dr_analog
razorboy
No bio...
User ID: 583
The Venezuelan gang members deported to a for hire prison in El Salvador with no judicial review (or in defiance of judicial review) is honestly a lot more frightening than this story. This Becky story just sounds like something that can happen in any country. When visiting our offices in Asia, HR would counsel me very carefully to say I'm not "working", I'm "meeting". I doubt if I slipped up at those borders I'd have a very pleasant return flight experience. Especially if I was already inside for months and got refused a weekend getaway to a neighboring country.
The El Salvador prison thing though. You could imagine the Trump administration just disappearing people they find annoying. The only cover they have right now is that most of them probably were gang members.
Musk and JP could have avoided so much self-inflicted misery if the bottom 99% of their tweets were deleted instead of posted, with hardly any loss in upside.
Being cut out for it means being cool in the face of ugly attacks. It means "acting Presidential". Refusing to be trolled. Refusing to engage in trolling. Have principles, but if you don't, at least pretend to instead of pitching them to own the libs.
A publicist could have saved them each boatloads of treasure, their reputation and their sanity.
dr_analog
razorboy
17d ago
You're onto something there for sure. If you ever draw the ire of a Twitter hate mob, the first hundred people that are angry at you make you feel bad. But by the time you've seen the thousandth you have fully dehumanized them and wonder how you can use this power.
Have we considered how destructive having the political left be angry at you is to the sanity of people who aren't cut out for it? That is, people who aren't politicians?
As a prior example, I'm thinking of Jordan Peterson, who seems to have followed a similar trajectory of brilliant man becoming increasingly unhinged as political attacks step up.
Musk got on the political left's shitlist during COVID. I believe he was irrecoverably poisoned on the left when he expressed interest in hydroxychloroquine as a COVID treatment and complained about labor restrictions in California right as he saved Tesla from bankruptcy.
His fallout with Sam Harris over losing a bet re: the number of total COVID cases there would be in the US seem like early hallmarks of Musk's decline.
Since then it seems like the left's hatred of him has only intensified, not that he didn't help himself by indulging in trolling them back. Basically, having an irresistible urge to troll and being a target of the left can drive some men to ruin.
Anyone want to talk about GLP-1s again?
I started taking them mid-December. I've lost about 11 pounds so far. I haven't increased to the full dose yet because it's having a moderate effect at this ramping dose. I started at 220 lbs and am hoping to get down to 185 lbs
When tested, at around 220 lbs, my VO2Max was about 50. I can run about a 25 minute 5k.
Playing with the calculators a bit, if I can drop to 185 and simply maintain my cardio capacity, I should end up with a VO2Max of 60. This would mean a sub-20 minute 5k should be achievable.
I'd be over the moon if I could pull that off.
To change gears a bit, I'm kind of embarrassed that I didn't understand until recently how much being overweight affected my running performance. It's so obvious in hindsight, if someone hands you a 35 pound dumbbell and says go try to run a 5k with it, it's obviously going to drag you down. No doctor, sports PT or coach has ever quite told me that though, probably because it's considered rude and most people can't reliably and significantly affect their weight.
dr_analog
razorboy
23d ago
For example, when debating Russia, arguments often amount to Russia is evil because they aren't onboard with pride.
It is one fairly reliable way to judge how ideologically distant a society is from the Western enlightenment tradition. Liberals may not put it in those terms but that's what they actually want.
It seems like existence of pride parades seems to be a key benchmark for judging the moral virtue of a country. Why is this benchmark so central?
It has its limits. Israel has pride parades while Gaza does not and we know what liberals think about this conflict. "Victim of colonialism" is an even more important moral virtue, apparently.
dr_analog
razorboy
24d ago
I've been to places like this though don't have anything but anecdotes. My guess is "the pace of life is slower" means markets here are broken, so you can't buy much, so there's really no point in working much. They didn't choose the simple life out enlightened non-materialism but because there's no way to choose anything else.
What I'm saying is as constructed, they are literally incapable of changing enough to do what they need to win.
The Man Enough ad (YouTube link) really drove home how unbelievably out of touch the Kamala campaign was with working class men. Somehow managed to directly insult and talk down to the demographic they were doing the worst with and actively trying to target.
They polled terribly with white men. They really needed not to do this! They couldn't help it.
I was a full on "lesser evil for Kamala" voter but this, this ad nearly made me just leave the ballot blank.
dr_analog
razorboy
26d ago
How much aid would you provide? Weapons? Money? No-Fly Zone? Air support? Troops on the ground? Nuclear umbrella? Something else?
I would continue to provide intelligence sharing, weapons, economic aid. I would not involve our own military. Continue to strike as many deals as possible to economically isolate Russia as well.
What is the end-state your policy is aiming for? A ceasefire? Deter subsequent Russian invasion? Restoration of Ukraine's original borders? The Russian army destroyed? Putin deposed? Russia broken up? Something else?
Slowly and annoyingly bleed out Russian resources until they get exhausted and go home. No grand last stand. No obvious red lines crossed. Just endless quagmire for Russia, enormous cost for no lasting progress. Make it crystal clear that there's a rules based order and if you just cross boundaries in a war of conquest we will not make it easy.
A world where we didn't defend Ukraine is a lot more volatile. I contend that our willingness to simply surrender Afghanistan to the Taliban because we got bored is likely what contributed to the Ukraine invasion. I'm sure Putin thought he's nowhere near as fucked up as the Taliban, surely the US won't mind if he retakes Ukraine.
Oops.
Is there an end-state or a potential event in the war that you think would falsify your understanding of the war, and convince you that providing aid was a bad idea? Another way of putting it is, do you think your views on the Ukraine war are falsifiable, and if so, what evidence would be sufficient for you to consider it falsified?
