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
3mo 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
3mo 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
4mo 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.
Example bullet points are convincing and demoralizing. Do you have vast bookmark archives, or is your recall that sharp? I will bump an absolute banger of a post with junk and an AAQC report.
The behavior is better than literally burning witches and heretics. So, in a sort of Pinker-esque perspective it's not so bad. If we can't recognize any useful tools, people, or mechanisms, then hope or acceptance may be better than chasing the dragon.
Principles? Clearly these aren't shared values to the left
The left-left? They jettisoned, or were stripped of, any sort of practiced ideological pinning that shares any of the relevant principles. Progressivism consumed liberalism among city dwellers without much resistance.
Left of center people will still recall these principles. Their voices, politicians, and institutions even still give lip service and faithfully repeat the right platitudes. Until challenged by their moral betters with the most tepid amount of heat applied to their feet. Still, if those principles become apparently useful then something will change. Once upon a time, left-leaning Jewish lawyers rallied a hell of coalition to espouse, then enshrine such principles.
Appeal to the center?
I'm not sure what Trace means when he says centrists. Inasmuch as centrists supposedly can mobilize they are not in a position to be a prominent voice, nor equipped to actually do things writ large. Unless we define major institutions as inherently centrist, as a leftist would, then they may as well not exist except for a number of grey tribe weirdos. The moderate liberal does exist. I'd include a hefty slice of the aging center-left and some right of center folks. Powerful folks, even, but not cultural movers. They are cowed all the same when the hot iron is applied.
For as long as centrists are boring and culture warring fun they will remain cultural irrelevant. Politics, partisanship, and being mean to enemies is fun. Having enemies you won't die to is fun. The stakes aren't high enough for enough people to be stripped of fun. How do you compete with fun? You either take power to enforce boring, win a cultural victory via memetics like principles, or-- you wait for a terrible self-afflicted catastrophe that allows moderate temperaments to have their day in the limelight. Take advantage of the aftermath of some awfulness that reminds people why the responsible centrists are so eager to tell you why you're ruining stuff.
The radical, backbone-having centrists needed to start their march through the institutions 15 years ago, but they didn't, because they don't exist. They can't be real until the landscape changes to allow them to exist.
But the best arguments I can find for anyone else to behave differently don't look very good.
Christians have some good reasons. People in positions of authority have good reasons. Each individual person probably has one or two good reasons. LibsofTikTok has few good reasons.
wemptronics
4mo ago
Nope.
I don't have a lot of sympathy, but it's still not cool. Mobs getting angry and demanding [bad stuff] happens to [petty target] when no real harm has befallen anyone is a human behavior championed by geeks. Not cool, man. Dweebs and dorks chase the dopamine rush from owning the libs and bashing the fash for saying dumb stuff. A political party should adopt a platform that includes the creation of state trained swirly enforcers that replace the democratic moral outrage mob. It will require a constitutional amendment, but after that it's smooth sailing.
More seriously, there's no a path to a détente. People really don't like people that say bad stuff that makes them angry. A good old fashioned lynching is probably one of those God given human rights that the American founders thought were so obvious they didn't write down. Perhaps this pathetic incarnation of the lynching and moral enforcement is the last trace of true humanity we have. There's not much else anyone can do to enforce speech norms in a liberal democracy short of physical harm.
For this reason I'll suggest, in addition to dunking nerds in toilets, the SS (Super Swirlies) could make their way around to the people shit posting after they dunk the pointdexters for being mad at them. Dunk'em all.
There have been rumors circling that the Secret Service counter-snipers may have been directed not to fire first. At first that seems silly to me, but I think it makes sense in such an environment with constantly-changing scenery, civilians prone to doing all sorts of silly things, and new law enforcement organizations to cooperate with every week.
I've seen people (on the internet) saying this, and while I fully understand this policy and the false positives it means to avoid, it still is an unbelievable policy. A USSS sniper team has stricter rules of engagement than a citizen or cop has legal protections/assumptions in a self-defense shooting?
If the USSS is proficient and competent at everything else, then it is justified to centralize the 3-second-decision making in the upper layers of an events chain of command. If communication network at an event is well practiced, well functioning, and efficient. If those in a commanding role are constantly kept in the loop, on top each responsibility with a clear picture of what is going on and familiar with what their subordinates are doing. All the stuff that prevents 3-second-decisions from popping up. Even if all that and more was true, then it still is a major limitation on what sharpshooters can do to succeed in their role.
