JarJarJedi
Streamlined derailments and counteridea reeducation
User ID: 1118
JarJarJedi
2mo ago
For all their macho posturing, the reality is that today's right-wing is soft, easily bullied, and unstrategic.
Hear, hear. The main question for me in the American politics for the last decade or so was not why Dems do what they do - they are a leftist party moving increasingly to the left, and they do exactly what is expected of them. It's how inept, weak, inconsequential and dumb most Republicans are. They fall in every trap the Left puts behind them, and when there's none, they manufacture their own and fall into those too. They are absolutely incapable of using any of the left's blunders, but are vicious to their own. Despite the common "Republicans pounce", they are really shitty at pouncing, outside couple of internet places. Their treatment on Jan 6 people, for example, is horrendously shameful - pretty much nobody (including, from what I understand, Trump himself) did anything to protect them. While the Left is absolutely openly and shamelessly shields violent Antifa from justice, the establishment Right is largely still afraid to even mumble something in the general direction of Jan 6 not being worse than 9/11. Not that it helps them in any way of course. And there are many other examples. And people notice, you know. The Left knows if they fight for The Party, The Party will take care of them. The Right knows if they do anything even slightly controversial for their cause, or even slightly questionable in the eyes of the New York Times, the establishment Right will make sure to proclaim on every corner that they want nothing to do with those violent extremists, never knew any of them and completely fine with throwing all the books available at them. And also whatever cause it was, they'll betray it anyway at the next budget vote. So who would want to do anything even minimally risky for such people anyway?
JarJarJedi
2mo ago
Next decade, sure, there is enough structure left yet. It'd be a gradual process anyway. If the Dems win, the Left will devour SCOTUS first. That'll take time. Then they'll do immigration amnesty. That'll take time too. Next elections will be likely full mail-in with pretty much zero security, so guess who suddenly gets permanent majority. Then there will be Green New Deal, whatever it will be then, and killing the First Amendment, at least online. Electoral college probably will be done somewhere on the way too. Then the Second Amendment - it's not as big impediment as many think, but it must be done, and it'll take time to do it properly. Then there are no limits, anything goes. May take way longer that a decade overall. If Republicans somehow manage to pull an upset anywhere on the way (though I am not sure how it'd be possible after the amnesty) it may slow it down further. But in two decades, I'm not sure it'll be the same republic - or any republic at all.
JarJarJedi
2mo ago
But you still are free to take other drugs, including other opiates? For an alcoholic, there's no easy substitute I presume.
Not that I noticed any. Of course, I have my own bubble so I can only answer within what I tried to search for. Also, you can tune the rankings - e.g. say this site is more trustworthy and this is less, so it would rank according to your preferences. E.g. if you don't want to see a lot of reddit, you could downrank it, or vice versa. But I haven't noticed any helpfulness of the sort you mention there.
They have a free trial plan so I definitely would suggest to try it out before committing with payment. I upgraded to paid when I tried it out and saw that when trial was over I was upset I can't use it anymore.
JarJarJedi
2mo ago
So, summarily I get this:
1. Hoecke doesn't apologize for the Nazis enough (or maybe at all?)
2. Hoecke mentions 'thousand years of glorious history' of Germany
3. He said "Alles fuer Deutschland" which turns out has been used by SA
4. Is tolerating swastika-tattooed mobs
5. Some (who?) in some conference called for deporting German citizens if they had the wrong ethnicity
Did I forget anything important?
I don't have much of a stake in German politics, but it would be important for me to understand whether or not AfD are Nazis or Nazis-in-building. I have a very low tolerance for Nazis, but also American politics taught me that about 99% of times when somebody calls somebody else a Nazi it's a lie. There's still 1% where it's true, about the Nazis which do exist, and some of them even wear swastikas (many others wear other outfits and signage) - but one has to be careful there.
So far, from the list 3 is a little worrying - did he know and used it on purpose, or is it like saying Trump is a Nazi because "Make America Great again" was once used 80+ years ago by some Nazi sympathizers? Hard to make a conclusion here. Is there a pattern of using such slogans and symbols, or is it one time thing? By itself, the slogan does not sound that heinous, but of course if he was attracted to it as a way to say "sieg hail" without saying "sieg hail" it'd be a problem.
4 is worrying if he's really leaning on these mobs and welcoming them and integrating them into his infrastructure on the ground. But is not worrying is it's just some jerks that happen to agree with him on something - I'm sure plenty of jerks agree with me on some things, not all jerks are obligated to be wrong about everything all the time. How important are those mobs for him?
