anon_
17hr ago
I think the simple explanation is that society generally condones or at least tolerates porn “actresses” making large amounts of money because people generally understand that such women are condemning themselves to social damnation with assumptions about their reputations that may very easily turn out to be naïve and thus deserve to be at least financially well-compensated by simps whom society considers to be loser chumps anyway.
This isn't even true. Most porn stars make less -- it's a steep pyramid.
It's the same with kids that want to become soccer stars or football greats -- sure Messi & Brady made $100M a year or whatever, but it's just not representative. Or rock stars or rappers. There is an allure of glamor and a draw of the very top of the pyramid, but the reality is that most live music acts are done in a local dive bar for barely a few bucks. Some kid in the hood really thinks he's gonna be the next Drake?
This seems like a far more parsimonious explanation about stardom.
anon_
17hr ago
Boy, if only there was a technology that could help with that the movie industry would embrace enthusiastically.
anon_
17hr ago
Buddy, you can't tell people to shut up.
in a lot of cases, consumers stopped buying the Big Mac because it was outlawed
Yes. This is a problem on the regulatory side. And I'm very sympathetic to the claim that a given regulation (say, for backup cameras or whatever) has an unfavorable cost/benefit ratio -- in many cases it's absolutely true. So it's completely valid to say that shitty regulation makes things more expensive, but that isn't inflation.
anon_
1d ago
Right, but that doesn't change the fact that the car is now, in fact, more expensive than it was before, which is what a measure of inflation is supposed to capture.
Inflation is supposed to compare like-for-like. You can't switch from a Big Mac to a NY Strip and call it inflation, it has to be a fundamentally comparable good.
But if you're a member of the Rent Food Gas class, you have been getting obliterated.
anon_
2d ago
But the previous option is not available. The real cost of car ownership went up, even if that's not, strictly, "Inflation."
Well not really. It moved from one kind of cost (some probability of splattering your brains on the steering wheel) to another kind of cost (at most 2% at most the cost of a new car).
There was never getting around the cost.
anon_
2d ago
I think the smart thing if you're a trans professor and someone does this is to give them a B- and let some cis professor fail them in the next level class up.
Giving them a zero is just taking the bait.
anon_
5d ago
The Supreme Court wasn't very receptive to Trump's argument that he can apply vast tariffs based on a thin (but extant, I suppose) Congressional mandate.
Indeed, it's probably worthy of a larger post, but I think the Court could really lean into the Major Questions Doctrine as an important way of correcting the vast indifference of Congress to actually governing.
So I don't know what happens to all those trade deals, to be honest.
anon_
5d ago
I'm not talking about the mythical never-Trump Republicans, but suburban moderates, swing voters, and independents. I've pointed this out before, but Mt. Lebanon, a wealthy Pittsburgh suburb, used to be reliably Republican area and, while it had been shifting leftward for several years prior, the emergence of Trump turned it into the kind of place with rainbow flags and "In this house we believe" signs.
I guess we'll see if this translates to any real power dynamic within the Demcoratic apparatus, or whether they will triple down on hard wokism.
Republicans had a massive chance when the US decided it was fed up with that shit, I guess we'll see how much of it they squandered.
anon_
5d ago
And this is where we get to see how much the edgy millennials get to determine conservative discourse in opposition to the kind of old school Christian types
anon_
5d ago
You should probably look at this guy’s entire life.
Whatever Bohacek is, “progressive” ain’t it. You’ve lost the plot.
anon_
7d ago
Maybe. But this was a man whose vote was apparently needed. So retarded or not, his view on it matters.
It really would be nice if our leaders could decide not to shoot themselves in the foot. Just once.
anon_
7d ago
I understand how the euphemism treadmill works.
Using terms that are considered slurs today, regardless of whether it's a slur in decades since or hence, is a flex by the edgy -- an attempt t demonstrate that they don't recognize that social norm and can't be made to.
anon_
7d ago
It took me a while to realize this was anti-abortion advocacy.
