VoxelVexillologist
Multidimensional Radical Centrist
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User ID: 64
VoxelVexillologist
Multidimensional Radical Centrist
2mo ago
I don't always find myself agreeing with the most radical egalitarian types, but I can at least accept their viewpoints. We've largely broadened the definition of "woman" to include anything a man can do (specific corner cases, maybe not). But they weren't really successful, as far as I can tell, at broadening the definition of "men". We haven't really increased the acceptance of men in caregiving roles, or even wearing traditionally women's attire -- the reverse pant suit, as it were.
I'm not planning to do it myself, but "I'm not a trans woman, I'm a man wearing a perfectly egalitarian dress. Don't assume my gender. " would at least be an interesting wrench to throw into the debate.
VoxelVexillologist
Multidimensional Radical Centrist
2mo ago
On one hand, I appreciate the decorum of not politicizing national cemeteries. On the other, I appreciate your Constitutional argument, and it seems like we live in a time in which everything ("the personal," as the kids say) is political. Most wouldn't object to the President attending a ceremony at Arlington and giving a speech (indeed, this seems like a pretty regular occurrence), and the Right seems to have dug up campaign ads he's used in the past featuring national cemeteries. If we're not careful, the rule will quickly spiral in practice into "the President's political opponents are not allowed to attend ceremonies on public grounds," which feels very autocratic.
In practice, I don't really come off liking either side here: Trump seems to be pulling a political stunt on hallowed ground. On the other, Biden seems unbothered to attend to the families of soldiers sent to their deaths on his orders three years ago. I haven't read Trump's remarks, so it's possible the only direct politicizing was implicitly by Biden's absence, although from what I know of the man that seems unlikely.
Honestly, I am, for once, appreciating that other countries like the UK have a (mostly) non-political head of state (The Queen) that can attend to such things.
VoxelVexillologist
Multidimensional Radical Centrist
2mo ago
Like the social roles associated with women that aren’t on some level arbitrary are the ones a male-sexed person can’t perform anyways.
It's worth noting that there isn't broad agreement about what these differences in gender roles are. As far as I can tell, the entire war between trans activists and radical feminists happened because a specific sect of feminism denies that there is (or ought to be, at least) a difference between those gender roles. If women can be, say, firemenfighters, there isn't a distinct "men" gender role to mismatch with your mechanical parts, and so from their perspective the entire idea is nonsensical.
VoxelVexillologist
Multidimensional Radical Centrist
2mo ago
Somewhat related: I know a few couples for whom legal divorce and living together filing separate taxes would be a decent federal income tax break (this can be the case for dual-moderate-income families). But I know nobody who has actually done this, even if it has come up in conversation, and even if only on paper and remaining "married" in a common-law and spiritual sense.
VoxelVexillologist
Multidimensional Radical Centrist
2mo ago
It's pretty apparent even in English: the retcon split the adjectives male and female as "sex" from the nouns man and woman as "gender". There isn't really a way to describe a "gendered" person with a specific job -- "woman doctor" doesn't roll off the tongue.
I suppose this is excluding grammatically gendered nouns like actress or aviatrix that are becoming increasingly archaic at this point, although that may be the result of the proto-wokeness of last century.
VoxelVexillologist
Multidimensional Radical Centrist
2mo ago
I saw one of those set out with bulk trash pickup a few months ago. Wasn't sure if it was someone moving or a legitimate vibe shift, but it was memorable.
VoxelVexillologist
Multidimensional Radical Centrist
2mo ago
The taxes, are different, although the people that make up corporations are still responsible for their own taxes and serving in the military. The Defense Production Act allows the President to require businesses to accept and prioritize contracts for "critical and strategic" goods, which is at least related.
VoxelVexillologist
Multidimensional Radical Centrist
2mo ago
Organizations often have privileges beyond those granted to individual members.
Could you elaborate on what these privileges are? Because the obvious ones that come to mind are limited liability, which has some limitations and regulation regarding group formation, and tax advantages for nonprofits, which come with restrictions on governance, actions, and even speech -- 501(c)(3) organizations are largely prohibited from political action in favor of candidates.
