wemptronics
25d ago
Unless I read it wrong, the 50,000 number references the number of doctors they signed up to register voters. According to Google this is between 4-5% of all doctors in the United States. This number sounds unbelievable as I write it, but I'm no longer in a position to double check stuff at a screen. Did I quote that correctly?
Perhaps it is just the number of voter registrations and Aaron was sloppy with his writing? I can look tomorrow.
Did y'all talk about this story by Aaron Sibarium earlier this month?
Meet the Little-Known Activist Group That Has Tens of Thousands of Doctors Registering Patients To Vote
The article starts by describing a psychiatric institute in Pennsylvania that started an initiative to register voters.
Located in a swing state that could decide the 2024 election, the hospital asks psychiatric inpatients, regardless of diagnosis, if they would be interested in "voter registration tools" that let them check their nearest polling station and register to vote online. Patients can also request a mail-in ballot with "assistance" from hospital staff, according to a pair of papers about the project, which began in 2020.
...as the institute puts it, [voting] is a "therapeutic tool" that "helps empower patients and makes them feel good."
"Voting is an important part of the recovery process," Julie Graziane, a geriatric psychiatrist
Since the initiative is in a medical institution it must be justified, because you can't just waltz into medicine and decide voting is important. No, these institutes are bound to a sacred oath that commits their staff to the health of patients. By necessity, voting must become good for patients.
After the starting the voter registration initiative, the Pennsylvania hospital "has turned to the nonprofit Vot-ER, which develops "nonpartisan civic engagement tools" for "every corner of the healthcare system." This is where my lack of strong objection turns into a fully committed objection.
Founded by an emergency room physician at Harvard Medical School, Alister Martin, who served as an adviser to Vice President Kamala Harris, Vot-ER has helped more than 50,000 doctors register their patients to vote. Vot-ER claims to be nonpartisan, it is staffed by progressive operatives, funded by progressive foundations, and run by an umbrella nonprofit, A Healthier Democracy, that has referred to DEI as "the bedrock of fair healthcare." And ahead of the 2024 election, it is leading a movement—backed by top medical groups and an executive order from the Biden-Harris administration
The basic gist is that medical staff wear a QR code around their neck and point patients to it in order to register. A 2021 executive order encouraged this behavior, but Vot-ER's site only cites the National Voter Registration Act of 1993 in its FAQ page as its legal reason to exist. Medical professionals have the greenlight to seek out patients and proactively attempt to register them to vote.
I did not vet every link in the article, but I did look at a few, and as far as I can tell most of the quotes are presented in a fair enough, if biased, context. There are professionals willing to say stuff like these bits:
Debra Koss, a professor of clinical psychiatry at Rutgers... described a patient who, depressed by the poor conditions in her Section 8 apartment building, gained an "internal locus of control" by registering to vote. "Ultimately, she became less anxious and depressed," the doctors wrote in an op-ed last year, "and for the first time in 15 years, her intrusive suicidal thoughts ceased to exist."
I think if voting cures depression that's great, but I suspect voting does not cure depression and Debra Koss is not offering a medical opinion.
At the Pennsylvania Psychiatric Institute, Graziane, the geriatric psychiatrist, has argued that voting can "increase life satisfaction, decrease risky behaviors and increase mental wellbeing."
Their argument echoed what [the founder of Vote-ER] told the New York Times in a 2020 interview... The time for doctors "being impartial and apolitical," he said, "is over."
I watched most of a 20 minute talk from the founder of Vot-ER from 2023. It was very heavy on the voting aspect, the benefits of voting, and the benefit of voter registration. Not so much attention given to the medical aspect, ethical questions, or potential impacts. I briefly trolled through Vot-ER's site and, as far as I could tell, they don't provide any studies supporting the idea their program has significant positive medical benefits to patients. Which I would have figured would be necessary. If a doctor is doing something to me as a doctor it should improving my health.
If a person comes in with a broken arm and you offer to register them to vote on their way out I think this carries ethical questions but, fine, whatever. When the program extends to mental health institutions and picks up a motto of Voting Is Great For You Actually Because Anecdote this seems like it should be made an issue.
I'm no expert, but I am not under the impression that dedicating more attention to politics is the best path to a healthy mental state. I am under the impression that politics, particularly of the national sort, in this day and age appears to degrade many people's mental well being. Encouraging people to vote is not necessarily damaging to their psyche, but a focus on voting might be a gateway drug. An organization, staffed by party operatives or affiliates, pushing a political non-profits goals onto medical staff in hospitals is wrong.
Like ballot harvesting I think it's sleazy. I can accept sleaziness in politics. People accept that politics is not holy and sacred, but dirty. Importing it into medicine, which I know is not new, seems particularly bad though. Initiatives like this drives resentment when, on the other hand, I am inundated by messaging that claims one party is holy, good, and joyous democracy lovers-- while this party engages in what appears to be deeply cynical, irreverent electioneering. I guess I'll accept sleazy politics in medicine as well.
