VoxelVexillologist
Multidimensional Radical Centrist
No bio...
User ID: 64
VoxelVexillologist
Multidimensional Radical Centrist
4mo ago
Isn't the placement of the Roosevelt in the line of fire shooting down anti-ship missiles with even more expensive missiles already a "long and costly quagmire"? International shipping is effected, but we're choosing to ignore it because it would question our Glorious Leadership's choices a couple years back. It would make The Good Guys look bad.
I'm not even dead set that action is necessary, but if it were it should look more like Operations Praying Mantis or El Dorado Canyon (one-time, rapid, hard strikes), not Iraqi Freedom.
VoxelVexillologist
Multidimensional Radical Centrist
4mo ago
The Shia were supported by Saudi Arabia, the Sunnis by Iran. In any case, despite great odds against them, the Shia group (known as the Houthis) were able to hold out. Today, they control the capital and most populous regions of Yemen.
I'm not the most familar with the story here, but I'm pretty sure the Houthis are the Iranian proxies. The Saudis were fighting a war with the Houthis until the Biden administration removed their designation as terrorists and loudly brokered a ceasefire. While I'm not going to question that terrible humanitarian things were going on, this seems like another example of poor statecraft by Biden (or his advisors) coming home to roost. The choice to weaken sanctions on Iran sure has made everyone involved play nicely.
I really don't like violence. It's always a terrible option, but it does feel like for all our advanced weapons (see "Prosperity Guardian"), we -- or at least our current leadership -- are unwilling or unable to actually bring them to bear to serve The Greater Good (or at least Pax Americana, which I'd argue is a pretty great good) against various powers that largely sell themselves as fetishistic death cults, because someone might get hurt. I don't like people getting hurt. I really don't. But to allow the enemies of Peace-Loving Western Civilization to dictate the terms of conflicts because of it might produce some tearjerking journalism seems like it's demonstrably causing worse outcomes for everyone.
It seems to me with a growing frequency that a willingness to wield The Big Stick and strike back hard, rather than dribbling out anti-materiel strikes peacemeal might sometimes be a better strategy. If you want to put "Death To America" on your flag and take pot shots at US-flagged warships, nobody should be surprised when we return the favor. In spades. If you want to invade foreign nations, why should we trickle in aid while the body counts stack up? At some point, it saves lives to swing the stick around more heavily: say, mass forces at the border, issue an ultimatum to withdraw, or we send you Back to God. If you want to take American (or Western, more broadly) citizens hostage, you should be prepared for a reckoning from a civilization that cares about its own -- because that's what I'd want my leaders to do for me in that situation.
But that doesn't seem to be the times we live in: our mealy-mouthed leadership, and to be honest, a decent fraction of the electorate, seem more interested in de-escalation and appeasement even at the cost of actual peaceful outcomes. It doesn't feel like it's working: it feels like we're spending lots of effort tracking local focus groups opining on faraway violence and choosing the action that polls best, and pat ourselves on the back while conflicts simmer and boil over.
I'm not here to endorse any particular candidate or platform, merely voicing frustration. I don't want an aggressive foreign policy, but I'm also tired of what feels like peaceful overtures being taken advantage of.
VoxelVexillologist
Multidimensional Radical Centrist
4mo ago
You know, it would be interesting to at least entertain some of there structural differences as possible reforms to the American system. I know some towns love the local control of their police -- ticket revenue, quiet suburbs with fast response times, and so forth. What would folding them all under (partial?) state-level control look like? Or standardizing the training and professionalism? Intentionally shuffling officers around might improve uniformity and make corruption more difficult (although I suppose that didn't work for the Catholic clergy). Or enforcing weekly gun training -- not just firing and handling, also rapid decision-making.
But I also realize that I'm not knowledgeable enough to have confidence in any of these. Is there literature or trial studies for making these sorts of changes?
VoxelVexillologist
Multidimensional Radical Centrist
4mo ago
Knowing nothing but the "I rebuke you in the name of Jesus" quote, it reads to me as a threat (likely very dependent on tone). It comes across like trying to cast out a demon, and search results show no shortage of crazy (psychosis, often drug-involved) people who have engaged in violence to do so.
If someone yelled that at me randomly, I would at least be alert that violence might follow.
That said, leaving would have seemingly worked too.
VoxelVexillologist
Multidimensional Radical Centrist
4mo ago
because cops signed up voluntarily for a job whose description involves something about keeping the peace and protecting society, and random weirdos did not.