5 would be very bad if it were his party position but the vagueness of the claim is kind of suspicious. Who said that? What exactly did they say? How important this person is in defining AfD policy? Do other AfD policymakers confirm this? Did they endorse or promote such actions? "Somebody maybe said something on a conference" is a great start of a cancel campaign, but poor evidence if you want to figure out what's actually going on. Is there more to it?
1 and 2 don't particularly bother me. Politicians can performatively apologize for anything, and 100% of those apologies mean absolutely nothing - they can apologize for a thing today and do the same thing tomorrow. And Germany does have a long and glorious history - at least no less glorious than any other place, and no less bloody and disgusting at the same time too. Nothing wrong in remembering that, it's what conclusions you make out if it and how it moves you to act is important. The moniker "far right" imply that it moves AfD to act like a Nazis or at least as far towards the Nazis as political limitations will allow. But is this true? So far I haven't seen a proper substantiation of that.
P.S. Oh, and the last point. Plenty of people said Putin would start a war. In fact, Russia has been conducting several wars pretty much since it's establishment in early 1990s - they occupied parts of Georgia, part of Moldova, intervened in Central Asian states and Armenia-Azerbaijan conflict, there was pretty much no period where Russia was peaceful and isolationist, and Putin with his "tough guy" image never indicated he's going to be any different. And they actively meddled in Ukraine for all that time, too. Full-scale intervention was by no means an obvious outcome, but a lot of people raised it as a possibility - and get laughed at by a lot of other people. Many of the latter still among the decision makers in Europe and Germany, so not sure if their predictive capacities can be used to indicate anything.
JarJarJedi
2mo ago
What's the deal with RFK Jr.? I haven't paid too much attention to him, and considered him kinda minor player whose appeal probably entirely lies in his last name, and even then it's not that much of it. But I read a lot of commentary that treat his endorsement of Trump as some kind of a big deal. Is it actually a big deal? Why? What is his significance?
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Cops know pretty much everything about the drug trade, but don't shut it down because farming is easier than hunting
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Most vegetables in the US taste horrible because fitting tasty veggies into the industrial process is too expensive and people wouldn't buy them
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Everybody in education gave up on educating anybody decades ago (I mean if you want to learn, or you parents want you to, they won't stop you, but if you don't, they are 100% fine with it and really have no preference either way) and schools are basically warehouses to keep kids relatively unharmed while parents are at work and make them socialized enough they won't resort to cannibalism and serial killing if left unsupervised once graduating.
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A lot of people in tech are getting tons of money for furiously doing nothing important or necessary because big tech can afford it, and one of the reasons Musk is hated is because his actions threaten to reveal that fact. The correlation between income and quality of work pretty much doesn't exist.
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About 99% of stock analytics explaining daily stock movements by certain events are either vacuously trivial ("stock drops on bad news") or complete bullshit, any nontrivial movements are truly random and nobody can consistently predict it or meaningfully explain it.
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Gell-Mann amnesia is the sole reason why "journalist" and "unfunny clown" aren't largely synonymous.
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Nobody knows how to do hiring properly. All the interview techniques and trainings are groping in the dark and hoping it'll work out (which it usually does because the ultimate interests are aligned) but it pretty much doesn't matter what happens outside of the extremes (no filtering at all and excessive filtering which just filters out people who aren't desperate enough). Most value hiring agencies and consultants provide is CYA and allowing to blame somebody else if things go wrong.
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The entire field of nutrition and dietology is fake. Outside of treating some well-defined deficiency or intolerance diseases (like, if you allergic to X, avoid foods containing X) they can give no useful advice to an average person that would have higher than random chance of succeeding. Once medications like semaglutide become common, the whole field would occupy the niche between tarot reading and feng-shui furniture arrangement.
JarJarJedi
2mo ago
Yet even if we assume that Slavs are uniquely, among whites, good at basketball:
IIRC USSR had good basketball teams, many great player were from Baltics. Example: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arvydas_Sabonis
I don't think basketball correlates with race in any meaningful way, it's more a social phenomenon in the US. Without racism, in the US you'd still expect more black top players than white because sports as venue for prosperity for black players is culturally supported now and also because other venues are less accessible, but you certainly don't expect homogeneity like there is now. And of course among 300+ million people there would be great white basketball players. Just right now they probably would rather do something else then get into the whole racial issue.
JarJarJedi
2mo ago
I assume there is no direct link (or at least perceived direct link) between writing quality and game revenue. Thus, no effort is made to seek out good writers and filter out bad writers, and even if they accidentally get somebody that could do good writing, they would not be doing their best work because why bother if it doesn't matter anyway? And they probably take the cheapest ones and overwork them severely, because "I saved 20% of the budget" looks good in a promotion package.