Wow, thanks for sharing I'm glad I didn't miss that post. In case people don't know the OP of the reddit thread's username is an homage to the very pilot that was involved in the crash. The pilot was an active redditor that, as his username suggests, sought to dispel the misconceptions surrounding the the V-22.
Mostly he spent a lot of time explaining it was statistically average when it came to flight hours per crash when compared to other rotary aircraft. The kind of viral stuff that doesn't matter to Marines engaging in morbid bants or casual History Channel guys explaining how the M1 Garand ping was a problem that alerted Nazis a soldier ran out of ammo.
It's ironic that what were known, solvable parts failures in the V-22 likely had a major hand in killing the one guy who was so publicly committed to explaining how perfectly fine the aircraft is. For him to be blamed the same as a parts failure is borderline ridiculous if that post is accurate.
Does anyone know why that account was suspended? I had to google the username to remember, found another Osprey AMA on reddit (may be the same person) and they also have a suspended account. I know the wife of /u/UR_WRONG_ABOUT_V22/ took over the account shortly after the November '23 incident. Unless it was some LARP, stolen valor incident, or "suspended" is the same as deleted, then that seems very strange. As far as I know GUNDAM-22 (a pilot in the Nov 23 crash) was /u/UR_WRONG_ABOUT_V22/.
As for your larger point, while I agree we'll see material damages from a competency crisis I'm not sure this is the best example. For an aircraft that already has a controversial reputation it wouldn't surprise me that "pilot error" would find its way pushed up the who-to-blame ladder. If the V-22 is useful, good enough, and safe enough, but carries an unwarranted reputation, then review boards have good reason to fear the whole truth. It can fly faster and further than other rotary craft. It doesn't take many senators that have use for a Save Our Troops crusade to jeopardize this capability.
That said, bureaucrats placing blame to protect Boeing contracts and their credibility alone is disgusting and, I agree, emblematic of wider corruption. Do I expect this issue to be addressed? Yeah. Would I expect better risk management, manufacturing/quality control? Not really. That would be also be a good crusade for a senator, but you can't replace Boeing in a day.
This might be uncharitable of me
I think so. I would not say "I wish I could just use force to get women to have sex with me" is a common theme on 4chan. "Show tits or gtfo" or "women are stupid and/or weak and/or gay" are common themes. I have not visited /r9k/ enough, but extreme incel-ery was mocked on the more normie hobbyist boards.
But it is much easier for me to imagine men flouting those laws in mass than it is to imagine men literally going to war against the woman-coded side.
You would think striking would be a logical step before more serious conflict. Yet, we see plenty of civil wars and domestic strife go hot without general strikes. It's not a necessary precursor to violence or coups.
I'm of two minds. I agree with you that violent conflict seems unlikely. If men have enough collective grievance and mass to try to strip power from the Women's Party, they probably can do so without violence. If they develop collective grievances and identity, but not enough mass, then that's just your average rebellion. Men kill other men over power and all is right with the world.
On the flipside, we're in uncharted waters. If universal suffrage in two-party systems universally approaches a 50/50 gender divide I'm not sure how that's supposed to work or remain stable. There is a limit to what policies people can vote for at the detriment to their spouses, such as reparations tax on men, and those without children/spouses don't create long-lasting dynasties. But of the culture war stuff where the divide is becoming most prevalent?
On the topic of war, what about a foreign war? If the Women's Party decides war is in the nation's interest they are sending the Men's Party to fight it. If the Men's Party doesn't want to fight it, then I don't see how that doesn't negate the legitimacy of the state. If the Women's Party identifies this problem, and thus never responds to conflict without the Men's Party approval, that similarly seems to call into question their legitimacy to rule.
And I am lucky enough that at least the women I am close with are either politically moderate like me or are hard-core Democrats but are capable of having a conversation with me about politics without yelling.
Same.
It's an interesting trend. A gender divided party system seems unstable and people should probably worry about it. I guess one possibility is powerful women rule over men backed by T-3000 terminators and a matriarchy that provides women with government sponsored AI husbandos.
Oh, that's potentially good discipline. Is the expectation that you have to give up the act and engage more candidly in replies? Otherwise you invite dedicated trolls and jannies try to prevent that.
It is not so reasonable to declare lower class immigrants elects (the chutzpah!) to the dirty, lazy, good for nothing natives. I imagine this was for effect, which means it is effortful if intentionally provocative.
I did ask for a steelman for what I see as* the UK establishment position. This is far more culture warry than steelman-y. The most steelmanistic part is describing a need for migration, the rest of it is one half elitist scrutiny, one half deferential multiculturalism that I'm not sure anyone really holds as a true blue belief. Which could be read as satire if we did not believe the writer is attempting to rustle "our" jimmies. That's good writing even if unintentional.
This post is borderline too uncharitable/provocative. It is not exceptionally thoughtful, although I did report it as a based post. Which in my mind exists beyond an AAQC in another dimension. It's a different kind of post. Is it a shitpost? Yeah, kinda, but a tolerable and interesting one. One you get away with maybe a couple times a year if you're a prolific poster? I always appreciated lefty affirmative action in this space. I vote minor janny spanking, but I also do not deal with you weirdos all the time.