Apparently, security details are not always proficient and competent at all the things that justify such a policy. It may well be impossible for that to be the case given they frequently work with local officers of unknown ability and experience. If I am under their care I want to empower the highly trained, hopefully veteran counter sniper team to make 3-second-decisions without calling Lieutenant Fuck Up and waiting for his response. I don't know how sniper teams typically operate, but it seems like it has a built in structure that allows for decisions to be checked and calls made by more than one person. The spotter verifies the target and says, "You're good, hit him."
We are not calling in an airstrike. We are potentially trying to shoot man-with-gun before he shoots our VIP. If a sniper kills Joe Shmoe once every 20 years, that sucks, but fine. His career is over, the government writes a check to Mr. Shmoe's family, and the service is smeared and marred. It is still less of a reputational hit than counter snipers staring at an assassin and forcing them to allow the assassin to fire unless they hear back from Lieutenant Fuck Up. Unbelievable or untrue policy that declares POTUS and others under their care are not important enough to take the job seriously.
the supposed martyrdom effect is just a cultural strategy to discourage assassination. When politicians rally behind an assassination victim, they're contributing to a political norm that protects their own behinds.
Agreed. It's a fairly good norm to have. Not just for the politicians avoiding the guillotine.
At some level the average American understands, or believes, that assassinations on important people threaten their comfortable way of life. In addition to that, Americans have a common association with assassinations in history. Lincoln, JFK, the average American is taught about these figures and recalls them in the context of their assassinations. On top of the taboo Americans see assassinations as Big Historical Tragedy. That elicits sympathy and dredges up deep associations found within their educational programming.
I don't think the effect is such that a bunch of D primary voters will swing to Trump. Among undecideds or swing voters, however, if this event is still at the forefront of voter consciousness come November it will have an effect. As an anecdote, a very blue couple I was with yesterday shared the news. This couple had canvassed for Biden in 2020 as I recall. They are less politically engaged this go around, but still very blue. They believed it meant the election was lost. That was one of their first reactions.
Perhaps if Biden was in a stronger position they would have reacted differently. A lot can happen, as we've seen, but this felt like a nail in the coffin to them. This is a barb in the side of avid partisans and accelerationists. Of the, actual real people, group I was with there was one "wouldn't have been so bad if he missed" flippant comment. Which Blue Couple did not appreciate and shamed him for, despite all the the vitriol Blue Wife has directed towards the former president over the years.
Hmm, true. I wouldn't call Biden senile yet. I'd call him old, with a scoop of burgeoning senility*. I'm not going to dig thru 2020 stuff, but he was more capability for sure. I'm also not going to take Mr. Cluchey's account as gospel. His plea for media to "demonstrate the clarity and capacity to do their job" makes my eyes roll. Dan, too, apparently ignored evidence of Biden's ability in the past year or more and laughed at the media as they tried to "do their job." How happy would Dan have been if they did their job, the Whitehouse invited them to do their job, and came to a similar conclusion in, say, November 2023? Do we trust Dan here to spill the beans if he did see something concerning?
The media is building and driving a narrative. They often do so haphazardly, because that's what they do. While a hostile media might be upsetting to Biden administration, perhaps they could do a better job inviting media scrutiny to get to the truth-- if the truth is he's mostly fine, most of the time, for most of the day. We don't know to what extent the narrative is true, beyond what we see.
Age focused political attacks are destined to become true at some point. We can say AOC has cognitive impairment due to age, then cash in on that attack 40 years down the line. When Trump starts avoiding public appearances, events, and gathers a posse to surround him to get to and from Air Force One we will hear about it for days.
wemptronics
4mo ago
There's not enough posts to justify a megathread. This is the megathread. I can collapse chains easily. Browsing thread and yeah, this could have gone in a pinned comment or something.
wemptronics
4mo ago
His outgroup does lie. Frequently and, sometimes, brazenly. That's politics, baby. It's not so reasonable to assume they are baseless smears to the extent that you're surprised by something closer to the truth given the facts in this case. Like the Hunter laptop story. That was a true story. It was even a believable story. But, it was also a timely political smear, which reasonable people are skeptical of. Folks should not take every claim in political attack ads at face value.
Outright shoving them into the Republican propaganda box isn't doing people like Scott any favors. I would not be surprised if Scott hadn't paid attention to or watched any Biden old clips-- certainly not selectively edited ones posted to pwn libs on X.com.
I believe it was Michael Moynihan of the Fifth Column that said, a couple years ago now, what sold him that Biden's age was a real problem was the distinct omission of it as a topic in media. That late night talk shows didn't make jokes about his boomer moments was evidence itself this was not a concern people were interested in even laughing about. Then again, I'm not sure we'll ever really see a late night talk show scene that sees hosts take D-politicians to task for jokes.
