Walterodim
Only equals speak the truth, that’s my thought on’t
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User ID: 551
Walterodim
Only equals speak the truth, that’s my thought on’t
3mo ago
Loved everything about it except the Global Warming system
This reminds me that by some standards I have been a global warming denier longer than most people. My best friend and I used to play and laugh at how comically overwrought it was to just have whole tiles going underwater. Like, sure, we can talk about just how much sea levels are or aren't rising, but the notion that during the modern era they're going to just dunk New York City under water always seemed very stupid to me.
Walterodim
Only equals speak the truth, that’s my thought on’t
3mo ago
Are you familiar with walking around money? People don't actually need to be paid very much to do things. There isn't actually much of an attachment to political positions for most people.
Walterodim
Only equals speak the truth, that’s my thought on’t
3mo ago
I think there are also areas that are rural enough and mostly vacant and abandoned where you can form a homeless camp without anybody noticing easily, so there's less pressure to set up in populated areas.
I know people don't much like it as an idea and it's probably not possible to formalize in laws, but this actually is my primary solution to homelessness. I want the police to aggressively enforce rules to chase bums out of nice city parks. I also want them to look the other way at encampments in lightly trafficked areas. My goal isn't to "criminalize homelessness", it's to keep bums out of parks and off of sidewalks.
However, I tend to think that in places where mail-in ballots are the norm, it's not so much of an issue.
On what basis? Vote buying is a common practice and coercion is common all around the world. On the contrary, I think the only thing that has prevented this from turning into a much more obvious mess in the United States is that it hasn't been the norm and the machinery wasn't fully in place to take advantage of such a vulnerable system.
...but America had public ballots up until the 1890's, and that in itself didn't cause any major issues for the country for most that period.
Yeah, and vote buying was famously common! Notably, the husband-wife dynamics discussed in Marcotte's article weren't a problem yet anyway. I don't like Amanda Marcotte, but I think it's pretty obvious that she has a point about spousal coercion.
Walterodim
Only equals speak the truth, that’s my thought on’t
3mo ago
Maybe they do, maybe they don't. I honestly have no idea and I could come up with tolerably plausible stories in either direction. I'll be continuing my quixotic mission of nudging people in the direction of understand what a secret ballot is and why they should care about it for non-partisan reasons. There just shouldn't be anything cynical or partisan about saying that it would be good if everyone voted their own conscience freely and in private without the possibility of coercion.
Walterodim
Only equals speak the truth, that’s my thought on’t
3mo ago
I'd routinely go out every Friday and Saturday night and walk/bike a couple miles through the downtown area to get home at 2-3am completely hammered and nobody ever bothered me. Do you all go out of your way looking for trouble? Do things change when you're significantly older and look like an easy mark?
Some of this seems to be about very small microenvironments and whether you stumble across and into them is quite random. Last year, my wife and I visited Milwaukee. I know Milwaukee pretty well, there are a bunch of areas of the city that aren't great, but I typically think of them as being quite easy to avoid if you have any familiarity with the geography. We went to a basketball game, an event at a brewery, then went out to go grab a takeout pizza afterwards. Thus far, all was well! Nothing to see other than people out having a good time. Maybe a few bums panhandling at a couple streetcorners, but nothing really worth mentioning. After we grabbed our pizza, we thought it would be nice to enjoy it at one of the local parks on the Milwaukee River, which is much more scenic than you might expect. To our surprise, the park that seems pretty nice during the day had dozens of vagrants, a couple of which began yelling at us about our pizza literally the moment we stepped off the riverwalk and into the park. We fled pretty quickly - we both felt like we were in genuine danger, not just uncomfortable with some beggars. I still think the city is a generally nice place to visit, but I have revised my opinion on how attentive I should be at night.
On the other hand, Baltimore really is unusually bad, even compared to other Rust Belt degradation.
Walterodim
Only equals speak the truth, that’s my thought on’t
3mo ago
I'm aware. I'm not being cynical or manipulative when I say that this is a very bad thing and is exactly why secret ballots are an important piece of social technology. Mail-in ballots enable coercion, manipulation, theft, and vote-buying. That this claim is controversial when it's mechanically obvious is a product of partisan propaganda.
