faceh
14hr ago
My personal push would be to form a unified group that pledges simply to withhold tax payments while this particular discrimination regime is allowed to continue.
Needs to be enough buy-in that "they can't prosecute all of us" is a legitimate factor. And ideally pool funds to pay for attorneys for those who do get tried.
Yes, there's like a dozen ways the state can crack down on this, but that would actually force them to cross those lines OR negotiate.
It's harder to disrupt or de-legitimize such a group compared to one that threatens violent martial resistance. Hence why this approach would probably beat forming an informal militia.
faceh
14hr ago
Ding ding ding.
And then there's the added problem of "oh, and any other field you might want to try could arbitrarily be closed off to you if it ever becomes lucrative and high-status enough for entryists to target."
faceh
16hr ago
Well, its pretty clear that you'd prefer to live in this era in terms of the sheer abundance any goods you could want, and the technology available.
But the inability to parlay that into a meaningful life is... problematic.
faceh
16hr ago
The contradiction is "you cannot save yourself from a literal systemic issue, coordinated action is necessary."
The point that needs to come across is "everyone else is coordinating with others to your disadvantage, you need to coordinate with others to prevail."
Boomer advice that ignores this sets people up for failure.
The institutions being hostile demonstrates that you cannot, in fact, save yourself without defeating those institutions. You cannot defeat those institutions by following the advice of going it alone. Its a contradiction in terms when you acknowledge the underlying fact.
faceh
1d ago
I still feel genuinely uncomfortable being super-sensitive to racial politics even as I realize "huh, I guess a lot of people do despise me just because I'm white."
Like, to the extent almost every other ethnic group has massive bias toward people who share their genetic makeup, the only viable strategy in response is to assume any individual of said group I encounter is biased against me until proven otherwise. It feels like I'm sitting there thinking "Okay, I know what stereotypes I'm expecting you to conform to... please please please don't confirm them."
After a certain point, the heuristics just prove too useful to ignore.
faceh
1d ago
I'd argue that the are available (look up Veterans using and abusing VA disability status, for example) but men are shamed for using them in ways that single moms and minorities of course are not.
No such thing as a welfare program designated specifically for them, however.
faceh
1d ago
Disagree, although I see the point. Most 'great men' commit some acts which would be considered atrocities if they didn't 'win.'
This is genuinely the other side of the coin for all the gender/dating wars discourse. All the pressure is being put on the men to improve and jump through whatever hoops women require in order to get one... and every avenue for improvement is being cut off and the hoops have been set on fire, lifted 500 feet in the air, and suspended over a pit full of poisoned spikes. And men are told "just jump higher, it is still doable!"
The whole "pull yourself up by your bootstraps, nobody is coming to save you, life doesn't owe you anything" mindset/'advice' that gets handed down to young men is blatantly contradicted by the fact that the entire social, legal, and political fabric is arrayed against them achieving the most reliable, rewarding paths to long-term success. On the margins, a lot of these guys will be completely wrecked because they followed the standard advice to a tee and had their path blocked anyway, leading them into a depression spiral.
And so when similar advice comes down with regard to the dating market, "Become worthy of women, nobody will set you up but you, women don't owe you anything" and men notice that they are in fact being selected against based on factors they can't control it starkly informs them that literally nobody is on their side, they have no 'allies.' And so older guys giving such advice will sort themselves into the 'enemy' category for simply failing to see that the situation is now actively intolerable to anyone trying to follow the standard advice.
And this wouldn't be quite so utterly intolerable if it weren't for the fact that these same dudes are going to be paying most of the taxes and will be expected to continue to be productive so as to subsidize their own disenfranchisement and replacement. They can't even really say "screw you, I'm taking my ball and playing somewhere else" because they will be compelled to pay into the system regardless.
On the one hand, you've got women who are increasingly rejecting settling for men and claiming its because they fail to measure up to said women's standards. Standards which have drastically inflated in recent times, whilst the standards women apply to themselves have basically evaporated. She can literally be an active prostitute for the entirety of her twenties and then 'expect' to settle down for a guy who will care for her (whether she gives him kids or not) in her 30's.
Then on the other, men are getting actively nerfed in their ability to advance their careers and they see additional competition is introduced from foreigners and their competitors are getting subsidized meanwhile Old Boomers are squatting in the seats of real wealth and power (and deflecting blame) and adding to the criticism of these young men. Oh, and some old wealthy boomers are also directly snatching up eligible women in their twenties and directly contributing to the aforementioned sky-high standards without a hint of irony. So young men notice that going for absolute degenerate crypto gambling and harebrained startup schemes are the only 'hack' to get yourself out of this rat race that aren't completely stacked against you. Its still gambling, but at least chaos is fair. (Note, I don't actually believe that, but I see the reason it would be preferable.)
And every step of the way, from every angle (except guys like Andrew Tate) they're informed that they are the problem. And if they crash out over this, that is seen as proof positive that they're the problem. In England, apparently, they can get literally jailed for complaining about some of this.
