naraburns
nihil supernum
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User ID: 100
naraburns
nihil supernum
4mo ago
I have never seen any evidence that Harris has the intelligence or insight required to lead a nation.
Does Trump?
Likely no--though he does possess a certain raw cunning, which served him reasonably well in his first term. I think his handling of COVID was pretty bad, but prior to that I had no serious complaints. Whether he actually has the insight or intelligence required to lead a nation, he has actually done so, which seems to qualify as at least some kind of evidence. Harris, by comparison, appears to have had basically every political position handed to her. Whitmer, at least, has some executive bona fides.
I don't think this switch will be good for the Dems (Biden staying would also not have been good for them, it's a no-win situation), but at least they can now make the instant switcheroo to "It's Trump who is old and demented, HE should drop out now".
Agreed--and really, I'd love it if Trump did drop out, too, though I have to wonder whether today's announcement was timed to make that maximally difficult for the Republicans to manage. I also wonder how thinking Democrats feel about having this happen now, after the opportunity to hold open primaries has passed. There's no way Kamala would have been the pick. It looks very much like the party is prepping a Clintonesque coronation, again--and there's nothing about Joe Biden's health today that wasn't known six months ago--or even four years ago. The tacit (and heavily papered-over) admission that Biden will not be fit to serve as President in January is also, I think, effectively an admission that he should probably have been removed from office for disability months, if not years, ago.
naraburns
nihil supernum
4mo ago
He doesn't mention picking a successor, but may in a speech later this week.
CNN et al. have been trying to make Kamala happen. Even Drudge seems to be in on the "consensus is gelling around Harris!" false consensus-building rhetoric. I have never seen any evidence that Harris has the intelligence or insight required to lead a nation. She was explicitly chosen for her current position by virtue of her sex and skin color, and sex and skin color have been the driving factors in her entire political career. To my mind this is frankly disqualifying, but of course--many Americans disagree with me there.
The fact that the second most likely pick currently appears to be a governor around whom the FBI decided to craft a kidnapping plot with which to libel right wingers does embarrassing things to my "deep state" priors.
naraburns
nihil supernum
4mo ago
Who is John Galt?
People old enough to have done things like "boot from a USB drive," but not so old as to be confused by computing devices generally?
Thirty years ago, relatively few undergraduates brought their own computers to college, though most had access to some kind of computer "lab." Twenty years ago, most undergrads brought their own computers to college. Ten years ago, it was common for many programs of higher learning to "give" students a laptop for curricular use, testing, etc. Today, I get a surprising number of students whose only computing device is their cell phone, or a similarly hobbled tablet-style appliance. They live in walled gardens and think that computing begins and ends with "apps." Throwaway consumption devices are, slowly but surely, crowding from our collective consciousness the general purpose (and modular!) machines that delivered the Information Age.
And in some ways, I suppose, that was always the goal ("it was always the plan to put the world in your hands...")--just as we don't need everyone to change their own oil, or know how to fly airplanes, we don't need everyone to be using desktop computers. But in much the way that the average American utterly fails to understand or, therefore, appreciate the systems that keep them fed, keep the power on, etc., I suspect that failure to even slightly understand the technology on which our civilization functions contributes to some pretty distorted perspectives--on the world, on life, on politics, etc.
naraburns
nihil supernum
4mo ago
Pure hearsay--but my IT guy says "if your system had Crowdstrike installed, and it was on and running automatic updates when the updates was pushed, then you got hit. If your system happened to be off, power-cycling, delaying updates, etc., then you missed it, and the actual fix was rolled out very quickly to prevent further problems."
So now "zero day" protection is also a zero day exploit.
Something something security monoculture? Truly critical infrastructure should probably be running multiple operating systems on vendor-diverse hardware in parallel, I guess?
naraburns
nihil supernum
4mo ago
"fucking stop it, you're going to cause a literal civil war with your antics"
It is remarkable to read stuff from the early 1800s discussing how an American civil war over slavery was just inevitable--a matter of time.
It is depressing to feel like that's where we are today, that it may still be decades away but that a civil war between "reds" and "blues" has become inevitable. I would like to believe there is time to de-escalate, but I'm not sure there is a clear way--the bifurcation of American culture has gotten to the point where one side or the other simply must go away if the country is to survive at all. Time and demographics could accomplish that naturally and gradually, but if not, then a civil war is what will do it. But demands for political orthodoxy (on either side) seem to be getting louder, not quieter.
naraburns
nihil supernum
4mo ago
Of the major Democratic candidates waiting in the wings, it seems clear that Newsom is the only viable candidate. And if you’re Newsom, why would you possibly replace Biden now?
The only answer I can think of is "for the same reasons Biden isn't dropping out."
