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PaperclipPerfector  22d ago (text post)   2767 thread views

Small-Scale Question Sunday for August 25, 2024

Do you have a dumb question that you're kind of embarrassed to ask in the main thread? Is there something you're just not sure about?

This is your opportunity to ask questions. No question too simple or too silly.

Culture war topics are accepted, and proposals for a better intro post are appreciated.

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Somebody's been flying a fairly large quadcopter over my property and hovering over it, far enough away from the boundary that they're clearly breaking the BVR rules.

Does anyone know what my options are short of shooting it down? Is there an actually reliable scanning app for logging Remote IDs? Does the FAA jump at the chance to go after idiots? What sort of evidence would they need if they care about it?

Don't read this part if you're an FCC agent, but it seems like a nice directional antenna broadcasting noise on 2.4 & 5ghz would take care of a commercial drone nicely? Or at least make it go away if they have their return to home autopilot set up.

@ZorbaTHut is there a way to do exact-string search on theMotte? I want to search for [long peace], as opposed to [long]+[peace]. I know quotes don't work (I just get ["long]+[peace"]).

(If there's not, consider this a feature request.)

Why are black people so bad at organized crime?

A common stereotype of black people is that they have violent and/or criminal tendencies. Yet there are no black equivalents of Italian Mafia, Mexican Cartels, Chinese Triads, or the Irish Mob. "Gangstas" are known more for their music and breakdancing than for their scary, ruthless ways. No black organized crime groups have ever managed to capture popular imagination. Why is this?

The crips and bloods never captured popular imagination? I'm not entirely sure black gangs are even much more dysfunctional than Italian or Mexican ones after correcting for general member criminality.

No black organized crime groups have ever managed to capture popular imagination.

Ever see Predator 2? That had some black organized crime groups, though it was like Jamaican vs Puerto Rican, or something

I noticed that the current top post on the SSC subreddit examines differing cultural attitudes towards male and female life expectancy. One commenter noted the following:

In Germany, until a few years ago, women could retire with full payment 5 years!!! earlier then men, despite their already longer live expectancy. But at least they equalized that. But actually arguments could be made, that the fairest would be to allow earlier retirement for men, so they can enjoy a similar payout ratio as women do.

To which another responded:

We had a similar, now disfunct system. An aspect of the earlier female retirement was that the women got granny-tracked - they would be available earlier to provide child care for their grandchildren/nephews and the state would basically pay for that. So that would be one aspect to consider - the state is not paying anything out of fairness, only of utility.

"Granny-tracking" is an English expression I never heard before, but it did ring a bell. I can't tell what current German legislation is on his matter, but I know for sure that Hungarian law is similar to what the German was(?) - women have the option to retire earlier though their life expectancy is higher on average. As far as I know, this is normal in most countries. And yes, the most likely explanation I can come up with is indeed that society operates under the tacit assumption that old women can be generally expected to fulfill the socially desirable role of unpaid babysitters, basically, whereas old men cannot, for various reasons. And this role is more important than whatever jobs they would be doing - it's really that simple, isn't it?

Let's also consider that demographic implosion and social atomization probably has little effect on this. A child needs care and supervision even if it's an only child, and even moreso if it's being raised by a single mother.

Another aspect is that society doesn't treat male and female careers the same way. The notion that men can basically be forced to keep working until they drop dead is something that society can tacitly accept more or less, but not in the case of women. In fact, it's generally acceptable for women to basically drop out of the rat race after finding a husband, then preferably having two children in succession, thus leaving the job market for 6-7 years, returning to it afterwards only to the extent that family expenses absolutely demand it.

Does anyone have a different perspective?

I don't think that happens much here in the states, though it might be different business to business. I believe all federal employees are the same.

As for why do people do it? I think you present the best argument a state might use, but it might also just be old-school parochial sexism.

I have an idea for an on-chain token called The Sovereign that would be granted to all citizens and used for a variety of political activities. I have a feeling I'm reinventing a wheel that exists somewhere (I'm aware of other governance token ideas, but I think mine's different...?). I'm looking to bounce the idea off of some people before I present it to the world and am rewarded with scorn and mockery.

It's been a minute since I've played in this sandbox so, the 'no dumb questions' post seemed a good place to start.

I've heard it mentioned here that Democrats game the system by having Hispanic be a race, not an ethnicity, on demographic surveys. I have long felt it was stupid that Hispanic or not Hispanic is is own separate dimension, but I'm not sure I know how it concretely has an upside for the Democrats. Can anyone explain it?

I swear there was an AAQC somewhere explaining the historical background. Maybe it was around here?

Worth mentioning that “Hispanic” counts as a race as of this year. As does ”Arab” “MENA”. So if there’s an upside, it wasn’t enough to make a big stink.