If this causes WW3 and we all die in nuclear armageddon I would say it was a bad idea. But to some degree it would be unavoidable if Russia is that suicidal and that expansionist.
dr_analog
razorboy
27d ago
This kind of asylum is very much in the spirit of the asylum treaty that Congress enacted and the President should be blocked from deporting them.
dr_analog
razorboy
28d ago
elicit glee from yours truly because they're so obviously needed.
I have expressed similar amounts of glee. Here on TheMotte even. Repeatedly. Watching people on /r/fednews react with outrage at the collision with reality has been like porn.
But I still think the government does some useful, good things and the carpet bombing approach DOGE is taking is very costly. I would consider it worthwhile if the goal was to substantially reduce the deficit, but not if the goal is to score ideological victory. If the goal is to keep the deficits and cut taxes, you can score ideological victory through more surgical cutting.
dr_analog
razorboy
28d ago
This inner peace comes from recognizing that nobody cares and that it's never going to happen.
I had been resigned to this. Then Elon and Trump appeared initially quite serious about fixing the deficit. If there was a silver lining to these greedy unprincipled clowns taking control of the government, to the fucking all-in podcast / PayPal mafia now being in the President's ear, it would be that they were at least serious about the budget. Libertarians rejoice!
Except they aren't. Or, at least, Trump used Elon. Or, Elon was never serious about it either.
Instead we're slash and burning the government, which includes useful important stuff with no replacement. And we're doing it for, what... approximately nothing? Because the cruelty is the point? To own the libs?
dr_analog
razorboy
28d ago
dr_analog
razorboy
28d ago
The theme is marking the occasion of the SOTU by taking inventory of some of the broken promises, incompetence, lies and hypocrisy in just six weeks.
In his first term, he added approximately $8 trillion to national debt, and the spending and tax bill is set to add trillions more.
I was willing to put up with the risky, indiscriminate slash and burning of the government if it meant America was going to reduce its deficit. This is a major thing Elon and DOGE campaigned on.
But the Trump budget proposal to Congress, which slashes spending proposes to slash taxes even further and net increase the deficit overall.
That's just beyond the pale for me.
dr_analog
razorboy
29d ago
We were being LeanFIRE for a bit[1] and my waifu and kids were getting by on bulk rice, lentils, beans, flours and eggs and a quarter cow in the freezer. Also a CSA. Worked out to about $300/month.
It was fairly edible food albeit not really what you'd call American. What it did require was a lot of planning and being resourceful, and I'm absolutely positive the people on food stamps just don't have this capacity available.
- Eventually we decided being OverweightFIRE was better
dr_analog
razorboy
29d ago
incentivizes collecting your paycheck and running before the whole house of cards collapses around you.
I am not this pessimistic about private sector work, but even if I was I think I'd still consider it less soul crushing than tending a computer lab in a public high school?
dr_analog
razorboy
29d ago
Because of a treaty that isn't worth the paper it's printed on. You know this stuff.
I don't follow. If it's not worth the paper it's printed on why does the "Because" happen?
I'm seeing people who had long term and stable government contracts, sometimes decades, being let go.
I have fairly negative reactions to this kind of lamentation.
My first experience with "government stability" is when I was in high school. I was really good at computers and would cut class and hang out in the computer lab and the people working there decided I was a mild net benefit so they put up with me. This was during the dot com bubble so I was on the cusp of dropping out and chasing big money.
Most of the technicians there were grade A mopes who couldn't hack their way out of MS Word, but one was particularly skilled and we got to talking. He said he was making some meager $45k/year. I asked him why he was working there for so little money instead of at a dot com and he said he just wanted the job security.
That made no mathematical sense given that he could have been raking in $150k/year as a systems administrator with the slightest bit of hustle but whatever.
In a somewhat Joker kind of way I think it's more life-affirming to cut these government jobs. Between market forces for labor and more regular job changes, this guy would be dragged kicking and screaming into finding a job that paid him what he was actually worth.
(Or maybe not whatever)
dr_analog
razorboy
29d ago
At the very least this is all going to be fascinating - one of the ironclad, universally agreed-upon tenets of a social science being put to the test. Markets have not reacted well so far, but that's as much a feature of groupthink as it is reflective of material reality. It's a good time to be a prospective PhD in Economics. You're about to have more than you could have ever hoped to work with.
This is like firing up the Large Hadron Collider for the first time for macro-economists right?
dr_analog
razorboy
30d ago
We enter the war on the side of Ukraine, mudstomp Russia for six minutes before the nukes fly, and we all sing Kumbaya as the bombs fall.
So. What are the limits to nuclear armageddon blackmail here? Why can't Russia just invade a NATO member like Finland and say fuck you, they're a threat to our security, surrender or the nukes fly?
dr_analog
razorboy
30d ago
Sure, though whether or not it's a good idea depends on what the goals of the invader are, no?
Russia has engaged in a series of expansionist salami-slicing tactics like this. Giving in just seems to embolden them.
dr_analog
razorboy
1mo ago
Right, I doubt Ukraine would give up its sovereignty simply to appease Russia. I don't quite blame them.
European boots on the ground are, if anything, more likely now that Trump has sent everyone into hysterics - South Vietnam and France also held out for years with their situation going from bleak to bleaker until the US finally caved and sent in its own GIs.
Doesn't this also raise the risk of nuclear exchange? It's not like Europeans aren't nuclear powers themselves.
Is your argument that dispensing with due process is fine because Trump has only rendered bad people to an El Salvadoran prison AFAWK?
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