The_Nybbler
If you win the rat race you're still a rat. But you're also still a winner.
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User ID: 174
The_Nybbler
If you win the rat race you're still a rat. But you're also still a winner.
6hr ago
There's a sequence of tweets showing how Bernie Sanders's rhetoric changed... he started complaining about "millionaires and billionaries", then when he became a millionaire he dropped that part. Elizabeth Warren, too, sets her proposals above her own substantial (~10M) net worth.
The_Nybbler
If you win the rat race you're still a rat. But you're also still a winner.
6hr ago
You're basically asking for a magic wand to give you the upsides of what you want without the downsides. It does not exist.
The_Nybbler
If you win the rat race you're still a rat. But you're also still a winner.
6hr ago
There needs to be some way to reconcile a difference in moral values.
There is. Violence. Might doesn't make right, but might determines whose right prevails in practice.
The_Nybbler
If you win the rat race you're still a rat. But you're also still a winner.
18hr ago
Furthermore I would argue that at the end of the day plumbers janitors and morticians are more essential to maintaining a "first world" quality of life than anyone working in software or finance.
Maintaining on the day to day, perhaps. But building it... that's required finance since before the US was a nation, and software is ubiquitous nowadays. To be fair, a 1950s American standard of living might still be "first world", and you could advance it quite a bit without software. But hate 'em or not, you still need the financiers.
The_Nybbler
If you win the rat race you're still a rat. But you're also still a winner.
20hr ago
What do they actually want?
More of what others have. Preferably all of it.
The_Nybbler
If you win the rat race you're still a rat. But you're also still a winner.
22hr ago
Nuclear blackmail also doesn't work the way the author thinks it does. Why doesn't North Korea say "Give us $100b and lift all sanctions or we nuke South Korea and Japan"?
Because they're afraid the US would say "Go ahead, make my day". If South Korea was making the decision they might well pay it. Israel, to Iran, is in the position of South Korea.
The_Nybbler
If you win the rat race you're still a rat. But you're also still a winner.
22hr ago
OK, but if you're going to do a steelman, it's best not to include things that are false (like the top 1% being so rich that an additional million or billion wouldn't make a difference)
The_Nybbler
If you win the rat race you're still a rat. But you're also still a winner.
22hr ago
Again I disagree that this is going badly for the US, and actually think it might strengthen our overall geo-political position
Strengthens our relationship with the Arab states, weakened it with England, France, and Italy (Germany seems to be in "Keep calm and allow overflights" mode, so maybe no change there), broke it with Spain. However, since England and France appear to be utterly useless (Starmer is announcing a "summit to advance work on a coordinated, independent, multinational plan to safeguard international shipping when the conflict ends"; how not-the-bee!), it might be a reasonable trade.
The US position here is that if the straights are going to be "closed" than they are closed to everyone.
Just the opposite; they're closed only to ships visiting Iranian ports, and Iranian mines (if there indeed were any) are being cleared.
The_Nybbler
If you win the rat race you're still a rat. But you're also still a winner.
22hr ago
If I were sitting in a bar and an attractive woman sat down next to me and introduced herself, I would prefer to be able to say that I am a tech lead at Google than tell her I am the CEO of OMW, Inc.
Naa, tech leads (who can be almost any level) are a dime a dozen; if the woman's actually approaching she's thinking you're Senior Staff or better, and will be moving on otherwise.
The_Nybbler
If you win the rat race you're still a rat. But you're also still a winner.
22hr ago
Most people who use language try to transport meaning rather than just fill the silence.
I think most people are just trying to manipulate other people with mouth noises rather than transport meaning.
Do you think Trump tries to transport meaning with language?
Yes, but he is also trying to manipulate other people. But the likely meaning can often be teased out with effort; for instance, I was able to predict the actual meaning of his threat to close the Strait.
Do you think that Trump was willing to follow through with his threat to end the Iranian civilization?
No. He would have done something, but not anything like that; no advantage in it for him.
Or do you think he was bluffing? If so, do you think Iran bought his bluff?
It was not bluffing like poker, but chest-beating like primitive primate displays. It appears to have partially worked, getting them to the table but not getting them to yield on key points.
Or take the Greenland debacle. Trump could have achieved the same outcome, i.e. learning that Denmark is unwilling to sell Greenland to him entirely through diplomatic channels without it ever making the news.