I'm not really sure it is. Or at least I think the pro-choice advocacy position here is that they too wish they could push a button to make them all better. I think you part ways only on what to do when we cannot do so -- when the kid is not going to be all better no matter our best efforts.
anon_
7d ago
at the expense of another human's entire existence.
I'm reasonably sure (at least as far as these things go) that one of our close friends didn't have a planned 3rd and 4th kid after the 2nd was profoundly disabled.
Anecdote isn't data of course.
anon_
7d ago
I'm quite sure Trump refers to things as stupid and idiotic on a weekly basis.
Some parts of the iconoclastic euphemism-treadmill-go-brrrr contingent wants to recast the word 'retarded' as a synonym for 'very stupid'. That doesn't make it so.
anon_
7d ago
The real meta-meta joke is that she talks to children the way she would condescend to adults, instead of regarding them as unformed people that will one day bear profound moral and social responsibility.
anon_
7d ago
Well, at the risk of being the bearer of unwelcome news, I don't think the stout Indiana conservative-conservatives and the edgy alt-right conservatives are gonna ever seen eye to eye. Bohacek can no more respond with ironic detachment than Trump can issue an apology -- it's not in either man's nature. And that's the intra-right generational fissure, which now that the right is ascendant, is arriving exactly on cue.
Of course you're absolutely right that it's an unforced error to do something that exposes that rift in his own coalition.
Ultimately, retarded children give people the ick, including leftists and Democrats.
True, but I think it cuts the other way when the GOP wants to elevate to prominence people that wouldn't terminate over it. Recall the old "what's the different between Sarah Palin's mouth and her vagina" joke.
anon_
7d ago
It’s both very small and very large at the same time. Are talking about the man’s daughter.
anon_
7d ago
Whenever I go to a restaurant where (rich, high earning, often at least moderately intelligent) clientele are dressed like disgusting slobs, which is almost all of them, the reason for their slovenliness is because of a decline in standards.
That may have been true a quarter or half century ago. Today, it's more of a counter-signaling thing. It's the exact same mechanism -- dressing like crap while sitting courtside is an impossible-to-forge signal of status.
OTOH, I do strongly agree we can go back in on broken windows for antisocial offenses. But hassling people for wearing sweats isn't coming back.
anon_
7d ago
If everyone has the time and money to visit some beautiful beach on a tropical island paradise, how pleasant will that beach end up being? If everyone can afford a Bugati Veron, what will the rich do to show off?
Those are different examples! The experience of a beautiful beach with lots of colorful fish isn't a status good. It's a good-in-itself-good.
And maybe if you love racing your supercar, it could likewise be. But if you're showing it off for clout, it's now a different class of good.
anon_
7d ago
If you thought US politics could not get more (figuratively) retarded ... you'd be wrong.
Apparently Trump called Tim Walz (among other things) a (figurative) retard. Walz is pretty dumb but is not (medically) a retard. But Michael Bohacek has a daughter with Down's and apparently he's it went over poorly enough to derail the GOP redistricting effort.
[ An interesting parochial aside here is that decades of abortion politics has made Down's a bit of a CW item. And Indiana was among the first to react to Dobbs writing a ban that not only doesn't except Down's (only lethal anomalies count) but in a (laudable) fashion, it specifically un-excepts it. ]
My (subjective) take is that Bohacek's stand seems noble in a wildly-out-of-time kind of way. Like we're back in the 80s/90s and mainstream conservatism was still broadly anti-transgressive while the left was about iconoclasm. But I suppose also that 'family over politics' is not a value that either party is willing to endorse -- certainly not the scolding types gloating about talking down to their transphobic uncle at thanksgiving.
anon_
7d ago
Another slight problem is the status differential. A hundred K back in 1959 puts you in a different social status for the day than that amount would today.
No doubt on the relative status, but that's kind of the question -- how much would you really sacrifice for relative status.
Most Americans could retire abroad for a song. They don't, because relative status isn't all they care about.
I think you’ll have to forgive that the industry that could benefit from it as decided to obstruct it.
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