anti_dan
1d ago
Do you think you deserved this treatment? The left's long march and resulting political/social power was itself a reaction to decades of similar suppression after all. Is your goal to doom us to cycles of repression?
What? When? Commies were popular in the university from the outset.
anti_dan
1d ago
The incompetence was swiftly acknowledged. Which is why its not going to be a longrunning story.
anti_dan
1d ago
If the center right no longer exists (not true IMO) the center left hasn't for decades. So, I don't see the point of trying to make that point.
anti_dan
1d ago
Live betting is also a space where the books are behind the advanced modelers.
anti_dan
1d ago
You can take a kind of functionalist position and say that Democratic politicians are what they do, and so in 2020 they were radical trans ideologues. Sure. But it doesn't give much insight into how they will respond to changing circumstances.
You have to do the former and be skeptical of the latter, because every Democrat in my lifetime in a major statewide or national race has ran to the center, only to govern far to the left of their campaign positions.
anti_dan
2d ago
The mere fact of your interaction with a woman at that level of intimacy will reveal to you that she is comparatively incredibly weak in the vast majority of such intimate interactions.
This need not be intentional for you, you will simply be stronger. It wont be close. People dont have sex, as a general rule, where the only interaction is the penis penetrating the vagina. Other, non-essential (from a reproductive POV) things happen. They are going to involve legs and arms. If you are the man, your legs and arms will be stronger in almost every instance.
The world records do indicate that women stronger than me do exist. I have never met such a woman. Honestly, I would speculate they likely have what my HS coach called "air muscles". This is a derogatory term for lifters for both sexes and is true. Being strong at weightlifts is only useful if it translates to combat or hay baling. Obviously the best at both are men.
anti_dan
2d ago
Do they also not have sisters and female cousins or friends or moms? Aunts? Grandmas?
Or dads to tell them to be gentle with women?
The levels of ignorance get really deep really fast. As a male, there is some gigantic certainty that you will at some point become much much stronger than the females you are close to. Maybe its your mom who you can pick up with ease at 13 even though she's heavier than you. Maybe its your sister. Older or younger doesn't matter, there are common feats of strength easily observable. Maybe its a cousin. Or an aunt. Maybe all those people and your dad or grandpa told you the importance of "never hitting a woman". Any normal individual understands this, it is because they are fragile. Which is statistically true.
Being a virgin isn't an excuse. You have to be the level of the the guy who wrote the original article to get close to having an excuse. He was all of that plus more.
anti_dan
2d ago
That isn't just more charitable, it is maximally charitable. In the post the OP is talking about the author describes the almost insane and pathological amount of avoidance he had for physical activity throughout much of his life, particularly post puberty. This is a guy who not only didn't participate or watch high school sports; in PE he sat out or walked the track; he had basically no friends, no brothers with girlfriends, and no sisters that he actually interacts with; and certainly no friends of the opposite sex willing to touch him in a playful manner. I dont know if it is a real story, but it is a literal one in a 100 million story sort of thing.
anti_dan
2d ago
Short term the stock market isn't modeling what happens, it is modeling what people think is happening, or what people think people think is happening.
Long term you are dead.
Better to stick to sports gambling if you actually have some sort of prediction advantage. Shorter ROIs, actually clear outcomes.
anti_dan
2d ago
Yes, I think he admits this. He is basically describing a very extreme and uncommon version of Gell-Mann, except without the part where you read about something you know. Or at least that is omitted, because he doesn't talk about knowing the media lies sometimes.
anti_dan
2d ago
This incident strikes me as kind of a perfect banality.
Its one of the most boring "scandals" of all time. What did we learn?
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High level Trump officials use signal instead of, or in addition to regular texts for discussing topics relevant to their job. We already knew they were using something, now we know its signal. Maybe that will change. Maybe it will cause some foia headaches. Overall, big yawn.
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Someone in this circle was incompetent, apparently someone on Waltz's staff. Well, not even really incompetent. He/she basically did a fatfinger and gave the boss the wrong number. Yawn, with an asterisk.
