uhhh... yes. I was going to add an aside but deleted it because I guess I wrongly assumed it was understood in the frame. That was implicit in the 'cumulative effects' point.
I had a point about building a bridge over the cliff faster than the car was accelerating, but deleted it because it didn't add to the illustration.
Deflation is irrelevant to my point about why a blank 8% was more than 6% doesn't tell the story about cost of living pain.
We came of a decade of very low inflation and a rapidly expanding economy. Then in the first part of this decade, we felt that expansion slow down combined with extremely high inflation. This ate up a lot of the slack in the system. Now under Trump 2, inflation is still too high, and the increase in earnings isn't being felt by the people. So depsite it being less 'too hihg' than under Biden, it can still hurt more. None of this requires expectations of deflation to explain why comparing Biden's highest high to trumps high doesn't tell the story or produce a conundrum
iprayiam3
3hr ago
Inflation reached 8% in 2022...
This is an area where number lawyering distorts what's rather straight forward observationally. Cost of living is bad, and constantly getting worse. That it was getting worse at a faster rate eariler, when it wasn't as bad on absolute terms, isn't really a headscratcher.
You're comparing rate of inflation, but sentiment is accounted for by looking at cumulative effect. Inflation is a rate of change number. Inflation was bad under Biden, it ate away a lot of slack in the system; now under Trump inflation is still too high even if it's eating cost of living at a lower rate of increase.
Now this is a different conversation than laying blame, but it helps udnerstand why comparing raw inflation rate is not as straightforward when translating it into felt effects.
Imagine you're speeding toward a cliff and accelerating. Now we swap drivers, and not only does that driver maintain the speed, but he continues accelerating! only not accelerating as quickly as driver 1.
Does it really make sense to be confused that the second driver is met with more panic than the first?
iprayiam3
1d ago
I’m just thinking back and chuckling to my post a few months ago where I said - indexing my life on my parents 30 years ago, it’s obviously way less affordable, and I was met with a chorus that I was wrong.
It’s the economy stupid. Nobody can afford a house. Burritos cost 20$. Sure sure ackshully that all you want, then lose elections
iprayiam3
4d ago
Why does everybody walk so slowly? Come on, people, shake a leg!
But seriously, why do you all walk so slowly?
My casual walking speed just seems to be completely misaligned to the general populations baseline.
iprayiam3
6d ago
2022 seems odd. Things were really popping in 20202 with Covid, Floyd, the election, and ascendency of woke 1.0 race stuff and trans stuff.
I will admit it kinda swung right into AI rise, but yeah. I agree AI is tiresome as a CW topic, it’s a long game of wait and see. I agree evaporative cooling has hurt this place. I’m also just tired out of internet discourse in general.
But I think a bigger thing is AI has fundamentally shifted how a lot of us deal with written communication. I’m sure most of us spend plenty of hours going back and forth with AI on topics, who answer our comments immediately with more depth and reasoning than most other comments.
AI has made the value of the “effort post” go way down. I’m tired of reading text walls man….
iprayiam3
11d ago
I think the ideal response from a woman in this situation is to be grossed out by a drug fueled gang bang; have her danger signals activate, and assume the girl was kind of a slut who was still taken advantage of.
I would highly prefer that to either being a liberal realist and defend consensual gang bangs on ideological grounds, even if she’s “based” about it or fall into some me too! Victimhood solidarity circle with her girl friends.
I think both are bad signs. And I’d rather her just say “ew gross” and move on. I thus wouldn’t try any ideological reasoning about it
iprayiam3
14d ago
I think it really depends on the circumstances and what's at stake. Vivek is different from Paxton. Both in the actual distance from thier opponent, and in what 'poor character' reveals about their actual political incentives.