Yeah, my gut says we're failing the Turing test. That reads too closely to online doomer well-of-course-the-whites-won't-revolt rage thinking. A person that thinks that nativist uprisings in this context are completely unjustified isn't going to defend their position with a through-and-through justification of the lopsided enforcement. Maybe they do, but if they're a dedicated pragmatist, then surely they can see the inherently impractical nature in failing to sufficiently placate the majority native population? All you have to do is demonstrate that the majority is sufficiently cared for and protected from [bad people]. It doesn't take much to Set Examples for said population. If there were enough examples to support a policy choice they'd be easy to point to?
It may be the case that the authorities deliberately decided it was safer to align against the majority to some extent, but I'm struggling to think of alternatives explanations that aren't ideological. If it's been a misjudgment of pragmatic policy (less strife and chance of ethnic misgivings if we stack the deck this way) that'd be one thing, but it's ended up so predictably wrong I don't know how you can really say it was a practical policy choice at all. UK decided to do this in 2005 when all was nice enough and inertia carried it through 20 years I guess?
The posts Andrew Torba shared don't seem particularly charged. I have no idea if that's a selection of his posts or all of them, but those aren't the comments of deranged 20 year old leftist shouting online. Without further context those read pretty close to the median internet argument. We can go read far less reasoned comments on reddit all day. For all we know those comments are evidence he liked to pass time as a devil's advocate. This forum has seen a few.
If Torba provided that selection to demonstrate Crooks as frothing leftist I don't buy the framing. Which makes his actions more puzzling. He probably wasn't a committed online ideologue, so why do what he did? More evidence towards CIA LSD mind control device from beyond the Ice Wall.
This has earned him the moniker of "Two-Tier Kier", with many calling out that a two tier justice system exists in the country; when minorities riot over facing justice, the state bends over backwards to appease them, but when native whites riot over the stabbing of children, the full force of the state comes out to crush them.
I'm not familiar enough with the state of it all to opine, but if someone were to steelman the opposite position -- that there is no two-tier policing and the UK authorities and police treat everyone fairly -- what would it be?
Does it require a context wherein a certain response to BLM type or Indo-Paki protests are justified to receive tacit support, but things like anti-vax/anti-lockdown/anti-mask protests do not? Rotherham grooming gangs is sufficiently dated to where a steelman may not necessarily need to address it, but I wouldn't be surprised if there are more recent examples that a Brits would point to. What is the evidence that UK authorities do not treat the benefactors and subjects of the migrant friendly, multiculturalist policies more kindly than they do their own native citizens? Or would the argument be that they are justified in doing so to avoid, well, I would have thought they'd say they do so to avoid conflict like this.
Looking it up 3/4 of migrants that they detain file some legal dispute and the UK deports around 5,000 foreign criminals a year.
Say what you will about the Bri'ish Isles, but UK government reports seem so much higher quality than stuff America puts out. That second link is nicely packed with information. Especially the part where they explain EU human rights commissions fudge up "deport first, appeal later" policy where they kicked people out before hearing out their disputes. Just what exactly did Brexit do for the UK in this regard? Anything? As an aside, opening up your nice Western legal system to the world continues to appear untenable. Where can I invest in human rights law firms?
In 2023, just under 4,000 foreign offenders were removed from the UK. This was the highest number in four years, but removals remain lower than pre- pandemic levels. From 2010 to 2019, removals averaged 5,500 per year. [39]
There were 10,400 foreign national offenders in prisons in England and Wales as of 31 March 2024, accounting for 12% of all prisoners.
Whether those numbers are a lot or a little does little to quell concerns about importing tragedy. Anyone knowledgeable enough and feeling steel manny enough to explain why this is just a common nativist rage, the UK government deals with these issues handedly, or alternative angles? From this side of the ocean it does seem like this is a long time coming.
EDIT: Thinking about it, if they're deporting about half the number of "foreign offenders" that they keep in jail, that seems like a significant amount. Although this doesn't engage with the fact that foreign criminals become classified as native ones in a quick 15 years, stuff like the criminality of 2nd generation immigrant citizens, and so on.
Israel can't defend its own citizens on its own soil
That's true. I would call a new neighboring government in Gaza that only required minimal military action to maintain on a path to a formal state recognition would be a victory, but many Israelis would not. Politics has them in a perpetually compromised position. They punch above their weight imo.
As soon as the IDF gets sick of being ambushed and pull out of any one part of Gaza, Hamas moves right back in.
Yeah they've done the 'mowing the grass' strategy for a long time. It's management, not solution, which is probably the best they can ask for with the parameters set. It's one of a few options they can do when there's no desire to officially rule a territory or go all the way via violence.
Israel is not impervious to rockets landing in the country. I'm not too interested in talking about how important or effective Iron Dome is. All I said was that if Iran's great show of force doesn't deter actions such as this strike on a target supposedly nearby Iranian officials, then what great success is that show of force? Just because Israel has targeted Hamas and Hezbollah leaders before, and will again, does not make the strike insignificant.