[puts on libertarian fedposting hat]
Now, I was told we live in a society. Us random weirdos have obligations to each other: if I refuse to give my money to the Feds and hole up in a cabin in the woods bothering nobody (and maybe sawing off shotgun barrels, it's not quite clear), they'll happily show up with guns to shoot my family to make sure that I pay my income taxes pound of flesh. I didn't sign up for that! I didn't sign up for the violence inherent in the system!
[takes off hat]
It is at least interesting to me that many of the same folks that have very strong opinions on what the very wealthy (most consistently defined as "wealthier than the speaker") owe to the rest of us also seem to think that everyone other than the very wealthy owe basically nothing to each other. You know, like not initiating physical violence.
On the gripping hand, I haven't watched the full video, but I don't understand why police have, in several instances like this, seemingly avoided just extracting themselves from the situation: as far as I can tell, nobody (else) was thought to be in danger, and just leaving (maybe coming back in the daylight) would have de-escalated.
VoxelVexillologist
Multidimensional Radical Centrist
4mo ago
For context, 1045 people is about 9 days worth of US traffic deaths.
Ironically, in our rush to deem police as morally bad in 2020, traffic deaths rose from 10.99/100k in 2019 to 12.89 in 2021, around 8000 additional deaths, with no appreciable change in total miles traveled. It's pretty clear to me (and anecdotally, comes up in conversation occasionally as generally accepted) that they basically stopped enforcing traffic laws at the time, which has lead to more deaths than if police killings dropped to zero. And the number of murders went up quite a bit too. I'm fairly confident that, overall, Black Lives Matter has a negative count of (Black) lives saved, but I'm glad (/s) they feel good about their advocacy.
IMO one of these cases where systems are more complicated than they seem. Something about Chesterton and fences, even though I think there's substantial room for improvement in how we do policing and criminal justice overall.
VoxelVexillologist
Multidimensional Radical Centrist
4mo ago
You're not wrong, but having the foresight to actively setup recording is something non-obvious that may have been overlooked, or even not part of the standard procedure. Do they have a history of recording, and only this one is absent (see the Watergate tapes)? On the other hand, I could point to NASA where "lock the doors" is a planned procedure where in case of incident nobody leaves without a full debrief, and no data wanders off to be missing later.
Given that (publicly known) security incidents under USSS supervision are rare (when was the last one?), perhaps they've not spent much time on post-incident data retention procedures. At a bare minimum, this seems like a good time to demand these changes (recordings, debriefings) after incidents going forward.
VoxelVexillologist
Multidimensional Radical Centrist
4mo ago
I seem to remember "Cancel culture does not exist" being a thing at the tail end of the BLM2 riots, but before Biden got elected.
There have been plenty of writers advocating that position, but I'm not sure it's really distinct from the classic "it doesn't exist, but it's good actually" argument. It would amuse my internal memeplex if it started getting quoted back to the the cancelled who were previously cancellers, but I'm not sure that includes the lady from Home Depot.
VoxelVexillologist
Multidimensional Radical Centrist
4mo ago
The real question was how much blood should be taken, with most responses landing somewhere between "massive" and "infinity".
To play Devil's Advocate for a bit, I'm not sure the answer should be zero either. The historical parallel that comes to mind is the difference in long-term outcome between WWI and WWII. Germany lost both, but at the end of the first hadn't really suffered any major damage to its infrastructure or civilian population, since the front lines were mostly beyond their borders. Belgium and parts of France certainly got hit hard, but I can't help but look at how the second war weaved its narrative around the aftermath of the first: Versailles was unfair, but wasn't even fully enforced, and a generation later Germans were thinking not that the lesson to take away was that simultaneously fighting Russia, France, and the UK was doomed to failure, but that "this time, it'll be different." But the lesson from the second, even before the country was split among occupying forces for several generations, was (loosely) "nothing we could have won would have been worth it."
I can't help but think that to at least some extent, history teaches the costs of the war need to be at least plausibly fairly distributed to discourage revanchism. And I think that could easily be applied to the Culture War: yes, that absolutely sucks for the victims, but ensuring a long-term stable peace is plausibly cheaper than the short term concerns here. Giving one's opponent, after they've inflicted a serious beating, a chance to tap out before getting hit back seems like a recipe for convincing enough people that it might be worth it to try again later.
On the other hand, I don't wholly endorse this view: I generally side with Asimov that "Violence is the last refuge of the incompetent." But I don't think the idea is completely meritless either.