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Vance is less hawkish than the rest of the inner circle relating to defense. Already public info.
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The administration isn't lying in public about thinking Europe is a bunch of weenies. Confirming more public info.
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Jeffery Goldberg is a fabulist that exaggerates. Also already public info.
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Jeffery Goldberg isn't evil enough to leak military information he has until after the OP is done. Honestly, this is new information. Before this story I would have been close to 50/50 on whether he would jeopardize a strike in the middle east for a story.
The only way this story is really A STORY is if 2 is a lie, and this was an op. That is, the staffer is a turncoat, or there was some FBI/CIA/NSA interference that resulted in Goldberg getting added, or something else. So as it is, the story as reported is quite boring. Everyone acknowledged the conversation was real fairly quickly, its contents are basically uncontroversial, and sometimes downright encouraging (I can't imagine Kamala and Lloyd Austin texting about the actual pros/cons of bombing Houthis in a productive and substantial manner). The security flaw, having been identified can now be rectified with either a more secure app, some additional protocols, etc. In the end, the administration got a little lucky, but the great thing about getting lucky is you dont take a loss, and yet you still get to learn LIKE you got a loss. If you are smart. And I think at least a number of people in the Trump admin are smart enough to coach a high school sports team, which is all the smarts you need.
anti_dan
2d ago
Trace also would never survive a DNC primary or a week as a host on CNN. So he is not a good example of the mainstream left.
anti_dan
2d ago
There's a perception that Democratic politicians are particularly fringe or loony with respect to trans issues or immigration and in general they're not. The problem is that the people who are extreme are uniformly Democrats, and that gets projected on to the rest of the party. It doesn't help that these people tend to, by their nature, be the most motivated, loudest, and most likely to get signal-boosted by their political opponents.
Is this actually true? Who was the Democrat governor banning puberty blockers in kids in 2021? Who was the Senate Democrat voting for the wall in 2018? And Biden officials? Come on. They put trans people in multiple positions, had the crossdressing airport thief, and their border policy intentionally massively increased both illegal immigration as well as net of the "asylum claims" that no one actually thinks are legitimate.
anti_dan
3d ago
Well, it only works for protesters who protest in areas where the police and/or the prosecutors are instructed to be friendly to them.
Essentially, this means Blues can protest anywhere they want under this sort of ruleset, because they dont want to protest in the suburbs, exurbs, and rural areas. Because Red voting in cities has been expelled by paramilitaries and general crime they dont have political power in those areas, despite being essential for the survival thereof.
anti_dan
3d ago
Why should we so strongly privilege puberty because it's "natural"? Many things are natural, such as 50% infant mortality rates, dying of a heart attack at 50 or getting prostate cancer by 80.
Because puberty is a necessary step to making babies. Which we need to continue society and the human race. Your other examples are not analogous to puberty because they lack what is, not just a redeeming feature, but an excellent feature of a generally excellent process. Few people in this world were more capable human beings at 11 than at 25, and those few usually had something unusual happen on the way.
anti_dan
3d ago
Sure, just like how homosexuals still aren't "fine" by the lights of plenty of people today. But, again, we can just ignore those people and win over the people who can be won over based on the (lack of) those secondary problems.
But the homosexual community is still struggling with the issue: Turns out they can't ignore those people and instead seem compelled to eradicate them from all public fora. And I think trans advocates are cut of this same cloth. Dissent and debate are lethal to these movements, seemingly, in very similar ways for very similar reasons. Some feelings are good for governing behaviors. Things like the feeling that touching a stovetop hurts is a very good way to avoid severe damage to your limbs. However, these more complex feelings are much more of a crapshoot. Love is notoriously ephemeral. Sexual attraction is less so, but letting attraction have a strong influence on your sexual acts is still a recipe for disaster.
anti_dan
3d ago
There was no catching up on that growth after they quit wrestling. The chip on their shoulder manlet former wrestler stereotype exist for a reason. They were tricked by their coaches into peaking at 15, and sacrificed the stature of an adult and the romantic successes that come with it.
