fishtwanger
shirking duties randomly made up by people who hate us
No bio...
User ID: 2896
fishtwanger
shirking duties randomly made up by people who hate us
5mo ago
Open-borders libertarians, I think? They'd prefer lots of immigration, all legal by default. But as is, they're heavily sympathetic to people coming to America, any way they can, to make a better life through hard work and free enterprise. The first place I looked was "Reason", and their top article right now is "Trump's Mass Deportation Plan Is Anti-American", making the case largely on moral grounds:
But this conversation is about much more than monetary costs. It's about the government wielding force against largely peaceful, nonviolent residents who help create vibrant American communities. It's about whether deploying police officers, National Guard members, and the military to extract undocumented immigrants from their homes and workplaces in raids is consistent with American values. It's about the civil rights and due process violations that will inevitably occur if this plan comes to fruition.
fishtwanger
shirking duties randomly made up by people who hate us
5mo ago
even if the new fad diet was based on unicorn farts
Oh, fasting, I've done that. :-)
The TV show "The Wire" had two black kids in what one black parent referred to as the "pediatric neurosurgeon phase", where a young black kid, who hadn't been ground down yet, picked as a role model one of the most intelligent and successful black men in the area. Apparently this was a real thing, at least in Baltimore, and it was due to Ben Carson being the director of pediatric neurosurgery at the Johns Hopkins Children's Center (in Baltimore).
fishtwanger
shirking duties randomly made up by people who hate us
5mo ago
I agree, although I think "refuse to identify" is too strong - there seems to be a "there but for the grace of God go I" attitude, from what I've heard. But yes, from what I can tell, a lot of racial disparities seem to be mediated by class rather than coming directly from race.
Anyway, looking back at the original quote, those with four American DOS grandparents make up 33%, so there's 66% who have at least one grandparent who is from Africa or the West Indies, or who is non-black. Put that way, the numbers make a lot more sense. It could easily be the long-hoped-for cultural assimilation at work, where once people make it into the upper-middle-class (this being Harvard), they identify more and more with their class peers, regardless of geographical background and sometimes regardless of skin color. And so their children and grandchildren still count as "black" in America's racial classification, but they aren't the sort of "black" that intelligent progressives want to focus on.
fishtwanger
shirking duties randomly made up by people who hate us
5mo ago
I think for me they're "intelligence and competence porn". Roughly, it's the idea that an intelligent and competent person, put into a dark and evil situation, can use the light of reason to restore order and uncover hidden secrets. Thriller novels, of the techno- and military- varieties, also do that for me. As with porn, I worry that over-consumption by susceptible demographics can induce unrealistic expectations of human behavior. ;-)
fishtwanger
shirking duties randomly made up by people who hate us
5mo ago
But if America is getting the right tail of the West Indies DOS, shouldn't there also be a corresponding right tail for native ADOS? ADOS are about 42m as of 2020, while Wikipedia says that the entire West Indies is 44m, and a quarter of that is Cuba, and that's the entire population including whites and all other races.
fishtwanger
shirking duties randomly made up by people who hate us
5mo ago
Yeah. From some non-political fields, I can tell that my heart is progressive, but through bitter experience my head is conservative, if I stop to use it. It's very who-whom.
When I'm the one pushing for the changes, I've thought enough about them (of course I have!) that I feel confident that they'll be a net benefit. But I can't see what everyone else's life is like, and for any long term project, I need widespread buy-in from all sectors. If I overturn their world, I won't get that. And then, of course, if it's someone else trying to push their (poorly thought out, most likely) changes on me that I haven't had time to fully examine the consequences of, well, that of course is a problem. :-)
fishtwanger
shirking duties randomly made up by people who hate us
5mo ago
Who knew the Motte was filled with so many hopeless romantics?
But not quite the way you mean it. This is advice I wish I'd been given, and had taken. But I missed some chances, and then unpredictable bad life shit happened. So I'm projecting a bit here. Maybe this path will work out better for you than it did for me. You certainly make a reasonable case for it. Good luck, whatever you do!
fishtwanger
shirking duties randomly made up by people who hate us
5mo ago
Good point. Maybe it's the same thing as with people, where the sociopaths turn the empathy on and off whenever convenient. And we happen to notice the contrasts between the pets that they love and the people that they couldn't care less about, and we don't see all the other animals that they also couldn't care less about.
fishtwanger
shirking duties randomly made up by people who hate us
5mo ago
Your questions seems to assume the current system is making some sort of effort to avoid mistakes
No, I'm being completely straightforward here, simply asking what 2rafa would prefer. (It's a shame that that's hard to get across, in text.)
Personally, I think the dominant progressive element in America is running amuck, and making changes that sound to them like good ideas, without any clue about whether those changes will be implemented effectively or have the desired results. By my own criteria, I'm much more conservative than they are, and that's not even considering that my ideal world is probably closer to 2rafa's than the woke ideal.
I'd take that deal Ina heartbeat.
So would I. I was going to originally put in something about Heinlein-style restriction of voting to veterans. I'd also be in favor of instituting Singaporean caning instead of imprisonment or fines, at least for minor crimes.
fishtwanger
shirking duties randomly made up by people who hate us
5mo ago
Maybe go on a mostly-chaste date or three, just for fun, if she's on the same page? Have fun, get some practice, go to a show, overact romantic with a twinkle in your eye, be more frank about your life and situation than you might otherwise be, try out some conversational gambits that you might hesitate to use if you thought more was on the line. Whatever mask you wear, drop it a bit.
If she's that closely connected, she might wind up being a family friend in the long run, and this would make a good story for when your own respective kids meet on a dating app.