JarJarJedi
2mo ago
I am reading a lot of reporting now about "fentanyl vaccine". I am not sure what's going on there, can anybody explain it to me? Specific questions:
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I understand that vaccines work by training the immune system to recognize certain proteins associated with pathogens and have other immune cells to bind to them and destroy them (not quite sure how but maybe not important). But fentanyl is a relatively basic compound, wouldn't training immune system to grab on something this simple also have a danger for it to react on many other simple compounds and disrupt the normal function of the body chemistry? What happens to fentanyl once the immune system recognizes it - is it broken into basic hydrocarbons? Somehow captured and expelled? How does that work exactly?
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I assume it is supposed to somehow fight fentanyl addiction. However, assuming it's effective all it would do is make the addict not to be able to get high from fentanyl. They however still will stay addicted, both physiologically and physiologically, not? Wouldn't they immediately seek to get high on some other drug, of which there are dozens? Wouldn't they still suffer withdrawal since their body still craves fentanyl but now is not getting any effect from it - wouldn't that make them take higher and higher dose? Also, would any drug addict voluntarily undergo treatment that would leave them as addicted as before but without any ability to get a fix? How is it supposed to work to solve the problem?
JarJarJedi
2mo ago
Vertical tabs are nice, btw, recommend to try it out. Takes a bit of time to adjust but surprisingly more convenient for a tab hoarder as myself.
Brave + Kagi
There's no point in going on the internet now without an ad block - that's like going naked for a run over a landfill full of medical waste. Thus Brave + Privacy Badger.
Google as the search engine has been going down in quality lately. I've used duckduckgo and brave search, but Kagi seems to be cleaner and results for me are better, and I like the search engine when I'm the customer, not the raw material to be processed and sold.
JarJarJedi
2mo ago
is that Israel passed back-channel threats to retaliate with tactical nuclear strikes
That sounds like conspiratorial BS. Israel does not need nukes to kick Iran in the nuts (they have demonstrated excellent far strike capabilities before) and nuke usage would annihilate pretty much any relationships they had with EU and dems in the US. That would be a massive stupid and useless move, a well aimed rocket strike against an oil refinery or a port would hurt much more and cause much less civilian casualties. Also, Iran has massive number of proxies capable of striking Israel (such as Hezbollah, for example) - so you assume they told Iran they'd nuke Lebanon too? And Gaza (now that's an idea...jk) This doesn't sound even remotely plausible. I don't believe any such thing ever happened.
JarJarJedi
2mo ago
Unlikely. Modern nuclear force, outside of terrorism uses, requires pretty wide support and maintenance, you can't just ship it in a car. In Cuba, there was substantial Soviet military presence, and planned to be more. Deploying those in Iran makes little sense for Russians. And, they will be exposed to being destroyed by Israel, since Israel have declared nuclear Iran to be unacceptable, and probably would declare any Russian nuclear site within Iran a legitimate war target. Why would they need all this trouble for no visible gain?
JarJarJedi
2mo ago
Because the dominant narrative from the MSM is anti-Russian, and the easiest way to be hip is to just say the exact opposite of what the MSM says without looking too much into the details.
JarJarJedi
2mo ago
George Zimmerman was reported exclusively as "White Hispanic" because otherwise the main narrative of the story did not hold well. The term existed before but I don't think I saw a lot of usage of it in MSM prior to that.
JarJarJedi
4mo ago
I don't know exactly how the IDF is organized but there's gotta be solutions for problem soldiers
Yes, there are. Depending on how bad the person wants out, there are several ways one can avoid being conscripted (or get out if you're already in), though it usually costs certain opportunities and carries certain stigma. Just as in the US it was possible to dodge the draft at certain costs, it is in Israel too, though not too many people do it. The army does not make it easy, but it definitely makes it possible, and sometimes even refuses to accept certain categories of people (Arabs, criminals, drug addicts, people deemed "political extremists", etc.). The question of drafting the Orthodox exists not because the army has a critical lack of manpower, but because of the political implications of the wide segment of people visibly taking money from the state but not contributing back by being part of the military service. Once this setup - which is a source of frustration for many political movements in Israel - is gone, nobody is going to watch over every single Yeshiva student to ensure what happens to them, so I am sure some solution will be found that is workable both for the Army and for the Orthodox leadership.
