johnfabian
6mo ago
This is just the substack equivalent of the more deranged branches of critical theory. They posit that because they are against the people who claim all media is actually engaged in fighting a war for the fate of the soul of society and YOU need to pick a side, that in fact all media is actually engaged in fighting a war for the fate of the soul of society (but different). I'm fond of reading tea leaves but I think one loses the point (and fun) of it when you start smashing your head into your cup.
I was reflecting upon this earlier today when I saw on Reddit that the children's show Bluey had uploaded to youtube an episode that had been "banned" in the US. It wasn't actually banned, but Disney decided not to include it in the show's episodes for American subscribers. You can watch it here and take a guess as to why that might be. If you haven't heard of Bluey, it was the second-most watched television show (in total minutes) in America last year in spite of its short format. It's a charming show and is much more tolerable to adults than much of contemporary children's programming, most of which seems like the virtual equivalent of crack cocaine. It's been in the news recently because it may or may not have ended (?) despite being massively successful and profitable. I took a gander at some of the culture warring over it and it's invariably idiotic. The lunatic left see its messages of friendship and inclusion as proof it is secretly Marxist; the retarded right see a wholesome nuclear family with nary a Pride flag in sight and think it's hiding its power level. This kind of reading-into-things seems to me little different than the kind in the linked article.
Any time I see stuff like this my eyes protectively glaze over and my curiosity is ended. All of this kind of culture war obsession just strikes me as so incredibly infantile.
johnfabian
6mo ago
One might argue that it would predict that Churchill would get a pass from the anti-fascist collective, given that the thing he's most famous for is helping to defeat the most prominent example of fascism in human history.
Not if the argument is that Churchill was in charge of an only-slightly-less-fascist state, whose conflict with the greater was merely about Who Should Dominate.
Among quasi-Marxist (this is misleading because contemporary leftists almost uniformly haven't read Marx) people in the present they have already decided that the Soviet Union, near-alone, defeated Nazi Germany.
johnfabian
6mo ago
Lots of places sell or "misplace" their mailing lists to other parties.
johnfabian
6mo ago
Absolutely not. Don't even bother thinking about it again. They were out to scam you and you just got them first.
johnfabian
7mo ago
There's another element: discovering wealth does not necessarily make you wealthier. Within 100 years of discovering the Cerro Rico at Potosi which essentially doubled the world's silver supply, the Spanish crown was serially bankrupt.
johnfabian
7mo ago
Would there be? Does NATO risk nuclear war for the sake of Estonia?
What if it's just a border incursion? The Russians penetrate some 20 or 30 km and then stop. What if it's just shelling or a few bombs dropped on military bases?
I don't think this is something particularly likely, but the Russians might think it valuable to test the waters on how united NATO really is, especially if Trump is elected again.
johnfabian
7mo ago
I think a significant part of it is simply staff size. A 10-man team can create a work of art. A 1000-man team is answering to shareholders first.
johnfabian
7mo ago
It might depend on what level of salami slicing is attempted. Estonia is a very soft target; there doesn't need to be some massive build-up of force to seize most or all of it. So let's say you have a normal force distribution at standard readiness in the Leningrad Military District. All of a sudden the wire comes in - ethnic Russians have been killed by the government of Estonia, and the rest need immediate protection to prevent the same! It's only a 200 km drive to Tallinn from the border. There are negligible forces in your way. How much preparation is actually needed at this point?
johnfabian
7mo ago
They sort of flip Jessica and Paul's eagerness with respect to the missionara protectiva prophecy; in the book Paul is all for it and Jessica reluctant. But in the movie it is Jessica who is the insistent one and Paul troubled with it. This makes Jessica seem much more manipulative and also lumps her in with the rest of the Bene Gesserit when she was supposed to be the black sheep
johnfabian
7mo ago
This makes it all the more peculiar that nobody has been able to experimentally demonstrate and therefore verify the greenhouse effect.
Experimentally proving the greenhouse effect is a common science class task for sixth graders. The author of this could probably do it with materials that exist in his house. This is a rather extreme self-imposed ignorance.
Churchill in this message was actually reusing some of the same words he had used in a message to Anthony Eden two days previously (in the context of learning about the deportation of Hungarian Jews to Auschwitz):
"There is no doubt this is the most horrible crime ever committed in the whole history of the world, and it has been done by scientific machinery by nominally civilised men in the name of a great State and one of the leading races of Europe. It is quite clear that all concerned in this crime who may fall into our hands, including the people who only obeyed orders by carrying out the butcheries, should be put to death after their association with the murders has been proved. I cannot therefore feel that this is the kind of ordinary case which is put through the Protecting Power, as, for instance, the lack of feeding or sanitary conditions in some particular prisoners' camp. There should therefore, in my opinion, be no negotiations of any kind on this subject. Declarations should be made in public, so that everyone connected with it will be hunted down and put to death." link
Ironically enough he torpedoes two denialist claims in this short message. No wonder they pretend it doesn't exist.
johnfabian
7mo ago
For some reason I was thinking about the OJ Simpson trial today, and it reminded me of your comment.
Even this analogy is somewhat inapt; it would require for OJ Simpson to have been unrepentantly open about killing them, with the defence team meanwhile trying and failing to construct alternative scenarios regardless.
Like I've said many times everytime SS starts beating this drum, Holocaust deniers never seem to come up with a convincing way to get around the fact that the Nazis were quite happy to admit they had killed millions of Jews. At best they would feign that they had somehow been coerced, or threatened, or were just following orders.
johnfabian
7mo ago
he says "puck". It's an old saying about why Wayne Gretzky was so good.
johnfabian
8mo ago
Anglo countries allow for individuals or groups to mount legal challenges to the state much more aggressively than other nations, and judges are much more likely to grant injunctions, freeze construction etc while those cases progress.