Some not-bare links, words, and a Scott watch.
1 a. https://www.astralcodexten.com/p/prediction-markets-suggest-replacing
First, a Scott post on Biden, debate, and a personal accounting of The Big Reveal. The curtain drawn across the stage to lay bare Biden's cognitive decline for the world to see. This is the common framing and narrative, anyway. He writes:
Many people on Twitter are asking “how could anyone possibly have been stupid enough to not realize that Biden was senile?”
I was that stupid. I didn’t say it openly, because I’m at least smart enough to have a high threshold for giving my opinion on political things I don’t know much about. But I thought it in my heart. So in case the people asking “how could anyone have been that stupid?” actually want an explanation, here’s my former reasoning.
Republicans have been accusing Biden of being senile (and the Democrats of hiding it) for at least five years now. Before the 2020 debates, they were excited that this was when they could finally prove once and for all that Biden was senile. Then Biden did fine, and they retreated to “well he’s senile but”....
Reversed stupidity is not intelligence. Even if liars are saying something for their usual liar reasons, it can still be true. For twenty years, people spread false rumors that Castro was on his deathbed, but this didn’t make Castro immortal. In the same way, I should have figured out that even if I couldn’t trust any particular claim that Biden was senile, the prior for an 81 year old becoming senile was still high.
He then suggests Biden drops out, dropping Kamala as well, and throwing in some "purple-state Governor". Like Scott, this seems rather late in the game to me. There is still plenty of time to the election, as I'm sure the Biden loyalists are also telling themselves, so anything can happen. Who knows, maybe Biden gets a war? Wars are good for incumbents.
1 b. https://eigenrobot.substack.com/p/come-on-man
Eigenrobot, Twitter poaster extraordinaire, has some good thoughts looking at the same theme, but with regards to the media. He lays some groundwork with articles speaking of Biden's potential decline as an elderly gentleman some dating back to 2017.
My tentative conclusion from all of this is just that everyone here was socially or otherwise imprisoned and so prevented from putting two and two together even privately. All of the evidence was plain to see; or at least enough to not be shocked by what happened last Thursday. What was wanting was the capacity to perceive it.
There are some beliefs held for utility, and some load-bearing for survival; if they were to be abandoned, one would have to surrender their convenience, their security, or an identity. These are real costs.
Finishing with something that's been mentioned here many times:
The secret is my God I mean Biden was coming up on eighty years old! Have you ever met or known eighty year olds? Even if they don’t get a diagnosis, even if their minds aren’t totally lost to us, the fact is octogenarians are just in a phase of their lives where they are meaningfully slowing down both mentally and physically.
Biden is old! This reaction with CNN anchors exclaiming, "how could the Whitehouse aides forsake us" is funny. Journalists have gotten worse at their jobs, that's how. There was space and time to talk about Biden's age and its potential impact it may have on the election. All well within the Overton window, even. Some journalists did write about it-- even those in Respectable Publications. That this idea was pushed into right-wing meme territory is an apparent, notable, visible failure for journalists. Not only do they feel lied to, they feel inadequate that they allowed themselves to be lied to. An outrage!
- https://youtube.com/watch?v=_sZU0tQkwnQ&t=3382 - Mistake theory strikes again
I listened to this Q&A with Scott and Nate Silver at the allegedly controversial Manifest conference that happened in June. There's some interesting tidbits in there if you're interested in prediction markets, Nate Silver+election models, AI risk, and so on. Perhaps not anything new for your ears that these two haven't written about.
The time stamp shows Scott answering a question about AI and how that may play into the risk of future wars. He first says that wars between great powers have a good chance of going nuclear and that is bad. However you want to define "good chance", fine. Then he goes on to say how it is his impression that "often [wars between great powers happen because] everybody was trying to do brinksmanship and made a mistake".
Scott is answering questions off the cuff in an informal, impromptu format. He's not some foreign policy wonk and neither am I. Brinkmanship is a thing. Some conflicts may escalate to unwanted, outright hostilities due to brinkmanship, political grandstanding, or get accidentally'd into full blown war. My impression is that escalation is usually not a mistake, though. Ukraine is not some exception as Scott suggests.
Escalation can be a proactive, reactive, or provocative measure to induce war. Escalation can be seen as a deterrent by one side, then used as a provocation to the other, sure, but I don't think it's fair to call these things mistakes. They are realities. Over stepping, going a little to far, these things can happen between states as they do people. Maybe he means a war that led to nuclear exchange would be considered a mistake. Which is probably true if it happens.