Newsom seems to view high political office as his manifest destiny. At that level of politics, maybe most of them view things that way; you'd almost have to, I think, to run in the first place. If Biden and his handlers were even halfway humane, he would have retired years ago (same goes for Trump). There is something deeply narcissistic about believing that you, and you alone, can effectively steer the community/state/nation at this particular time--but if you didn't believe that, why would you run for office? I'd love to hear "a keen sense of civic duty responding to the insistence of one's fellow-citizens regarding one's merits as a leader" but I know that kind of idealism just gets me laughed out of the room.
It's really something to imagine Newsom or DeSantis in place of Biden or Trump at the CNN fiasco. This year's presidential race is a textbook-crafted thought experiment on inadequate equilibria in political contexts, brought to painful life.
naraburns
nihil supernum
4mo ago
I’m not sure to what extent can it even be called a culture war topic.
...
It’s like when Blue Tribers today think that...
Well, at least to that extent, right?
CW thread.
naraburns
nihil supernum
4mo ago
...I think the case against male circumcision has been overstated by advocates and adopted by guys who were circumcized as infants and wouldn't know the difference.
It is certainly my belief that most, maybe all advocates are in the business of overstating their case, whether to make it seem more urgent, or to demand X in hopes of at minimum securing something less than X as a "compromise." In this particular case, botched circumcisions are sufficiently horrifying that the severity is difficult to overstate--but the incident rate is probably not.
This isn't directly on point...
Still, it's relevant. "Preventing children from having their properly functioning bodies interfered with, even when the adults in their lives are totally cool with it," is one of those things I think the law--judicial, legislative, and executive all--must be empowered to do, if it is empowered to do anything at all. If the law cannot protect the bodily integrity of minors, even against their own expressed wishes, much less the wishes of their parents, it's hard for me to imagine how the law can be permitted to paternalistically protect minors from anything at all.
And maybe that's the right answer, certainly I know some anarcho-libertarians who would bite that bullet. But despite the occasional temptation I have never really been able to get excited about governance quite that small.
How do you gatekeep medical procedures against the well resourced?
Well, first, you can't. But second, who cares?
I don't mean that in a dismissive way--I mean, has "but that law seems difficult to enforce" ever been a legible reason for striking down (or refusing to adopt) a law against something dangerous? There are countless laws against illicit drug use. Many of them are, at least arguably, stupid, but their stupidity is a political question, not a question for the courts. (At least until an activist court decides to get fancy with "arbitrariness," I suppose...) People use drugs, and it's bad for them, and explicit government disapproval of their activity does seem to actually reduce those harms (see: Oregon) even when it can't be said that the relevant harm can be eliminated entirely.
Ultimately, if enough people are down with transing the kids, the kids are gonna get transed. The threshold of "enough" is simply a question of power: if you've got a lot of money, then just knowing one willing (or venal) doctor will probably suffice. But if you're a middle class parent hoping to engage in a little light Munchausen's by Proxy for internet karma and GoFundMe credit, you're going to need some extra assistance via e.g. insurance, tax subsidies, and maybe some government bullying of recalcitrant health professionals. Conversely, simply making a law against transing the kids will suffice for 99% of the population, just like all the other laws that rich people so often find themselves free to disregard.
At best we can rely on professional ethics, but, you know, lol. What's the strategy here?
Sending a message. Having a government that doesn't directly contribute to harming children based on dubious pop culture trends and the elevation of mental illness to a virtue. Protecting children from abusive parents. "But they don't think it's abuse!" Fucking tough; I'm happy to outlaw genital mutilation (including male circumcision), too, because my conception of child abuse is unmoved by appeals to moral relativism. If states can't outlaw transing kids, then they can't outlaw the genital mutilation of infants, either--not in any principled way.
naraburns
nihil supernum
5mo ago
What I'm curious about is how committed you all are to the rules-based order.
The commitment is to the foundation:
This website is a place for people who want to move past shady thinking and test their ideas in a court of people who don't all share the same biases.
The rules are crafted in service of that, moderation is conducted with it mind, and where the rules and the foundation might seem to conflict, the foundation trumps.
So far, between me and the Jew-posters, you seem to be committed to banishing assholes more than having legible principles.
I mean, one of the very first rules is "be kind," so banishing assholes is definitely also rules-based. Of course the rules are not self-enforcing and the mod team is not a calculator, we aren't always perfectly predictable and we aren't always right. But the vast majority of our users seem to get on just fine. In general if it looks like you're even trying to follow the rules, you'll be fine. It's the people that go looking for just how far they can go without getting banned, who tend to be the biggest problem.
