RenOS
10d ago
That would be a good analogy if people were lecturing you on CICO while you're bleeding out. You can't fix a broken engine with more gas, you can't fix a broken body with CICO.
But pretty much every case of being overweight can absolutely be solved with CICO. Calorie restriction always works if you actually do it. It's just that 90%+ of people prefer to dump a bottle of sauce on every salad they eat but still count it as 100 calories. Which is very understandable - I also struggle with plenty of things that are 100% willpower issues - but pretending that CICO doesn't apply or even claiming it is wrong is just silly. Even Ozempic is nothing but CICO at its core.
RenOS
15d ago
As I said last time - a large part of the AfDs policy plans are sufficiently unappealing for many people so that it's easy to rather grit your teeth and give the CDU a last chance. But the CDU has been rapidly exceeding even the most cynical expectations.
RenOS
15d ago
The penal colonies are imo quite clearly presented as bad, and Glokta likewise as a cynical anti-hero literally broken by life.
Also, this reminds me of another thing that gave it such a modern western feeling: West hangs out a lot with the Prisoners because he gets along with them well, while the prince he is supposed to be with is a complete idiot asshole. This is mirrored in the cast of PoV characters; By far the most insufferable person, and deliberately so, is Jezal, the nobleman, who only redeems himself through the adventure the story is about. The king, meanwhile, is a fat, drooling senile. The first law consistently portrays the aristocracy as vain idiots with few exceptions, and even those exceptions make up their intelligence with malice. On the other hand it idealizes the wretched.
In history however, meritocracy didn't succeed because commoners are better than nobleman, but because the best of the commoners are better than nobleman. However, the average nobleman had always been better than the average commoner in most ways you could care about. Nobleman often suffered higher casualties than commoners during wars due to their bravery, even common-born upstarts would prefer spending time with the noble-born due to their sociability and commoners in general often engaged in the kind of dysfunctional self-hurting behaviour that contemporary lower classes still exhibit much more than contemporary middle and especially upper classes. And this is and was true even more so once you compare criminals with the nobility.
RenOS
16d ago
As cannabis legalisation around the globe shows, even trivial inconveniences add up. Before legalisation, I thought legalizing was good but kind of pointless - it wasn't particularly hard to get nor did I expect to get into significant trouble even when caught (at least with the small amounts I had as a customer).
Now after legalisation, I actually lean towards it having been a mistake, bc consumption increased so much, especially in frequency, that it's both gotten really annoying to go over campus due to the smell and evidence is adding up that while occasional usage isn't problematic, daily usage is. At the very least, even assuming no long-term effects, a decent chunk of students is blasted out of their mind perpetually.
RenOS
17d ago
I don't really mind it too much in itself. It's a question of frequency and presentation; It's annoying and stupid that it has become the default, especially so if it's not justified through fantastic elements. But it seemed relevant to the OP.
RenOS
17d ago
Thanks, Trump! Now we only have to figure out how to get all the Bürgergeldempfänger to work at these businesses...
RenOS
17d ago
I think the only way to get persistent trade surpluses is when one country is saving in the other's currency (earning or buying their currency, and then just sitting on it).
From what I understand, Import/Export is specifically goods and services exchanged for money, so it does not include many financial instruments, such as direct investment into a foreign country or leaving your money at a foreign bank. So a country can run a long-term trade deficit indefinitely as long as it can re-capture the difference this way. Which is especially easy if you just-so happen to be the financial headquarter of the world. But yes, many countries saving in US currency is also an option.
I agree that, if anything, this implies a trade deficit is good for you.
RenOS
17d ago
I also considered the first law, but despite the morally grey main characters, it had a modern western feeling to it. The main party includes a woman, who is also a strong, physical fighter. The opponents engage in slavery and dark magic, while the main characters, for all their faults, have clear red lines on that front. Modern-style romance and gender relations in general are quite clearly implied to be the morally correct option. It has been quite some time since I read it so I may be misremembering/forgetting some parts, though.