Is there a case in the last 15 years where police had the opportunity to suppress a manifesto, but released it anyway? If the option to suppress it is there, then it seems like this is becoming more standard. Most manifestos that make it into the public get directly uploaded somewhere, posted to 4chan, mailed to a newspaper if you're a 20th century terrorist, and so on. Seems like poor form to forget to post your deranged manifesto publicly before committing a heinous act. ** Also, her diary seem less like a philosophical statement, or call to action, than they are the weird doodles and thoughts of a mentally ill individual.
As for the police, Nashville PD, and most police departments, probably don't contain many cops that are too interested in protecting trans ideology. I can buy FBI involvement or pressure decreases the likelihood of a single cop leaking it as it pertains to trans-y ideas versus white nationalist ones. As a counter example, Brenton Tarrant and his manifesto was heavily suppressed in New Zealand and elsewhere following the Christchurch shooting. His manifesto was banned on lots of sites places if I recall. New Zealand also suppressed his name, face, and manifesto, albeit not very effectively.
For media coverage, yes I think it's fair to say there's a bias here. Googling Audrey Hale gets me this which includes a few right wing rags and the Post which may or may not qualify as one. On the flip side, here's one NPR article on Dylann Roof's manifesto. Dylann had his manifesto read out loud in court, but the NPR article predates that. If this was instead white nationalist rage manifesto, then yes it's fair to say there would be American media all over this shouting at the roof tops. Crazy trans radical kills children just doesn't have the same ring to it.
Is there a good argument for police to release every crazy's manifesto? Is there a good argument for media to cover the contents and proliferate the ideas in every manifesto?
Offering free national publicity for each person that gets the bright idea to impose their bullshit on others by killing kids creates a perverse incentive. If the options are coordinate a memory hole or offer them an free publicity-- one seems better than the other. A media ecosystem that could effectively coordinate this would be pretty scary though, wouldn't it?
Appeasement didn’t work in the ‘30’s. Looking weak today increases the risks China or Russia oversteps in the future. You even marginal raise the risks of a Russian/Chinese first strike if they think you are too soft to counter.
Yup. Does the 2022 invasion happen if the West had a more serious response in and after 2014? Depending on what that is, it probably does not. A decade ago it was decided Ukraine was not worth too much. Things were messier then, sure, but only after Putin learns the West's level of commitment to Ukrainian sovereignty does the West decide it actually matters a bit more.
Perhaps Putin still invades thinking the thunder run will be successful before any shift in defense commitments. However, the calculation is very different. The West still does not think that Ukrainian territory and ideas of sovereignty are worth dying for. The West is just paying interest on missed payments in the past to deter further aggression.
wemptronics
5mo ago
My impression is that Zorba et. al would rather the project die than have its mission compromised. The move was a full commitment to make it work or death. A concern beginning back at reddit where the lowest common denominator wandering in and ruining everything was a genuine one that required active management. The project is always in some precarious, delicate state of balance that requires a velvet glove.
I recall a year or two ago there was some shout outs from @ymeskhout and @TracingWoodgrains. They both have larger audiences and could do the same. Maybe they didn't see much effect. Mods are likely older and busier now which makes the idea of managing problems that come with a boom from widescale advertising unappealing.
Putting the vault on substack and having people blast that out seems like a good (safer) idea to filter out some of the troublemakers and attract more wordcels. Entropy, a bitch, etc. Before death, Kulak should put the site on blast to his Twitter followers for maximum going-out-with-a-bang witch gathering.
I read that (great!) thread on the bill. Any other decent long form articles or think pieces on the bill? Some ignorant thots in the mean time. These might be too cynical, or not sufficiently cynical.
If you're a Democrat and see this is as a Genuine National Concern, but it's not a problem you can admit is a problem, then what's the best way to deal with it? If the party has consensus, then maybe you can talk to your more centrist party members to commit to a Blame Manchin strategy. You let the Republicans pass the legislation and then pass blame for addressing the problem-not-problem on your political enemies and useful quislings. This doesn't seem to be necessary and that should worry for the GOP.* This could also be Plan B for 2025.
If you're a Democrat and see this is as a Genuine National Concern, and may lose the Whitehouse to a man you can not be seen as cooperating with for the next 4 years, then now's the time. Get the legislation out there now while you have the chance. That's leverage for your enemy. Although the leverage may be worthwhile if the bill is electorally beneficial or neutral for your party in this election. At worst, it takes some wind out of the opposing party platform.
If you're a Democrat, and this problem-not-problem is more so an electoral concern, but you're constrained by your party's established platform that needs time to change, then what do you do? You put up legislation that doesn't really address the not-problem or help your opponents, but is enough to pass blame off to the other party if it passes or not. Hey, we just passed bipartisan immigration reform or Hey, we tried to address the not-problem.
