VoxelVexillologist
Multidimensional Radical Centrist
No bio...
User ID: 64
Things with "Made in USA" labels tend to place it pretty prominently, often with a flag or red/white/blue. And they tend to be at least a bit more expensive than the alternatives: there seems to be a bit of an assumption of some economic nationalism going on where those products are seen as "premium".
Of course, economic nationalism is sometimes blamed for causing trade imbalances: "The Japanese market isn't interested in American electronics" is something I remember hearing back when the Japan Takes Over The World trope was running strong. Similar things are sometimes said about China today, too. And I'm not sure how "buy domestic" preference generally squares with the administration's concern about trade imbalance: are they willing to discourage it here, or is the standard being applied potentially unfairly?
VoxelVexillologist
Multidimensional Radical Centrist
1d ago
He applied for asylum from El Salvador in 2019. The immigration judge denied his request for asylum, but granted him "withholding of removal," which specifically prohibited his deportation to El Salvador due to the risk of persecution there
This seems like a pretty nonsensical status that I can't really explain. The guy is from El Salvador, which is then about the only country that could be reasonably expected to take him back for no reason (others would also expect dollars, most likely). I get that there are real concerns about it's criminal justice practices these days (which are maybe better than it's previous murder practices), but I can't really explain this ruling other than an activist judge recognizing that he doesn't actually qualify for asylum but granting him the closest functional equivalent: Surely asylum would apply if he was actually at risk of persecution (on the basis of protected statuses) and applied truthfully for it in the US. Or maybe I'm missing something?
VoxelVexillologist
Multidimensional Radical Centrist
1d ago
Only tangentially related: I wonder if the US is paying any other countries to keep their own citizens imprisoned. I wouldn't be surprised if there is foreign aid for "criminal justice" tied to anti-terrorism laws, for example.
VoxelVexillologist
Multidimensional Radical Centrist
2d ago
In this case, it's not so much "the next town over" as it is "home": the guy in question is a citizen of El Salvador. Although I think there are reasonable asylum claims about how one's own (legal) country will treat them, and maybe even those are sufficiently sympathetic here, but it does complicate the "sent to random country" narrative.
VoxelVexillologist
Multidimensional Radical Centrist
2d ago
BUT I WOULD ONCE AGAIN SUGGEST THAT SUCH PEOPLE CAN PETITION THEIR HOME COUNTRY FOR REDRESS.
Isn't this guy actually Salvadoran? His home country is the one holding him in prison, which might complicate efforts to ask for him back even if the administration wanted to. Unless it's something they explicitly negotiated, it seems a bit odd to argue for jurisdiction. "Please send us this guy of yours you have in prison, we don't think he did anything wrong" doesn't work for political prisoners internationally most of the time.
VoxelVexillologist
Multidimensional Radical Centrist
3d ago
There are apocryphal (unconfirmed) reports that the US launch codes were set to something trivial (all zeroes?) for a long time under similar arguments.
Officer: "Do you have any firearms in the vehicle?"
Me: "Well, some of that is going to be up to interpretation. I have an AR lower receiver in the glovebox, but no other relevant parts. I have an 80% Glock receiver and a Dremel. Six feet of 3/4" steel pipe and a couple of tools that some courts have rendered 'a firearm' in conjunction. And I have a shovel in the back of the truck. And I'm wearing unregistered shoelaces. Sorry, I'm not sure exactly which of those count."
ETA: "I also have the supplies Kirk used to defeat the Gorn in the Star Trek episode 'Arena'. Not sure if that counts either."
VoxelVexillologist
Multidimensional Radical Centrist
3d ago
Historically, the submarine commanders don't have the launch codes.
I believe public British doctrine is that their submarines sail with "Letters of Last Resort" from the Prime Minister in the event of war and contact is lost, which are acknowledged to (potentially) include instructions to retaliate. If the PM chose this option, they'd presumably have the launch codes.
VoxelVexillologist
Multidimensional Radical Centrist
3d ago
What further alarms Russia is that this 10 minute window drops considerably if Ukraine is added to NATO. A decapitation strike against major cities in Russia launched from Ukraine could take as little as 5 minutes.
The distance to Moscow from the northermost portions of Ukraine (500km) isn't that different from the eastern portions of Latvia (600km). The Baltics (and now Finland!) are also substantially closer to St. Petersburg, as are their bases in Kaliningrad and Murmansk. This also doesn't explain why Russia is specifically focusing on Donetsk and the east.
The idea that a western strike could "end them entirely" also seems pretty questionable: it's not like Russia is short on territory for its own equivalent of Minot AFB during the Cold War, or the fleet of ballistic missile submarines.
VoxelVexillologist
Multidimensional Radical Centrist
3d ago
Currently reading My Brilliant Friend. It's been interesting so far; I think I came across the recommendation from Tom Holland on The Rest is History. I don't think I've read non-science fiction in a while.
