RenOS
the mountain passed, the sea in front
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User ID: 2051
RenOS
the mountain passed, the sea in front
2mo ago
I completely agree, but I also have a hard time caring when the other side isn't much better, but simply has better PR.
See the "trans surgery on illegal aliens" bit from the same debate, which was roundly mocked on twitter and in the media; Not only did most people not bother looking it up but basically just assumed it has to be made up bc it sounds so ridiculous, when others then showed articles on Kamala talking about precisely this they turned to flat-out lying that "this is just the headline, but her real words were about medically necessary treatment". Except that it's trivial to look up that it was explicitly stated that medically necessary as judged by mental health experts was sufficient. Which in practice includes, among many other things, trans surgery based on suicide risk. They even explicitly mention "gender transition surgery"!
Or now that I think about it, as naraburns pointed out this is pretty much 100% what they are doing for "abortion denial deaths", except with the added irony that any alleged example they have found so far is more accurately described as just "abortion death".
RenOS
the mountain passed, the sea in front
2mo ago
Thanks for looking into this. I already suspected something contrived when reading the headline, but this is on the level of blaming a drunk driving accident on prohibition.
RenOS
the mountain passed, the sea in front
2mo ago
A bit of a tangent, but I can't really read existential comics anymore after seeing his twitter.
RenOS
the mountain passed, the sea in front
2mo ago
Likewise, it's unworkable to ban children from porn sites. Are they going to make everyone give their ID to every damn booru and sketchy Russian site? We have a massive surfeit of bureaucrats with too much time and money on their hands. Nobody ever wants to leave things alone, they have to work hard making a mess out of uncomfortable, sometimes unpleasant realities:
It's also simply a solved problem: For small children, parents should fully monitor their screen time anway; For older children, it's trivial to set up a device with a whitelist; And for teens who are old/smart enough to get past these filters, just watching porn is the least of a parent's worry. In particular it's preposterous that the west claims it's impossible to keep teens from having physical sex, while simultaneously demanding that they can only access porn with 18.
RenOS
the mountain passed, the sea in front
2mo ago
Really depends a lot on the person. I loved being a kid, hated being a teen, I liked being a young adult but hated college life and now love being a parent & working ( though I'd prefer a different job at this point). And I'm barely past 30! I don't think I'll become less happy for quite a while. Probably peak happiness is still in the future, since I'm already looking forward to my kids being a bit older so that we can do stuff we currently can't.
One imo true part is inflation stats. Basically, we used to use a simple bucket-of-goods based approach, which would compare the same goods in the past to the same goods in the future and calculate inflation based on that. This was deemed not good enough, on the understandable logic that we will want different goods in the future, so over time this fixed bucket will reflect consumer realities less and less.
So we now use a different approach, the CPI, which has a flexible bucket based on the actual goods we buy instead. Sounds good? Well, the problem is twofold. First, it means we aren't comparing like-for-like anymore, so any historic inflation comparison is kind of nonsensical. Second, and imo even worse, it naturally biases inflation estimates downward. For example, back under Corona bell pepper prices shot up 300% or so at my local super market for a while, and we pretty much instantly stopped buying them. Which means that over this time frame, looking at the CPI, the rather extreme inflation of bell pepper would have minimal to no impact on the inflation stats calculated solely on our household, despite being one of my favorite vegetables that I like to eat near-daily if I can. This can easily be generalized to most consumers - if there is a good that was consumed a lot in the past but not anymore, a solid % of that will be an increase in price, and vice-versa any good that was rarely consumed in the past but is now consumed a lot, chances are it got cheaper.
So if we fully buy into this framing, some time in the 80's official eco stats substantially uncoupled from the real economy. Obviously that doesn't prove that we actually got poorer, though.
