago
are fixed by giving more money to progressives.
Correction: replace "more" with "all the" and "money" with "power". Money is downstream from power. Forcing NASA to do DEI hires is the exercise of pure power, and when the power squeezes, the money flows to the required direction.
JarJarJedi
11d ago
Losing the Space Race Boogaloo to China seems like a fairly big deal.
I mean it'd certainly sting pride-wise, but US lost the space race to USSR, and yet USSR was dead within a generation. One can argue that losing the space race had been beneficial, serving as a wake up call that stimulated increased interest in space technology in particular and science and technology in general. Given how senile, inept and infested with grifters US governance structure had become, maybe losing another space race would be the necessary wake up call that produces the necessary change? I'd rather choose the timeline where US loses the race now and China's communism collapses in 30 years, than one where US barely pulls ahead because it can afford to waste trillions, and smugly sleepwalks into the situation where in 30 years it's being eaten alive.
JarJarJedi
11d ago
Talking about attitudes about various things, including sex, is important. But I don't see how digging into the past is going to help anything. Usually obsessing over such things is the sign you're not feeling secure in the relationship, and if that's the case, the focus should be on trying to figure out why it is. Digging out more juicy details about the past is not going to help any. I know it's hard to "stop thinking about the white elephant" but realizing no good may come from following that road may help.
JarJarJedi
12d ago
Not feeling it right now. Either it's sporadic or admins are doing really good job at fixing it.
JarJarJedi
17d ago
Let's not forget that in The Boy Who Cried Wolf, the wolf did eventually come and eat everyone.
Way to miss the whole point of the story. What enabled the wolf to come and eat everyone is exactly the fact that the boy lied so many times before. So the first step is to make really sure it's the wolf and only then cry, otherwise you are fucking it up for everyone. And if you are about to sound the alarm, you need to make really, really sure that it's indeed a dictator is slowly installing an authoritarian regime, and not just an elected politician enacting policies you happen to dislike. You need to work extra hard if you already sounded multiple alarms which are on record as false. In fact, in this case it's better to just shut up and let somebody else, who doesn't have such a horrible record with alarm sounding, to do it.
American leftists warned everyone against this from day one, with poor results.
American leftists falsely warned everyone against this from day one, with poor results. That's the word you missed, "falsely". So your question is "how can you make somebody who lied many times before to sound believable this time?" And the answer is "you don't".
JarJarJedi
17d ago
I think this is the main and best claim.
Well, it is false. Moreover, as I noted, even people advancing this claim (I don't mean well-akshually-ers on internet forums, I mean politicians and media) don't really think it is true - they are just using it as a wedge to open the box with the sweet sweet budget money, and that's all. In the best case. That's like calling the opponent a Nazi - when it's done, they don't really think you are about to don the Hugo Boss uniform and invade Poland. They are just giving themselves permission to treat you like you already did. Same here - they are just giving themselves permission to treat Trump as if he already dismantled the democracy, even though he had no intent to, and they know it perfectly well - but that's not the reason to deny oneself a useful weapon!
JarJarJedi
17d ago
How could you possibly know that?
How could you? I think I have more base to claim the person is not a criminal if there's absolutely zero proof he is, than you do to claim he is a criminal with the same amount of proof.
There is no evidence
Thank you.
But bad people making motivated arguments for bad reasons doesn't automatically make them wrong.
It automatically makes their arguments dismissible. There's no point in considering argument if the whole framework of discussion is built just to manipulate you. Discussion makes sense when the goal is to find the truth. Or at least get closer to it somehow. If the goal is to just pull your strings, the right strategy is not to play the game at all.
JarJarJedi
17d ago
You may think that the system is "broken" because your political opponents are leveraging their role in it against your preferred politician.
No, it's the reverse - they are able to "leverage" it because it's broken. The whole "debt ceiling" debacle should never happen at all, let alone be happening year after year. But my main point it's not that, it's that discussing all these high-minded concepts is useless when we're dealing with a banal case of political extortion. Nobody is trying to change the basic principles under which US military operates, what Trump is doing is just trying to make people not suffer from the consequences of the brokenness of the system and its abuse. The pearl-clutchers may scream this is because he wants to turn US Army into a Pretorian guard loyal personally to him, but not only it has nothing to do with the truth, but they themselves know perfectly well it's false, they are just using it to try and fool some part of the public into putting pressure on Trump to achieve the real goal - getting the money. That's my point - considering all that as if it were a real argument about the real role of US Military is pointless, because there's no relevance for this discussion to the current events. It's all performative manipulation, not real discussion.
JarJarJedi
17d ago
We have the formal process and abstract system. Except it's broken, and being broken down further by the very same people who are now clutching the pearls about 0.05% of the military budget that is supplied as a short-term stopgap measure. Again, all the talk that this is about some high-minded principle is bullshit. It's not about "democratic Constitutional system", it's about hurting people on the ground so they lose faith in Trump and make them give money to the particular extractive gang leaders to distribute between their supporters. That's all.
JarJarJedi
18d ago
Trump didn't take any money in exchange for political favors (at least in this case). But if it has been happening for 100 years, and people suddenly start screaming today about it, saying they suddenly discovered that they had principles all that time, but somehow stayed silent right up until that moment, but now they honestly declare "they all bad" - they are lying. They just want to use this as a weapon to attack Trump. As they would use anything to attack Trump, because the point is not any principles - the point is attacking Trump.