Recently finished The City and the Stars which I think came recommended here. I was interested in the interesting bifurcation in the concept of transhumanism, which felt pretty relatable as someone aesthetically opposed to non-essential/restorative body modifications. I can see a splinter faction opposing Managed Immortality™ in a nonviolent capacity like the book shows. The overall "We Stopped Dreaming" plot also feels relevant in these times, but it's not the most novel element (see Moana, for a pop culture example).
I had some time while working on a home improvement project recently and made it through a few out-of-copyright LibriVox audiobooks (free, reasonable quality in my experience). Finished Moby-Dick, then started and finished Kim, The Jungle Book, The Man Who Was Thursday (this forum likes Chesterton). I think audiobooks are a great medium for some things, but it's harder to backtrack and re-read parts if your mind wanders or something else happens, especially if your hands are full. I'd estimate it's about 70% as in-depth as normal reading for me.
VoxelVexillologist
Multidimensional Radical Centrist
4d ago
I think think this is a case of "knowing somebody": I know people who have had mortgage contracts to non-bank entities. Sometimes it's family with money doing the underwriting (there's an element of trust here not to be entered into lightly), but some older family have told me about buying a house from its existing owners this way to give them a fixed income to downsize. The latter seems less likely to find in this less-personal age.
Part of the problem is that mortgages are finicky contracts: you have to worry about getting paid (employment, cost of living), and the continued valuation of the underlying asset (2008 anyone? Or just vanilla gross property damage even). It's not a business I'd want to be in privately with the general public.
VoxelVexillologist
Multidimensional Radical Centrist
6d ago
I’ve made converts of friends and acquaintances with recordings of Pavarotti‘s Nessun Dorma, and YouTube clips of Donizetti‘s Cheti, Cheti/Aspetta duet.
Your post intrigues me, and I'd be interested in watching/listening to any specific links you'd care to share. (High) Opera has never been a particular interest of mine, but I do enjoy musical theatre and the occasional Gilbert and Sullivan, so it seems like something I might like with the right introduction.
VoxelVexillologist
Multidimensional Radical Centrist
6d ago
Why did we decide to stop (most) further study of lobotomies? The inventors of the procedure won a Nobel Prize for it! At some point it seems we decided that it wasn't actually worth it, as far as I can tell.
I think it's a hard question, honestly, even before the pediatric ethics complications. How do we decide what experiments are reasonable to run on people? Definitionally, sometimes experiments find negative outcomes, and if we never run such experiments, we never find ways to make things better. To me, at least, there needs to be some level of reasonable confidence on the theory for why a potentially-harmful, irreversible experiment would be likely to succeed, and clear consent to participate.
Medicine isn't my wheelhouse, but the repeated failure to turn what should be lots of test data into verifiable claims of strong evidence suggests that the evidence isn't as glowing as the rhetoric would require. Which colors me cynical about much of the whole movement, but that's just my opinion.
VoxelVexillologist
Multidimensional Radical Centrist
7d ago
They want (liberal) artists to create conservative-inflected art,
If anything, I think they'd be happy with conservative artists making conservative-inflected art, but The Academy has largely destroyed the teaching of traditional forms of (visual) art. Over the last decade or so I've found a decent list of artists whose works I enjoy, but most of them have very mixed advice about "art school" specifically: it's not a great place to learn, for example, traditional painting (landscapes, formal portraits, still life) because "traditional" isn't "cool," and so you see those produce things (uncharitably: ugly schlock) like "CalArts-style" or brutalist architecture that are IMO visually unappealing.
For some reason, the (traditional) music side of the academy seems to have held onto tradition better, although even there "I went to music school. Don't go to music school. Just make music." is a surprisingly common piece of serious advice. And despite not being a huge Rand-stan, The Fountainhead feels fairly relatable here: most of the artists I'd list seem successful because they chose to make what they were themselves were passionate about, not what the zeitgeist told them to. Some of them seem to be doing reasonably well based off their social media profiles. And I really appreciate it, because it's had me take up art as a modest hobby, even if it'd never work for me as a career.
(liberal) historians to write conservative historical narratives,
I think this has largely the same concerns as the artists: the pipelines for traditional publishing are fairly tightly controlled, and while it's possible for non-leftist fiction authors to self-publish, non-fiction has a higher expectation of review. I'm not the biggest reader of history, but my understanding is that nonfiction skews more male than other parts of literature, and I haven't seen modern book reviews of history (say, Scott's review of Hoover) take on a hugely strong left-leaning bent. But your average school history textbook is probably a left-of-center framing.
I definitely believe that AI and automation change the shape of industry over the next 50 years - and yes, the next 5. What I would not bet on (absent other factors, which are plenteous) is everyone waking up the same day and deciding to fire all their employees and replace them with AI, mass pandemonium in the streets.
