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Amadan

I will be here longer than you

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joined 2022 September 05 00:23:21 UTC
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User ID: 297

Amadan

I will be here longer than you

8 followers   follows 0 users   joined 2022 September 05 00:23:21 UTC

					

No bio...


					

User ID: 297

Verified Email

Hey no need to snark. Thank you for the correction. Yes, it's possible that many (what percentage?) of bureaucrats will not receive checks temporarily. My guess is that the details are complicated.

They're not that complicated.

With a few exceptions, all federal employees are furloughed during a shutdown. (This includes everyone from "bureaucrats" to the janitors cleaning the buildings - assuming the latter are actually federal civilians and not contractors, which many of them are.) This is not just all the people you think of as "bureaucrats" in HHS and the VA and SSA and EPA and NEA and national parks, etc., but folks working for the DoD, for the IC, the FBI, and the GS-4 park rangers and motor pool guys and badge issuers and so on.

The exceptions are people who are considered "essential." This does not, contrary to what some folks have suggested, mean that everyone else could easily be fired and the government would carry on just fine. You can suspend the operations of a bunch of agencies for a while and most people would not notice immediately, it doesn't mean that work isn't piling up and the effects won't be felt eventually. But essential personnel have to keep working to make sure everything doesn't literally grind to a halt.

This is one reason why a lot of people think these furloughs are "no big deal," because the stuff that people would really notice - airports being shut down, social security checks not being mailed out, military standing down, etc. - doesn't happen thanks to the skeleton crew of "essential personnel" who continue to work.

Everyone else goes home and all work stops.

In the past, in theory, furloughed federal employees had no guarantee of being paid for their forced time off, though in practice, Congress always voted to restore their back pay. After playing chicken over CRs became an annual thing, Congress passed the Government Employee Fair Treatment Act in 2019, which guarantees back pay after a furlough. So yes, feds are essentially being given a free paid vacation during a furlough. (Though they still aren't getting paid during it, which can cause financial hardships for some if the furlough goes on for a long time.)

If you think this is unfair, that feds are getting a "free vacation," well, it is, but that's entirely on Congress's shoulders. And if you said "Sorry, furloughs mean you just don't get paid, now come back to work when Congress says so, and by the way, this is likely to happen on a regular basis," consider who will stick around to work for the government under those conditions and who won't. If you're one of those "abolish the federal government, all government employees are parasites" types, this may sound good, but most people I think would not like the long-term effects.

Keep in mind that a lot of people working for the government now are actually contractors working for private companies, but doing "government business." (This is an entirely different boondoggle on a huge scale.) They are not allowed to work in government buildings during a government shutdown, and they don't get back pay restored by Congress. Some of them will be temporarily sent home by their companies unpaid; others will be given work to do by the company during the furlough. This is entirely up to each company.

Overall, furloughs are a big expensive mess that shouldn't happen if not for Congressional dysfunction.

Don't spam threads with LLM output. ChatGPT answers aren't forbidden, if there is some context or purpose to them, but "I was too lazy to write up my thoughts myself so I had ChatGPT do it" is what every lazy college student is doing nowadays. This place is not for lazy college students half-assedly submitting their homework.

I admit I am surprised, and I appreciate the apology.

Now would you consider the possibility that some of the other things you say (about the mod team, and about me) are off base? I really don't care if you don't like me, if you think I am "woke," if you think I am too sympathetic to liberal posters, or if you think I am too stupid to spot trolls. But whether you believe this or not, every member of the mod team tries very hard to act in good faith and to make considered and fair decisions. We are human beings with biases, but nobody here is trying to secretly shape the Motte to conform to our personal biases. Nobody on the mod team, individually or in collaboration, has a plot to purge the Motte of "undesirables" (whatever you think undesirables might be to us). We have expended enormous energy and effort and (in Zorba's case) resources to create a place where even the most noxious "witches" are allowed to post with only minimal restrictions (e.g., no fedposting, no personal attacks, and don't be an ass).