I also don't see many people calling the current state this conflict a victory for Israel. Shills are very optimistic as ever. Resistance types still insist it is a fake and gay country filled with Jews. The current state of the conflict seems about right. Maybe better than they could hope for considering what they were prepared for when it came to entering Gaza. Having an actionable plan for governing the territory, or transitioning power there, seems like it would've been a pretty good idea to get going 9 months ago. Perhaps that's impossible too, but I suspect that's mostly political as well.
There's a lot of brain worms when it comes to Israel. Oh well that's cyber for ya.
"We can hypothetically launch more drones at you and actually do harm" after launching a few is not a victory in itself. It looks like they won very public assassinations of their allies and vassal leaders on their home turf. What else did they win?
The problem with launching 3000 drones is that is usually called a war and they don't want that kind of war. Whereas Israel appears to be asking for one or certain they won't get one. Israel did say they'd kill all Hamas leadership, so maybe there's an understanding. That's what proxies are for. Dying so you don't have to.
are you suggesting that a Rubicon crossing is less likely if we allow the President more leeway?
Yes, of course. Caesar's enemies don't need to placate all of his ambition. They need a bit less obstructionism, unyielding perspective, bitter zero sum politics, and a few clicks down on the compulsion to destroy their political rivals. Employ a bit more savvy, a bit more compromise, and outcomes other than the destruction of the Republic become more likely. Hopefully those outcomes even become appealing or preferable. I would not go back in time to tell Cato that if he imposes a few more limitations -- just one more extra long filibuster -- on his bitter enemy that everything would work out. The obstructionism, the politics, the factionalism is how you find out, woops, I guess power can be different than what it appears to be.
I didn't argue that the executive shouldn't have any limitations to immunity. Just that the Trump v. US ruling landed in about the correct area. The President is not practically any more or less "immune" to murdering his political enemies than he was 10 years ago. I have only read excerpts of the opinions and dissents, by the way.
It sounds like you have a lot more trust in the entities that enforce "rules and boundaries" than I do. I believe if the President had no legal immunities today they would be mired in nothing but lawsuits. I'd wager we agree there, then at some point from no limitations on prosecution to has chip in his brain that puts him to sleep when he thinks about a crime we diverge. Allowing the President to do stuff without having obstructionism and factionalism destroy the Republic is good. The qualm about the bribes hypothetical that ACB (I think) brought up as and the related evidentiary issue is a sticking point. I don't mind the President being immune to extra presidential bribes if it means another 100 years of of peace. This ruling gives the nation more time to iron out the details in the future.
We have cases of "no immunity" to full immunity, we have a mechanism to impeach, and we have a mechanism to remove a president every 4 years. It's fine, it's enough. Asking for much more from the same people, those that can get lost in the of their own perception of power, carries a risk. SCOTUS majority probably saw that people imposing rules and boundaries couldn't stop themselves or, if they didn't think so now, they saw a future where they couldn't.
A reliable, peaceful transfer of power is worth a hundred consecutive Trump presidencies.
wemptronics
1mo ago
Hah, thanks for posting. That's an interesting way to go about it. What would be the best way to start with term limits if you're prevented from removing the current lifetime appointees? I think the new appointees should probably be subservient to the OG justices, or even irrelevant, until they the OG's are dead.
Start building an alternative court that handles... something until OG court is down to 5 or so then combine them?
Biden isn't actually trying to build a legacy as a lame duck, is he? This has to be campaigning. Energize, synergize, winner-gize!
Generally, if Congress wants to pass a new amendment reducing executive immunity, I say go for it. That's what they're for. Do I trust they are capable of writing an amendment better than the SCOTUS ruling even if they had support? No.
How vulnerable a president should be to prosecution is a difficult question. It's a question I suspect SCOTUS didn't want to answer. I think most would have preferred to keep the presidential pardon norm, avoid the question, or avoid the candidate and cases that spurred it. Personally, I don't like the ruling, but I do think SCOTUS landed on the correct side of the trade off. I prefer an executive getting a lot of legal protection, because I'd really like to push the Rubicon crossing as far away as possible. Voting, impeachment, and the three different "layers" of presidential immunity seems fine. It'll cause some problems, but any policy will cause some problems.
Term limits seem fine, so long as we can agree to start with term limits in fifteen or twenty years. Some medium-far date that demonstrates we're changing the rules on principle, rather than political convenience of today.
Conduct and ethics rules I am only fine with if they expand to include Federal elected legislators, judges, and executive appointees. If Congress can pass a law that will hold themselves to the same standards they want to apply elsewhere, then sure let's do it.
Maybe it's a manufactured event, but there's already ongoing conflict in the North of Israel. An official second front opening has been a possibility since day one of the conflict. Israeli and Hezbollah have been in a state of active, firing weapons at each other, not-war this entire year. If Bibi felt he needed additional pretext to open another front all he had to do was wait for one that looked nice and use it. How much does the Israeli government care about dead Druze children in Golan on an average day?