For one, I'd like to point out that this has been a constant for centuries at this point, dating back to at least the industrial revolution. I was discussing family history a while back, and we have photos of my great grandfather proudly picketing for a union that doesn't exist anymore. That entire profession was gone and the union folded before I was born because of pre-AI "automation" (computers, really). Entire professions have disappeared since WWII because of the spreadsheet — VisiCalc famously sold users on a $2000 Apple II to run a $100 application, in 1979 dollars!
The real question that comes to mind about "AI" in these days is whether this is a rather impactful step change (like the spreadsheet, or the smartphone), or whether this is something else in kind. And I'm somewhat leaning toward the former, and find that arguments for the latter tend to under-sell the impact of major technology changes even within my lifetime; for all the concern about "singularity", exponential growth manages to look pretty similar but lacks the vertical asymptote. But I'm open to hearing other ideas.
VoxelVexillologist
Multidimensional Radical Centrist
8d ago
I don't think Hillary ever claimed the documents in question weren't classified on that basis. And I don't think they were publicly released like these seem to have been. I'm not sure it would have gone more smoothly if she had, either.
VoxelVexillologist
Multidimensional Radical Centrist
8d ago
if a 10K time was fast or slow
Where would you put the threshold for "fast" or "slow"? I run a fair amount, and while I'm definitely not "fast" by my own definition, I have won a race or two when it's a low-key park run or such. I suppose compared to the average American I'm "fast", but my personal mark is "the Boston qualifying time" which continues to be slightly out of reach.
VoxelVexillologist
Multidimensional Radical Centrist
8d ago
even if it didn't involve classified intel
Honestly it should be pretty embarrassing regardless, but the technicalities probably side with the folks in the administration saying it didn't: classified is a distinction largely imposed by executive orders (excluding some unrelated carve outs) and the power to declare a given fact "secret" or not is a power that has long been delegated to some of the people in the chat.
Maybe it should have been treated more sensitively, but the Secretary of State is empowered to decide "this isn't classified" definitively, and everyone else is supposed to follow along.
VoxelVexillologist
Multidimensional Radical Centrist
10d ago
I've certainly heard this opined about high-level political types. In my experience the contractors and low level folks take it pretty seriously, and I know there was a lot of annoyance from those groups in particular about Hillary's email server, for example. There is (perhaps rightfully) a pretty strong view of a two-tier system there.
ETA: I've also heard rumblings that different departments within the government handle things like this very differently too.
VoxelVexillologist
Multidimensional Radical Centrist
10d ago
The boring answer is that "the official channels" require badging through a few locked doors to log into a desktop computer in a windowless room to check email, which isn't very responsive if you're trying to move very quickly across several tiers of organization.
That is a poor excuse, but it seems the most likely one to me. Either that or concern about opsec was minimal given the adversary's technical prowess, but that also strikes me as a poor excuse.
VoxelVexillologist
Multidimensional Radical Centrist
10d ago
I think the text of the laws in question largely date from a time with well-defined "work" and "not work" life spaces, but they're hardly unique to the US. If you're a laptop-class worker, can you "check your email" while on vacation somewhere? I can appreciate that there is a line somewhere before your host country should at least expect you to pay income taxes and such, but a small amount of de minimus work seems pretty harmless.
I follow a number of professional artists on social media, and at least once have seen a post lamenting that following the letter of the US tourist visa meant they couldn't paint a canvas, even for fun, while visiting (a high profile makes legal scrutiny more likely to appear too).
On the other hand, I don't have a specific threshold of "reasonableness" in mind. I'm open to hearing ideas, but "no" is at least a clear answer, and I'm fortunate enough to be able to personally leave work at work when I'm on vacation.
VoxelVexillologist
Multidimensional Radical Centrist
13d ago
There are a surprising number of cricket fields in the couple American metro areas I frequent. Not a ton, but people are clearly investing in them. I suspect a good chunk of the players are South Asians on H1B visas or their relations, but I don't see a problem with trying to evangelize a sport.
VoxelVexillologist
Multidimensional Radical Centrist
13d ago
VoxelVexillologist
Multidimensional Radical Centrist
13d ago
if you're the product of a mixed family, are roughly the same color as Taylor Lautner and have the surname "Lopez" are you hispanic or white?
There have been a number of shifts in the common definition of "white" (which has occasionally gone by other terms like "WASP") that generally get swept under the rug by partisans. In the late 1800s, it didn't include Italians. Catholics more broadly were probably excluded until maybe the JFK administration.
I sometimes wonder if we'd all get along better if we actively tried to culturally expand that definition to include all Americans, rather than focusing on divisive "hyphenated Americans" (a term which dates back to the late 1800s). But it seems an unpopular idea in political activist circles.
I do think that's quite possible, but we lived through a bunch of supply chain snafus in the last five years (toilet paper, unloading at Long Beach, the Ever Given fiasco, Houthis, chip shortages) and I will admit those weren't great times but we did make it through them, and systems (capitalism?) were more robust than at least I expected.
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