I can't know his inner thoughts, but I would suspect Trump thought (incorrectly) that Denmark would be more willing to sell Greenland if he made it public.
The_Nybbler
If you win the rat race you're still a rat. But you're also still a winner.
22hr ago
Wealthy people, say the top 1%, are now richer as a percentage of total wealth than they’ve ever been. They could not spend their wealth over the course of their lives, and they are all well past the point where an additional million or even billion makes a meaningful impact on their quality of life.
The threshold for the top 1% by net worth in the US is about $13.7 million. Easily spendable, and an additional million (and certainly billion) makes a difference.
At the same time, many Americans who arguably work just as hard as these people in terms of effort and working hours struggle to get needs like healthcare and shelter met.
The labor theory of value is just wrong.
The_Nybbler
If you win the rat race you're still a rat. But you're also still a winner.
1d ago
It is also likely that among imgur users (who lean young and left) this is actually a message that lands well, and is probably providing inspiration for other young would-be vigilantes.
Young lefties on imgur aren't working in warehouses.
The_Nybbler
If you win the rat race you're still a rat. But you're also still a winner.
1d ago
There should be no noblesse oblige without the patents of nobility.
The_Nybbler
If you win the rat race you're still a rat. But you're also still a winner.
1d ago
The status quo ante itself is unreachable, because so much of Iran's military and leadership has been killed. We spent blood and treasure, and they spent blood and treasure and nothing else changed isn't really the status quo ante.
The_Nybbler
If you win the rat race you're still a rat. But you're also still a winner.
1d ago
I find it a little amusing that most of these would constitute things being worse than the status quo ante.
You asked for things which would be a failure. Why is it amusing that failure is worse than the status quo ante?
The_Nybbler
If you win the rat race you're still a rat. But you're also still a winner.
1d ago
What good is "power and bridge day" if it just kills a lot of Iranian civilians while the military retains its ability to fire missiles and drones? As far as I can tell, to the Iranian regime, most of its civilians are just useless bags of mostly water, and they could use the water elsewhere.
The_Nybbler
If you win the rat race you're still a rat. But you're also still a winner.
1d ago
There actually is a replacement elite in Iran to seize power.
They can't. Either they don't really exist to any significant extent and most Iranians support the regime (which, since they're Muslims, might well be). Or they're so completely disarmed and leaderless, and Iranian state capacity so great, that they can't even make a try at it when the US has bombed the hell out of the regime. Either way, there's no one who can replace the regime.
The_Nybbler
If you win the rat race you're still a rat. But you're also still a winner.
1d ago
The US never closed any waterway; except one, all the ships it stopped were sanctioned and unflagged or showing a false flag. The one was Panama-flagged, carrying sanctioned oil, and stopped with the permission of Panama.
The_Nybbler
If you win the rat race you're still a rat. But you're also still a winner.
1d ago
It was originally a link to an AI slop tweet that included the video.
The_Nybbler
If you win the rat race you're still a rat. But you're also still a winner.
1d ago
You're claiming hospitality is race-blind, which is already being against racism. A racist doesn't (from their own perspective) treat a black family coldly "just because"; they do it because the black family is black.
The_Nybbler
If you win the rat race you're still a rat. But you're also still a winner.
2d ago
You're in fantasy land here. You can (and the US and Gulf countries have) shoot down with a Shahed with a machine gun. It's just a small aircraft.
The_Nybbler
If you win the rat race you're still a rat. But you're also still a winner.
2d ago
That's AI slop.
The_Nybbler
If you win the rat race you're still a rat. But you're also still a winner.
2d ago
Before Iran closed the strait, it was generally understood that customary international law required the strait remain open. After they closed the strait, the many nations of the world made it clear that there was no such custom, so Trump closing the strait is perfectly in line with precedent.
Though I suspect when the Truth Social post is translated to action, the US blockade will end up covering only Iran's ports, and so be in accordance with prior customary international law.
The_Nybbler
If you win the rat race you're still a rat. But you're also still a winner.
2d ago
It's true that the US is a net importer of crude. In fact, the US tends to export light sweet crude and import heavy sour, because we have a lot of refining capacity for the heavy stuff that many other refiners don't have. But that crude is mostly coming from Canada, Mexico and South America, not the ME. And in January a bunch of Mexican heavy crude refining capacity came on line, leaving US refiners with a problem, at least until Venezuela happened. I rather suspect Trump knew all about that too.
"Cthulhu always swims left"
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