Perhaps we have diverging understandings over the state of relations. Do you believe Hezbollah has been attempting to deescalate and avoid conflict? That could be evidence Israeli would have a need to manufacture a crisis in whole. Have you seen them posture in a war avoidant way after October 7th? Appear ready and waiting to me. The Israeli drums for more picked up in Spring. Reports, articles, and think pieces describing a proper campaign against Hezbollah got going proper in June. It may be a false flag since everything is a gay psyop, but a chosen narrative more likely.
Unless there was some back channel diplomacy and understandings we don't know, it seems like Hezbollah committed to the solidarity for our brothers bit. Doing enough pain in the ass things to satisfy their patrons, without committing to the cost of major offensive actions. Victory they can attain is won in a defensive war, anyway. They have maintained tensions, as Israel has, have initiated aggression, and answered it. They did a strategic job of being a distraction for when it mattered. The distraction to stretch the IDF isn't important anymore, but the decision was already made. So here we are. Based on Israeli actions after October 7th, a Hezbollah strategist would have to be a great dullard to think they are doing something like deterring Israeli action rather than justifying it.
Might also true that Israel, or Hezbollah, or both considered/decided a '06 repeat was inevitable by the late date of October 8th. The early question for Israeli was to what degree Hezbollah would complicate things. If I'm an Israeli war hawk then I see a Hezbollah that has politely waited their turn whilst providing plenty of reasons to engage.
Does it lead to and create societal problems that cannot be ignored by the general public, or does this kind of idpol stay "mostly harmless" until everyone pretends it never happened? My hope is that it's the latter. Society allows these kinds of people to eventually say, "oh, silly us" and we all talk about how dumb the 2010's and 2020's were. My fear is the former, which carries a risk in ending in actual ethnic conflict, racial spoils, and bloodshed.
If comfortable white people can somehow forever profit from these kinds of signals, enact laws and policies at the expense of lesser whites without paying a cost themselves, then, sure maybe this is how it all goes down. Quietly. A white nationalist's worst nightmare. If comfortable white people no longer engage in a charming guilt ritual and instead find themselves disenfranchised and destitute alongside the bad whites, they will no longer be afforded to see charm in guilt rituals.
The reason why I find that a more likely end point if we continue down the 2020 framing of race relations is that, somewhere down that road, America empowers real, Black Panther racial supremacists. If the nation empowers true believers of racial supremacy, then I'd expect eventually we see them act as racial supremacists. Along with the fact that, in my estimation, it would coincide with the empowerment of ideologically bankrupt thugs. "Well, those are the good whites, we take care of them" only goes as far as you don't actually empower people that believe whites have a debt in blood to pay, deserve all the pain they receive, are inferior beings, and so on.
I'd like to think that we did reach IdPol zenith in 2020, and stuff like this is fallout. That Kamala Harris' campaign immediately launches identity based zoom calls is gross and disheartening, but she's also a product of her time. We all are. It's a major part of how she got her job, after all. If you're worried about race relations as a risk stuff like this could be a real reason to vote against Kamala. Doubling back to reinvest in 2020'isms carries the risk it all gets worse-- more pervasive, more legal -- that seems like a sharper turn towards Race War, Now! Rd. to me.
I still expect we "get over it", or a large part of it, in the ~20 years range. Maybe we never completely dismantle all the scaffolding, because stuff like socioeconomic outcomes are hard problems to solve, but somes ways of thinking and memes may change. We might be able to start cloning Kmele Foster.
Anyway, another L for liberals like myself. FeelsBadMan.jpg.
Never been there until now, but I will confidently predict yes, it is drifting leftwards. They all drift leftwards. "Cthulhu may swim slowly. But he only swims left."
That place looks like it's still in the realm of nice, active forum. How long it stays that way depends on how active and interested its mods are in maintaining that. My case study was not a drift. It was a cascade. A different kind of engagement, and a lot of it, just kind of moved in and took up shop.
That's not as likely for moderated forums with more specialized topic discussions, which I assume that place is. So it has that going for it. Unfortunately, it is inherently political, and there are few, if any, quality political discussion forums that value viewpoint diversity of any real size. It has that going against it. Mods and culture can fight the tides of Median Redditor, but the effort required to succeed for awhile longer is proportional to its size and growth.
I predict you have around the 40k subscriber mark until the quality drop starts to be really noticeable, then not long after that the consensus gets more intense, boring partisanship becomes uninteresting to the people that make the place (presumably) interesting, so many valuable content creators users depart, and then dregs take over. I think a really dedicated team of jannies, or very well defined ruleset, can extend the life beyond by 10's of thousands of subscribers. Let me know how it turns out and enjoy it while it lasts!
wemptronics
1mo ago
I was thinking of certain missile stocks. My understanding makes me suspect something close to a "232 times" number would be net raw tonnage of all things built to float. And that would be accounted for in shipyards (most of them) building civilian cargo ships. Big cargo shipyards are important. A shipyard pumping out cargo ships is closer to being retrofitted to produce new frigates than a non-existent shipyard, but maybe not that close. US shipbuilding capacity is anemic regardless, and it could not rebuild a fleet in any reasonable amount of time. China is building many ships and will build many more! But I'm not sure any nation, even China, will be able to replace a fleet in an amount of time that a conflict may requires. You never know, though. Hopefully by the time a nation needs to rebuild a fleet of a conflict would be resolved so the world can get better. I do not look forward to such a world.