While I am sure there are nonzero examples of this happening in wrestling, you have causation backwards, unless you were at one of a few programs I doubt almost anyone else on this board could name for a very specific time scenario, no one would agree with this.
That is because wrestlers are little because its one of the sports where being little is a competitive advantage because of weight classes. And thus kids get more into it when they are sick of being shoved around by 6'4'' 300 lb guys on the football field or basketball court.
Of course, wrestling is also a much higher barrier to entry sport than either of those. The number of elite wrestlers who did not start very young (or at least in a combat sport very young) rounds to zero, OTOH there are many elite NFL/NBA athletes who picked up the game as high school freshman. This further makes it a family sport. Short dads who are concerned their kid is also going to be short encourage them to wrestle as that is a sport they will have a chance of excelling at.
And, yes, in season weight cutting does exist, but all the good programs have been managing it extremely well since the 90s. And anything from before that is just as likely to be related to anabolic steroid and other doping use. The fact is that, once you are a good wrestler, there is nothing better for your career than for you to hit a massive growth spurt and surge into the upper weight classes. They are not nearly as competitive as the middle weights from the 130-165ish range. Get above that in high school and more than half the kids you are facing didn't touch a mat until high school. I used to, as a freshman at 125 lbs, beat our starters from the 160-180 lb range (but couldn't beat most of the 130-150 range). Those guys were just kids on the football team and the football coach also was a wrestling assistant. This pattern remains into college where the heaviest classes are not as skilled, and even weight deficits are oft overcome by skills (see Kyle Dake's career).
anti_dan
4d ago
Standards were already out of fashion at law schools, and went off a cliff with covid. There is no appetite at the schools to bring them back
anti_dan
5d ago
But this woman is surely bright enough to realize that this stunt won't actually do anything? Ca cest coullion.
Why is everyone so confident in Skadden's HR? When I was graduating some really talented people did make it into the top biglaw firms, but so did quite a few mediocrities. 2nd/3rd year is right around washout time for those people to go to firm #2 at a bump down where again they washout before taking a federal job where they do nothing for GS-14 salary till the end of time.
anti_dan
6d ago
While I appreciate the post summarizing the arguments, I think that with a little tweaking it could be a copypasta that we could use whenever Trump is talking about anything. Most of it isn't Canada-specific, and I actually started laughing a little during the Buchanan/McKinley/Putin portion. At that point I thought it was a copypasta and I had been successfully trolled into reading the little list.
anti_dan
7d ago
There isn't any valuable metric that we can conclusively say has improved under the DOE's tenure.
anti_dan
8d ago
My God.
I am replying to my own post because as I read the article I continued to find more and more problems. This person has...essentially no grasp on the reality of the situation in criminal law. Are public defenders underfunded? Maybe. When compared to the states attorneys they are up against? Not at all. The SAs have to handle every case in a courtroom, and have the burden of proof. The PD handles about half that (and in the county I worked outnumbered the SA 3 to 1) and has no real job for most of the case. In the event of trial they review the same evidence (with almost no caseload) and only need to prevent the SA from overcoming an incredibly high bar of proof.
Juries and grand juries also make basically no sentencing decisions. Those are made by judges, who are mostly just attorneys who are good at raising money. I dont think that is partisan.
DAs are elected to be hard on crime? Does this guy live in reality? This happens from time to time, but in the most crime ridden jurisdictions the pendulum swings back and forth. Sometimes hard on crime is a winner politically, sometimes soft on crime is. Either way, because this is America, the Defendant wins if he wins at any part of the case.
Mass incarceration started in the 70s? You mean the same time the CRA was kicking in, communities were being destroyed by crime and the prelude to the coke epidemic was manifesting? You dont say.
