anti_dan
16hr ago
As someone who wishes it was easier to use them as a part of my hiring process, I don't understand why people dislike them in the least (other than the race hustlers, etc). If I am hiring a paralegal who is going to be in the research division, I want to give that paralegal 10 cases to read about a topic and 1 hour (which is obviously unreasonable) and give them 10 questions to answer about those 10 cases. Then I can weed out lots of people who are too slow or too incompetent at reading.
The only real problems with American standardized testing right now is 1) It is way too easy. Most students should not be capable of finishing standardized tests. and 2) The special needs time accommodations make them even more useless in the middle section. A person who is slowly able to do the things a person did them on time is not the same.
anti_dan
16hr ago
What would satisfy me? At minimum, an attempt to say what sort of controlled datasets or natural experiments might actually distinguish “genes → institutions → capital” from “history/geography/path-dependence → institutions → capital”, and some acknowledgement of how far our current evidence is from that ideal. And even then, I’d still want an answer to a simpler question: even if Europe and East Asia did get lucky in some deep way, why must that luck be retrofitted into a story about racial essence, instead of leaving it as just that, simply luck?
This is simply where I disagree with you on where the burden of proof lies, at this point in time particularly.
Genes > Institutions is simply and Occams Razor solution compared to the Diamondian History + Geography + Path Dependence > Institutions solution.
Diamondism has had the full support of the establishment and academy for over half a century at this point, and produced nothing persuasive. Instead, often entire points that are being asserted as fact are simply rebutted by looking at, for instance, the geography that actually exists or existed, or a list of animals that exist or existed in a place. When the same set of easily rebuttable set of ideas that all resemble each other are always easily wack-a-moled one by one, its not a good sign for the overarching theory or set of theories that is outputting those theories. And that is a fundamental problem for environmental and historical theories at this point.
I do agree with some of your observations, GDP is the war machine, of course. But that is limited. Everyone knows if you gave the Congo's most elite squad American equipment and drones and satellite, they couldn't protect their own President from an equal sized group of Marines if he was holed up in some cabin in the woods. Maybe if it was something overwhelmingly strategically advantageous like a mountain cabin they could do it, but Italians throwing rocks were able to deter many landings in WWI. No one thinks the Italian tech and GDP were superior to the British at the time.
anti_dan
22hr ago
Large swathes of the intelligence community already plotted a coup. Generals have already bragged about defying lawful orders and concealing that fact. Any escalation of what we've already seen would indeed be quite crippling to our Republic. Otoh, giving a speech in DC happens all the time, and J6's outcome was a 99% outlier that can hardly even be attributed fully to Trump, as he didn't control any of the security apparatus involved in the security failures.
anti_dan
1d ago
This is just a somewhat skillfully deployed call for sedition by the people in question. Obviously it would be impossible to prove beyond reasonable doubt in court, but the implication is clear to anyone who is activated by the statements.
Its basically the Jan 6 case against Trump on steroids and I dont like it from either side, but here we are.
anti_dan
2d ago
How so? Just from a common perspective I've seen, marriage is a much higher risk for men. If you are successful the woman might still leave you, take the kids, the house, and a huge chunk of your future income. If you are less so, she takes the kid, the car, and a huge chunk of your future income.
anti_dan
2d ago
I have a female coworker who got married at 19, has 3 kids, and I'd estimate her career is approximately 2 years behind where it would be at her current age if she had not had any kids and just went nose to grindstone from 17-current. Most of those 2 years is time she actually took off postpartum. Any other woman in the company would probably have to take off MORE time to have those same 3 children from 30-40 (and often times spend lots of money to achieve conception) as compared to her doing it 19-27.
But, people really overestimate how hard college is. You can easily get a high GPA with pregnant with one and breastfeeding another. What you are actually losing by taking that path is 4 years of alcohol soaked hookups which you (as a female) are statistically likely to regret.
anti_dan
2d ago
Luthien's an odd case to be sure, and I've never been quite sure what to make of her as a character. In any case she's definitely an extreme outlier.
Luthien is half god, and the only battle power she has is that she is astoundingly beautiful and has an astoundingly beautiful singing voice (song being a source of godly power in the universe, as it was created by song), and her military feats all involve her basically singing really hard.
anti_dan
4d ago
Its a funny take with some support in reality, but not on the military front. The real weird part about TLJ and the sequels is, the part where the Rebels allegedly won, but in universe the Empire guys are actually stronger now. A good story is the explanation why the rebels failed to establish a new, successful, government because very few people are George Washington and competent at governance during both rebellion and while founding a new nation. Most such scenarios do fail. Washington was an extraordinary figure.