If you mean Russia pumps out more artillery shells than the EU and the US, that is true. It will still be true even when both entities reach new production quotas. But, I'm not super interested in a dick measuring contest. Regardless of how capable or wunderwaffe-y hypersonic missiles may be, or how much stronker Russia artillery production is, neither appear to be capable of stopping more droves of poor slavs from dying in the foreseeable future. And that's sad, but also indicative that all weapons carry limitations, and much of what they can do relies on many other things going right in the right places.
"Use one million USD missile launched from two hundred million plane that costs three hundred thousand dollars to keep in the air for one hour to destroy a Toyota Hilux that costs four thousand dollars" when sometimes you just need to throw a shitload of tnt on the cheap.
If you're asking seriously, it's because, while their shells were comparatively cheap, battleships were really expensive, big targets. There's some argument just how far USA procurement has gone to the expensive, precise, and hard-to-produce end of the scale. It should tell us something that most countries that can value technology and precision highly when procuring to fight peers or near peers. Ideally precision ends engagements faster, with more certainty, and are less costly. Which make wars against near peers faster, more sure, and less costly.
During GWOT the US did do some economic "value" option procurement.
Rail guns were supposed to be the more economical gun replacement, but Navy seems to have petered out on pursuing that technology? Someone can correct me. I just looked and the the newer 'small' 5 in. guns on US destroyers can 'officially' reach out to 37km with certain ammunitions. Which was the effective range of the USS Iowa's guns anyway.
I suspect the reason we haven't seen more action against the Houthis is not for a want of options. It's mostly a political, executive decision. This administration has zero desire for any sort of action that may end with escalation in an election year. Maybe they are planning to deal with it in 2025 after a win, or maybe they think the Red Sea isn't that important to US efforts and stability. Stuff like intercepting arms shipments to the Houthis is a simple, defensible action USA and allied ships could take.
That decision makers think the risk of doing so is unacceptable might tell us they really believe Iran is inkling for a major war, it might tell us they are risk averse to the extreme, that the Commander-in-Chief won't accept conflict for domestic reasons, or perhaps they just aren't that interested in the ME anymore. Could be they're right, and it's a no win situation to escalate against the Houthis. Although, it's a bit strange to send ships to patrol a place with missiles flying around, and not take sufficient efforts to deter missile shooters. I think there is a real cost imposed on risk aversion (Ukraine 2014 leading to Ukraine 2022 for recent example) but I don't think the behavior is too out of the norm for a D Whitehouse with a weak, aging leader worried about re-election.
Love paragraph one on the development and proliferation of ideas. There's probably a deep vein on memetics and ideas in the internet age to be mined from Culture War threads. Sure wish there was a search feature on The Vault and it actually had all the AAQC's.
Paragraph two/three reminds me to post a recent chat I had with a highschool teacher. He had mentioned he was headed to graduation, so I asked him a question.
Me: "How are the highschoolers? Kids I'm around are younger. Seem mostly fine but there's lots of doomer stuff from places like the reddit teacher place, [teacher friend X] quitting the profession, etc"
Well, they're not good.
I try hard to not be the "kids these days" kinda person, but the kids in school right now are the subject of a sociological experiment that most of us would probably agree is not going to go well for them. These are the first kids in history who have grown up with screens in front of them and the message that the screen is good and they're not okay.
Most adults will probably acknowledge that their phone is a problem. I don't know that I've ever met an adult who believes that they have a good control of their phone or that it isn't a problem somewhere in their life, and it's much worse for the kids. It's anestisizing them to feelings and experiences, and they're dumber because of it.
I mean that in a couple of ways:
All those movies you're supposed to see in your life? The ones that every one has seen? They haven't. They played on their phone through it, or they went to go watch this other thing and never saw it. There are huge cultural things that they're missing, and I'm not talking about, "What do you mean you haven't seen All the Presidents Men. I'm talking about things like The Lion King or Beauty and the Beast or such. They have no cultural knowledge to speak of. [Editor's note: this just sounded like old man-ism to me. But could indicate more concerns about decreasing shared culture, values, and increasing siloed experiences as a people. ]
They're not only uninformed they're misinformed. They get a lot of information about life from tik-tok/social media, and they aren't old enough to discern between "this is a quack pushing a bad idea" and "this is a doctor." I've had kids who have been transported to the hospital because they drank so much water (because some influencer told them to, as "healthy") that it screwed up their electrolyte balance. They actively believe in conspiracy theories, because the fake moon-landing stuff has a bunch of accounts pushing it, but the history accounts don't exist/aren't watched.