Thing is, Whitehouse or not, it appears Democrats are willing to start calling this a not-a-problem thing a problem that needs fixing. Reasonably, responsibly, and certainly not due to hatred. CNN isn't running stories on how this bill is a massive betrayal, are they? Does the GOP get away with dumping a lost opportunity?
If you're a Republican senator you might see it as a Genuine National Concern, but the ongoing problem is not really an electoral problem for you. Not so long as you're trying, or so long as your state's governor keeps shipping immigrants to other parts of the country. It might even be a problem that provides more electoral advantages the worse the problem gets. If allowing the opposing party to fix the not-problem doesn't help you electorally, then what's in it for you? Even if it was acceptable legislation you think might work, your party might have consensus to not deal with the problem until your party has a stronger position.
It may no longer be not be politically feasible to reform immigration through Congress. It seems that way. Congress found the one weird trick years ago. Keep the big stuff on the docket for campaigning, keep your seat, and let POTUS take the heat. If he messes up you can yell at him, and even if it works it'll only stay workin' until your team is back up on the plate. This also fits nicely into a case where you, senator, don't consider this a Genuine National Concern, and is instead just another episode of political football.
1/100 encounters resulting in attack sounds like a lot? I looked at the citation for that and the statistic is based one naturalist's observations of his own encounters during a period of study. It's more accurate to say, of this one man's 270 encounters with bears during his study on bears, he was only attacked 1% of the time. I assume this researcher is experienced in the field, knows what to look for, and maintains awareness of his surroundings. Your average person may have different results if they were to stumble upon, rather than seek out, 270 bear encounters in the woods. Even so, 1% still sounds like a lot. There's got to be a few Alaskan bushmen who have had hundreds of encounters without an attacks. Probably because they stay the hell away.
Bear behavior in an encounter relies on a lot of different factors. Distance, whether either part is surprised, what time of the year it is, male or female, whether it has cubs nearby, how hungry it is, etc. The infamous Grizzly Man guy (and his girlfriend) were attacked and eaten by a hungry, sickly, aging bear at the end of feeding season.
A person's behavior will influence the outcome as well. The author of the study aggressively yelled at two bears that attacked him which scared them off of the charge. Do bears do false charges? I know my regional black bears can be pretty responsive to aggression. He doesn't differentiate if so.
In a third instance:
In the second case, a female was defending young. My companion and I disturbed her cub. The cub ran away, but the mother jumped out of the brush, knocking me down, destroying my pack on my back, and then walking away slowly. I played dead; maybe it saved my life.
Lucky guy! Bears are cool. Way cooler than bear vs. bad man discourse.
If they can change the tenor of relations even slightly from "We got your back" to "Reign it in a bit, our support isn't unconditional" they could see that as a win.
They have already done so. POTUS administration has used messaging to suggest support is conditional, begging restraint, etc. For example, the reporting after Iran strike on Israel, it was widely reported afterwards Biden had talked to Bibi and said the US won't participate in any retaliation. "Take the win." Coordinating an impromptu air defense network between several regional partners to down Iranian missiles and drones is not lukewarm support. It is exceptional support. I don't think the general public is aware or cares about these kinds of details. It was also support defensive in nature which I guess makes it less useful to activists to point at.
It is unclear exactly what Biden could do to satisfy this arm of his party without ceasing all financial and military support for Israel. A politically isolated or more desperate Israel is probably not a better Israel for Palestinians to live next to. Nor would it be better for America to have to deal with and it would likely increase domestic pressures on Biden. So signals for restraint and (probably) coordinated public messaging is about all POTUS is willing to do. It is an election year after all!
cared more about the plight of the Palestinians
Well, yeah. Although, I am not without sympathy for Palestinians.
then you have or will care about anything in your entire life
I don't think so. Things and people I care about generally drive my will to survive and provide. I hope this continues to be true, and that I do not ever feel like I am in a position where I have to light myself on fire to mourn the plight of people across the ocean, or demonstrate my levels-of-care about something, or to someone else.
If I'm ever in a position where I need to sacrifice it all to protect people I care about, I hope I have the wisdom to recognize the situation for what it is, and the courage to accept that. I am past the age of dying for convictions that don't have material impact on myself or my family. You might be correct that I never was that age-- I am not so sure about that. If that's amoral, fair enough.
I do hope Bushnell's convictions gave him comfort on his way out. Otherwise, I don't think his convictions did himself or Palestinians any good.
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.
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