This is a drum I've been banging for a while, but what struck me here was Marcotte walking right up the edge of it, even using the words "secret ballot", but not even mentioning the solution.
Walterodim
Only equals speak the truth, that’s my thought on’t
3mo ago
Over at Salon, Amanda Marcotte expresses enthusiasm for secret ballots because of concerns that husbands are forcing wives to vote for Trump:
It's a useful reminder that secret ballots remain secret, even from nosy spouses. But that doesn't explain why the original tweet from Howell went viral, racking up over 8.5 million views and 14,000 retweets. As the comments under the post suggest, most people were envisioning a specific scenario: Thousands, perhaps millions of women, saddled with Donald Trump-voting jerks for husbands, who yearn to give their vote to Vice President Kamala Harris this November. "I think 'secret voting' by MAGA partners is a more widespread issue than most people think," one woman replied. Another man wrote, "As a poll worker, I have had to deal with husbands and fathers who want to join their wives or daughters in the voting booth to 'make sure they vote the right way.'"
She also thinks it would be good if wives used emotional blackmail to control men's votes:
Lenz said she "ended my marriage after the 2016 election" because "I watched someone who said he loved me vote for someone who had been credibly accused of rape and who spoke about women like they were trash." She implored women who disagree with MAGA husbands to ask themselves, "Why am I married to someone who doesn't respect my choices?"
Oddly enough, there is no mention of the issue posed by absentee ballots. These are the tools by which abusive spouses can use anything from cajoling to emotional abuse to outright violence to dictate the votes of those that reside with them. The only way to make sure this isn't an option is returning to the canonical secret ballot, which is in a voting booth where this is no option to show others who you voted for. Notably, this is a protection against other forms of coercion, such as from employers or caregivers.
Marcotte comes as close as I've seen anyone on the progressive side of things has gotten to acknowledging this problem, but somehow elides the solution to this fundamentally solved problem. Kind of interesting dynamic.
Walterodim
Only equals speak the truth, that’s my thought on’t
3mo ago
I thought it's fairly well accepted that what matters for the poverty -> antisocial behaviour is not absolute wealth but perceived relative wealth.
I do not accept this claim. I am sure that many people in polite company articulate as much, I doubt the sincerity of the belief. I have too much experience with people that are obviously relatively poor posing absolutely no threat to me and people who don't seem to be in any particular financial stress being the kind of people I want to avoid. I also don't see a plausible mechanism to go from low perceived relative wealth to just throwing garbage on the ground in your own neighborhood; the more obvious causal chain is that people that lack intellect and impulse control are poor because of their low intellect and poor impulse control, which also leads to their antisocial behavior. People that are poor by circumstance don't engage in the same level of antisocial behavior.
Walterodim
Only equals speak the truth, that’s my thought on’t
3mo ago
One year the guy manning the desk at the hotel straight up stole some of the cash we used to pay for the room, and we didn't realize it until we went to check out and they said we still owed $100 that hadn't been paid up front. Being suburban teens, we were just confused, tired, in a hurry to leave, and dutifully paid again. We didn't realize we were stolen from until we had time on the drive home to talk about it.
On one of my trips to Baltimore, I took a cab somewhere. My buddy and I were in that same boat (a bit older I suppose), but obviously seemed like rubes to our cab driver. He drove the wrong way, I absolutely believe intentionally, running up the fare. I had enough geographic sense of the city that I realized what was happening and hopped out of the car at a stop. My buddy, being even a bit more of a rube than me, was attempting to pay the driver as I was informing the driver what my opinion of him was; I did eventually get him to just get out, but he didn't seem to really get it until I had explained to him that this asshole was stealing from us.
I've been to some low-trust places in the States, but Baltimore is pretty easily number one.
Walterodim
Only equals speak the truth, that’s my thought on’t
3mo ago
In all his many travels, the only place he's ever had a problem was Baltimore. I want to say it was in the last year or two; he stopped for groceries in Baltimore--it wasn't even a destination--and had his window smashed in. He'd left a CD wallet (remember those?) on the passenger's seat of his car, and that was apparently sufficient inducement. I have a hard time imagining why someone would smash a window to steal 30 CDs in the Year of Our Lord Two Thousand and Twenty Two, but then--I have a hard time imagining why someone would smash in any car window that was not, say, between them and a dying person or animal.
