The_Nybbler
If you win the rat race you're still a rat. But you're also still a winner.
No bio...
User ID: 174
The_Nybbler
If you win the rat race you're still a rat. But you're also still a winner.
19hr ago
Certainly, given the employment-population ratio, but be aware that separating out the vital work from the non-vital work is extremely difficult. Part of this is I'm not sure if the question is whether men's labor is essential or whether a person's labor is essential. With society in a Malthusian state, all labor is essential for survival. The Industrial Revolution got us out of that, but didn't change (or perhaps even bent towards men) the relative necessity of men's labor versus women's.
The_Nybbler
If you win the rat race you're still a rat. But you're also still a winner.
21hr ago
More vital than today, perhaps, but the breakpoint was not the industrial revolution.
The_Nybbler
If you win the rat race you're still a rat. But you're also still a winner.
21hr ago
It also applies to Iran.
The_Nybbler
If you win the rat race you're still a rat. But you're also still a winner.
1d ago
But the men are never lamenting "She promised to marry me, then left me here alone with a baby and everyone is shunning me and now she claims I'm a liar and she never knew me".
Folk songs about a wife leaving a man in the lurch, though...
"You picked a fine time to leave me, Lucille
With four hungry children and crops in the field"
The_Nybbler
If you win the rat race you're still a rat. But you're also still a winner.
1d ago
"House prices up only!" lending implies that lending for houses is safe because house prices only go up. Since this is not in fact the case, it is your claim that is misleading.
A lot of things have been rising as a general trend (the S&P 500, for instance). That's different than monotonic increase.
As for "financial deregulation", I don't know which particular one you mean.
The_Nybbler
If you win the rat race you're still a rat. But you're also still a winner.
1d ago
I'll certainly believe that a stodgy old shepherd believed that about young men, and that could well be realistic for the time. But it doesn't mean the shepherd was correct, nor even that Shakespeare believed the shepherd was correct.
The_Nybbler
If you win the rat race you're still a rat. But you're also still a winner.
1d ago
The downblending of the uranium, as a minimum, is as much a part of the MOA as the 300B is.
Anyway, in commercial law it is understood that both sides are expected to be negotiating in good faith. That is very much not true here.
The_Nybbler
If you win the rat race you're still a rat. But you're also still a winner.
1d ago
The claim was "housing prices only go up". They don't. That's different from the claim that housing prices are high now; they are. As for that graph, since the median household income series ends in 2024, data after that aren't accurate.
The_Nybbler
If you win the rat race you're still a rat. But you're also still a winner.
1d ago
In theory, a situation can arise where men's labor is just as vital as ever but still devalued because a small number of men can do the work of many.
Theory or no, that is not the story of the Industrial Revolution.
I find it telling that the Japanese character for a man combines "strength" and "field."
Just means Japan's language is old.
The_Nybbler
If you win the rat race you're still a rat. But you're also still a winner.
1d ago
As you were posting what you were posting below on November 9, 2023, there were already groups decrying the Gaza genocide. Israel had no reason to worry about optics, as the optics were not at all under its control.
The_Nybbler
If you win the rat race you're still a rat. But you're also still a winner.
1d ago
Machine tooling in no way devalued a man's labor, because the machines were built and run by men. Amusingly, this held into the computer era (except during WWII, for obvious reasons), which was a point in the culture war.
The_Nybbler
If you win the rat race you're still a rat. But you're also still a winner.
1d ago
A Winter's Tale
Shakespeare is, of course, known for his 100% trustworthy characters, like Dick the Butcher or Polonius the Fool, who always espouse the author's wisdom.
The_Nybbler
If you win the rat race you're still a rat. But you're also still a winner.
1d ago
The US has demonstrated that the Europeans are useless, which is certainly quite insulting. While previous US Presidents generally treated the form of the alliance with sanctity, the Europeans allowed the substance of the alliance to wither.
The_Nybbler
If you win the rat race you're still a rat. But you're also still a winner.
1d ago
How does the USA navigate this problem with its erstwhile ally?
The first question is whether the US actually has a problem. Right now Trump is making nice to the Iranians and disparaging Israel, but he did the same thing to both sides (alternately) when trying to negotiate a peace between Ukraine and Russia, so it likely doesn't mean much.
Obviously the Iran deal isn't as good for Israel as the US forcing regime change in Iran, but Israel will have to live with that. The US agreement in the MOU for its allies to not attack Lebanon is worth about as much as past (or future) Iranian assurances not to fund terrorism -- that is, nothing at all. Obviously Israel does not feel bound by the MOU -- they are not in fact a party to it. And the US is not going to attack Israel to ensure the territorial integrity of Lebanon. Israel will continue to act as a loose canon, and the US will continue to occasionally pretend to be upset while being able to do nothing about it, and Iran's choice will be to blow up the deal or live with that. I suspect they'll complain but live with it.
The_Nybbler
If you win the rat race you're still a rat. But you're also still a winner.
2d ago
The Case-Shiller index went down (in nominal terms) from 2006-2012. It's roughly flat (again in nominal terms) now. Median sales price went down from 2006-2009, and is dropping now.