I suppose the police union part is somewhat fine, but they are far less insidious than teachers unions in my experience. The sex crimes alone are enough to end those. But his argument is flawed by comparing it to NIMBYs. Police have clearly shown that the unions aren't the real problem, it is police haters that made the unions needed (also a good indicator is that it was the 70s when such people started to take power). If cops were able to billy club thieves and then hang them without facing litigation we could field many more for far cheaper. As it stands, they are afraid to arrest a guy who hit a stop sign with a bottle a Jose Cuervo in the back seat because a judge might find the arrest was improper.
Overall, I find this article linked to be incorrect from my personal experience as an attorney in a large major metropolitan area who has worked in criminal law.
anti_dan
8d ago
What Trump likely hasn't foreseen is the likely response to this. I consider the Incentive Problem at the Heart of the American Justice System one of the most important articles written about America in the last decade. It's worth reading in its entirety; but the tldr is something like this: the tension between spending their own money and other people's money has created the disaster that is modern American policing, sentencing, judging and confinement. States don't want to pay for the operation of their own prisons at the same time they want to spend less on policing, so they'd rather give it up to for-profit prisons or shove it off to federal responsibility while enacting a weird kind of anarcho-tyranny.
I want to talk about one of the first points in this article.
Beccaria argued that punishments should be intended primarily to deter future crimes rather than retaliate for past ones, and further, that three factors influenced the deterrent effect of punishment: its certainty, swiftness, and severity, in that order. Beccaria reasoned that increasing severity of punishment produced sharply diminishing returns on deterrent value, because people will simply become desensitized to severe punishment and have difficulty weighing it rationally when conducting a cost-benefit analysis of their decision to commit crimes.
I know this makes sense and has data backing it with regards to deterrence. But I want to talk about a vastly under-discussed part of incarceration, which is incapacitation.
As a bit of background, I am an attorney who has worked as a prosecutor as well as many other parts of the law over a mid sized career so far.
The argument about punishment is wrong, because the goal isn't just punishment, the goal is no more crimes by that specific individual during that specific time period that he/she is incarcerated. You see this most importantly IMO with people who are serial thieves. They will have an MO. Its either retail theft where they keep going to Macys and stealing something like perfume or $90 shirts, or they go into a grocery store and steal booze. Others have the MO of following Amazon trucks and hoovering up delivery boxes. The point is, often these people will have 3+ pending cases at once, then they take a plea, get a short sentence, then are back out thieving a year later, get 3 more cases, take a plea. Repeat for 30 years.
Prison can solve this problem. First, we can have legislatures eliminate sentences running concurrently for multiple offenses. Commit 3 thefts, get 1 year on each, that is 3 years instead of 1 (under the current system). Thats still a deal for the defendant because they are now facing a max of 18 instead of 6 years (or whatever the math is for your specific state). Second, bring back strikes laws. You do some time, next time you do more, third time there is release even if it is just nonviolent theft. These crimes do significantly impede the law and order of communities.
side note, this sort of pattern, while common with theft, is not only relating to theft. I have seen rap sheets where people have committed 5+ burglaries, went in for a year, then committed 3 more plus a kicker charge for drugs/guns and still got out in time to be back in court a year after that second sentencing. In fact, it even happens with violent crime. I recall one case where a person's rap sheet had over 5 armed robbery convictions on it within 5 years of being back in court on another armed robbery. This sort of sentencing structure defies anything resembling sanity.
So, my conclusion is that we probably need more policing as everyone generally suggests. Boots on the ground both deterring and investigating crime. BUT we also need people to just not being allowed back into society. At this point, mere incarceration is not enough. We also need to expedite the death penalty not just for murder and sex crimes, but for all common law crimes wherein the defendant has a previous felony common law conviction. This is a cost saving measure. The whole anti-death penalty bar needs to be put in a corner. There shouldn't even be sentencing hearings at some point. Just ask 12 people did this person commit this crime. If yes, 100 days later the defendant gets to walk the plank. Literally. We should also bring back public hangings to assuage the deterrence-inclined folks.
Being gay or black is orthogonal to political persuasion.
It is also statistically true that being a gay or black man means you pose a heightened risk to society over a straight white man.
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