If you limited yourself to ranting about how much you hate leftists, you'd be like half the Motte and rarely attract our attention. But every time we mod you, or we mod someone else who you agree with, you post some snide jab at our "secret agenda" and "consensus building." To say nothing of the things you send in DMs and reports. When you keep kicking us in the shins, eventually we're going to react, and all you have to is stop doing that.

I'm unsurprised to say the least. Have you guys made any progress on hiding votes on mod actions? That would really help the old consensus machine a lot.

We have made no progress on this because we have never considered doing it. This is like all your other claims about what the mods are supposedly doing. You make it up, just as you made up the claim that I "have arguments with people, then ban them for a two week old post a day later."

I don't need your apology for being rude, but I would like you to apologize for lying.

That's nonsense, I've watched you have arguments with people, then ban them for a two week old post a day later.

Post a link.

Well, first of all, interestingly enough, no one reported @Rov_Scam, while multiple people (not Rov himself) reported the responses.

If someone had reported him... I wouldn't have modded it. But if you feel super strongly about it, report him and I will let some other mod determine how to handle it.

The most objectionable thing he said was "perma-DST people and noon is noon people are equally moronic," which, yeah, taken literally, is calling certain people who believe certain things morons, and if you are a "perma-DST person" with a thin skin, you could complain that he called you a moron. Could he have phrased it better? Maybe. But I don't think his intent was to say "You (individual person) are a moron" and we see people arguing, essentially, "A is stupid/People who believe A are stupid" all the time, and generally (unless it's really egregious or obvious consensus-building) we will let it go. Do you really want us to apply the standard you are suggesting every time?

It's very weird to me that an argument over DST is causing this much gnashing of teeth (reminds me of the Calendar Riots) and it's hard not to view this entire brouhaha as "ideologically motivated" as one deleted post said (apologies to the poster who apparently was not trying to start a fight).

My subjective opinion is that @Rov_Scam made a somewhat dismissive comment about the controversy, and people with surprisingly big feelings about it (and grudges) took offense and then went on the offense, with namecalling and belligerence. I disagree with you that Rov was being way more of a dick. But that is my opinion.

  • -11

We factor in posters' history as well as the individual post. This is not new, and you know this. One bad post probably gets a warning. The latest in a long string of bad posts probably gets a ban.

Looking forward to seeing how far back in my post history you'll go to find something "unrelated" to ban me for in revenge.

I have never done anything like this. To anyone. You know this, and yet you never adjust your priors when the things you keep saying will happen never happen. Almost as if you don't really believe the things you say.

You're also being dishonest about "You're a moron," which is further proof that your complaints are entirely based on a desire to see people you like be allowed to say anything, no matter how inflammatory or insulting,and people you don't like get banned.

All you do is sneer, sneer, sneer.

Unlike the other poster I warned, you do nothing but post things you hope will increase the heat, for no other purpose than to reduce light.

Banned for two weeks this time.

Well, contrary to @Templexious's hastily deleted comment that "It's only ideological," I couldn't care less about DST and I have no reasons to feel anything about you or @Rov_Scam. What I care about is the tone of discourse. "Your argument is weak" is fine, flipping out and trying to start a fight is not. (@Rov_Scam also seems to be calling both arguments moronic, so who exactly are you defending?)

Calm down and be less antagonistic.

  • -10

Mangione's politics appear to be all over the place, and I still wouldn't be shocked to find out he had an account on the motte at some point.

Why do you think the schism is "avoiding talking about it"? What is your model of their thinking that leads to this pointed avoidance of the topic? I skim the schism now and then and they are so low volume that many big events don't get a single post.

Fwiw, I appreciate your posts, but don't fret too much about downvotes, that way lies madness. As much as we wish people would vote according to how well an argument is articulated, whether they agree with it or not, I believe most people still use it as an "I agree/disagree" button, and a substantial fraction vote in a reflexively tribal manner.