In principle, it's fine to ask questions about the rules, and discuss them when it seems warranted to do so. But in practice, the vast majority of the time I get questions about the rules, it is from people who are looking for ways around the foundation itself, rather than ways to understand and follow the rules better. (Weirdly, it's also almost always from people who are obsessed with Jews for some reason, including one particularly persistent troll who has rolled literally dozens of alts at this point--like, think of the good such a person could do if they directed their efforts toward literally anything else! But this just seems to be an all-too-predictable symptom of the age.)
naraburns
nihil supernum
5mo ago
Unkind, unnecessarily antagonistic, not writing like everyone is reading and you want them to be included in the discussion, egregiously obnoxious, and multiple user reports.
I banned you for breaking the rules, so yeah, the decision to ban you came after identifying the rules you were breaking. But the case was, as you can see, wildly overdetermined. Coming back to open a rules lawyering session (as your aim appears to be here) is not going to benefit this account's longevity, though.
Great post (as always--you're a great contributor, which I think you know, but which bears repeating).
Young Mormon men seem to have no issue marrying chaste(ish) pretty blondes who will vote for Romney and deliver 3-4 children, because that’s their milieu. Too often some chubby suburban secular engineer whose primary hobbies are video games and online political discussion thinks he deserves the same.
To further elaborate on this point--young Mormon men also seem to have no issue marrying a reasonable match. Some years ago a Mormon colleague invited me to his son's wedding reception. The bride was obese; the groom, a NEET. The groom's father said "she's a nice girl. I wouldn't say she's a great catch but let's be honest, neither is he." But he had done a Mormon mission trip and she had the right social attitudes. Now they've been married maybe 15 years, no kids (fertility issues). Neither ever completed college, they both do gig work to scrape by with the help of their parents (they're in their 40s now!). They have dreams and goals they're unlikely to ever achieve, but they have a common social milieu, and they're clearly better off supporting one another than they would be as atomized incels.
It's not a life I'd want, but I have to remind myself--it's the kind of life most people get. Most people don't even get a bachelor's degree. Most people aren't particularly attractive. If we reserve the "good life" for "high value" people, things are going to get real bleak, real quick. But without the social support structures encouraging men and women to accept a good match, rather than always "marrying up," that's where we're headed.
naraburns
nihil supernum
5mo ago
The Friday Fun thread is not for culture war discussions; post removed.
naraburns
nihil supernum
5mo ago
Women hate men. Always have, always will.
When possible, write about specific groups rather than general ones. Proactively provide evidence in proportion to how inflammatory your claims are. Don't attempt to build consensus.
The sociology of sex is interesting and worth discussing, but like everything else we talk about here, the relevant conflicts need to be discussed--not waged.
naraburns
nihil supernum
5mo ago
I'm not a good man.
Well, this certainly isn't a good comment. Banned for a day.
naraburns
nihil supernum
5mo ago
Thanks, I've edited the link.
The "context" thing has been a weird issue since the site's inception, I think it is ultimately related to code stuff that is above my pay grade. I know Zorba has been working on it for a while.
naraburns
nihil supernum
5mo ago
Interesting that I think a few of those posts are bad or just not special.
So write something better.
An AAQC need not be Pulitzer material; it requires no expertise; it needn't even be correct, though all of those things could count toward an AAQC. I have approved many, many AAQCs that I'm confident were just objectively wrong. AAQCs are not an endorsement of brilliance or accuracy; they are a way of noticing and rewarding people who make positive contributions to the community through their engagement. What's a "positive contribution?" That's a qualitative question answered substantially by the user nomination and review process. Hundreds of posts are nominated every month, most of them quite plausibly AAQCs; the main reason I winnow them at all is that we do like to keep the list to a manageable size. If someone else were curating the list, it would probably be a little different--but less than you might think.
So like... it's okay that you think a few, or even many, of these posts are not the sort of thing you want to see. But there's exactly one thing you could do about that: write something better.
naraburns
nihil supernum
5mo ago
Sorry about that--there's apparently some weird technical issue with it. It's still visible on Gaashk's profile page, fortunately, and I will also reproduce it here:
Grew up in a very trad wife centric Christian homeschool subculture. It mostly didn't work out. Mostly, we had to get jobs. It isn't trivially easy to find a man who's prepared to be a husband, father, and primary earner fairly young, willing to ask girls out, often at venues like church functions, and interested in those girls. There are some, sure, and some families were formed that way. But now in our late 30s, I'm hearing about even some of the women who did marry a traditional head of household man divorcing, because he's pushy, unpleasant, domineering, and re-training as a nurse or something, now with several children.
