Mewis
3mo ago
One principle or rule that I try to stick by is that though I am free to dislike or avoid other people, I never try to persuade anyone else to do so.
Mewis
3mo ago
For the purpose of a hypothetical, it's useful - and if you start with less, you can just choose a later point in this hypothetical to start from. So if you start with 60%, it's like starting in Year 3, in which case you only have two years of majority ownership.
Mewis
3mo ago
If there are people making huge profits, they're not running grocery stores, which as a rule operate on unbelievably thin margins and run losses on some products. Remember - store brands are cheaper than name brands, not the other way around.
Mewis
3mo ago
Civ seems to have been slowly devoured by various malign strategy game trends - a tendency to define the possibility of failure as "unfun", scripted events with 2-3 choices, and the cancer that is "perks", even beyond the intrusion of wokist tendencies. So I don't hold on to much hope. I think Civ 6 had some decent ideas with districts, but ended up being too board gamey.
Mewis
3mo ago
Not engaging with the system is not an endorsement of the current system. Suppose in the next election, there was only 10% turnout. Would you consider that to be a ringing endorsement of the process? Do you think politicians would stay the course, or would they attempt to win the votes of that nonvoting 90%? Do you apply this same logic to markets? Does dismal sales actually mean that the product is fine, and that nothing should change?
Plus one vote never changed anything.
Mewis
3mo ago
It doesn't, but Ukraine needs to do something to keep Western attention and support. In addition, letting Russia operate airfields close to the border is probably not a good idea.
Mewis
3mo ago
No, there genuinely has been a decay in trust. Starmer's Labour didn't crack ten million votes, which puts him well behind Cameron's 2010 and 15 performances. And it's true that some of that is driven by third parties, but those third parties didn't drop out of the sky. They're winning votes because there's dissatisfaction with the main parties that didn't exist in 2010.
Mewis
3mo ago
It's interesting to note that despite their huge majority, Labour this time didn't win many votes - less, in fact, than five years ago under the controversial Jeremy Corbyn. There's a big hole in the electorate, in other words, waiting to be filled.
Mewis
3mo ago
What is the mechanism that will cause this two week trend to continue forever, until presumably Kamala is acclaimed as Emperor of the Universe?
Mewis
3mo ago
And yet Democrats sometimes lose elections. Kamala might well lose, her chances are worse than Hillary Clinton's.
Mewis
3mo ago
Can Kamala stay as Mystery Democrat for three months? If she doesn't explain herself to the electorate, Trump will do it for her.
Mewis
3mo ago
I mean, she can do that if she really wants but this would be very unorthodox. Dare I say it, even weird.
Mewis
3mo ago
Shucking and jiving outside your campaign bus or calling Repubs weird gets you somewhere with the faithful but it won't win over anyone who isn't. Kamala is going to be in fundraising mode for two months and only then will switch into targeting votes instead of donations.
Mewis
3mo ago
Political parties are mechanisms, at this point, for funnelling donations from the faithful into the pockets of campaign managers so they can run ads telling the faithful that their enemies are weird.
Mewis
3mo ago
And I was laughed at for saying that the second most recent Thing was a nothing burger.
Mewis
3mo ago
It depends on the specific circumstances. Born overseas to US diplomats? Probably not a big deal. But I found myself quite uncomfortable with Rishi Sunak, for example, who went through the green card process in the US and was married to an Indian.
Mewis
3mo ago
That's because all those games have an element of snowballing that makes it more difficult for teams that are behind to come back. If in football, you got an extra player every time you scored a goal, it might well not be worth continuing to play when you're 0-4. After a certain point, a chess or MtG player can be certain that there's no move or card that can turn the game around.
Mewis
3mo ago
Putting the ball in Iran's court is in fact, a very safe move, because Israel has provoked Iran countless times and Iran has never done anything significant. Especially since the alternative would be killing this guy in Qatar - a country that has relations with Israel. Israel has for once made the responsible choice by choosing to piss off an existing adversary that already hates them, and to respect a nation that is working towards normal relations.
Mewis
3mo ago
I don't get what you're not getting. There's a pretty good case for not letting Khelif compete, since she has highly elevated testosterone levels, leaving aside this stupidity about how "manly" she is or whether "I have a penis, you just can't see it" is actually a convincing argument.
Mewis
3mo ago
I'd say it's more of a coin toss, maybe slightly leaning Trump. That's what prediction markets indicate too.
Mewis
3mo ago
My understanding is that DHT is critical for the development of many traits that are strongly associated with men, including baldness, body hair, and penis and testicles. If you want to claim that having a penis and functioning testicles are not essential parts of maleness you may certainly try, but I would find it very unconvincing. There is a reason we call it a "manhood"!
I don't have a spouse or children, but I think it's fine to persuade or even directly forbid them from certain associations.
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