Maybe I'm caught up in cold war nostalgia, but the story used to be that when Soviet bloc teams traveled to America it was the commies that locked them up in the hotel to make sure they didn't defect, rather than the Americans that hustled them out ASAP.
I think that's more than likely the exact situation that's happening here. Note this very important point from the article you linked:
Ghalenoei did not say who ordered his team to depart the U.S. back to Mexico.
It's all blamed on "officials", not specifying where from. Unless you're quite far gone in the "the US is a fascist state!" propaganda, I think you'll agree that if it was US officials doing it, the coach could have just said so and not suffered any repercussions, which leads me to be about 98% certain the request was from Iran's side. The Hill (and the AP they're sourcing) are just being disingenuous in implying that it could be the US, because they want their readers who already believe the US would do this to come to that conclusion. In fact, if they had any belief it was the US they could have asked and investigated. What seems likely here is that the "multiple members of the team’s traveling party" that did not get visas were the team's IRGC chaperones and Iran is not comfortable with their players being in the US without them.
Do children of crunchy granola culture suffer higher rates of sexual abuse than the general population?
Abuse from true believers of crunchy granola culture, I would assume not, perhaps even less, but I would also suspect that crunchy granola culture attracts predators and sociopaths at a higher rate than normal (see: hippie cults/communes built around charismatic figures), because to them people with few taboos and a strong belief that everyone is good if they could just shed oppressive social norms (the one that were put in place over millenia to protect people from predators) sound like deer advertising that they're unable to run away or fight back to a pack of wolves.
pigeonburger
4hr ago
I think this is exaggerated and likely involves stuff we don't know, the Iranians likely try and smuggle in spies all the time under cover of sport and other things. Canada is outright banning players I heard though?
From what I gather, not players but officials, but this is likely your best indication that it's not petty animosity against Iran from the US. Canada would love nothing more than to showboat about mean ol' americans, so if they do the same, you can be quite sure there's something to it.
Though it could also be Iran doing this on purpose to try and spoil the World Cup good vibes: send people over that you know will be rejected for good cause then complain about it.
pigeonburger
3d ago
Yes, as opposed to the 20-to-30 minute intervals between any excitement happening in soccer.
pigeonburger
5d ago
Yeah, I assumed reading the story that something must have been communicated up the chain because without that, it just looks a lot like malicious compliance.
pigeonburger
6d ago
Meta's biggest contribution to AI is, by leaking their llama models early on, sabotaging the moat other companies were trying to build around the AI field through proprietary tooling, enabling the creation of robust open-source tooling that has imposed itself as necessary to support.
This also affects their own ability to profit from AI.
pigeonburger
7d ago
Yeah, I know, but the problem is that the population want to limit migration but they never want to have to be the meanies who say "no" to people, especially sympathetic cases (real international students who integrate, equivalents to america's H1Bs who are really filling unresolved gaps in the job market that locals cannot fill, genuine refugees from wartorn areas...) So a points system seem like a good solution because it takes the decision out of their hands but on its own, it isn't all encompassing, and unless you're also willing to say "no" to people in those alternative pathways, immigration will simply route around the points system into those pathways.
pigeonburger
7d ago
Yeah, but what I'm saying is that the move back away from Europe is going to be even less attractive, much less attractive.
pigeonburger
7d ago
The obvious difference is that while they could likely not expect to be as big a fish in that fishtank, the Pieds-noirs had a comparatively wealthier country they could move to. For an Algerian descendant in France, being "repatriated" back to Algeria would be a big step down.
pigeonburger
7d ago
Dominic Cummings always said that the idea of competently managed mass immigration (i.e. a Canadian/Australian points system) focus grouped as popular in the UK.
I dunno about Australia, but the main issue with Canada's point system is chain migration and alternative pathways. Coming to Canada saying "I want to immigrate here because I want better opportunities" is appropriately hard, but what often happens is getting accepted by a school that's mostly a facade (it's rarely recognized schools, it's "mall campuses" that are nominally linked with real institutions) then after moving and "studying" (usually working most of the time, then doing whatever the minimum is necessary to keep qualifying as a student; the "school" doesn't care, it's in on the grift) they leverage easier immigration pathways for people who have studied here, because that too polls well (and sending back students polls badly). Because it sounds reasonable to say that since someone was able to study and work part time to support his studies here, they are probably a good fit to stay here if they want. If that's what it was, if it was only people who truly studied and integrated, and worked alongside Canadian nationals, as opposed to moving here under false pretense and working "immigrant jobs" (Uber, delivery, immigrant dominated fast foods like Tim Hortons), then I'd support it.
