ToZanarkand
Some day the dream will end
No bio...
User ID: 2935
I live in Europe so the US presidency only really affects me through its effects on foreign policy. With that context, I lean towards Trump as he'd be far less timid towards Iran and their proxies, even if I don't like that he'd be less supportive of Ukraine than Biden (although my sense is that Biden's administration isn't providing enough support for Ukraine to meaningfully change the likely long-term outcome of that conflict anyway).
OTOH my family would probably be very upset if Kamala didn't win, so I guess I don't really know what outcome to hope for.
ToZanarkand
Some day the dream will end
30d ago
I'm really glad for the presence of Twitter since Musk took it over. I don't know where else I'd so easily be able to access news that the legacy media would prefer to be hidden away.
ToZanarkand
Some day the dream will end
30d ago
The TLDR is that fertility is essentially memetic: people have about as many kids as they see the people around them having. The theory is that the structure of Israeli society means that the high birthrate of the ultra-orthodox filters through to most people (even among the most secular groups), as there are enough conducting social layers between them that such memes can be transmitted between groups from one end of the religious-secular extreme to the other. Perhaps @pm_me_passion could comment?
The author compares this this with most other first-world countries, where there'll be highly fertile groups like The Amish, but who are (according to this model) too isolated for this to have much of an effect on anyone else.
An A* in History is easier than a C in Further Math.
A-level results in 2024:
Percentage of A* grades in History: 5.7%
Percentage of C grades (or above) in Further Maths: 89.8%
There could of course be a selection effect, whereby brighter students take FM than take History (which could explain why 28.7% of FM students get an A*). Still, I don't think that alone is enough to make the argument that History really is that much easier than FM, given the massive difference in grade attainment.
For what it's worth, Oxbridge students are generally very smart IME, regardless of what they study.
And by third tier I meant still within the top grouping of UK universities,
Fair.
ToZanarkand
Some day the dream will end
1mo ago
Getting into one of the least-subscribed courses at Oxbridge is easier than getting into many degrees at even third-tier British universities. If they did math or medicine it is fair to say they are probably pretty smart.
This is a stretch. I'm not aware of any Oxbridge course that will let you in without a minimum of AAA at A-level, while maths at UEA will consider you with ABB if they're the right subjects (and UEA isn't third-tier). You're right about medicine, but that's a bit of a special case.
ToZanarkand
Some day the dream will end
1mo ago
They don't want the CEO eaten because the other workers would get more. They want the CEO eaten so that there's no more CEO (and maybe some few sympathetic cancer patients can get treatment).
I like the post you're responding to, but this is a key point you raise. You could tell a lot of people that banning billionaires wouldn't measurably improve the lives of the poorest people, and many of them would respond with "I don't care, we shouldn't have billionaires while there are people starving or without proper healthcare".
Jim/Stephanie Sterling (if anyone here knows who that is) was prolific with statements of this kind. "No one needs a billion dollars" or "You don't make a billion dollars, you take a billion dollars" are two ones I recall them frequently making.
ToZanarkand
Some day the dream will end
1mo ago
These two issues seem pretty orthogonal. Russia succeeding in Ukraine would certainly upset a lot of western elites, so I suppose someone could support them for that reason, but I'm not sure whether there's any strategic logic to it.
ToZanarkand
Some day the dream will end
1mo ago
Why are you anti-EU?
Brazil was the 4th largest agricultural producer (in dollar terms) in 2020, so the weather is good enough for that at least.
ToZanarkand
Some day the dream will end
1mo ago
This was my question. If anything I'd assume it was worse in the past, given lack of regulation and transparency.
ToZanarkand
Some day the dream will end
1mo ago
and there is a very good chance that a Harris White Housr would be even more hawkish on Russia than the Biden-Blinken administration.
What's your basis for saying this? My only real sense of Harris' positions is that she's much likelier than Biden to indulge the left of the party, and that wing doesn't really care about Russia beyond any supposed connections the country's leadership has with Trump.
My intuition is that free speech, like many things, is something that works well in a culturally homogeneous society, and begins to break apart otherwise*. When the majority are basically on the same page about most things of real importance, you can tolerate a small group of weirdos ranting about blacks/gays/Jews/or whatever. When you have multiple cultures, some with very strong group-consciousness, free speech easily becomes abusable as a tool to direct aggression towards other communities in a zero-state competition for state benefits and favours. The UK is the obvious example of this: Muslims routinely use freedom of speech to organise thousands of young aggressive men to march around cities intimidating anyone they don't like into hiding away. OTOH, counter-protestors having the freedom of speech to express their dislike of this situation will cause outbreaks of violence with the aforementioned groups that will quickly escalate beyond what the state can handle, hence why they just simply deny this right to the less-favoured group.