The_Nybbler
If you win the rat race you're still a rat. But you're also still a winner.
2d ago
This doesn't happen naturally.
It does happen naturally. It DID happen naturally. Well, sort of; the timing was partly because of relaxation of capital controls forbidding mortgage lenders from lending for development. But that relaxation happened because the time was right and the lobbyists were called in to remove the obstacle. The banks wanted to lend for development (because they could see the wave of demand coming), but were prevented, until they had the laws changed.
The banks also wanted to lend during the early-2000s bubble. After the bubble, housing has been durably repressed, but this isn't for lack of funds; the US is awash in funds. It's because the reaction to suburbia, the New Urban anti-sprawl smart-growth people, who had been on the back foot for a long time, were able to use the housing crash to get the upper hand politically, which they still have.
The_Nybbler
If you win the rat race you're still a rat. But you're also still a winner.
2d ago
Age of first marriage for men until recently didn't get much above 25, with about a 4 year age gap. Now it's over 30 with a 2 year age gap. The current situation is much more different from the historical norm than the 1950s nadir at about 22 with a slightly over 2 year age gap.
The_Nybbler
If you win the rat race you're still a rat. But you're also still a winner.
2d ago
The average 20 year old man still sees himself as a temporarily embarrassed septuagenarian.
The average 20 year old man IS a temporarily embarrassed septuagenerian. Life expectancy at 20 is over 55 years.
The_Nybbler
If you win the rat race you're still a rat. But you're also still a winner.
2d ago
"Young men as protection racket" doesn't make your case sound as good as the Atlas thing.
The_Nybbler
If you win the rat race you're still a rat. But you're also still a winner.
2d ago
Freedom from want and freedom from fear, as FDR put it, are not freedom but security expressed as freedom.
The_Nybbler
If you win the rat race you're still a rat. But you're also still a winner.
2d ago
We persevere because we're ultimately what keeps the world going, that's why a young man Atlas Shrugged moment would be so powerful.
Your estimate of your importance is overblown. Societies have always been able to keep running while essentially all the young men were off trying to kill the young men from some other society.
The_Nybbler
If you win the rat race you're still a rat. But you're also still a winner.
2d ago
At the end of the day, there are only two positions -- "You can just do things" and "We live in a society". Each person has one or the other orientation (with most being the latter), and this determines their position on almost any regulation that doesn't go directly to their self-interest. It does not matter where on the freedom-to-tyranny scale society is at the moment.
The_Nybbler
If you win the rat race you're still a rat. But you're also still a winner.
2d ago
I'm sure @gattsuru will have a more full analysis, but the Second Amendment case US v Hemani just dropped. The Supreme Court found that a man who unlawfully used a controlled substance cannot, by doing so, become automatically prohibited from possessing firearms. The big shock in this case is that it was 9-0.
Unfortunately, as is to be expected, the decision is so narrow as to likely not affect any other case.
The Court’s decision is narrow. It does not address efforts to ban addicts or those presently intoxicated from possessing a firearm; other prophylactic laws Congress might adopt after determining that users of a particular drug pose a special risk of misusing firearms; §922(g)(1)’s provision disarming individuals convicted of felonies; or whether the government could bring a prosecution under §922(g)(3) accompanied by individualized proof that the defendant’s drug use renders him a danger to himself or others, or proof that a certain drug always renders its users dangerous.
The_Nybbler
If you win the rat race you're still a rat. But you're also still a winner.
3d ago
The 2024 Florida outbreak was in blue territory (Broward County). Immunization rate was 92% fully immunized, with 97% having had at least one shot in the series. This is not unusually low. Measles is just that contagious. It looks like a source was never found.
The 2024 Chicago outbreak was in blue territory, and was immigrant-related.
The 2025 Southwest outbreak was in a non-mainstream religious community which has no religious objections to vaccination, but in general does not use the mainstream healthcare system.
The 2025 Iowa outbreak seems to have mostly been introductions from people who traveled (including breakthrough cases); there were only 9 cases.
The 2026 Utah outbreak was among a non-mainstream religious community.
None of these had to do with either mainstream red or mainstream blue vaccine refusal; I'm not sure if any had anything to do with vaccine refusal at all.
That leaves 2025 Spartanburg County, SC. Definitely a red area, and Wikipedia claims vaccine refusal was an issue. This one was reported as due to vaccine skepticism in Ukranian and Russian speaking communites
So, I think that leaves the score since COVID at 0-0 for measles due to right or left mainstream vaccine hesitancy. If you go back before that, you find more of the non-mainstream mennonites and ultra-Orthodox Jews. The exception is 2019 Pacific Northwest outbreak... and that's not granola as you might expect, but 'may have started at a Vancouver, Washington church attended by largely immigrant parents "who don't trust government – or vaccination programs" after residing in the former Soviet Union'
Men are in a worse bargaining position because women's labor and confiscated fruits of labor can substitute for men's labor; that's more New Deal/Great Society than Industrial Revolution.
More options
Context Copy link