Because "the combined group has more resources" is true, but seems pro-egalitarian: pooling resources allows larger expenditures (TV ads! Blimps!) that would only otherwise be accessible to the Musks and Bezoses of the world.
VoxelVexillologist
Multidimensional Radical Centrist
2mo ago
Literally the current president and de-facto head of the Democrats told a primarily-Black audience that now-considered-milquetoast Mitt Romney would "put you all back in chains." The idea that whomever the Republicans field will get demonized as fascist and slavery-adjacent is not wrong, but you've also got a point that in many ways Trump is an exceptionally bad, although IMO not a guaranteed loss, candidate in 2024. I sometimes think that if the Republicans found a good candidate, someone Reagan-esque in all the right ways, that the DNC would be completely unprepared. But at this point it's not obvious who that would be in the next cycle.
VoxelVexillologist
Multidimensional Radical Centrist
2mo ago
I don't have much evidence to support this, but my gut feeling -- which is probably representative of the voters that the politicians are at least a bit responsible to -- is that this will depend on context quite a bit. An American citizen arrested for "hate speech" that happens in Europe and is relevant to European politics (say, participating in a riot in the UK) would be treated very differently than an American tourist arrested for something they posted in America on Twitter last year.
Extraterritorial jurisdiction is complicated and probably doesn't have broad support on either side of the Pond. Europe complains when the US does it, too: the entire Assange extradition thing wasn't, from what I can tell, particularly popular in Sweden or the UK.
VoxelVexillologist
Multidimensional Radical Centrist
2mo ago
In reality, everything that the EU wants Durov to remove from Telegram is stuff Musk’s X already does remove and is happy to remove if a takedown notice is filed.
As someone who's never used Telegram, to what extent do you think this is due to right-leaning Western content, versus its affiliations and use by the Russian military and PMCs?
VoxelVexillologist
Multidimensional Radical Centrist
2mo ago
I think that almost exclusively is going to depend on how many voters would be incensed or placated by that decision. Biden's supporters are perhaps more sympathetic to Griner than Trump's, but Gershkovich is a WSJ reporter. Musk has -- and I say this as someone who isn't a particular fan of the man -- managed to make himself centrally important to very public facing political objectives (NASA ISS/Artemis, DOD space launch) and employ tens of thousands of Americans in a way that would almost certainly haunt any politician and his or her party stupid enough to not bail him out.
But Musk is also a rather volatile figure and I could imagine quite a few scenarios in which he loses that central importance pretty quickly and becomes unsympathetic to the average voter.
VoxelVexillologist
Multidimensional Radical Centrist
2mo ago
American citizens are arrested abroad for crimes that are not crimes in America all the time, and beyond some vague consular action that occasionally partially (but not wholly) limits a sentence the US is often fine with it.
Sometimes. But sometimes it causes minor diplomatic incidents: the Executive Branch pulled at least a few strings to get Brittney Griner and Evan Gershkovich home. Or five US citizens imprisoned in Iran. The State Department presumably has some judgement in terms of what they consider "wrongful detention," though.
I thought Biden would tone down the culture war and stop petty political bullshit. Didn't appear to happen at all.
I still feel kind of burned by this. The number of obvious self-owns from choosing to wholesale reverse (rather than tone down or moderate) Trump's policies has led to a number of IMHO completely predictable results, from reversing sanctions on Iran and funding UNRWA, to police defunding and demonization, to reversing Remain in Mexico, to promising that this stimulus won't cause inflation. Clearly nobody could have forseen any of these troubles.
And honestly I feel burned enough that, absent some explicit acknowledgement of the failures and a change in direction, I'm not particularly inclined to offer my vote to blithe platitudes. The debate agreement is particularly frustrating, because it seems we'll at best get one debate between a candidate that I don't particularly like (but I at least know where he stands) and a candidate that seems to have a complete absence of policy proposals (excluding the non-moderate ones of her 2019 campaign). Debates would at least provide an opportunity to challenge both candidates as to where they stand today versus four years ago.