Vivek is an opportunist who has staked out some very anti-MAGA anti-American opinions, and he's rightly or wrongly constantly accused of untrustworthy insincerity. So character reveals can tell quite a bit about where his real focus lies. Paxton on the other hand is a crass ideologue. If you like his ideology more than Talcarino's you should vote for Paxton just about no matter what he says or does.
iprayiam3
15d ago
No you're correct he wasn't trying to beat Trump while courting his voter base - that was a mistake DeSantis made. He was specifically running a self-marketing campaign to bootstrap himself into Trump's orbit. I do think being a spoiler to distract anti-Trump sentiment were and being 'insurance candidate' in case Trump disappeared from eligibility, were real secondary aims.
iprayiam3
15d ago
maybe failed is too strong. but the context I'm saying this, is in the general ambitions of Musk from a government influence perspective. DOGE's accomplishments were not met with enthusiastic co-momentum from Congress. A lot of opportunity was squandered or actively ignored. DOGE lives on most, IMO, in spirit through the focus Vance has given to uncovering fraud - but again, this isn't really driven by the technocratic influence on the government from outside 'business efficiency' energy.
iprayiam3
15d ago
MAGA was pillaged from 2 sides in 2024 - the technocrats and the neocons; The technocrats, were a mix of recently politically homeless 'elites', with a sense of social liberalism, and economic conservatism (to a point), and mostly anti-woke (some of course, had been instrumental in enabling woke). They cozied up to Trump and Trumpism in a variety of ways, but in reality are a mix of opportunistic and somewhat aligned politically. Basically all were Obama liberals, and would have been quite to the left of Clinton.
Vivek is the worst and most transparently slimy of this crowd, and boy isn't it great to see his grift collapse. Here's a guy who's presidentail campaign was a super strained argument that he was an even bigger Trump ally than Trump himself, and relied on word games like "God is real" as a major campaign plank, to appeal to Christians, while simultaneously asking them to agree with it in a form that was transparently a unitarian platitude. Point being, tortured epistomological games worded in ways meant to trick the dumb voters is neither new, nor successful trick of Vivek's.
His Governorship run is just a leftover plate spinning from when early in Trump II it looked like the technocrats had won. Elon had DOGE, Vance came from Thiel, SV had trump's ear... The neocons had attached themselves to DeSantis (who, was an otherwise viable actually America First, populist conservative successor), and helped sink in by attaching their stink to him, while he went up totally unprepared to skip Trump in line.
But alas, DOGE was a failure, Vance turned out to be more MAGA than SV (yay), and the neocons won the current administartion in the end with Iran; Vivek is a dying gasp of the silicon plot.
iprayiam3
20d ago
Sorry for the double response but on for the thought the simple answer is No you can’t.
That would be like answering a question in an accounting job interview about your greatest strengths with an answer about your bench press.
The issue isn’t about true or false, impressive or unimpressive. It’s that you are embarrassingly answering the wrong question
iprayiam3
20d ago
What’s the actual point of telling a prospect what you like to do for fun?
- Status signalling
- How much fun she’ll have with you.
2 is both on a. an object level - are these things she can expect to participate in?
And b. on a generalized level - do these help her understand your personality in a way that prepares her to have fun with you?
None of your listed activities answer 1 or 2a, nor 2b particularly flatteringly - except watching football at a most basic normie level.
Don’t think of the question as a literal list of activities. Answer this question instead:
“What activities will help me understand what to like about you and anticipate the kinds of things we’ll do together?”
Watching YouTube or breaking down classic music is irrelevant. It’s not that those things are a turnoff it’s that they autistically miss the point of the question.
The correct answer is
I like to spend time with my friends, try out new places to eat, and X
X is a place to answer one legitimate high value activity, particularly something physical
Hiking, marathons, volunteering with homeless veterans, international travel, refurbishing furniture, etc.
If you want to add a Y last, that’s a little extra you, fine: watching movies, watching sports, model trains, video games, whatever.
But anything you add in there should answer the question - are you a fun high value person she’ll have fun with?