That being said, while I believe you that being a doctor is difficult and not as rewarding (financially or emotionally) as it might once have been, it's still really hard to convince me that being one of the 4% or so sucks as much as you imply. We could probably do all sorts of reforms that would improve doctor QAL, but some of those would also reduce doctor remuneration, and for some reason doctors seem to prefer the high barriers to entry and what amounts to years of grueling hazing before you're in the money.

I don't think the hostility you describe is some new wave of anti-doctor sentiment. It's a general breakdown in social norms making it more dangerous to be a bus driver or airline attendant or a counter person at McDonalds too. Most hostility about the health care industry is not directed at doctors. It's the hospitals, the front offices, and the insurance companies. And probably nurses take the brunt of patient hostility more than doctors.

fwiw, blame Congress (and the tax preparation industry), not the IRS. The IRS has asked Congress for years to simplify the tax code (and made suggestions about how it could be done). Congress chooses to make it complex, and guess which industry is opposed to making it less so?

A pointless and antagonistic comment.

This is your second comment ever, so you're clearly an alt and you appear to be here only to troll.

On the off chance you actually want to participate, I'm only going to ban you for a week, but if you come back and do this again, it will be a permaban.

I have asked you and @Amadan to explain how that is Holocaust Revisionism. You continue to refuse to do so, except for just saying "it's definitely Holocaust Revisionism." How?

I answered here as follows:

Can you Amadan, parse for me why a Romanian Nationalist praising a Romanian Nationalist leader constitutes Holocaust Revisionism?

I didn't say it was. But much of the objection to this Romanian nationalist was because of (a) his own anti-Semitism (which, again, you just claim doesn't exist and is also a good thing) and (b) the involvement of the leader he's praising in the Holocaust (which you... well, see (a)).

In no post did I say that praising Antonescu is "definitely Holocaust Revisionism." I would argue that it certainly implies support for the Holocaust, and is very likely indicative of a Holocaust revisionist, but neither I nor @spiky_fungus claimed that mere praise for Antonescu is in and of itself Holocaust revisionism. If someone praises Hitler and says he was a great man, I'd strongly suspect a Holocaust revisionist (or else an open Nazi who thinks the Holocaust happened and it was good), but obviously the statement "Hitler was a great man" is not in itself saying anything about the Holocaust (except by implication) and thus it would be incoherent to say it's revisionism by itself.

@spiky_fungus is accusing you of Holocaust revisionism by pointing out that downplaying Georgescu's role as "praising a Romanian wartime leader" is revisionist. You can argue the point (for example, by claiming that that is in fact all Georgescu has done, or by claiming that Antonescu did nothing wrong), but you haven't even attempted to do that.

Trust me, people report me whenever I argue with you. You certainly have your fans. I am very restrained in how I address you, as opposed to how I would respond to you if I weren't a mod. However, pointing out what you do, and pointing it out every time, so that you are not able to become comfortable with semantic evasions or attempting to turn this place into your personal soapbox, is not against the rules.

I do engage in the discussion. I've actually dissected your arguments many times. I don't just say "Stop talking about Jews, it's tedious." You can be annoyed that I won't let your posts pass unchallenged, but as several mods have told you, if you don't want to keep getting dinged for incessant Joo-posting, try actually engaging with the community instead of treating it as a recruiting platform. Do you ever talk about any of the other topics that come up here? Do you ever engage in any casual threads? No, you only ever post if you can make it about Jews. You make it very clear that the only reason you are here is to talk about Jews in the hopes of persuading more people to think like you do about Jews, simply because this is one of the only forums that will allow you to do this. So I'm telling you that our free speech norms are liberal but not infinite, and while you're not getting modded, you are going to have to continue to suffer me pointing out what you're doing.

Can you Amadan, parse for me why a Romanian Nationalist praising a Romanian Nationalist leader constitutes Holocaust Revisionism?