EDIT: I am not a betting man, but I would give decent odds that if Harris wins, she'll have a lower approval rating than Biden does now within her first year in office. Partly from a long-term downward trend in approval numbers, and partly because you can't promise a bunch of actually-disagreeing voters the moon Joy! and deliver something that satisfies all of them.
VoxelVexillologist
Multidimensional Radical Centrist
3mo ago
The culture war is a war between collapse and the the truths which maintain industrial civilization.
I think there's some truth to this. But the knife edge between modern industrial civilization and catastrophic failure has always been pretty sharp. I don't think I've ever talked to someone on the inside of any complex structure (government, corporate leadership, engineering) that doesn't characterize the whole thing as being held together by duct tape and baling wire. I think there's a bit of a bias toward seeing that, historically, these systems mostly worked (which is true, mostly) and comparing it to near misses today, which isn't really a fair comparison. Not to say that we can't invest in making systems more robust (We do! And we should!), but the idea that the Incomprehensibly Stable Systems of the past are falling apart is quite the anachronism: we've always been flying by the seat of our pants.
I don't consider it a bad thing, but the examples that come to mind would probably not be easy to explain if the reader hadn't seen the episodes in question. Something like the recurring use of "special" in the episode "Our Mrs. Reynolds" as part of an ongoing dialog between Book and Mal about morality, at least once in the presence of other characters unaware of the context.
EDIT: The famous "I'm always angry" line from The Avengers is probably also an example. As a line, it's cute and quippy, but it lands as the payoff for having spent a decent chunk of the movie trying to keep The Hulk under control: it's a cathartic release in that the anger is well-placed and actually helpful, and also shows that Banner has grown into at least some control of the transition. But in subsequent movies it's basically played for laughs that the two characters in the same body have come to peace -- without the setup, it feels much cheaper to me.
I'm not sure exactly how I'd tie the concepts together, but somewhere here is the difference between spending that money on, I dunno, a bottle of fine wine and drinking it, and spending that money buying capital assets to make bottles of wine. Intuitively to me, it seems like the latter is "better" even if both nominally contribute to (immediate) GDP equally.
But you're not wrong that if we all spend all our money on vineyards and not finished bottles, the vineyard isn't really a productive investment either. There's probably a Russell Conjugation here: "I buy and experience valuable cultural institutions; you spend money on fleeting entertainment; and that guy over there is a drunk buying wine by the case." And maybe someone's culture values paperclips.
I'd be curious if Real Economists have words for this concept.
VoxelVexillologist
Multidimensional Radical Centrist
3mo ago
without feeling the need to insert ironic humor
I frequently see this blamed on Joss Whedon, but I think I've come to the conclusion that it's actually cargo-cult writers trying to capture the "quippy" vibe that his productions are famous for. But kind of like Michael Bay, the imitators fall well short of the greatness of the original. Not to say that Bay is the best filmmaker, but attempts to mimic his style (briefly: "make every single shot as awesome as possible") often don't really manage to make awesome shots, especially consistently.
Having re-watched some of Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Firefly recently, the quips are there, but they're not usually shallow "lol, so random" jokes: they tend to be deeper cross-references to scenes from far earlier in threads that span an episode or more. Imitations of this tend to just drop jokes randomly and assume they'll land, but, done properly, there's an established setup and payoff. I would cite specific examples, but I doubt any of them are well-enough known to make sense out-of-context.