As discussed in this post, I had the experience of a junkie getting into my building's garage and smashing every passenger side window. There are some people that really are just terrible enough that they're perfectly happy to trade $200 of your money for the possibility of finding 50 cents in your cupholder. Baltimore has more of these people than most places.
Walterodim
Only equals speak the truth, that’s my thought on’t
3mo ago
This is pretty much my approach as well. I'll addend that if it's both slightly chilly and rainy, and I'm running for a decent amount of time, I'll shift over to accepting that I'll get wet and wearing a wool/tech baselayer that still keeps me warm in the rain. I skip the shell because you just get gross and hot inside it if you're putting in much effort. My favorite gear for this is Icebreaker merino wool, but it's pretty expensive.
If I was doing something like hiking in an Irish winter, I would definitely make sure to bring those wool baselayers.
Walterodim
Only equals speak the truth, that’s my thought on’t
3mo ago
I have decided to assume that anything I say could be connected to my real identity if someone was sufficiently motivated. The result of this is not that I hide spicy opinions, but that I try to only say things that I'm willing to stand by. My life is structured in a way that I think I'm not really cancellable, or at least not for just one malicious actor.
Part of this is just that I kind of doubt I'm competent enough to do opsec that's worth a damn anyway.
Walterodim
Only equals speak the truth, that’s my thought on’t
3mo ago
That's absolutely wild that someone could look at a chart where reasons 3 through 6 are directly stated as housing and slap a label on that says "few cite cheaper housing" as though they've made a serious point. There are basically three reasons on the whole chart - jobs, housing, and family. Surely the poster is just an amateur shitpoaster though, right?
@AzizSunderji
Analyzing American housing at http://home-economics.us
14 years of Strategy Research at Barclays Investment Bank (credit/macro/EM).
OK, seriously, how do "experts" keep being experts in absolutely nothing?
Walterodim
Only equals speak the truth, that’s my thought on’t
3mo ago
Obama was 47, Bush was 54, and Clinton was 46. There has been no "long era of political gerontocracy".
Walterodim
Only equals speak the truth, that’s my thought on’t
3mo ago
I have almost nothing but negative things to say about Kamala Harris and the 2024 Democrat Party and this parallel isn't obvious to me, so no, it is probably not obvious to most people. Perhaps you could elaborate?
Perhaps myasthenia gravis? I don't know, really a stab in the dark. I don't hear any signs of fatiguing through the conversation, which I would expect if there was neuromuscular deterioration. It's just hard to not have age and illness-related explanations pop to mind when we're talking about an elderly guy suddenly lisping when he's never done that before.
Alternative suggestion that I just heard that seems more likely - perhaps a dental issue.
Walterodim
Only equals speak the truth, that’s my thought on’t
3mo ago
NPR brutally fact-checked Trump, finding "162 lies and distortions". I am not here to inform you that Trump is a particularly honest man, but this bizarre tic that news outlets have developed of referring to statements of opinion that they disagree with as "lies and distortions" is wildly unhelpful. Let's look at a couple:
59 “The judge was a brilliant judge, and all they do is they play the ref with the judges. But this judge was a fair but brilliant judge.”
There has been lots of criticism of the judge in the case, Aileen Cannon, who Trump appointed. She had very little experience as a trial judge, made several decisions that were questioned by legal experts and early in this case, had a ruling, in which she called for a special master to review classified documents first, overturned by the 11th Circuit.
What the fuck? OK, you think she's not fair and brilliant, fine, I probably even agree with that, but it's just obviously a statement of opinion rather than an appropriate target for some nerd to "fact check".
91 “They wanna stop people from pouring into our country, from places unknown and from countries unknown from countries that nobody ever heard of.”
Someone has likely heard of whatever the unnamed country is.
Wow, thank god for that fact check. Very serious journalism.
135 “I've never seen people get elected by saying we're going to give you a tax increase.”