Marriages don't have to rise to the level of beating to be worse than working a lower middle class female job. If my now husband hadn't kept inviting me on romantic dates at ancient castles, I would still be basically content with being single, because being a single woman in the modern world is really just fine, with a long educated Anglophone tradition full of slightly lonely but basically fine governesses and nuns. Even at the standards of a century ago, I would certainly rather be a nun than marry a man I didn't like, of whom people said "well at least he doesn't beat you, just have more grit."
I am not a feminist by current standards. My grandmothers and great grandmothers went to teaching colleges, and followed their husbands around the world while they translated Mayan carvings or something, and returned to teaching when their children where older. They kept copies of Virginia Woolf in their houses. There are great grandmothers I don't know much about, because their children ran away from home (and first marriages, I think?) and met up on a Pacific island, and then went on to have those 3-4 kids together, and raise them while teaching. I don't know how to evaluate the alternate universe where everyone had more grit, sticking out their first marriage on some frozen windswept cattle ranch.
Much is made of the state of family formation in Asia lately. Chinese great grandmothers probably had too much grit, breaking their daughters' feet to help their marriage prospects. I don't know how things were for the great grandmothers of the current generation of South Korean women -- the educational issues there sound like an excess of grit -- everyone could just not cram that extra hour, and things would likely be just the same, but slightly more pleasant. It sounds very zero sum after a pretty baseline educational level and some research skills.
Anyway, I'm pregnant with a third baby because I don't think being not particularly successful in America is that bad, actually. Probably none of my kids will go to an unusually excellent college or have an unusually excellent job or win at a high level competition, and that's alright. Someone came in to my classroom today to say that she's pleased that her daughter is shift manager at a Starbucks and leading literacy tutoring over the summer. This is good! People should be able to be pleased with their children living normal, functional lives!
naraburns
nihil supernum
5mo ago
I think you are incorrectly framing this as though the ability to make inconsistent arguments is a unique power held by prosecutors.
No, I've definitely never said that--I've just only talked about prosecution in this thread. You are correct that defendants may also make arguments in the alternative.
The difference is that the defendants (usually!) only have to successfully defend themselves once. Whatever the jury decides, that's the account of the facts that will (usually!) be relied upon through the appeals process for that defendant.
The prosecution, though, is the same party (figuratively, as the state; literally, in some cases, the same person) across multiple cases, and in theory the party being held to a higher standard--because the power of the state is presumably extremely vast, we place a variety of hobbles on it (Bill of Rights, e.g.). Elsewhere in this thread I linked a law review article arguing that cross-case prosecutorial consistency ought to be regarded as part of Procedural Due Process. I find myself amendable to that position.
naraburns
nihil supernum
5mo ago
I mean, it’s totally possible that these two… nut jobs is probably the best term here… fed off of each other and were both manipulating and masterminds. That seems like an occasional nut dynamic.
This seems like the most plausible explanation to me as well.
naraburns
nihil supernum
5mo ago
As I understand it, prosecutors are allowed to make inconsistent arguments so long as they're in separate cases — that they claimed "X" in one trial is no bar to claiming "not X" in another trial.
There are many contexts in which the prosecution is allowed to make inconsistent arguments in the same case--for example, stating claims "in the alternative." The American court system is basically structured under the assumption that prosecutors are interested in truth and justice, rather than in winning their cases and clearing their dockets (see also: prosecutorial discretion). Honestly, I think it works out that way more often than not. But there is nevertheless an awful lot of prosecutorial fuckery.
It's not a "gotcha," though, it's a serious question about predicting the future. The reasons we have to believe that Biden is "not fit to simultaneously run a campaign or for office for four more year" are the same reasons we had to believe that four years ago, and two years ago, and six months ago. What has changed now isn't Biden; what has changed now is that the Left has been forced to accept that these reasons are not "cheap fake videos."
It's hard to get people to change their minds, but it's not impossible. The weight of the evidence has long been against Biden's mental competence, but for a while there people could do the political thing and ignore that evidence as cheap political tactics. The problem is that now we can look back at all the evidence and see that it wasn't cheap political tactics; if it had been, then there would be no new reason for Joe to drop out now. Trump almost getting assassinated did not change Joe's mental fitness. Trump dominating the debate did not change Joe's mental fitness. If nothing has changed about Biden, then why drop out? If it's purely a question of trying to beat Trump, that makes strategic sense, but his withdrawal is not being phrased that way, either.
So we get this Schrodinger's excuse; the narrative is that Biden has decided it's time to retire for purely personal reasons, but also somehow that those reasons have absolutely no bearing on the remainder of his term in office. Those reasons are not new, and yet they are newly relevant, and which part of that narrative you deny depends on which political point you are trying to make.
It would be simpler to just be honest about it: he can't beat Trump, and that's all the Party cares about at this point. Whether Biden is mentally competent has never been the Left's concern; if anything, his lack of competence probably made him an easier puppet to ply.
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