The sequels being about bad governance and failure of new leadership is probably a much better set of movies, but also really hard to write.
anti_dan
9d ago
Write it how you do, tie goes to "no". Not angry problem here. If using snap, or state equivalents becomes a pain in the ass, that's a feature. Its a horrible program
anti_dan
9d ago
Total US grocery spending is projected to be $900 billion or so, food stamps are $100 billion give or take, so 11% of the market. Supply is not highly elastic, demand, particularly on superior food goods (beef) is highly elastic. 20% seems like a reasonable ballpark number.
anti_dan
9d ago
So you are arguing people are going to market oatmeal cookies as oatmeal to get around said law?
anti_dan
10d ago
So why don't they already do this with booze and the like? Market beers and vodka as kombucha or something?
anti_dan
10d ago
Sure, but why? The Democrats when they were at their most coherent were stating that the shutdown was over sunset provisions to PPACA subsidies that they had passed as part of emergency measures when they had a trifecta during the Biden years, which actually wasn't a topic in the CR at all. So what you had was a continuing resolution on a previously bipartisan budget that failed to address a minor issue Democrats had created on their own 3 years prior and had 3 years of foreknowledge it was coming up.
Hardly "suck". At worst "mid". In reality "contrived complaints". This budget doesn't "suck" for anyone but fiscal conservatives. Almost all the covid era money from the sky programs continue its basically the Biden budget plus inflation adjustments. Republicans didn't pass a budget where all SNAP dollars are redirected to ICE and Medicaid is returned to 2007 levels. Welfare eligibility continues to be at levels Bill Clinton would have objected to, from the right. There is no case to be made. Or, at the very least, no case WAS made. Instead what happened was a niche issue that polls well for them was selected as the point of agitation, and Democrats leveraged their continued, but dwindling, media advantages to eek out some minor PR victories until a minor victory for them was achieved, likely right before a terrible PR situation for them was about to be dumped into their lap.
anti_dan
10d ago
Doesn't this already necessarily exist? You cant use snap to buy Budweiser or Cough Medicine from the grocery store.
anti_dan
10d ago
I would think the OP would point to them as just being fake email jobs where nothing of actual policy value is produced as well.
anti_dan
10d ago
I didn't see any Democrat making the case that the budget sucked. I certainly can make my case, almost everything should have been cut, but Democrats don't agree with me, so I dont see the case for the budget sucking from a Democrat POV.
anti_dan
10d ago
Yes, the sheer scale of the program is part of the problem. Its almost certainly making food 20%+ more expensive!
anti_dan
11d ago
I mean, you made a list including 10 bullet points and I am perfectly comfortable saying only the first two should be SNAP eligible and the rest is for people using their own money.
anti_dan
11d ago
What is your mental model of this "full Chrismas SNAP crisis", because I think its probably a load of crap. At least with regards to actual people being hungry. I'd expect people would loot and steal and riot because they can't get their Dr. Pepper, but no actual amount of people would be starving. There are too many school lunches, shelters, food banks, etc. And even outside private charities, states can also always easily step up in this sort of situation by simply being less generous in their dispensations. Restrict the eligible product pool to vegetables, fruits, grains, beans, and dairy and you save like 90%, while avoiding the issue of people spending all their cash on day 1 on waygu steak or orange crush, or selling them for spending money.
anti_dan
11d ago
Ezra Klein made the point that, in the end, the whole thing holding the shutdown coalition together was Trumps "tyranny". Which along with being a nebulous concept, I doubt Ezra and many Democrats even get close to believing their own rhetoric on that particular point. Faced with several of their core constituencies poised to violently riot again over losing government handouts I think the continued shut down was simply far too risky for the Dem defectors to continue to justify to themselves.
anti_dan
13d ago
Alec could have been a hero, but in the end as Bond said, his plan was to cause a global financial crisis to steal some cash. "Nothing more than a common thief" if I recall the line correctly.
anti_dan
14d ago
Can you perhaps expound more about why you think these quotes, if even true, are bad? They seem like jokes with a solid grain of truth in them.
anti_dan
15d ago
What people actually do, if they do anything besides buy what the mainstream media is telling them at face value, is find an entity who's motivations and biases they align with, and then pick that guy's story. Sometimes the establishment consists of flaming hot liberals (Rittenhouse), sometimes it consists of based law enforcement (ICE Twitter). What "establishment" figure gets trusted more depends on whos listening.
Memorization is trivialized by formula sheets, and is also a weaker skill that can be employed. My college, in ancient times now, wouldnt accept my perfect AP score on the non-calculus physics AP exam as credit. This was even more incredulous given my also perfect AP score on the calculus exam.
But the idea does sort of make sense. There is a reason that (at least in my day) companies would require splits on GPA between major-qualifying classes and overall GPA. If you have a 3.5 GPA, but a 3.0 in engineering related classes, you are pretty mediocre at engineering. If you have a 3.5 and a 3.5 in engineering related classes, you are a guy who is very talented, but cant be bothered to give a crap about the mandatory liberal arts classes every school imposes (it is odd, from a certain point of view, that there are no mandatory math classes for the LA people, but we all know why). These are old numbers that probably date me, even in engineering most crappy students now have a GPA similar to our old top 10%. Which just shows the problem with the current system.
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