Vice President Harris has echoed President Biden’s pledge not to raise taxes on anyone making less than $400,000. However, Biden has called for raising taxes on wealthy individuals and raising the corporate tax rate from 21% to 28% – halfway back to where it was before the 2017 cut. — Scott Horsley
I don't even know what NPR is trying to argue here. Again, perhaps Trump is incorrect in his assessment of the electoral success of promising tax increases, but there isn't some "lie or distortion" there.
153 “She was early, I mean, she was the first of the prosecutors, really, you know, now you see Philadelphia, you see Los Angeles, you see New York, you see various people that are very bad, but she was the first of the bad prosecutors, she was early.”
Although Harris did refer to herself in her 2019 memoir as a “progressive prosecutor,” her legacy has largely been seen as tougher on crime. She has supported some progressive reforms, such as pretrial diversion, which offers certain criminal defendants things like drug treatment instead of going to trial. — Meg Anderson
And on and on and on. These are disagreements, not "lies and distortions". Maybe you think Kamala's great! That she's actually the perfect balance of tough on crime with smart on crime progressivism, that Trump is just too goddamned stupid to understand that, and so on. That's fine! But there isn't a "lie and distortion", there's an actual disagreement.
I'm amazed at just how banal "factchecking" has become. I wouldn't object to this particular piece framed as an argument that Trump is VeryBadActually, but this smug tone intended to reward their readers with the sense that they're hearing serious truths, and that they have precisely calculated 162 lies is incredibly annoying. That figure then gets repeated by figures like Pete Buttigieg as though it's actually a serious empirical measure of dishonesty, furthering the sense that they're the party of facts. Perhaps things have always been this way and I'm just sick of it, but it sure feels like it's getting worse as party apparatchiks try to create an impression of the official truth.
Walterodim
Only equals speak the truth, that’s my thought on’t
3mo ago
I have also seen these reports and man, I have trouble thinking that this stuff isn't fundamentally hollowing out people's humanity in some meaningful way. I can see that being a good tradeoff for people that are destroying their lives with food, booze, or gambling, but eliminating cravings seems almost synonymous with dampening drive and joy.
Walterodim
Only equals speak the truth, that’s my thought on’t
3mo ago
A few years back, a junkie broke into my building's garage and smashed the passenger-side window in every car in the building. Whether his condition was a product of choice or disease really didn't make a whole of difference to me, as where the reality of someone doing ten grand in damage to try to steal fifty bucks seemed pretty salient. If someone else would like to discuss how best to treat them, that'll be up to them, but step one is removing people like this from the general population. If I could get people in power to agree on removing such people from the general population, I would be amenable to pretty much any amount of spending on providing them with high-quality rehabilitation or just permanent incarceration - my interests in not having my windows smashed, my park camped in, and my public square not filled with bums yelling at people. Whatever happens with the junkie downstream of that I will leave to people that care about that part of things much more than I do.
Walterodim
Only equals speak the truth, that’s my thought on’t
3mo ago
...I feel that knowing where that neighbourhood is, at least in very broad terms, is relevant to understanding the complaint.
While I share some curiosity about the matter, I don't know that it's relevant. Have we not all experienced basically the same thing across many different cities? Deranged and drug-addled bums coddled by NGOs that make endless excuses for them aren't unique to a single city. This is so common that it would be more interesting to me if someone called out a city where they've never seen such a thing.
Walterodim
Only equals speak the truth, that’s my thought on’t
3mo ago
From a practical perspective, what's the best self-defense weapon?
From a practical perspective, it depends on the context. Priority one is always going to be avoiding conflict rather than dealing with it when it comes. The order of operations for that are:
- Don't go to dangerous places. Seriously, these are usually pretty obvious.
- Be aware of your surroundings.
- In the event that there is potential for conflict, be ready to deescalate or flee as needed. Both are superior to engaging in a conflict if they are realistic options.
In service of these the advice from @Lizzardspawn below is quite good! Being fit will tend to make you a less appealing target and allow you to flee from most potential conflicts.
If you're thinking about situations where outright preventing conflict is not feasible (e.g. home invasion), the correct weapon is an appropriately suited firearm. The appropriate firearm depends on local risks from overpenetration and the geometry of your property. As a broad generality, you can't go too far wrong with whatever your ergonomically preferred 9mm pistol with hollow-point rounds is. If you have the budget and inclination, my own preference would be a short-barreled, suppressed AR-15 chambered in 300 BLK with subsonic rounds, but this probably not realistic for most people.