I'm reading Nate's blog currently, and this review of the book does not terribly surprise me. In general, I get the impression that he has a prodigious ability to silence his own biases when the data goes against them - in my experience a very unusual skill - , combined with a serious attitude to competently do the single thing he is doing. But in most other ways he is not actually very exceptional. His polling/election model, which he is focusing pretty much all his attention on, is well done and very reasonable, but it doesn't actually include anything surprising. It's just that the competition tend to blatantly ignore or diminish the biases of their favourite polls or use kind-of insane assumptions, such as current-538 (which isn't affiliated with Nate in any way, under the hood) enforcing a fundamentals-only polling approach that, among other things, led to a better election forecast when DEMs polled badly.
RenOS
the mountain passed, the sea in front
2mo ago
Tyler Cowen really, really hates unrealized gains taxes
He isn't always right, but on this topic he imo makes a lot of good arguments.
But the pictogram isn't happy. It's grey and joyless.
Edit: It seems I misunderstood you, but for a family emoji I want it to look nice & happy, and that goes for pretty much all families. I haven't seen anyone use the pictogram so far, and imo you might as well remove it altogether.
RenOS
the mountain passed, the sea in front
2mo ago
I know it's not a big issue, I know I should have expected it and I shouldn't let it get to me, but dammit. It's just so clearly reminiscent of the larger movements in ideology. Today I was asked whether we come with the entire family of four or with less to an event and I wanted to post the family-of-four emoji back. I'm usually not a big emoji poster, so I searched and searched and couldn't find it. Well, as it turns out, ALL family emojis were removed earlier this year and replaced with what looks like bathroom signs (and appropriately moved to the signs section as opposed to people emojis). The reason? Simple:
The Family Emojis Are Now Equally Useless For Everyone, And That's A Good Thing.
Direct quote from the author, who was on relevant committees, for some time even vice chair, for this decision:
Silhouettes might please no-one, but at least they might displease everyone equally.
First, I want to note how destructive this thinking is. A healthy attitude, upon seeing a sad and a happy person, would be to say: We should try to make the sad happier, even if they might not become as happy as the other person. It leads to more overall happiness, and also to more equality, an unalloyed on-net improvement. By their explicit, stated reasoning these committees would rather make the happy person's live miserable until they are exactly as sad as the other person.
And secondly, I can't help but notice how much this thinking is obviously directly descendend from communist/marxist economic thinking, just applied to cultural topics - i.e. cultural marxism. My wife was born and all her family lived in the DDR (soviet east germany). This is exactly what they reported about how life was structured - every time someone had something that wasn't attainable for everyone, you generally should try to hide it, lest someone might report you or otherwise try to make your life difficult. Exception were, as usual, only for special people. For example, my wife's grandfather was a reasonably well-connected and quite competent car technician working for the military intelligence, members of which were generally left alone by the much more well-known civilian intelligence, the Stasi. Among other things, he had access to a car cemetery, and through this he managed to build is own Wartburg, which was a more expensive car he normally wouldn't have access to, from parts of multiple destroyed Wartburgs. The only reason why he could do this was precisely because of his affiliations - otherwise simply having a better-than-usual car was so suspicious and dangerous that it's better not to try - a car after all you can't easily hide.
So life in the east was in large parts structured around seeming humble and normal and, from the perspective of the higher-ups, only giving people things which you're sure you can give it to everyone. Just like these bathroom sign families, buildings were often literally bleak and grey, which was considered good by the authorities since the alternative was inequality. It seems to me at least some portion of the people who make decisions concerning all our lives start again to think like this.
Third, this is often likened or even explicitly called "tall-poppy-syndrome", the attitude of cutting down the above-average successful. But it's actually worse than that: We steer towards a culture that uses the very least successful/happy as the reference, and that strives to drag the average down until it is exactly as unsuccessful/sad as them. It was trivial to include a bunch of skin colors to accommodate most cases, but since accommodating all possible variations was unfeasible, they decided against it, independent of how ever-rare these variations might be.