I think the argument is that it allows extra flexibility in reporting, making it possible to include them as white or not depending on what's convenient for the narrative being pushed at the time.

George Zimmerman was reported exclusively as "White Hispanic" because otherwise the main narrative of the story did not hold well. The term existed before but I don't think I saw a lot of usage of it in MSM prior to that.

I’m extremely skeptical of the phrase “non-“duality”. Is there anything valuable to be gleaned from non-duality as a concept?

Absolutely. It's more of an experiential guide, from my perspective.

If you aren't into serious meditation/contemplation you may not find it very useful. But ultimately it describes the state where it feels as if your self drops away and you merge into full union with God/the Universe/experience w/e you want to call it.

Has anyone else noticed that people in academic or intellectual hobbies tend to split in terms of disposition? On one hand, you have fact collectors; Those professors who read everything in a dry voice, who seem impartial to the conclusions or suggestions of whatever they might say, as if the raw accumulation of knowledge or data were the only goal, and who fill their books with raw, nigh uncategorized information. On the other hand, you have those who love intellectual topics due to their love of conclusions, and who see knowledge as a stepping stone to something greater. These types love to cherrypick, they make sweeping generalizations, they are often your world-famous intellectuals.

I don't have much to add to this dichotomy, but I believe it would benefit everyone if we recognized it. Partially because they are incompatible: Just as narrative writers draw ire from the fact collectors and their inaccuracies, so too the former is frustrated with the latter's awful signal-to-noise ratio. As one hard-aligned in the former category, I find myself learning more from a Thucydides than an Oxbridge historian or a Freud than a journal; even if I entirely disagree with their narrative it still produces something to collide against and draw sparks, whereas a collection of facts passes through empty air leaving no impression.

Ok, don't know why I have a tab open with this slightly older comment, but I liked it apparently, lol.

What your dichotomy makes me think of is the Meyers-Briggs distinction between "P" perceivers and "J" judgers -- this of course has poor test-retest reliability, I myself have tested on both sides of the silly line -- but it's not entirely silly in its concept.

True to what the MBTI people would say about me, I find myself on both sides of this spectrum. I have different dispositions depending on the subject, my mood, my interests, my needs, etc. In theology, for instance, I tend to be conclusion-driven, because my goal in studying theology is finding a church home. That doesn't mean I don't love collecting facts, but I do so with the goal of making decisions. When it comes to history, I tend to be fact-collecting, because I just find historical events intrinsically interesting and memorable, I like hearing stories and telling them. With psychology, it's more conclusion-driven. With philosophy, it's intensely conclusion-driven, because I find the people I disagree with on basic philosophical topics insane, even if I try to be charitable towards them. With computing and IT, it's a mixture, sometimes I want to get things done but sometimes I find myself reading the Linux File Hierarchy Standard on the train because I just think standards are neat. With astronomy and space science, I'm the "I Fucking Love Science" idiot, I'm sorry, I just like outer space, I will always be a little bit the tiny boy who made pillow forts in my childhood bedroom and pretended they were spaceships.

All of this kind of gets blended together into my best guess at a cohesive worldview. This can seem like fact collecting, but I distinctly remember in college all the various disciplines I took courses in started to connect together like puzzle pieces and at the end I felt like I had a much stronger sense of myself, my views, and my place in the world. If I could make a positive argument for a liberal arts education, it would be that. (Now if only what most people were learning in those sorts of courses had anything to do with verifiable fact.)

My girlfriend comments constantly that I seem to know random things from all over the fact spectrum -- but of course the joke's on her, she gets the same comments from her coworkers. But it's important to note that for me, like my professor father before me, sharing trivia facts is anything but "dry" or "impressionless" -- my father gets emails from students about how much he makes them laugh. It's all about storytelling, and being genuinely excited about sharing the things that interest you with other people. I'd freaking love to be an instructor, and 100% of the people who know me well say they can't imagine me ever being anything else. Now if only universities were looking for cis-het-white-male adjuncts with contrarian tendencies...

But if I had to pick a side -- it would be Judging, because I get very annoyed at people who seem so charitable to all sides that they become unable to pick a viewpoint, or so open-minded their brain falls out. Looking at you, religious studies students.

Another concept analogous to this is the is-ought distinction. Fact collectors care about what is and the conclusion seekers care about what ought to be.

You could also say this about autists and normies. Autists leaning towards more how things are and the normies obsessed with how things are supposed to be. Although I will admit this one is a reach.

Unrelated but, I think for a long time biology has been filled with fact collectors and not enough conclusion seekers. The conclusion seekers go into programming and engineering. Once these engineering type conclusions seekers come to the conclusion that we should be healthy forever and turn their intellect and focus on biology, that's the beginning of us becoming Human 2.0

People who have the ol' good clinically diagnosed autism often have limited range of interests and poor understanding of everyday things, including cause and effect.