Whatever arguments you want to make about the improvement in material conditions for young men over the past couple decades, their social standing has been eroded to the point they can't actually use that material wealth to satisify their actual desires (marriage, kids, respect, social esteem, and purpose) and are constantly, CONSTANTLY at risk of losing that wealth for making the sort of misstep that today can get you arrested but in the Boomers' day would have been the subject of a classic comedy film.
I'm so glad you made that point so I can post this.
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/spacex-launch-site-boca-chica-texas-60-minutes-plus/
Granted these are more a shakedown attempt than a true attempt to stop the process.
faceh
6d ago
And yet you get people screaming about water and electricity usage (being fair, the latter is a concern).
They have successfully shut them down before:
https://www.kold.com/2025/12/02/county-city-leaders-amazon-pulls-out-embattled-project-blue/
I agree with your overall point, datacenters are less objectionable than average... so imagine what building anything more objectionable would take!
Let me just say for the record, I am SO glad that NASA exists simply because by building out their facilities at Cape Canaveral back when Florida was barely populated, we've got a large rocket launch complex that didn't have to be built in barely accessible mountains or something. Can you imagine the fuss residents would put up if someone suggested building 40 launchpads near a populated area?
faceh
6d ago
And more to the point... I don't think the real contention was that America CAN'T build. But between all the bureaucracy, environmentalism regs, NIMBYs, and cost disease, it just costs WAY more than it probably 'should' and thus things only get built if someone is enthusiastically willing to fund the process. Once they do, things happen very fast.
With Datacenters, we have motivated buyers utterly flush with cash so the cost obstacle is surmounted, at which point all the other steps can be done.
As I'm fond of pointing out, Florida built a high-speed rail system before California even broke ground on theirs because there were many many fewer unnecessary obstacles to doing it. Simple as.
faceh
7d ago
Yep.
Maybe if we don't want centralized control over vote counts, we could still have some central FedGov fund for paying the election expenses of given districts so long as they meet certain standards and can pass an audit.
And maybe those that fail, rather than toss out that election's results, the punishment is that their votes won't count in next cycle.
faceh
7d ago
Either way, communities that can't secure their elections shouldn't get their votes counted.
I see the risk factor being malicious actors throw the count off to get certain districts disqualified.
It is such an odd situation, you can't really train many 'professional' poll managers for an event that happens like one day every two years.
So we rely on volunteers with minimal training and small motivation to go above and beyond the call of duty.
It sucks that this once again seems like something trivial to do in a 'high trust' society. But as trust degrades suddenly it becomes almost intractable.
Generally speaking, I will never, ever fault somebody for putting their beliefs up for scrutiny, when they've actually made their arguments clear and aren't ignoring inconvenient data or hiding that they have a pecuniary interest in making you believe what they're saying.
Its admirable specifically because people will ignore that it was a well reasoned, researched, and even-handed prediction about a topic of great uncertainty, and will mock it for getting details wrong while still being mostly right directionally. You take a risk to your status to try and elucidate the topic for everyone. Sure beats people trying to obsfuscate as a status play.
The thing that gets me is that OF COURSE every single AI company is actively trying to create an AGI. Whether that is what they admit or they even expect to achieve it seems irrelevant, they're acting in ways that would bring it about, and bring it at the fastest pace they can achieve.
I'd love to see someone as smart and persuasive write the definitive "AGI Never" paper, predicting when capabilities will plateau and never improve, with falsifiable metrics to compare over time. I just do not think there's an argument that can do so successfully.
faceh
8d ago
If we design a procedure that makes it trivial to give foreign powers leverage over people, then we should expect them to use it.
Well, there was a whole whole thing about Russia allegedly recruiting Trump with a pee tape or something.
The only thing that makes controlling people involved in elections valuable is the aforementioned trillions of dollars tied up in the outcomes, and of course Diplomatic/military consequences.
All the more reason to take the 'extreme' measures to secure them.
I suspect the vast majority of citizens to be honest citizens.
If you'd asked me this 10 years ago I might agree.
Nowadays, I'm not willing to say even a bare majority are.
But I do believe they respond to incentives! Be those incentives from malicious actors, foreign powers, or their own government.
I simply note that a lot of Election Officials don't have strong incentives for good behavior, and its probably insufficient to 'reward' good behavior on their part.
Which leaves...
Reading the link, most of what happened in Broward County in 2018 is standard-issue incompetence causing waste and delay, but not affecting the ballots.
Yes.
And if the incompetence is significant enough, that's precisely where someone would hide the fraud.
The money quote literally says:
"we are unable to provide assurance over the accuracy of the November 2018 election results as reported.”
Add that to the issue:
"Half of Broward County’s election precincts reported more ballots cast than the number of voters."
And that's precisely the place you'd want to look for fraudsters. But oh so luckily the process was so badly done that we can't really determine what the numbers should be.