RenOS
the mountain passed, the sea in front
2mo ago
Tbh I would even go beyond this and claim that transracialism is much more reasonable than transgenderism. As a simple example, one of our neighbours is an asian woman who was adopted by whites in canada and who was 100% raised like a white canadian kid. She actively rejects anything that has to do with her biological ancestry and is very insistent that she is canadian through and through, in particular she hates being called asian ("that's just how I look, not what I am"). I may not entirely agree with her, but this makes a lot more sense to me than claiming something as obviously biologically dichotomous as sex is malleable and in particular can have an inverted social component.
RenOS
the mountain passed, the sea in front
2mo ago
I'm pretty sure I had some way of restoring concealment, but it might have been from a mod as well. In general XCOM2 is imo one of those games substantially improved with mods.
RenOS
the mountain passed, the sea in front
2mo ago
I've started playing it before our newborn came (hadn't had the chance to play it again), but my biggest problem was the immersion break on missions when suddenly dozens of mooks show up and die one after another while Arthur's crew just cuts through them like hot butter. The rest of the game is made so realistic and immersive, why did the choose to make these fighting scenes so over-the-top ridiculous like most other action games? I don't mind it as much for other action games because there it's just the way the entire world works, but for RDR2 it just seems so bizarrely out-of-place.
RenOS
the mountain passed, the sea in front
2mo ago
On XCOM 2 (well, Long War, but for both XCOM I never really played anything else), I found the opposite, if played well the stealth mechanic is extremely substantial (though I preferred the first XCOM). But I also used a whole bunch of mods, including one that made timers freeze until stealth is broken (bc that just seemed stupid except for very few exceptions).
RenOS
the mountain passed, the sea in front
2mo ago
I wouldn't be surprised if mottizens are actually disproportionally chronically undecided. As far as my understanding goes, especially the rare posters and lurkers are still mostly disgruntled left-leaning grey tribers, disliking the woke far-left wing but not enough to make the full jump to the right. Especially since the right keeps nominating people like Trump, who are at the very least just personally very unappealing.
RenOS
the mountain passed, the sea in front
2mo ago
Congratulations!
My main advice would be: Parenthood is more about not fucking up than about giving them a perfect head start. Don't worry too much, and no, you don't need that much stuff.
This is exactly what I'm talking about tbh. The spin in that article makes my head hurt.
I'm a german parent, I know german abortion law, I've talked with german doctors about the issue. By american conception, our abortion laws - both by law and in practice - would be considered at best center if not far-right, and is quite similar to what moderate GOP politicians are proposing. Abortion is strictly illegal here, punished with prison, except for four cases:
- The abortion happened in the first 12 weeks and was done after thorough consultation with a certified professional
- There is a life-threatening medical emergency
- The pregnancy is the product of a rape
- Seriously debilitating exceptional circumstances (also only done after an even more thorough consultation)
As a side note, I quote the purpose of the consultation by the literal text of the law: "Die Beratung dient dem Schutz des ungeborenen Lebens. Sie hat sich von dem Bemühen leiten zu lassen, die Frau zur Fortsetzung der Schwangerschaft zu ermutigen und ihr Perspektiven für ein Leben mit dem Kind zu eröffnen" (rough english translation: The consultation has the purpose of protecting the life of the unborn. It should strive to encourage the woman to continue the pregnancy and give her a perspective of life with a child.)
That's it. I don't doubt that there are some doctors somewhere who wink wink nod nod and spuriously claim medical emergencies and/or exceptional circumstances, but the average doctor takes this quite seriously. By the text of the law, the purpose of the fourth criteria is strictly to be used if the fetus shows signs of serious developmental issues that would preclude a fully realized adult life. Afaik it is also occasionally used for people who are not of sound mind, i.e. pregnant children and the mentally disabled. But strictly speaking this is not supported by the text of the law.