Then there's chain migration, once one person gets their citizenship, they can start sponsoring family to go through a pathway that also bypasses the points system.
pigeonburger
7d ago
I wouldn't know, I'm a Fountains Of Wayne supremacist.
pigeonburger
7d ago
I think geeky guys would love women into geeky pursuits.
But that's urquan's points; are these men looking for girls that are into the same things they are, or for girls that are into "geeky girl" pursuits?
I have been single for most of my adult life, I couldn't find many girls that were into the things I was in. The few dates I had where it clicked with the girls were into museums and arts, one of the girls I had a very enjoyable date with was a jazz musician. These are geeky things, those girls were geeks, but not "guys with boobs".
More recently, and after I found and married by wife, I ended up having to work, for a little while, for a company that did services for libraries (like categorizing, writing descriptions, and stuff like that). The whole place was filled top to bottom with mousey, shy librarian-type girls, some very good looking, that were for the most part a bit awkward interacting with a straight guy like me. That's when it really hit home; there are a ton of geeky girls, they just define geeky differently.
For places where this is a regular issue, I'd say Allow police officers to inflict corporal punishment as a summary procedure.
I'm watching a lot of youtubes of (US) police bodycams and man it's hard to argue otherwise. Of course, it's a biaised sample, but man does it seem unreasonably annoying to have to deal with someone who believes they are going to argue, refuse to comply their way out of a ticket and then physically resist and yell and twist their way out of an arrest. I think there might be some people who'd become more reasonable if they were clearly told by the police "if you do not shut up and comply, I am empowered to beat your ass".
There are also of course, police officers who seem to jump to every opportunity to claim battery on a law enforcement officer. I get that anything that can discourage resisting is probably good in the end, but resisting is already its own charge, it makes me lose some respect for the officers if they feel like a suspect lightly pushing back on them while resisting is them being "battered".
I'm also confused by how many people in the US seem to be driving without their license on them; what the fuck?
pigeonburger
9d ago
You don't have to be a genius at economics to understand "Less hot girls are making more money than you in escorting while doing less. If you want to make more money, you just need move to where there are more rich, lonely, awkward guys." While I don't finish that fast, I'm pretty sure you don't need to elaborate much more for this to be within intellectual reach of anyone with an IQ of 95. Probably 90.
pigeonburger
12d ago
whereas photorealistic AI-gen porn looks just like real life except with every conceivable imperfection mercilessly rooted out.
Honestly, this was already the case before AI-gen porn, for some categories of it. The high-end, "classy", "art" porn from central/eastern europe already has models-style girls with few imperfections to begin with, with top quality Hollywood level make up, flattering lighting, poses and angles and post-processing erasing whatever was there. So I think unrealistically perfect was already a thing before AI-gen.
Obviously consuming either kind of porn to excess will mess with your head. But which do you think is worse?
As a previously healthy consumer of porn (mostly reformed), sometimes you're in the mood for those perfectly shot videos, but also sometimes you're up for real amateur content, for fake amateur content, for 2000s early online productions, for 1990s italian hardcore flicks, for 70s classic films, for drawn content, for 3D CGI content, for softcore...
I think what is worse is being laser-focussed on a single thing and letting that shape your tastes. Checking many things out and being aroused by many of them is healthy.
pigeonburger
14d ago
The accounts I had read gave the impression Digwa was considered by his own community as overly enthusiastic about knives and swords, in that context, the provocation that led to him murdering Nowak might have been a mere pretext for doing something he's always dreamed of doing.
pigeonburger
15d ago
The answer to that will be an even fuller embrace of cloud computing by every software manufacturer. It will be the end of running commercial software locally where you could possibly decompile, crack or copy it. Every software publisher will only allow you to interact with their software through cloud computing, that way they can avoid needing to copyright their software. This includes games (the infrastructure is slowing coming into place to allow this).
How much would it really costs to remake them like 1.5-2.5 b which is significantly less than the initially paid for the IP.
I think the real cost, the real problem, is the reputational hit from admitting they fucked up, alongside the shame, blame, and perhaps even legal responsability, it puts on the creators (producers, directors and writers, mostly) of the publically disgraced movies and the chilling effect it would have on future works.