Amusing example recently from Toronto: the process is underway of electrifying the rail network in order to transform it into a German style S-bahn with frequent, fast, bi-directional service all day. This is legitimately maybe the most important public transport project in Canadian history, give or take the construction of the Canadian Pacific Railway. In terms of reducing greenhouse gas emissions it might be the biggest individual project because it will displace tens, perhaps hundreds of millions of car trips yearly.
So it is totally rational for the project to have been delayed because a group of concerned citizens (who incidentally, live near the rail corridor) were worried that the electrification might affect a type of salamander in a nearby ravine. That is not to say the salamander actually lives in the ravine in question: but it might, and the electrification of the railway and the increased train traffic might affect it somehow. No, the salamander isn't endangered. But who knows: perhaps it one day will be?
johnfabian
8mo ago
A short post about Metrolinx, Ontario's incompetent transit authority
I enjoy talking about public transit. Not just because I advocate for it to be better, but also because I think it sits at the nexus of a number of problems in the Anglosphere: crushing regulatory barriers, unwieldy bureaucracy, land use and housing, GHG emissions, and the declining state capacity to envision and build projects that better the lives of its citizens. As has been discussed much before, the Anglosphere has a problem separate from other western countries with respect to its construction costs, and this is particularly egregious for transit. Similar projects to those accomplished in Spain or Norway or Italy are - when attempted in Canada, the UK, or the US - considerably more expensive (often 10x more, per km), take longer to build, and when finished have inferior performance. If you live in the Anglosphere and are barely aware of local issues you can probably think of a few local examples off the top of your head.
The Eglinton Crosstown is a classic example. Originally intended to open in time for Toronto's hosting of the 2015 Pan Am games, this light rail line was subsequently cancelled, revived, and redesigned before construction eventually began, with a greatly inflated budget. The project's completion date had previously been announced as 2020, then '21, then '22... in September 2023 a news conference was called by Metrolinx to announce they had no update for when it might be operational. Ostensibly it will be this year, but no one would bet on it. There is presumably some fault with the construction (informed speculation points to leakage and erosion in some of the stations near the intersection with the Yonge-University subway line) that is not being publicly announced due to legal wranglings with the P3 contractor. All in all it's a gross failure, and a pathetic one.
Which made it all the more unbelievable that Metrolinx decided to launch a PR campaign mocking those who complained about delays. Sometimes you get a glimpse of someone's personality by some action they take that seems to reveal in a moment all you need to know about them, and I get the feeling based on the public reaction this substantially hardened people's opinions. Now I know some people who have worked in or with Metrolinx, and I was aware of their general incompetence, their paralyzing bureaucratic approach, their malaise of indecision. I was not aware they were so contemptuous of the public. This 30 second advertisement and its accompanying campaign cost $2.25 million and was immediately pulled due to the response (all told, one of their more on-target projects).
But the real reason I wrote this is so I can share the amazing parody of the Metrolinx ad campaign that perfectly captures the passive-aggressive sanctimony.
johnfabian
8mo ago
There's a UK "quiz culture" and corresponding infrastructure; local leagues, regional leagues, prestigious competitions, popular club at universities, etc. It's just a much more popular pasttime from what I can tell.
johnfabian
8mo ago
it's some dude in the midwest who every time he has a bratwurst thinks "Heil Hitler, we must save the Fatherland"
johnfabian
8mo ago
I've been binging Only Connect, a game show people here might enjoy very much. The appeal of it is that it's a sort of hybrid of trivia and lateral thinking, which often forces contestants to combine different sorts of thought processes to find answers. It's delightful in that it is simultaneously unpretentious in its presentation and incredibly pretentious in its subject matter, is played for no money, and as far as I know in the English-language world it is the most difficult game show. If nothing else it will improve your knowledge of British geography. The (almost) full archives of it are on youtube allowing you a near-infinite back catalogue. If you want a taste here is the most recent series finale.
johnfabian
8mo ago
The sites died out because their format of pouring incandescent hot rage into your eyes has moved to youtube, tiktok, twitter, etc. Those offer either condensed format or visual augmentation, whereas for as bad as those former sites were for humanity they at least forced you to READ a bit.
The comments on youtube/tiktok/whatever are still largely unmoderated even if the more text-based social media sites are.
johnfabian
9mo ago
At the start of the 20th century, if you were forced to pick a country that you think would carry out a Holocaust-level atrocity in the next fifty years, everyone would have picked Russia. (Not necessarily with Jews as the target, they were just the most obvious target). No other state in Christian Europe was nearly so repressive.
johnfabian
9mo ago
You actually support Diocletian's reforms? umm, yikes.
johnfabian
9mo ago
I'm a progressive! (circa 2014)
johnfabian
9mo ago
This is actually a debate space to make progressives better at debunking alt-right trolls. TheMotte plays a critical part in deprogramming radicals.
(this isn't even necessarily untrue)
johnfabian
9mo ago
All the SBNation sites went downhill when they got monetized. Geez, I haven't been on SilverSeven for like 5-6 years now at least and it used to be a daily internet stop of mine.
Somewhat related, Scottie Scheffler has been on the biggest tear golf has seen since prime Tiger; in late March/April he won four out of five tournaments in a row and narrowly missed winning the fifth - some $20ish million in winnings. All this while his wife was 8+ months pregnant; I can't find speculation as to what the precise due date was but comments from him seemed to suggest late April so now she's overdue. He is skipping the big money event this week but more to the point he was very vocal that if his wife went into labour he would step off the course mid-round. He said this also applied if he was leading in the last round of the Masters (which he won comfortably). Now it's not a team sport (besides I suppose the caddy) but the question is essentially would he potentially compromise his individual legacy as a golfer to be with his wife during labour.
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