VoxelVexillologist
Multidimensional Radical Centrist
3mo ago
Taxpayers for whom tradable assets make up less than 20% of their wealth will be classified as "illiquid", and can defer payment on gains in the illiquid assets in exchange for paying a "deferral charge" not to exceed 10% of unrealized gains. This charge is paid when the gain is realized
I'm still curious how this is supposed to work for early investors in startups that don't succeed, but post impressive numbers. Say I'm a founder (I'm not) with no other major assets and for one year my share of my startup gets valued at $200M, which triggers this unrealized gains tax. Even if I get this "illiquid" status, I'm going to be assessed a 25% ($50M) tax bill. It's not uncommon for startups, even hugely publicized "unicorns" to fail completely. If the company is forced into a down round next year, and my share drops to $50M, where do I get the funding to pay my tax bill? Is the government going to take my entire stake? What if the company folds and I end up with nothing: do I still owe $50M? Is that a thirteenth amendment violation?
If the answer is "yes" here, I really can't let my assets be illiquid and volatile, lest I find myself unable to pay the tax man at some later date. It's also potentially concerning that triggering Mugabe-esque hyperinflation suddenly becomes a positive (real) revenue stream for the government when every asset is worth $200M or more and gets a 25% annual wealth tax.
And it probably pushes investors into infrequently-valued investments: buy a one-of-a-kind Renaisance masterwork, and how does the government handle that valuation? Supposedly my jurisdiction assesses my real estate property values annually, but I can tell you I've seen pretty substantial divergence between actual sale prices and assessed values over the last few years.
VoxelVexillologist
Multidimensional Radical Centrist
3mo ago
I have wondered if replacing income tax with a tax on expenditures would fix some of these questions. Sure, the rich might accrue huge bank accounts, but money isn't actually useful until it's spent. Something like a flat percentage (or maybe progressive) on anything over the computed cost of living for your family. Sure, this has its own questions: does buying investment assets count? Does it have a negative version of the EITC? Can you pro-rate multi-year expenses? I think you might be able to balance timing expenses pretty reasonably with cumulative lifetime values (math: a conservative vector field, although we could do this with income tax already). How do you deal with cash tips?
Maybe it's more bookkeeping to track expenses, but those are starting to be almost entirely automated systems that could make this feasible. But I'm also not really sure it's a better system, just a different answer to a problem with no ideal solutions.
Small arms alone don't help against tyrants these days unless the tyrants have the gloves firmly on;
I think the Waco and Ruby Ridge stories show that while the state can defeat partisans in battle with small arms, this isn't always a win for the state. There's a convincing case in my opinion that the state lost the wars there: even decades later they're still treating groups like the Malheur Wildlife Refuge standoff and the Bundy conflicts with kid gloves. And even despite that, the government lost most of the resulting court cases even when you'd think there was clear evidence of their case.
Absent a huge swell in public opinion away from small-armed partisans (most obviously: poor trigger control and injuries to uninvolved parties), I think actually rolling out the jackboots might well burn public support faster than it can put down rebellion. And I don't think that's purely right-coded either: I doubt squashing riots in 2020 would have brought a more peaceful resolution there, either. There's a fine, if observably fuzzy, line dividing public support for state violence from denouncement: even the Ma'Khia Bryant shooting was controversial.
VoxelVexillologist
Multidimensional Radical Centrist
3mo ago
tough way to pull off an assassination
My first thought for obvious-but-probably-wrong conspiracy theory is that your missing billionaire disappeared himself intentionally to spend the rest of his days at large. Something like the Carlos Ghosn escape from Japan story.
VoxelVexillologist
Multidimensional Radical Centrist
3mo ago
I have never found a serious source for this in aggregate (probably publication bias), but I have a suspicion that outcomes correlate negatively with funding. It's not hard to look and see that the districts that spend the most per student tend to also be the worst performing overall.
Some of this is higher costs in urban areas, and frequently bad districts can have some really good magnet schools. And I'm also not really of the opinion that this means cutting funding would improve outcomes.
VoxelVexillologist
Multidimensional Radical Centrist
3mo ago
Wait, is wearing ties unhealthy? I've never heard that before, and to be honest I'm a bit skeptical of the claim. Do you have a source?
I chose The Queen as the example because I wasn't really sure if Charles has acquired the same "beloved, apolitical voice of patriotic respect" that she had yet. But I'd be curious to hear from any of his subjects that have an opinion on that.
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