VoxelVexillologist
Multidimensional Radical Centrist
4mo ago
I think the honeymoon phase for politicians ends pretty quickly once real policy changes are being proposed. It's easy to present oneself as a reasonable, upstanding figure that wants what's best for everyone. It's much harder to keep that image when tough choices have to be made.
Voters can agree that the status quo sucks, but in aggregate hate any suggested changes to it. I don't think the honeymoon will continue once Harris has had to clarify her positions on immigration, inflation, the Middle East, and Ukraine. Thus far she's mostly been hiding (or perhaps forced to hide) behind Biden's positions, and there is no combination of views there that satisfies all the left's core constituencies.
VoxelVexillologist
Multidimensional Radical Centrist
4mo ago
Serena does have four Olympic Gold medals for the US, but Phelps has something like 28 total medals. There is something patriotic I can't quite pin down to getting the national anthem played so many times.
On the other hand, the 1980 US Hockey team gets lots of press and movies, and comparatively little goes to Eric Heiden who won the other five American gold medals that year. Sometimes I can't explain the zeitgeist well.
VoxelVexillologist
Multidimensional Radical Centrist
4mo ago
Medicaid sucks and is a pain in the ass but a lot of places have staff whose job it is to navigate those things for the patient, and the specific way the suck happens sometimes makes it simple at least.
This isn't wrong, but I think there is a lot of low-hanging fruit to improve these systems by reducing their complexity: is there a common application for Medicaid, SNAP, and free school lunches? Section 8? Can we align the the means testing thresholds to eliminate benefits cliffs?
I've gotten the sense in the past that anyone really capable of wrangling all the different systems as they are intended probably has to have it together well enough to have the ability to hold down a job paying well enough to disqualify them from the benefits.
VoxelVexillologist
Multidimensional Radical Centrist
4mo ago
IMO Michelle Obama is particularly popular because she has never presented herself as a particularly partisan figure. That serves really well in the role of FLOTUS, but I think the luster would quickly be lost once voters disagree with her on issues. Also I think a nontrivial subset of American voters really hate the idea of political dynasties.
VoxelVexillologist
Multidimensional Radical Centrist
4mo ago
5% allotted to indigenous communities
I am legitimately curious who "indigenous communities" here refers to: I usually associate that term with first world countries with guilt complexes around historical events. I may be ignorant of regional events, here, but I'm not quite sure who this means, and what they were present before.
VoxelVexillologist
Multidimensional Radical Centrist
4mo ago
Give it a few years. In the short term, they're probably focused more on anti-drone countermeasures, and adding IFF to that raises the complexity beyond "shoot down all drones."
On the other hand, I think laser-based anti-drone systems are probably going to start appearing in all sorts of places like this within a couple years.
VoxelVexillologist
Multidimensional Radical Centrist
4mo ago
IMO letting it be really obvious that he's letting the interns write the tweets is a bad look, especially given the widespread questioning of his competence. Jokes like that on social media are -- checks notes -- not something I'd expect someone of his current verbal wit to do, and don't seem very "Presidential" either.
VoxelVexillologist
Multidimensional Radical Centrist
4mo ago
the procedures involving the Speaker and Prez pro tem succession are hilariously dumb and would cause a ton of chaos if they actually saw use
Gerald Ford isn't the most fondly remembered (although we did name an aircraft carrier after him), but managed to serve as President without being elected on a national ballot. Although I believe he was elevated to VP from Speaker and then subsequently to President.
VoxelVexillologist
Multidimensional Radical Centrist
4mo ago
Has anyone started taking bets on whether Biden pardons his son on (or before) his last day in office?
VoxelVexillologist
Multidimensional Radical Centrist
4mo ago
I think SCOTUS is skeptical of its self-appointed claim to be a heretofore undocumented fourth branch of government.
VoxelVexillologist
Multidimensional Radical Centrist
4mo ago
I have long thought that it would have been completely reasonable for Biden to try to negotiate a pardon for Trump a la Ford pardoning Nixon in return for a back-to-normalcy sort of proposal. On the other hand Nixon was term limited and Trump was at least in a position to consider running again. Perhaps in return for retiring from political life? It was also a pretty unpopular decision by Ford at the time, but I think in hindsight was probably better for just moving on as a nation.
Although it's not even clear that Trump would have accepted it if offered -- he doesn't seem like one willing to retire quietly. Nor does Biden, who steadfastly refuses to consider dropping out, seem quite as much of a one-term caretaking administration as was perhaps originally advertised, so it may never have been under consideration to begin with.