If you're trying to swing elections, you WANT there to be enough plausible deniability that the numbers can't be directly challenged. Can't do that if things are well-run and accurate.
But its REALLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLYY convenient that the places where the 'incompetence' is actually so serious all tend to trend the same way on election night.
For 2018, if you add Palm Beach and Broward together (they are adjacent counties, BTW) there's about 1.3 million votes recorded between the two of them. It would be feasible if not likely to hide 10k-30k false votes in there if spread around enough, which as mentioned would be enough to swing the Senate race and several of the state-level executive races.
It is driven by widespread sloppiness, corner-cutting, incompetence, and insecurity that means losing candidates can spam plausible fraud allegations and election officials can't refute them.
The one thing I don't think that the architects of our Democratic processes realized was that literal Trillions of Dollars would become tied up in the outcomes that can swing with <100,000 votes.
And yet, I've lived in Florida long enough to see it go from being THE SINGULAR EXAMPLE of sloppy election processes (2000 was the year of 'hanging chads') to running effectively flawless elections that report on time and accurately. The state has only gotten more populous since then, too.
Its like so many complaints about social problems are disproven with a straightforward counterexamples.
"Oh man violent crime is complex and multi-factorial, you can't just arrest your way to safety." Why'd it work for El Salvador?
"Bureaucratic waste is inevitable, and achieving real cuts to government spending is futile because all the incentives run the other way." Why'd it work for Argentina?
"Elections are complicated and chaotic, and counting millions of votes quickly AND accurately isn't viable in many places. Incompetence will always seep in." Why'd it work for Florida?
So maybe the solution is to just send Desantis on a tour to every single state with fucked up elections and he can show them precisely what to fix.
This is a general problem with making highly-visible solutions to non-existent problems a key part of your politics.
Its clearly not non-existent. And if merely announcing the penalty is sufficient to scare people from doing it, so much the better.
That was actually the argument I made back when Desantis put together his election fraud task force or what-have-you.
Merely being aware that there's people out looking for it is a disincentive.
Yes, False positives are an issue, but our Justice system is pretty decent at dealing with/avoiding those.
Hence why I'd put the threshold somewhere around 100 votes so we don't catch, say, some grandma who accidentally voted twice or something. High enough that a volunteer is exceptionally unlikely to 'accidentally' breach it.
I strongly suspect that after one (1) person is unambiguously convicted for election fraud and publicly executed (you KNOW that every single network would cover such an event) that EVERYONE would be aware of the consequence and so it'd be much harder to recruit them unknowingly.
And for people who knowingly collaborate with a foreign party to undermine an election... we already treat Treason as a capital offense.
If faith in election integrity is a critical piece of successful Democracy, better treat it with sufficient weight.
faceh
8d ago
That tracks.
Harris seems like the type who 'knew' she needed an old White dude on the ticket... but was ABSOLUTELY unwilling to accept someone who might overshadow her, like Newsom. She had to put up with being under Biden, after all.
When in reality, being in someone's shadow was the main thing that kept her viable.
I'm also willing to entertain the hypothesis that he was chosen in part so that when Kamala won, they could use FedGov power to cover up the problem/immunize him from consequences.
Minnesota providing an ongoing, real time example of most of the bad things that righties say happen when Democrats are in charge has been interesting to me.
Then you remember that they used Tim Walz as their answer to the Trump problem. Very odd they'd want to hold his state out as an example like that?
faceh
8d ago
I root for Scott, I'm just not sure what projects he's a working on that I can wish him success with.
He did contribute to that "AGI 2027" paper/site which is getting some flack now, but I don't think any less of him.
faceh
8d ago
Oh, I would never suggest that voting counts need to be centralized.
My proposed solution was death penalty if you get caught fabricating more than, say, 100 votes.
Don't even have to re-do the election, just let the voters see that those who undermine it are punished.
I highly doubt she won't be able to find a normal job, in fact it may be a plus! I'm sure some business would love the publicity of hiring her, as FtttG outlined above, this is a new dynamic in the modern attention economy anyway. Our culture is extremely sexually immoral, don't get your hopes up that porn actresses are facing any serious consequences.
Good luck making a list of hardcore porn performers who notably go on to successful, fulfilling mainstream careers with stable relationships into middle age and beyond.
There's maybe a couple who quietly retired from the public eye and live on a ranch somewhere.
On the male side you have perhaps literally ONLY Ron Jeremy. And he's come to an extremely ignominious end.
EDIT: Wait, I forgot Sylvester Stallone. But he didn't have a very long adult career and it was softcore so I am comfortable discounting him.
Most of them that try to do something in the mainstream end up flaming out.
In no small part because there's a lot of other vices that tend to surround that particular career path, and you'll have very few respectable allies in your corner if you stumble.
Remember that one State-level Democratic candidate who had filmed sex acts for a Cam site? She lost.
Who is going to pay for the lawfare?
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