netstack
Texas is freedom land
No bio...
User ID: 647
netstack
Texas is freedom land
1mo ago
How do “several unclear assassination attempts” cause FEMA to sandbag their one job?
netstack
Texas is freedom land
1mo ago
My sister is currently visiting from an affected, neighboring city.
She reports most of that city was without power and there were lots of downed trees. Still, traffic was redirected rather than stopped, so people were able to get back to work or get out of town quickly.
One of her neighbors was picked up from Asheville Monday because it was in terrible shape. Looters and still no power or water. But it’s worth mentioning that she could be picked up without Katrina- or Haiti-scale congestion.
The death toll remains under 300, and I expect it to stay low. Maybe sub 500. There are no stadiums full of refugees. Water access is still poor, but on the other hand, it’s much easier to get in and out of the area. Regional infrastructure is relatively intact even in cities directly on the path, so long as the geography didn’t funnel water.
I think relief is going about as well as expected. That’s not to say we couldn’t spend more to do more—this is America, after all—but that we aren’t being negligent or incompetent. Not sure how to formalize that as predictions, not ones which would satisfy a conspiracy theorist.
netstack
Texas is freedom land
1mo ago
We keep warning you to stop shitting out one-liners, and you keep dropping in to do it. Two week ban, this time.
netstack
Texas is freedom land
1mo ago
The real enemy is quick-change shelves. If it’s not secured to the wall, it’s not California compliant. (There’s a joke about magazines here, too, but I can’t quite make it work.)
I don’t think this is a line-drawing issue. It’s a difference of intent.
netstack
Texas is freedom land
1mo ago
Funny, but look at those confidence intervals! And the axes—it’s the equivalent of every restaurant averaging 4 to 4.5 stars. At first I thought the ratings were a Likert scale, but philosophy did score over 5, so it’s probably not.
netstack
Texas is freedom land
1mo ago
Correct—this isn’t a low-effort top post. There was clearly effort put into adding commentary, and I actually think it’s rather well-written.
It is also a pure expression of “look what those people did!”
Effort is not enough. There is a separate failure mode where a low-charity top post sparks uninteresting discussion. On Reddit, this was called a circlejerk. I gave the OP a mild warning in hopes of avoiding our own little slice of hivemind.
netstack
Texas is freedom land
1mo ago
Is that the fault of decriminalization? Rates have basically only gone up since 1979.
Oregon’s policy was a disaster, but didn’t exactly show up in overdose deaths. Take that result with a tiny, but still incredibly lethal, grain of fent. It still suggests that the 2400% insanity isn’t due to decriminalization. No, people are just doing harder stuff, whether or not they can get arrested for it.
netstack
Texas is freedom land
1mo ago
Nothing wrong with being the 100th post on a subject. On the other hand,
Basically, if your content is 'Can you believe what Those People did this week?' then you should either refrain from posting, or do some very patient work to contextualize and/or steel-man the relevant viewpoint.
It looks like you read a trashy article and then attached your own impression of the author’s politics. Please don’t leave it at that next time.
netstack
Texas is freedom land
1mo ago
I don’t think there’s actually any restriction on it.
netstack
Texas is freedom land
1mo ago
Let’s avoid casting aspersions. You may be correct, but it’s not really constructive.
netstack
Texas is freedom land
1mo ago
every pizza place
If that’s not hope for a cultural victory, I don’t know what is. God bless America.
netstack
Texas is freedom land
1mo ago
“Lukewarm” is about what I’d expect for principled defenses of uncomfortable optics.
I kind of waffled between my two paragraphs. I’m strongly in favor of collective bargaining as a concept, since firms are categorically different than individuals, so I objected to OP’s characterization. And I really do think the popularity of unions stems from a genuine desire for “fairness,” so cases like this will damage them. On the other hand, I’d be alright with more limitations; I just don’t have a good idea of what those look like.
(Also, I’ve been trying more aggressive editing for conciseness. It’s going okay.)
netstack
Texas is freedom land
1mo ago
What does the Overton window look like for dialing back Union power?