VoxelVexillologist
Multidimensional Radical Centrist
4mo ago
I think this was a common conservative complaint about Hillary in 2016: the "Copresidents" line was from an SNL skit, but I think it resonated at least as well as the "I can see Russia from my house" (also an SNL quote). If you're so concerned about long-term influence like that, it seems that almost electing a candidate that already lived 8 years in the White House seems like it should also be worrisome.
I don't completely discount your concerns, but Trump will be four years older in 2028.
VoxelVexillologist
Multidimensional Radical Centrist
4mo ago
and the percentage of books written in the last 10 years (much less the last 20) is absurdly high.
I almost certainly can't find it now, but I remember stumbling upon a list of movies or albums like this that was published decades back, probably in an old magazine, and realizing that it had a similar bias that had aged terribly: half of the then-contemporary ones didn't seem to have been mentioned again, but had heard of all the classics.
At least it's not a new bias, I suppose.
VoxelVexillologist
Multidimensional Radical Centrist
4mo ago
Although presumably a Secret Service agent will fire first if they see a gun,
There have been rumors circling that the Secret Service counter-snipers may have been directed not to fire first. At first that seems silly to me, but I think it makes sense in such an environment with constantly-changing scenery, civilians prone to doing all sorts of silly things, and new law enforcement organizations to cooperate with every week.
Yes, "shoot if you see someone with a gun" seems reasonable, and to be honest I'd probably defend it, but I can only imagine that we're only seeing the one(?) false-negative in my lifetime. I don't think I can point to a case where they did shoot first (or at least without a direct credible threat), either, but I can only imagine that given the complexity of the job they've come close to shots that wouldn't sit well with the public more often than they'll ever admit to us (for security reasons, naturally): Local law enforcement went up on the wrong roof, kids playing with airsoft guns, an unrelated carjacking a block away from the motorcade, suspicious-looking camera equipment, and so forth. It's pretty clear they don't shoot anybody who breaches the White House fence: that seems to happen regularly, even toddlers, and the optics from that would be terrible.
VoxelVexillologist
Multidimensional Radical Centrist
4mo ago
I am loosely of the opinion that we've already passed the maximum likelihood of civil war in this generation. If anything, the Culture War as a broader battle seems to be calming down, although this particular incident perhaps points the opposite direction. Both sides seem to have reached a point of being too tired of apocalyptic rhetoric to be energized by their own positive attributes: last I checked, both candidates have higher unfavorable polling numbers than favorable numbers.
More broadly, I'm coming around to a personal hypothesis that the introduction of the Internet as a social medium is starting to have run its course. We had a good couple decades where it was almost the exclusive domain of the young and well-educated, decaying September by September as normies have gradually settled the digital frontier. For a while, the discourse was Blue (with a strong helping of Techno-Libertarian) because the population was more generally. And as that faded, left-partisans were able to evaporatively cool dissent (cancel culture) in the space to maintain the partisan atmosphere. But evaporative cooling only works so far: at some point it cools to the point where people start noticing that the emperor has no clothes: I think we saw the peak of this in 2016, where the strongest efforts of blue partisans weren't able to completely ban online red-tribe rallying points. The Internet can no longer be maintained as a partisan territory for either side.
And I think that's generally still true. The forced-to-be-online interactions of 2020 seem to have had major effects: renewed efforts to ban red-tribe online spaces and such, but forcing everyone online doesn't really change that evaporative cooling is played out. Instead, it seems like the period of rapid social (and possibly also economic) change that the Internet has wrought seems to be coming to a close.
It's not the best-supported hypothesis, but it seems plausible enough for me.
I think this is a fundamentally hard question: "How do we design the system to give incentives to maximize the robustness of infrastructure in the public commons?". I don't have a complete answer here, but it's easy enough to point to failures on both sides of this sort of thing: there has been no shortage of major incidents stemming from unpatched systems on the Internet. This seems like the first major incident in which the systems we put in place discourage that (automating the rollout of security fixes) have, themselves, failed.
I don't think a perfect solution exists today. The NIST guidance to keep your systems updated and install AV is better than nothing, but no checkbox-based system is really substitute for a good head on one's shoulders aware of what's going on. I think there is good discussion to be had about what the rules and incentives should be, but unless your system is "hire smart, capable, competent people", and really even then, I don't expect perfection. And honestly, our really smart, capable people are probably better utilized working on harder problems than IT security for non-life-critical systems.
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