Imagine how it would go! It's hardly a new phenomenon, bad movies get made all the time at all budget levels, but admitting it means throwing people under the bus. It means telling, quite directly, to the dozens of fans of episodes 7-9 as they are that they have objectively bad taste, talk about spitting on someone's soul. For any producer, director or writer who is about to work on a Disney movie, they'll have seen how Disney failed to stand behind their works. Are they going to imply the movie I worked years on is shit if it doesn't make them enough money? For the public, they'll have seen how Disney swore, for years, to the tune of billions of dollars that episode 7, 8 and 9 were the sequels we always wanted to the Star Wars saga.
No, I don't think we're gonna get a redo. If that bad all women Ghostbusters movie was never officially disgraced by Sony, Disney's not going to do it with Star Wars. At least that Ghostbusters movie could be pushed into a corner never to be talked about again, while SW killed off or bastardized beloved characters. It's best for them to maintain the fiction that they were perfectly good movies that simply for whatever reason, didn't resonate enough with audiences. The best they could do to correct it is a split timeline, JJ Abrams' Star Trek-style, that they then splice over the bad one, and I have a hard time imagining them pulling it off in a way that doesn't feel like a massive ass pull; at least Star Trek had a history of time travel and diverging timelines.
pigeonburger
20d ago
NewPipe broke for a few days, but the latest update fixed it for me.
pigeonburger
21d ago
If you offered me both, I know I'd chose the rattan strikes, easily. I don't know how low the time in jail and high the amount of strikes would have to be for me to, not knowing precisely how painful the strikes are, prefer the opposite, but in my ignorance I would at least exchange up to 20 strikes for a year.
pigeonburger
21d ago
This will open the congressmen to accusations of being too lazy to go in person: "I will go every week to argue your case in-person to Washington DC and I will not be leaving until I get what's best for you, my opponent wants to phone his vote in, literally phone it in with online voting. This is not what a dogged, hardworker does!"
It's kind of stupid because the reality of campaigning means you have to promise something absurdly draining, unrealistic, and unnecessary.
I do agree that if a man is high enough status, he can probably play the "I am a humble servant and a lowly worm" schtick and still attract women. I would call that "countersignaling."
No, that's the thing, high status men don't play "signaling" games. They don't play act like they're servants, they're just bros to everyone. They just don't act like women are different in that matter.
Honestly, the second you start thinking about how to "signal" and playing games to attract women, you've lost; you're not and will not be high status that way. Maybe you'll trick some broken women into sleeping with you, which is maybe from some perspectives better than staying a virgin "nice guy". But high status men don't even know when their charm is on. I know some of these guys. They're just charisma black holes, there's no switch they don't act different to men and women, and their charm works on both equally, even straight guys. When they join a conversation, whatever the topic was is immediately dropped for everyone to talk about them and what's up with their lives and please talk more about yourself.
pigeonburger
22d ago
I disagree with the maximalist version of this. I agree if we're talking about the guy bending over backwards to help a woman because she's a woman, maybe some sort of childish misguided chivalrous ideal is pushing him and women resent that because they feel like the guy taking on this chivalrous role is trying to push her into the role of the grateful rescued maiden. But the well-liked, pillar of the community, popular with women guy is a helpful guy too. The difference is that he would help anyone, not just "fair maidens", and women know and feel that difference.
pigeonburger
23d ago
Yeah, the fact that it's trivially resolved overnight when it would be unbearably embarassing for the politicians in charge kind of proves that point.
The more I look into this story, the more I see tortured journalism.
Here:
"They'll be asked to leave" by whom? Of course, the article is written to imply that it's the US that's having them leave, but... Who gave that order? The whole thing seems to be deliberately written and carefully quoted so that if this arrangement was made and decided between Iran and FIFA it would still be true, and having it be said by an american official is just so that they can imply the order is from him without stating it. About all the articles I find are sourcing the same stuff and are all carefully avoiding stating that the US is forcing the team out, only stating "this was the plan", not stating whose plan. Note that when something IS an order from the US government, the wording is much less weasely and attribution is clear:
Also note that Iran's delegation has clear spooks in it, so to me, the story sounds a lot like: Iranian team has as part of its delegation IRGC elements in it. Probably not to spy on the US but to keep an eye on the players and dissuade defectors. The US and Canada refuse them visas. Iranian team complains to FIFA, they arrange with FIFA that ok, the players are allowed but they play their games and get back to Mexico where they do have handlers. This plan is communicated to the US officials who say "ok, whatever, as long as the obvious IRGC elements are not coming in that's not a problem".
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