I answered you directly above, and @spiky_fungus responded below.

and if you decide to continue whining about me talking about "da Joos" I'm just going to ask this same question again in response.

If you actually start posting about something other than Da Joos, I will stop pointing out that you do nothing but Joo-post. You would like to post about Jews Jews Jews constantly and you've been told not to. You haven't actually been modded for it recently because we let people have a long, long leash about their hobby horses, because it is somewhat subjective at what point someone is going on about something "too much," but if you are declaring your intention to single-issue post over and over, that will make our decision easier.

Can you Amadan, parse for me why a Romanian Nationalist praising a Romanian Nationalist leader constitutes Holocaust Revisionism?

I didn't say it was. But much of the objection to this Romanian nationalist was because of (a) his own anti-Semitism (which, again, you just claim doesn't exist and is also a good thing) and (b) the involvement of the leader he's praising in the Holocaust (which you... well, see (a)).

Note I am not claiming this in itself is reason to overturn an election; I don't even know all the nuances of the Romanian political situation. I'll bet you don't either. If a candidate who was legitimately elected had his election overturned just because he's an anti-Semite, well I'd object to that on principal (again, without knowing what Romanian law says). But I don't think that's the case and it doesn't seem to have much to do with what happened. It just so happens that a right wing candidate appears to also be anti-Semitic, so you are again trying to shoehorn your ZOG conspiracy into events, because everything is always about Jews.

I am a somewhat slower reader usually, but I'm not sure that's the reason. Though I suppose speed reading would make it harder to appreciate individual sentences.

Some people care about wordsmithing and sentence crafting, some people only care about story. There are definitely people who don't understand why anyone would care about the other thing, just as there are people who don't understand why anyone would read fiction.

This is unfortunately characteristic of all your posts on this topic.

"Some Jews happened to die during a war, and now anyone who might have somehow been involved with a Jew dying during the war is cause for cancelling elections. Holocaust grifters are pretending that Jews dying during a war is worse than anyone else dying during a war. Yeah, there were some resettlements and shootings, but that's just stuff that happens in war."

Well, gosh, yes, that would be pretty outrageous, wouldn't it?

Your responses are bad and disingenuous, and I have pointed out before that you don't engage in good faith or honestly, not because I disagree with your premises (which I do), but because you intentionally obfuscate and cloud the actual issue you are arguing.

Your core belief is that the Holocaust didn't happen, and if it did the Jews deserved it, and nothing exceptionally bad ever happens to Jews and if it does they deserve it. Of course if you presented it that bluntly, you'd turn off even a lot of the Jew-critical readers. So instead you post things like this, arguing as if people are (at the instigation of paranoid manipulative Jews) criticizing some guy who admires some other guy who might incidentally have been involved in a few Jews dying along with lots of other civilians during the war. But unless you can handwave away all Jew-slaughter as conveniently as you would like to, the charges against Antonescu are considerably more than "some shit happened during a war."

Now this is not an invitation to go through your entire Holocaust denial tap dance one more time to explain how being an anti-Semite is irrelevant and anyways anti-Semitism is good actually because Jews are bad. You single-issue posting about Da Joos is annoying; dropping the Joo-posts into every single thread that you can possible make about Jews is even more annoying. What grinds my gears personally is when you engage in this level of disingenuous, which offends me because I dislike sleazy argumentation. If you said "Antonescu wasn't responsible for any massacres because those didn't happen," I'd disagree but at least you'd be arguing honestly. Likewise if you said "Antonescu participated in the slaughter of Jews because they had it coming and he was doing a good thing." I am honestly not sure which of those two statements is closest to your actual belief, but "Antonescu dindu nuffin" is surely not something even you are niave enough to actually believe.