Their reading/critical thinking skills are really lacking. Shakespeare has never been easy, but "My only love sprung from my only hate!" should be something that they can parse, and they can't. The lack of time reading is leaving many of them the inability to think very deeply, and they don't know enough to have anything to think about.
They're fragile beyond belief. Their feelings are the most important thing in the world, and anything that hurts their feelings is automatically wrong.
With all that being said, they're nice enough. They're not bad. They're selfish, they're self-absorbed, and they don't have great skills, but they're nice. Their parents are probably the reason to quit: The inability to hold students accountable for their poor decisions, and that it's somehow the teacher's fault, is more of a soul-sucker than anything the kids can do.
Me: "[I basically say, well, teenagers have always been jerks.] Definitely a concern there with just how easily and cheaply social media can manipulate educated adults, let alone kids that are accustomed to sucking up 80 second clips as an informative source."
Yeah. They're not radically different, but the bad is just worse. They're more coarse. Like... selfish jerk? Yes, but twenty years ago, you could shame them for it. Now? They don't see anything wrong with being selfish. "Hey, if I don't look out for me, who else will?"
And yeah—we don't have the social mores to deal with the technology that we had. In 800AD, you would have beer for breakfast—it had calories, it wouldn't make you sick, and it was so weak that it wouldn't be a problem.
By 1300AD, a bunch of monks had invented distillation, and suddenly there was hard liquor. It took hundreds of years to figure out the rules for dealing with it. "No drinking before 5 o'clock", "this is for adults only", "one and done" and all the other rules we have in society.
We're not there yet with the tech—and a lot of people are just so firmly in the "more is better" place they don't see the need for it. AI is going to ruin their ability to think and write, I'm sure.
2016 /pol/ was the purest form of online political memetics in action, and I have no doubt by 2020 it was heavily astoturfed if it somehow wasn't in 2016. Today I have to imagine much of their messaging comes through truth.social. I tried to visit the other day, but it requires registration.
Since Elon took over you can find plenty of Trump and MAGA loyalists on Twitter fighting the good fight, though. In fact, you can find them under any CW related Elon Musk post these days if you want to dive into those networks.
Enough with the election. Let's talk about memes, sort of, in relation to message discipline, consensus building, and partisanship... for elections. Sort of.
I've been meaning to tap the motte-trust on this topic. Spurred by this comment by @Goodguy below. The following ramblings make me feel a great deal of shame. Forgive me, senseis.
I started to feel better about the current state of political discourse when I realized that probably a large fraction of the online political discourse is created by astroturf campaigns
I've been having similar thoughts as Mr. GoodGuy. Not just because it's campaign season, although this is part of it, but it's a general noooticing. I have always assumed astroturfing has had an impact on what people say online, but post-2020 it became more visible, or perhaps less bearable personally. 2016 set the stage, and probably perfected some systems, and now it does sometimes feel like Dead Internet Theory is real. But, instead of bots, these are performers.
Since most of you are credentialed internetters familiar with web surfing the following few paragraphs may not be necessary:
A recent case study that has spurred my curiosity is /r/npr/. I have been subscribed to the NPR subreddit for a long time. I don't engage there, but I would visit it a few times a year. Historically, it has been a relatively low comment activity link aggregate for NPR stories and podcasts. The most common type of post that received comments would be an NPR story and a few dozen comments. A specific program was good or bad and a few users would come talk about it. Between the years of 2018-2022 there was also a recurring "what has happened to NPR?" themed post.
Until around last Fall. I started checking it more frequently, because news was hot, I was weak, and the reddit-fication can be interesting in a guilty pleasure way. First October 7th, the the college protest stuff, then January 1st rolled around (it became an election year), Claudine gay was fired, more college protest stuff, then finally Uri Berliner's story came out in Spring.
Which is a rough, anecdotally polluted, timeline-- a relatively quiet link aggregate transformed into /r/politics blob with /r/politics type of consensus. My recollection of the sub as a light user could be wrong. Maybe it was part of the /r/politics blob already and I just missed the switch. It saw a ton of growth during the happening years, but a couple examples follow my concept of the subreddit:
- July 26, 2022. A snap shot of the sub
- March, 2023. Abortion story, 200 votes, ~40 comments. That's pretty normal, and that's after the major influx of users from 2020.
Despite its astronomical growth following 2020 I didn't notice a full on reddit political consensus until this year. And, if I were visiting between then and now, I'm fairly sure I would have noticed. I am no n00b nor naive traveler. I know what to expect from Popular Reddit Sub, but the comments in those places are still rather unbelievable.*
The sub now experiences an insane amount of increased activity in comments in the vein of /r/politics. Seriously, just go read the comment section. Almost like a flip was switched as it was decided this place was an important canvas to paint.
"Well, duh, @wemptronics, of course reddit is astroturfed," you say. But, my curiosity isn't limited to reddit-leftist types of blob. I see this many places in any popular English speaking onlineville. That's the basis for some general follow up questions and thoughts-- poorly formatted and ill-considered.