As far as I understand Trump, he considers the trade imbalance itself a problem and thus if a country doesn't buy enough american goods - even if it isn't the result of tariffs - that needs to be fixed. Negotiations can then still be done by the governments of the respective countries by deliberately buying american for large-scale infrastructure projects and pressuring their own larger companies to invest/buy more american. Taiwan, for example, has had no tariffs, but has declared their intention to invest more into american companies to start negotiations.
But yes, I agree overall. Achieving a perfect equal trade balance with all countries is the same kind of nonsense as the desire on the left for the perfect equality of all people - neither desirable nor realistic. I'd greatly prefer genuine reciprocal tariffs.
RenOS
18d ago
Sequestration was a response to an entirely artificial crisis (it was part of a deal to increase the debt ceiling)
The ceiling may have been a somewhat arbitrary value, but the crisis wasn't artificial. The debt increased in a major jump, reaching the ceiling in 2011, which was a direct result of the 2008 financial crisis and demanded some action, one way or another.
RenOS
18d ago
Some of the current developments are increasingly pointing towards 2.
But we will have to see. If he really intended primarily for 2., his move was very ballsy. I'd have been much more careful, first negotiating and only considering targeted tariffs in case a country shows no willingness to change. In a one-on-one, America is always economically larger, so they can strong-arm almost anyone; By picking a fight with everyone simultaneously, they risk them banding together instead. But I'm also quite strongly generally opposed to tariffs, while Trump at the very least does not mind introducing them if he feels treated unfair (and he does so quite easily).
RenOS
18d ago
Human babies are basically dysfunctional compared to other mammals for the first year or so, probably just so that they can have such an unusually large brain, and by extension skull, for their body size. I wouldn't over-interpret any particular behaviour they exhibit.
And yes, crying before sleeping is very common for babies. It gets (much!) better with age, but most kids get increasingly cranky in the late afternoon and evening.
RenOS
18d ago
What about the Warhammer 40k universe? Very grimdark of course, but as far as I see it should mostly fulfill your conditions, though it depends on which particular book you read. Neither sadists nor edgelords are rare, for one, but they also aren't universal. I guess some may say the entire setting is kind of edgelord-y.
Another option would be old epics and stories, especially greek or german are enjoyable. Or do you specifically mean modern western? I wanted to mention japanese stories, but they are also excluded if you are spefically looking for western ones.
RenOS
18d ago
Oh I know, your second sentence made clear what you meant. I just had to chuckle since the first sentence wouldn't have been out of place in a very different kind of post.
RenOS
20d ago
Does this mean it’s crossed the inter species barrier?
I'd consider "two-year-old child in India" to be an edge case.
Woah careful with these levels of HBD! We have indian posters here, you know.
RenOS
22d ago
I'm about as pro-capitalist as it gets but imo this is the wrong model for zero-sum (for example advertising) and negative sum (for example compliance) industries. Especially large, already successful companies can secure their position by burdening everyone with enough extra costs that only they can shoulder well enough due to scale.
RenOS
22d ago
I don't think those really are comparable - all of them were reactions to concrete fiscal crises/shocks which absolutely needed a short-term budget correction. Our current problems are ballooning costs, and while I think this has significant long-term negative effects, it doesn't have that immediate necessity. But I'll grant that I myself was being hyperbolic - it would be more correct to say that governments rarely manage to limit spending with long-term foresight in mind, but only purely reactively after a crisis has already happened and desperately requires action. DOGE is attempting the former.
On the second point, I completely agree, but in my view this makes reducing welfare spending for the old a foregone conclusion, it's only a question of how long we can kick the can down the road. And mind you, Americans have a comparably rosy situation - here in Germany the old / young ratios are much more grim.
RenOS
22d ago
Even the politically motivated firings, I understand, if not condone. Trump's first term was plagued with malicious compliance, obstruction and outright and blatant ignoring of orders.