*The obvious counter-example is the US, which is certainly more diverse than almost anywhere else by most metrics. I think they get away with it as the sheer scale of the country means that even if two groups of people want to kill each other, while they're living thousands of miles apart there's little chance of large-scale violence occurring.
ToZanarkand
Some day the dream will end
1mo ago
I honestly thought RFK was the libertarian party candidate.
My deep political offline conversation with the average committed right-winger is kind of like "Hey man, we don't agree but whatever, it's fun talking about this stuff". My deep political offline conversation with the average committed left-winger consists of me trying to get them to question their ideas while gingerly ballet-leaping my way over the various minefields that, if I stepped on, would cause them to classify me as Adolf Hitler. Don't get me wrong, I also often just straightforwardly speak my mind with leftists in the mode of just "chatting about politics for fun", and this has not brought me any harm. Most leftists I know in person are not about to go report me to the thought police, they are not totalitarian. What I mean is that in those occasional really deep political conversations that one engages in, the ones where both people actually care about talking about the politics in a meaningful way rather than doing it just for fun or to vent, I have found that right-wingers are generally more easily accepting of disagreement, whereas with left-wingers you have to slowly seduce them into letting go of their instinct to assume that your disagreements with them mean that you are Hitler.
I've also noticed this - I don't know how much is really down to right wingers being inherently more accepting of differing POVS as opposed to the fact that in young, educated circles leftism is the default and being willing to share right-views necessarily means having to be able to tolerate aggressive pushback.
ToZanarkand
Some day the dream will end
1mo ago
So did the Japanese. Before the invasion of China and WWII, the Japanese were known for being exemplary in their treatment of civilians and POWs. Things can change a lot in a decade or two.
Is there a simple explanation of why the Japanese changed so much in this regard over such a short time period?
ToZanarkand
Some day the dream will end
1mo ago
AFAIK nuclear powers tend to want to avoid proliferation, even among their allies.
think the underlying problem might be not so much that women find stable reliable guys unattractive, it's that largely because of economic changes, it's become harder to become a stable reliable guy than it used to be. It is hard to be stable and reliable if you are struggling just to get a decent job and pay the rent. These days you can't just go to the factory and shake the foreman's hand, now you kind of have to either become a white collar guy or really succeed in the trades. In my experience of observing incel forums, it seems to me that being an incel is highly correlated with also having economic problems. The two share some common underlying causes, like mental illness and shyness. Hence the stereotype of the incel who lives in his parents' basement. Of course, physically attractive people also find it easier to get good jobs, which does not help the truly physically unattractive subset of the incel population.
I'm skeptical there's much of a correlation between economic stability and sexual success (at least at the levels of wealth that account for more than 99% of us i.e. not a millionaire). There's a reason the stereotype of the broke, loser man who cheats on his wife/has children with multiple women he owes child support to exists and it suggests that for all their problems, getting laid isn't the main problem for this kind of figure.
The reality is that most guys, reliable or not, are getting laid (at least during some periods of their lives). Genuine incels are a small group and people talk about them as if they have much more impact than they do (case in point, the suggested UK policies that this whole thread is discussing).
ToZanarkand
Some day the dream will end
1mo ago
If that group of males is dropping out of the social system, then the only males you have remaining are either the Andrew Tate types or the totally progressive bought-in types.
Most guys do get laid and have relationships, without being Tate-types/Chads or simps. There are lot of normal dudes with normal romantic lives out there.
ToZanarkand
Some day the dream will end
1mo ago
I’m having a hard time finding what is currently done about “political Islam.”
My understanding is that authorities tend to try and build relationships with relatively moderate figures in Muslim communities, to try and encourage/help them redirect younger members away from particularly radical (i.e. ISIS-level) influences.
What should be illegal is incitement to crimes. I am sure that this is already illegal in the UK. "Blow up Parliament for Allah", "Rape some bitches to protest against wokism", "Kill a cop to bring forth the dictatorship of the proletariat" are not protected speech, if anyone posts them on their facebook they would quickly be removed and the poster charged.
While this may be legally true (IANAL), in reality this is very dependent on the person making the incitement. Muslims and other minorities effectively have legal privileges that include making exactly the sorts of statements you give with no repercussions.
ToZanarkand
Some day the dream will end
1mo ago
Very interesting stuff.
ToZanarkand
Some day the dream will end
1mo ago
My admiration for the guy keeps increasing.
ToZanarkand
Some day the dream will end
1mo ago
The London Met Chief Commissioner had an interview last week, where he said:
We will throw the full force of the law at people. And whether you’re in this country committing crimes on the streets or committing crimes from further afield online, we will come after you.
I'm not sure I understand this last bit. How exactly is the London Met going to "come after" Elon Musk? Or is this some weak-sauce "we'll charge him with a crime if he ever comes here"?
Fairly likely, I imagine. It seems that the west has treated them lightly so far out of fear of doing anything that might result in civilian casualties, which I don't think Trump will be too concerned about.
I couldn't say.
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