Is the social-media-net made up of a bunch of actors with too much spare time playing roles manipulated by a just a little bit of astroturf and narrative controls? How much weight do astroturf campaigns and organizations carry on social media? How much of what people say on large social media platforms is authentic types of group think and reinforcement?
Has anyone begun studying this stuff yet? Has the internet sociology and history been ideologically captured yet? It's too much for my small brain to systematize, nor do I want to spend time doing so for free.
Besides getting out of the screen, here are some ways I reason myself out of "wtf these people can't exist" Kookville:
- Perhaps my conception of "real person" exists far out on the tails of reality, and people acting like ActBlue or MAGA surrogate shills online is a totally normal behavior for an average person to engage in.
- Get with the times, old man, This Isn't UseNet Theory. My conception of "real person on the internet" may have at one point been real, but is either outdated, or was always an incomplete model. It is completely normal to spend time spouting outrageously partisan questionable propaganda among friends.
- Kids have grown up with astroturf, and thus have become the astroturf theory. It's fun to wear political suits and bash the fash. Now it's all the kids have known. Even many of the kids have kids now.
- The astroturf propaganda power law. Also Brave New World theory. 1% astroturf sends 99% "real" people accustomed to act and engage in certain behaviors that were once organically developed. If I were to guess I'd say the groundwork went up in 2012, was perfected for 2016, and now it's smooth sailing here on out. The "real" people find this experience rewarding.
- Just Filling Time In A Weird New World theory. Sure, my Uncle posts dumb memes on Facebook, and he is manipulated by messaging downstream from some political apparatus somewhere. He'll tell you why all liberals suck in real life. But, he's a functional person who mostly just has fun owning libs with memes. U mad?
Was this all just a roundabout way for me to scream, "Wake Up Sheeple" as I tip my fedora violently? Perhaps. Eternal September is not a new topic to this forum. But, geez, when I venture a little too far out into genpop, when I dive into a Twitter chain I shouldn't, when I click the "comments" section at WaPo, NYT, NYpost I am reminded just exactly what never was or will be.
wemptronics
1mo ago
Neat story. Never heard of it.
(I only know about Novichenko because of my time living in North Korea, where a North Korean army officer told me to look him up.)
Tangential, but wtf? I can't believe this has been hidden in theschism for years. Have you written about your experiences in this role beyond your polite request to resume academic exchange? I assume we haven't resumed it.
You lay out some good points with the Soviets in that post, re: collapse and nukes. Academics can provide a basis for further collaboration. Do you think there are any risks associated with academic exchange with geopolitical rivals and adversaries?
wemptronics
2mo ago
The best heuristic for any general GOAT tier list on Popular Website is popularity. Michael Phelps is not nearly as popular as Lionel Messi. But, he exists in the same realm for people who read and write ESPN editorials. Which are primarily non-soccer watching Americans.
My mother would recognize all the top 10 names on this list. Once you get to Novak Djokovic her would knowledge drops off. (She would recognize 5 of the 9 names that follow Djokovic.) Michael Phelps is not as famous as Messi, but in terms of Olympic gold medals he can't be beat. Americans like gold medals. They're great, because we're great. Someone who gets all the gold medals at the Olympics should be top of the list. Any list will do, but especially GOAT lists.
Also, Olympians definitely do not have to prove themselves the same as world class spectator sport athletes. That's what makes the Olympics cool. Highly dedicated non-pros -- that now receive oodles of money from their respective countries to train -- get one or two shots in a lifetime to get the glory. Messi goes out there every week for 20 years.
Now, who the hell is Diana Taurasi?
Editor's note: Badminton is as fun as fun gets. We need to close the #wagegap between badminton players and other people playing more difficult, popular sports. The top 30 badminton pros should make as much as starters on the USWNT.
People with depression should be encouraged to do normal person things. How far up the list would you put voting? High enough to start a major non-profit? There's plenty of functional, healthy people that don't find voting necessary or worth worrying about. At least when it comes to the psych patients it screams predatory to me.
What would a more candid presentation look like to you?
This is what it might look like to me: "yes we are a D political advocacy group that aims to register more Ds. We offer registration resources to other non-D voting demographics. As this allows us to call ourselves non-partisan and more effectively recruit potential doctors to help our political cause. We will not try nearly as hard to reach non-D voting demographics, either through resource allocation or messaging, but that is not our mission."
My candid description might be uncharitable. If it is I encourage you explain why it might be. I don't believe a truly non-partisan voter registration non-profit for hospitals goes national. It definitely doesn't creep into inpatient mental health treatment centers. Not enough juice to squeeze there. "You can register to vote here" sign in a waiting room doesn't have the same pizazz as massive non-profits with a mission and culture aligned with the interests of one party. The goal is to leverage trust in doctors on one end and hope the correct type of votes come out the other end. It's not even trying to obfuscate, really.
Addressing ethical questions should be more than half the battle in doing anything non-medicinal in medicine. That's a good standard to have in a high stakes profession.
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