Yes. It's not nice, but I don't see how they could get anywhere without them.
The execution? All kinds of programs that most people think are laudable are catching strays. The administration doesn't seem to be particularly on the ball when it comes to rolling back the most obviously negative changes. And the savings figures they tout are frankly speaking, worthless.
I still find it very hard to judge whether the allegedly-laudable programs really are strays. All the ones I've personally looked into seemed fishy at best, and they almost universally have pretty bad transparency. When in doubt, cancel spending. Not to mention the multiple cases where the media just pushed blatant lies yet again, which is also one of the prime reasons why they are reluctant to rolling back anything - if they were responsive, they'd end up rolling back almost everything, because the media will always find a convenient sob story. The savings figures is just Elon doing Elon things - wildly overpromising, but even the estimates by critics seem quite OK for such a small team in such a small time. Especially considering how rare it is for a government to meaningfully cut spending at all.
RenOS
22d ago
Even if you want that, the change in tariffs from one day to another is just staggering here. Say what you will about stupid, counterproductive left-wing economics (which I'm certainly not a fan of!), but they almost always make sure that they don't rock the boat too much in the short term at least (Corona aside).
RenOS
22d ago
Imo Musk has always been the same kind of person he is now - Make wildly implausible promises of over-delivering, including lying about current capabilities, and then reach beyond what anybody else can do ... while still technically significantly underdelivering compared to the promises. DOGE is the same. I'm not aware of any western government managing to significantly reduce spending in any way whatsoever - at most there is a moratorium on increase of spending. DOGE does not deliver what he is promising, but it still seems above any comparable efforts. Though I admit that his approach just objectively works best on easily-measurable metrics, such as "does the rocket fly", "how much does it cost" etc.
RenOS
22d ago
DOGE I like - certainly on principle but also many of the criticisms seemed bad-faith and nonsensical to me -, but I've never been a fan of tariffs. If they were actually reciprocal / 2 I'd understand somewhat - a country can hardly complain about a new tariff if it's just half of what they charge - , but automatically classifying all trade deficit as equivalent to a tariff is pretty crazy, and then also giving a 10% tariff floor anyway to countries against which you have trade surplus is hypocritical. Or, as it seemed plausible early in his presidency, if they were used primarily as a threat / leverage.
Sigh. So many people are really, justifiably pissed at the current left/green administrations running most of the western states, but it seems we haven't found what can plausibly replace it.
RenOS
22d ago
Schools are falling over backwards to fight right-wing "toxic masculinity" and "incel culture" while referring to this show. It portrays this as a general problem of white boys. Yet, the real cases it's based on are extremely disproportionally minorities. It's a moral panic designed to misdirect from real problems (misaligned minority cultures) to imagined problems (white young boys being frustrated with progressive values).
I'm unfortunately mostly familiar with (late) 2000s animes and you already mentioned most of the older ones that I know.
Some more niche pre-2000s ones: I enjoyed the first short of Memories (1995) very much, though the other two shorts were mediocre imo. Infinite Ryvius (1999) is basically Lord of Flies IN SPACE. Serial Experiments Lain (1998) has already been mentioned by others. Great Teacher Onizuka (1999) is a lot of fun, but also no SF.
If we extend to early 2000s: Texhnolyze (2004) has a dark & arcane atmosphere very similar to Blame!. Gankutsuou (2004) is the Count of Monte Cristo IN SPACE, this time literally. Haibane Renmei (2003) is by the same author as SEL and in my opinion one of the best animes of all time. But it's not SF.
On Blame!, I can definitely recommend the manga. Imo it's better than the movie.
I know it's most people experience but don't generalize. Neither of our kids was anything like this. Months 1-3 are so sleepless that we didn't even want to meet people even if we could. Month 4 they would already be mobile enough to not tolerate the stroller.
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