Walterodim
Only equals speak the truth, that’s my thought on’t
3mo ago
It's also just absolutely pathetic to go through life with such smug pride in talent level that hasn't actually been expressed with any particular accomplishments to be proud of. Gloating about having a higher IQ or more academic credentials than Musk is the equivalent of someone saying they have a higher VO2max than the Tour de France champion. OK, good for you when you look at the number on your phone, but Tadej Pogacar is a multimillionaire cycling champion with a beautiful girlfriend and you're proud that you can consume a lot of oxygen. I don't even like Musk, but he's obviously just done more than almost every single human being alive.
Walterodim
Only equals speak the truth, that’s my thought on’t
3mo ago
Yeah, to be clear, I'm not arguing with the ban, just the assessment that there wasn't any underlying content. There is an argument embedded in there! Frankly, I even agree with the level of contempt expressed for the commentariat and academic classes, but also agree that it's just not appropriate here.
I watched the Harris speech this morning and wrote down some scattered thoughts. My apologies if any of them don't make sense without having watched, I was just typing a few things up as I watched.
Nice outfit - fairly warm while still professional.
When she mentioned going to Illinois, there was a small cheer, when she mentioned Wisconsin there was a much larger cheer. No one likes Illinois, not even the people that live there.
Talking about the experience of “injustice” is in such bad taste for the child of professors. These are privileged people that found immense opportunity in the United States. I realize that the whole Democrat schtick is playing up how oppressed people of color are, but it’s ridiculous for Harris.
The phrase, “I’ve only had one client - the people” is a fantastic way to spin never having held a private sector job. Good speechwriting!
The line referring to Trump as an “unserious man” is a good line. Trump’s lack of seriousness is obvious to all but his most ardent supporters. This criticism rings as much more on point than all of the Russia conspiracy and “coup” nonsense ever could.
The claim that Trump has an “explicit intent to jail journalists” is just an outright lie.
The callback to her earlier line with “the only client he has ever had - himself” is great speechwriting. Banger of a setup and punchline. Much like the lack of seriousness jab, this rings much more true than all of the dark conspiracy stuff.
The line that the Department of Education “funds our public schools” is pretty weird. It’s not quite literally false, the DoE does spend ~$20 billion on public school funding, but total American school spending is nearly $1 trillion and the vast majority of it is state and local money. Are people under the impression that school funding is a big thing that DoE does or is it just a bit of rhetoric?
Referring to abortion as “decisions of heart and home” is an interesting tactic. Abortion is a huge winning issue for Democrats, but it’s so frequently referred to with euphemisms rather than in the most literal terminology. I’m basically entirely on the same side as Democrats on the issue, which makes it more interesting to me that it tends to come with alternative phrasing rather than just saying what they mean.
Shoehorning every issue into “freedom” requires some downright Orwellian twists. Abrogating the constitutional freedom of the right to bear arms is inverted to “freedom to live without gun violence”. A massive regulatory state creating arcane rules for everything from flow of showerheads to the powertrains of vehicles becomes “the freedom to live free from the pollution that fuels the climate crisis”. I think the framing probably works for people on that side of those issues though.
Claiming that the recent Senate border bill was the “strongest in decades” is a lie. HR 2 from 2023 passed the House and was much stronger but was unacceptable to Democrats. I do understand that this one has become an accepted truth among Democrats though, so it probably plays pretty well. Continuing to push this one requires a fully complicit media, but she can safely rely on that.
The Israel line is politically palatable, but also pretty hollow. Israel has a right to defend itself, but the Palestinian people will get freedom and self-determination - OK, what’s that look like? As near as I can tell, Palestinian self-determination selects Islamist leaders. Islamist leaders want dead Israelis and the land returned to Palestinians from the river to the sea. You can’t solve this problem if you’re not addressing reality. Someone has to actually lose.
Overall, it was a well-delivered speech that tacks towards the middle on most issues. While I am personally not impressed by teleprompter speeches, her tone and clarity were both quite good. Simply being energetic and eloquent is a good look. If I were a Democrat strategist, I would feel good about the speech and consider it a positive step towards victory.
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