JarJarJedi
4mo ago
Some orthodoxes (many actually) serve in special units, and I imagine this can be extended. But many are also much more trouble than it's worth and the army doesn't really need many of them, so many of them could be just low-key dismissed - not in bulk, as it has been done before, but on the individual level. So I imagine it'd be the combination of the two - a bit more (or bigger) orthodox units where the facilities are set up to accept orthodoxes and for those that don't want out too badly, and those who do want out too badly, after suitable harassment to not make it too easy, they'd be let out. Some will also go to the National Service (Sherut Leumi) - the non-military service alternative - which has already accepted Haredi - primarily Haredi women, but also some men - and probably can accommodate more. What is the proportion of who goes which way depends a lot on the wishes and needs of the Army, logistics and politics. E.g. they could figure out a deal where some Yeshivas would do some services that the state needs and would in exchange be classified as part of Sherut Leumi, and so the students there would be in the same position as before, except for doing some other work for a couple of hours every day, for example - it's not the case now, but nothing in the law prevents it. Could be other solutions too. But I don't foresee either all the Army converting to Orthodox practices (both logistically near impossible and the Army just won't do it, and nobody can force them) or the Army pressing Yeshiva students into regular service without any accommodations, since nobody needs a soldier that thinks it's his duty before God to run away. There would be some kind of a deal that would leave Haredim less happy (they'd like to keep the current arrangement obviously) but still happy enough.
JarJarJedi
4mo ago
Israel wouldn't likely do anything in Lebanon unless Hezbollah does something spectacularly stupid - and they have repeatedly shown that they want to keep it low-key for now. Israel hates the low-key harassment campaign and wants to decisively put end to it - but if they choose when to start, doing it while having their forces occupied in Gaza seems pointless. However, the official "take control" part of Gaza plan seems to be coming to completion, and once that is done and it moves to the "periodic cleanups" phase, Lebanon could very well be the next step. So I'd say not yet right now, but very possibly pretty soon, unless some unexpected development happens.
JarJarJedi
4mo ago
Russia is in no shape to come in anywhere right now, they came to NK because they need all those shells NK has been stockpiling since forever, since the ones USSR has been stockpiling evidently are running out. They came to get, not to give - why would they want to mess with SK? Korea has never been in traditional Russian sphere of influence, so they'd feel zero obligation to do anything about it.
JarJarJedi
4mo ago
They may threaten, but would they ever deliver on their threat? I'd assume they hate Trump much more than they disagree with Biden, so at the end they'd do what they are supposed to do and vote Dem. They may sacrifice some low-level congressmen if needed (it's pretty low cost since Reps have the majority anyway) but the Presidency is too important. I don't deny some voters may move to the other camp, eventually, but not just for day-to-day matters. So, frankly, I don't believe the leadership is scared of those fractions. I'd rather believe they are doing what they wanted to do anyway, pretending they are scared by the fractions, to save face for everybody involved - and if they weren't going to do it anyway, they don't.
JarJarJedi
5mo ago
More zero information extremely lazy people voting? Not sure how it would solve any of the problems.
JarJarJedi
5mo ago
Republicans seem to have an easier time banding together behind a single candidate even if they have personal issues with them, whereas Democrats seem more likely to either not vote for or at least suffer significant mental anguish about making political compromises by voting for someone who even slightly diverges from their ideal platform
Is it true though? There's significant "nevertrumper" movement, for example, but I never heard about "neverbidener" or "neverclintoner" movement. I remember recent competitive Republican primaries, including Trump's first one, but I don't remember much meaningful competition on the Dem side once Obama settled the question against Clinton whose turn it is now. In fact, do we have any estimates of how many Dems really abstained from voting D because of political disagreements, rather than threatening it and then voting D anyway? Mental anguish doesn't count - it's what they do, like 90% of their platform is feeling mental anguish about one thing or another, nothing exceptional there.
JarJarJedi
5mo ago
But wouldn't Rs benefit from "vote for Freedom McSovereigncitizen but put Square A. F. Establishmentor Sr. as your second choice" somewhat too? There are some very colorful right-wing fringes too, maybe not as colorful as antifa, but still they exist.
Not really. Where's the eternal oppressor class, which must be forever blamed for every wrong? Where's selecting a specific group and declaring it forever tainted with past sins? Where's the identarian strife and the oppression hierarchy? Where's the guilt for past injustices, overwhelmingly driving any future decisions? Where's the affirmative action, land acknowledgements, deconstruction and destruction of every past achievement due to them all being oppressive, removal of monuments, rewriting of films and books? Where's the only cure for past discrimination being future discrimination? Where are the species quotas and quarterly reports about racial and species-al makeup of the command structure, the redshirt casualties and the promotion schedule from every captain? I mean, no starship even has a DEI officer! That's not even close to woke.
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