If you want to also make it filter against women who you won’t have fun with, ok. But It is not a demand for an accounting of your interests weighted by time.
iprayiam3
1mo ago
No, you sound like a feminist. Not all feminists are pro-sexually liberalized society, and not all sex libertines are aesthetically interested in girl power narrative, but both are part of the same fundamental school of thought:
Women (and men) should be understood as atomic individuals first, and social or cultural expecations that restrict liberal expression in favor of traditional, Christian-based, role-based hegemonic ideas are to be rejected as oppressive.
iprayiam3
1mo ago
Right but my reaction isn’t just “deception”. I wish that society as a whole found it offputting and offensive to personify robots past 70s sci-fi androids. Calling your AI agent Jessica and giving her a cute white girl icon isn’t fooling anyone, but should still be anathema
iprayiam3
1mo ago
It should be illegal for AI to imitate humans. (now, this is obviously both unworkable and too late, but still.)
I'm not just talking about scams or intentional deceptions. I hate that every commercial website has an "AI assistant" with an human name and picture in the corner like Jessica.
It should be illegal to name your AIs with human names, it should be illegal to allow it to imitate a human voice - Robots should be named things like Rx-12 and talk with a robotic voice. Siri and Alexa should not have been allowed their names or voices.
AI should not be allowed to produce textual output that reads like a human, AI should not be allowed to generate images or videos of humans, and robots should not be allowed to have human bodies.
iprayiam3
1mo ago
Right about non practicing Catholics of course. But mentioning Vance OP seemed to be asking whether practitioners actively believed it.
iprayiam3
1mo ago
Yes….?
If your model of the US is one where most educated practicing and professing Catholics don’t really believe it, you’re very wrong. Now of course, you can give some side eye to politicians, but if your assumption is that we all are mostly just larping, no.
iprayiam3
1mo ago
Without looking deeply and taking this at face value, yeah it's pretty bad and I agree with all your points except #2. I still think this is quite different from the core contention of #2.
iprayiam3
1mo ago
It is obviously a very good idea. Traditionalism is more importan than liberalism, and conservatism that conserves liberalism rather than traditionalism is not my ally. Traditionalism is also Christian Western American tradition, attempts to support other forms of traditon are not conservatism and not my ally.
There is a broken pattern now, that anyone with eyes is able to recognize: Welfare is incentivization.
Subsidy spending is bad! Ok but what about the needy? Well of course, we'll subsidize the needy.
All well and good, unless being needy is at all downstream from individual choices.
The libertarian response: Just remove all the welfare is absolutely nothing but controlled opposition. It's pie in the sky nonsense. Libertarian boomers are free to distribute their Medicare and Social security check to the taxpaying base or better yet their married children who can't afford to start a family, while they go on cruises. I won't hold my breath.
Just cut spending mean: Don't spend on the base! Spend on the liberals. Establishment conservatism hates its base.
But that's not the only issue with the 'just cut the spending' crowd. It's also wrongly ordered. I've typed at length about "Liberalism of the Gaps" and my interest in post-detraditionalisation, and this is as good an example as any.
I don't think atomizing society is good, I don't think atomic liberalism is good, While I agree in the abstract in reducing spending, I'm not motivated by many of the same reasons as Con-Inc is here. Supporting traditional institutions like marriage and stay at home mothers is among the highest goods. When we've returned to a healthy social order, then I'll entertain discussions about why spending thats already being spend shouldn't be spent on good things instead of bad things.
iprayiam3
2mo ago
No it’s not the same fundamentals -
The argument was that insanity should not be a defense and your example was of a scenario where charges shouldn’t be pressed.
You can remove insanity ad a defense and not have to charge every person having a small episode
yeah and Biden lost, and Trump won handily. I certainly felt that jump.
But my point is that the cost of living hasn't improved in the intervening years, so the additive inflation has continued to pile on the existing pain.
You all can keep scratching your heads, but it's not that crazy,
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