They are interesting in the way a comic book is interesting. Martin's prose is far better, and Sanderson just has no depth. But I realize that some people don't care about that at all (hence the enormous popularity of fanfiction and litrpgs), and I admit I am pretty judgmental about writing quality. That's why I made the distinction between good and enjoyable; I have read a lot of his books, after all (and enjoyed most of them).

I liked Kaladin in the first book, but Words of Radiance was so boring I decided there was no way I was reading eight more books of this (I think the Stormlight Archives is meant to be 10 books, which knowing Sanderson means it will actually be three 10-book series). That is pretty much my experience with Sanderson; first book or two in a series is good, after that it becomes crap. (Mistborn is an exception, though the third book was very flawed, and the second trilogy did not hold my interest at all.)

Sanderson? Sanderson is the most banal, extruded fantasy product workmanlike writer to come out of the RPG/fanfiction sphere, and his main virtue is base-level competence and being extremely prolific. Problem is his extreme prolificness doesn't even produce interesting books (like Stephen King did in his coke fiend days), just more and more and more of the same. Fictionalized RPG worlds complete with entire extra continents and secret prestige classes and bonus spell lists and artifacts and new monster manuals, but the stories are all basically Protagonist Figures Out Cheat Codes.

I have no problem with people who think Sanderson is more enjoyable than Martin (I have read more Sanderson than Martin), but whatever you think of Martin and his morality, his writing is far better than Sanderson's.

Your analysis looks cogent. I think the portion you are missing, the reason why Martin is such a punching bag (especially for right-leaning fans) is pure culture war. It's not really because he's fat and unhealthy; that's just a convenient reason to mock someone they already dislike. It's not because he's gotten rich and lazy and is almost certainly never going to finish the series (both because he has little motivation to and because he appears to have written himself into a corner, as well as being overtaken by the direction the show went) - his actual fans are mad about that too.

The reason is, simply, Martin is a rich liberal Democrat, and he's gotten in a few notable spats with right-fandom, which put him on their enemies list. Remember JK Rowling was equally hated, until she went "TERF," and most of the right still mistrusts her and sneers at her for being a lefty feminist, but holds their fire because they like it that she fights with trans activists. Stephen King has taken a lot of shit over his Democratic and anti-2A stances, but he's literally too big (and too old) to care; while he posts on Twitter a bit, he does not really get in fights with people, and thus isn't entertaining. But Martin is vocally leftist, active on social media, posting shit about the NFL instead of writing (say what you will about King - he is always writing), and he feeds the trolls, thus encouraging the trolls to keep baiting him.

I trace this back to Vox Day (anyone remember him?), who started the narrative that Martin is a pervert who hates everything that is good and decent and Christian, largely because Martin was one of the first big names who spoke up about booting Vox Day from SFWA.

So Martin is a big name lefty responsible for a major portion of contemporary pop culture, and thus part of the culture war even if he doesn't see himself as a culture warrior.

Martin's post-modernist epic fantasy is, as you say, Lord of the Rings without Tolkien's romanticism. His critiques of Tolkien (generally beloved by right-leaning fans as a trad-Cath, though Tolkien's defense of the Jews and other classically liberal views would disappoint them if he were alive today) and Lord of the Rings have been read as Martin "trashing" Tolkien and thinking he is better than the Old Master. When in fact his critiques are clearly coming from a place of adoration; Martin loves Tolkien (he's said he rereads LotR every few years) but thinks his work was lacking in some dimensions that Martin wanted to explore.

For all the complaints about Martin's "perversity" and grimdarkness, there are authors who've written series with a lot more deviance and pointless, nihilistic violence. There are also authors far leftier than him and far more critical of Tolkien. Michael Moorcock, for instance, who actually does think Tolkien is shit and wrote a series about a sort of effeminate elf prince with an evil sword that's actually a demon that eats people's souls, and the protagonist kills everyone he loves and worships a demon god, and this is a classic in fantasy literature. But Moorcock, again, is too old and not online enough to have really drawn fire from the right.