In both our pregnancies our doctor made very clear that she would not support late-term (in germany, late-term generally means the second trimester) abortions unless this criteria has been fulfilled beyond reasonable doubt ( which was actually a point of contention since we would have liked less strict criteria). A rough translation of a quote from her, concerning us asking for the more modern genetic testing for trisomy, as opposed to the traditional, more strict ultrasound testing: "If you can't see the trisomy (down syndrome) in the ultrasound, it usually is less bad. And even the disabled can lead a happy life."
I know enough people from other european countries - and have lived in one other for a while - to know that they generally have very similar laws, some slightly more strict, some slightly less.
But here in europe we do have the same problems, we are merely lagging a few years behind - in both social media usage and teen mental health issues. I agree that it's almost never just one thing, though. The social contagion theory also seems extremely hard to deny from our vantage point - we can literally watch how american social problems spill over here through the (american- dominated) media.
RenOS
the mountain passed, the sea in front
2mo ago
I want add to your edit another falsehood I often see repeated: That the wider western world also has free abortion laws similar to what the american left wants. As it turns out, 12-15 week bans are the norm, and if I talk with women here about it they also feel strongly about it not becoming longer. The 20 weeks+ I often see from the american left (and unfortunately even our own left is starting to propagate it) is almost as extreme as the Evangelicals ban on abortion except for medical reasons.
RenOS
the mountain passed, the sea in front
2mo ago
The problem with this line of argument is that if you directly, anonymously ask normal people about their preferences, many of the answers are so far right that they couldn't be stated in polite society. Especially on the topic of enforcing borders or trans ideology. Compare to, say, libertarianism or any other possible political ideology, which are generally speaking not supported even when you ask people directly (which, I'm sad to say, includes many of my own preferences). So something else seems to be happening than just right-wing ideas being unpopular.
My impression is that if you're successful, it's just stupid to not make yourself part of the international elite. And that international elite has a particular set of values, which from the american perspective might as well be "agree on everything with the democrats". For a simple personal example, as an academic almost any enforcement of borders is a hassle to me, and living in the (expensive) university district myself, I'm fully insulated from perceiving any of the costs, at least in the short-term. Not only that, but many friends of mine are from across the world and they would suffer even more from the borders being enforced. So, from a purely egoistic perspective I should want the borders to be as open as possible. And this is the de-facto only acceptable position here; Being in favor of any border enforcement whatsoever puts you basically outside the overton window of the international elite.
So in turn any person in favor of these topics can't be part of the international elite, which means they're either not really all that successful, or stupid, or extremely disagreeable. So these are the people you're stuck with. Normies notice this, and the situation hasn't deteriorated enough yet in their perception that they're willing to vote for "this kind of person" just to get a change they desire. So they suck it up and consider it the cost of doing business.
RenOS
the mountain passed, the sea in front
2mo ago
I, on the other hand, wasn't even aware that it had been turned into a book.
RenOS
the mountain passed, the sea in front
2mo ago
Actually the military is the poster boy for this problem in most prosperous western countries to my knowledge. Btw yes, I know some people who signed up, though most of them a generation above mine. They constantly have to lower requirements because the only people nowadays willing to sign up would have been considered unfit for service in the past.
RenOS
the mountain passed, the sea in front
2mo ago
Depending on the minimum wage laws it absolutely can be the case. Not to mention that the big problem isn't just being low skill - we have some black market work for those, even if it isn't ideal - it's unreliability. If you can't depend on a person to at least show up on time, stay for the agreed-upon time, do the work, and not opportunistically steal from the company, than a person can easily be worth negative money for a company. If you read up Haiti and more generally african countries, it's this unreliability that drives most of the dysfunction, not just merely being low-skill.
RenOS
the mountain passed, the sea in front
2mo ago
I don't think the European middle ages suffered from a shortage of executioners, at any rate.
Because it put food on the table, and starvation was always an option for some people back then. There is a reason why western countries increasingly have recruitment problems for the less pleasant jobs. The only people being willing to be police officers under your scheme would be immigrants I'd wager. I don't know a single person who I could imagine willingly signing up to this.
Does it ship with every like?
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