My first thought was capping each one to the size of the employer. It seems obvious that everyone in a particular factory ought to be free to associate, less certain that everyone in a corporation should, and by the time you get to an entire trade, it starts to look like monopoly. So perhaps that would be a viable limit. But I know the standard tactic against strikes is replacement, and if a union is unable to defend against that, does it have any effective power at all?
As far as I can tell, no one tried this even during the Red Scare. I’m not sure if it means it would be too strong, too weak, or have some horrible consequence.
netstack
Texas is freedom land
1mo ago
I’d say they owe their continued existence to the fact that they are rationally, game-theoretically correct. Your employer does not need you. It needs people like you. Why shouldn’t you bargain as a group?
Yes, they levy a tax, and we could do things cheaper without them. “Cheapness” isn’t the only goal worth pursuing. Something resembling “fairness” has its own place in the American mythology, and unions were lionized because they flattered that goal. The further they get from that motte, the less support they’ll see from left and right.
netstack
Texas is freedom land
1mo ago
Why would handing Senators back to state legislators, which are often more partisan than their constituencies, help?
netstack
Texas is freedom land
1mo ago
It is pretty incoherent, which is why I doubt Democrats actually believe it.
Well. I should never underestimate the lunatic fringe, but I don’t think Twitter sloganeers have an actual plan to cheat.
netstack
Texas is freedom land
1mo ago
I don’t believe it.
Most people aren’t Raskolnikov. They don’t make decisions like this. At most, they use such a ghoulish, utilitarian calculus as a post facto justification.
No, if there was cheating, it was banal. The first thought was “hey, I can get something I want.” The second, if it happened at all, would have been “no one will notice.” That’s sufficient to explain the kind of crimes that @Walterodim suggested. Fudging counts, encouraging false statements. Voting for your dead parent.
But the “existential danger” theory proves much, much more. If you’re convinced Trump is Turbo Hitler, why are you stopping at a fake ballot? Where’s your manifesto and your one-dollar stamps? How did you suddenly become amazing at judging risk, such that no one gets caught in the act?
The Venn diagram between Trump haters, principled utilitarians, and election officials has to be vanishingly small. Perhaps that’s why he’s had such an hard time finding evidence of fraud.
netstack
Texas is freedom land
1mo ago
People here keep saying Democrats “lied about Project 2025.” What are they actually saying about it? What has Trump said, other than “not knowing the guy?”
I think if you take Trump seriously but not literally, or just assume that he doesn’t have many plans to choose from, he’s probably going to end up picking a very Project-approved slate. Kind of like the Federalist Society list of justices. He’s never had any problem delegating before.
netstack
Texas is freedom land
1mo ago
Looks like that backs up Ben’s description, no?
Most of the conflict is intrastate or non-state. Death rates are up from 2010 but down from basically every year before 1988.
netstack
Texas is freedom land
1mo ago
I’d be interested, too. Judging by this graph there was no shortage of rocket attacks before the Dome went up. There are surges in later years, but how do we know they aren’t more about availability?
netstack
Texas is freedom land
1mo ago
This is nuts. I love it, and I want to see it represented in alt-history fiction.
The Louisiana Purchase would probably look quite different if we were still a British subject. Does that put a damper on any industrial snowball? No doubt Napoleon still does Napoleonic things, so I expect we end up with it eventually, unless Britain springs for a separate colony.
We probably delay the English abolition of slavery, and I would expect we have a civil war over it anyway. But the export-reliant, heavily coastal Confederacy of our timeline stands no chance against peak Victorian England. Unless they're committed in India or, I dunno, Russia at that point, the war is much shorter and favors the Union.
Russia probably ends up in the same mess over the 19th century. Their problems didn't depend on Napoleonic devastation or the Continental balancing act. I don't know nearly enough about German and Italian unification to say where that derails. Bonus points if Marx gets lost to the butterflies, though I suppose something like communism was bound to happen.
And that's before we even get to renegotiating WWI.
They look fine to me.
Can you show me a leadership page that you wouldn’t say is incompetent? I’m not sure I understand your criteria.
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