JarJarJedi
18d ago
Organizations or people with huge amounts of money are rarely motivated by a deep sense of charity
Cool, now please do Open Society Foundations and Tides. Or Zuckerberg paying for elections. Or any of the thousands of other examples where people with huge amounts of money donated for causes directly benefitting some politicians.
How did they get so much money in the first place if they're so kind and charitable?
How does "none of your damn business" grab you as an explanation? Unless you have a probable cause and a warrant, nobody owes you explanation about anything in their property, and it is certainly absolutely unwarranted to accuse a person of being a moral degenerate and possibly criminal just because he did not give away all his money yet.
It's bad and illegal for someone to pay the president $100 million personal money in exchange for cutting their taxes by $200 million
It is completely legal for someone to give an NGO $100 million in exchange for the government not raising taxes by $200 million to finance the NGO. Though usually what happens they raise it anyway, the NGO gets $300 million and spends it on electing Democrats (well, that and buying large mansions, of course).
But how often do you think that really happens?
I don't know. Let's examine the whole multi-billion-dollar NGO network that is deeply intermeshed with governmental structures by now, especially on state and local level, and see? Somehow except a couple of DOGE folks nobody ever is interested in looking into that, and what you get for such interest is being called a Nazi.
It's usually bribery with just enough plausible deniability to stay out of jail.
If it's indeed so, then I prefer the bribery to pay for the soldier's salary and not for Governor's second cousin's yacht. If we're going to get rid of that bribery altogether, I would prefer to start from the latter, which had been going on forever and nobody ever showed any interest in it, and not with the former, which started just a week ago and somehow everybody is obsessed with intermixing private and government money. With this pattern, my strong suspicion is, as always, they don't give a whistle about any of the high-minded principles they cloak themselves in, and cynically use them to attack their political enemies, while in the same time doing the same thing ten times more, with gusto.
Money forcibly taken is clean because the giver can't use it to extract concessions and manipulate the government.
Yes, we never heard of the case when rich people could extract concessions and manipulate the government. I mean, until Trump came and ruined the perfect system.
JarJarJedi
18d ago
empirically people don't donate to the government for altruistic reasons.
People donate to all kinds of causes for altruistic reasons. In fact, people have been known donating literally their lives to governments. And the government is not shy to demand it. We hear that it is our patriotic duty to give as much as we can to the government. But somehow this only is laudable when done under the penalty of jail, if you do it without the threat, you are a pervert. Is that some kind of BDSM thing I am not aware of?
JarJarJedi
18d ago
A side note here: I find it fascinating how inflamed people become when they learn something the government directs is paid by people giving money voluntarily, rather than by money forcibly extracted from unwilling subjects. It's like the act of forcible extraction itself is the one that sanctifies the money and makes them fit for the official purposes, and otherwise it's impure and unfit for use. Thinking about it, though, it's probably not surprising - the same people probably are deeply suspicious of any action done by private individuals voluntarily cooperating (aka "business") and think that only giving all power and control to a small set of government functionaries can make anything those individuals do morally acceptable. Why spending money should be any different?
JarJarJedi
18d ago
Literally just yesterday I read about this: https://www.adamlogue.com/microsoft-365-copilot-arbitrary-data-exfiltration-via-mermaid-diagrams-fixed/ TLDR for those who doesn't enjoy the technical details: asking Microsoft AI to review some document may result in all your data (i.e. all corporate data accessible to you and Office 365 tools) be stolen and exfiltrated to arbitrary third party. One of the proposed solutions for this (besides the immediate short-term fix) is what you are talking about - mechanisms that ensure AI stays at the original task and does not decide "screw that whole document explaining thing, I must instead just gather all confidential emails and send them to dr_evil@evil.com". Of course, having N levels of checks only means you need N+1 exploits to break this, which somebody with enough time and motivation will eventually find.
JarJarJedi
18d ago
Finished Careless People. It has a lot of "hot" stuff, though I am not sure how true it all is. I can see why Facebook weren't happy about it being published, though I don't think they could do anything about it. Nobody (including the author) ends up looking any good at the end. I am thinking about writing a more detailed review for it.
JarJarJedi
18d ago
I know that women around don't owe me to look good (or anything at all) for my benefit, so if they want to wear ugly but comfy clothes, I have no right to complain. But selfishly, of course, I wish more beauty around me, because it makes me feel better. Hopefully, the wheel will turn again towards more aesthetically pleasing trends.
As somebody who have been in relationships before "settling down", this is not true. I don't feel like my previous experiences - many of which I don't even remember now - diminish my bond to my wife in any way, and I don't think she feels our relationship is less special because she was married in the past too. It's all the past and gone, and the special thing is now.
In marriage, sometimes you need to make sacrifices. I think sacrificing the part of your selfishness that is jealousy to the past is not a bad thing to do. And if you keep in mind why you're doing it and what you're getting in return, you may feel better about it. You can't make yourself not feel things that you feel, but you can conquer those things and not let them make you unhappy. Fortunately, these are things that depend only on you alone - so nothing prevents you from doing that.
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