And if you hit it off, well, you might be needing a new shrink soon, what with the move and all, right? So it won't be the ideal situation, but if she's close enough to the ideal girl for you, then don't let her get away. Don't make the modern mistake of having an image in your head of what your life should be like, and then waiting for it to fulfill itself. If she's got brains and integrity and a sense of humor, and you find yourself falling for her, seize the opportunity when it presents itself. (Finding out if someone has integrity, in the time you have available, there's the rub...)
fishtwanger
shirking duties randomly made up by people who hate us
5mo ago
"Then she told herself to stop her nonsense. If you looked for things to make you feel hurt and wretched and unnecessary, you were certain to find them, more easily each time, so easily, soon, that you did not even realize you had gone out searching." ― Dorothy Parker
fishtwanger
shirking duties randomly made up by people who hate us
5mo ago
Yet what better test is there of empathy than if you are emotional about the plight of animals?
Sociopaths are notorious for being more fond of animals than they are of people. #NotAllWhiteWomen, of course.
But if I were to try to spin an opposing narrative, maybe as one graduates from ignoring the comatose drug addict on the street, all the way up to viewing one's political outgroup as vermin, somewhere along the line all the repressed empathy finds an outlet in animals. Animals can never truly deserve to be hated, not like people. They're sweet and innocent and aren't capable of knowing any better.[1] Whereas That Guy over there knows exactly what he did, and he deserves everything that's coming to him, and if you call me a "mind reader", you're next against the wall.
[1] Except pit bulls, of course, which should all be killed with extreme prejudice. Invasive species, too. Unless they're cute.
fishtwanger
shirking duties randomly made up by people who hate us
5mo ago
FWIW, the scaling works fine for me, in Firefox on Android, and Firefox on Linux, and Chromium on Linux. But not, however, in Chrome on Android.
fishtwanger
shirking duties randomly made up by people who hate us
5mo ago
I mean no offense, but to be honest, I thought that femcel post was pure toxoplasma-bait for a place like the Motte.
Although I did like the meta-discussion of whether the author was intentionally using it to get attention, and about her lack of self-reflection, and whether she was preparing for a try at being a right-wing grifter.
fishtwanger
shirking duties randomly made up by people who hate us
5mo ago
My experience with Adderall was that it didn't help me get started on doing things, but it did help me continue doing things I started. If you can tell yourself "I'll just spend a minimum of 5 minutes working on [whatever]", then maybe the Concerta can take you the rest of the way?
fishtwanger
shirking duties randomly made up by people who hate us
5mo ago
All I want to do is to live in a civilized and functioning society. ...
Your almost lyrical phrasing in this paragraph reminds me of Le Guin's description of Omelas. I can practically smell the drooz.
Does this make me a conservative?
It's a lovely vision, but to answer, I'd need to know: What would you be willing to do to make it real? How many mistakes and how much damage are you willing to tolerate along the way? And perhaps, what other qualities of this society would you be willing to sacrifice, to gain the ones you describe? (Universal suffrage, for example?)
It seems that you're in favor of progress in a particular direction, but that you happen to differ with the locally dominant group of progressives about what that direction should be. That rules out being a radical or reactionary. I tend to associate progressives as moving more quickly toward a destination, and conservatives as pulling back and slowing the rate of change to prevent mistakes. But I suppose there's no reason why a conservative couldn't have a positive vision of the future that they're working toward, just in a slow and cautious way.
fishtwanger
shirking duties randomly made up by people who hate us
6mo ago
I meant, it's clear that someone else reported the comment as high quality, and I just validated their choice while doing janitor duty. So should I report the comment as high quality myself, thus giving it 2 HQ reports, and forcing some other volunteer janitor to read the same high quality comment? The answer appears to be "yes".
fishtwanger
shirking duties randomly made up by people who hate us
6mo ago
Will do, thanks!
fishtwanger
shirking duties randomly made up by people who hate us
6mo ago
All smart whites/asians/indians will quickly register as Republicans (whether they vote as such or at all is of course irrelevant).
Hmm, this could theoretically apply to everyone: a queer black woman Republican would check a lot of boxes. It would be ironic if this backfires and moves the Republican party leftward. ("Polls show that over 60% of Republicans believe...")
fishtwanger
shirking duties randomly made up by people who hate us
6mo ago
When we're doing janitorial triage, and come across a comment that's so good that, in addition to sorting it as "high-quality", we have a strong urge to report it as "high-quality" ourselves, should we do that? Would it only add noise, or would it somehow help the process?
fishtwanger
shirking duties randomly made up by people who hate us
6mo ago
Adding political party registration as a protected class
I'm unclear on how "political party registration status" will be interpreted. Does it mean that they "can't create" "have to pay attention to" a disparate impact on Democrats, Republicans, Libertarians, Greens, etc.? Or does it merely mean that they "can't create" "have to pay attention to" a disparate impact on people who are registered and people who aren't registered?
"Original public meaning" is failing my poor spectrum-y brain.
fishtwanger
shirking duties randomly made up by people who hate us
6mo ago
When we're doing janitorial triage, and come across a comment that's so good that, in addition to sorting it as "high-quality", we have a strong urge to report it as "high-quality" ourselves, should we do that? Would it only add noise, or would it somehow help the process?
fishtwanger
shirking duties randomly made up by people who hate us
6mo ago
Kim Stanley Robinson's "The Years of Rice and Salt" has some of this. The premise is that the Black Death killed 99% of Europeans in the 1300s, instead of 30-50%.
Oh, wow, thanks for the phrase. That's precisely the thing that bugs me about so much sprawling Internet fiction (fan- or otherwise). The author feels the need to delve into the inner depths of so many different characters, and then the plot bogs down because anytime anything happens, we have to see the event from everyone's perspective, because each viewpoint is precious and important. G.R.R. Martin used to be a model for keeping this in check, but I think he started to succumb in his last few ASoIaF books.
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