Nerds have great obsession about how things should be according to their own pet theories. Normies won't care about irrelevant things, unless it is necessary or beneficial (and then it is no longer irrelevant)

You could also say this about autists and normies. Autists leaning towards more how things are and the normies obsessed with how things are supposed to be. Although I will admit this one is a reach.

It's the opposite, in my experience. Normies just deal with what is, and autists are very concerned with the way things ought to be.

Normies deal with what is, but get very upset if you accurately describe them as they are, instead of how they ought to be. Autists can deal with things as they are, as long they're labelled correctly, it's the dissonance between the actual state and the description that drives them nuts.

This seems to hit the nail on the head.

I wonder if this clash plays any sort of key role in autists often falling out of working life and social circles.

I feel like polite social life often requires a certain amount of lying. Not only to others, but even to yourself. It helps ease the tension in all sorts of awkward situations, if we can all just fib a little and pretend things don't exist. Autists really struggle with that. (And I say that as someone who is a bit autistic and a terrible liar)

Yep knowledge lovers vs wisdom lovers. A tale as old as time.

I've been taking driving lessons recently in my late 30s (never bothered to before as I lived in the city) and I'm surprised by how it drains me. It's not anxiety, I'm not nervous about driving. There's nothing different about me before I go to a class. But I feel extremely tired after a 1 hour driving class, almost as if I'm sick, my brain get foggy. My current theory is that driving being an unfamiliar and potentially deadly activity my brain goes in an hyperfocused state that is extremely tiring to maintain for an hour. If that's the case I imagine it will get better as my degree of familiarity improves?

Did anyone else here have that experience of extreme tiredness for an only moderately long driving session? Did it improve? Were you a teen or an adult when you learned? I'm wondering if maybe teen brains get used to it faster.

I started driving at about 15, the normal age for it in the US. IMO it still is much more tiring than the amount of time and the actual physical activity would suggest. I'm not really sure about improvement - it probably has somewhat, but the extra mental strain is still there.

I do still like to stop every few hours when driving longer distances. Partly from mental strain, partly from the physical part of stretching and moving around. Also for bathroom, snacks, food, gas, etc.

driver since 1991 I've driven in almost every US state and Canada, and many places in Europe. I've been a passenger in the Mid-east and various countries in Asia. I've driven cars, vans and trucks up to 22' with the military. I've towed trailers and driven professionally as a service call technician. I've probably wasted a third of my life in cars.

#1 Driving sucks and it's gotten worse. There's more worse traffic than 30 years ago. Way more distracted driving, more congestion, more bicycles, more motorcycles, more semis. Some significant portion of traffic are lost gig drivers. In Europe, my experience on the highways is that they are mostly fine, but back roads can be tiny and terrifying when large vehicles--which were not really a thing in Europe back in the day--come barreling toward you. The middle East (UAE, Jordan) is the absolute most insane driving I've ever seen. Thailand is crazy because entire families will be hanging out on a moped doing 60 down the highway in a rainstorm.

#2 You're definitely tired and exhausted from being on full alert the entire time you're operating a vehicle. You have to maintain 360 degree, above and below awareness of your vehicle moving at deadly speeds through space and time. You're looking out for yourself, for other vehicles and for the comfort and safety of your passengers. It's a serious thing that requires full attention and nothing will wear you down faster than pumping road stress blood into your brain.

#3 It takes years of driving experience to 'figure it out' and have a feel for where people are going and who the shits are that need to be avoided at all costs. People drive like they walk, so you you have to constantly assume they do not know you are behind or next to them and presume they might stop at any second. Eventually you will notice that people lead with their bodies and they do this in cars as well. You get a 6th sense that someone is going to change lanes or do u-turns. It's definitely one of those 10k hours things. The only solution is lots of driving experience, so take some road trips. :)

#4 The best drivers are motorcyclists. Stay out of their way.

#5 Everyone is a bad driver >1% of the time.

Tips Make sure you set your mirrors right. Do not drive next to semis. Speed past them if you have to. Be careful when cresting a hill--something might be jsut on the other side out of sight. Always let aggressive drivers pass you and try to remember to stay toward the right on busy streets. Always optimize fore safety over convenience and even the law. Know where you're going before you leave. Learn to ride a motorcycle. Remember people can't see your turn signal if you have you hazards on. Two hands on the wheel!!! :)

I also learned to drive recently, in my 30s. I also found lessons really exhausting, but I totally chalked it up to nerves. Not that I was panicked or fearful, but driving takes a lot of focus and concentration, as well as multitasking and anticipation. With lessons that is even more true. You're paying attention to the road, to the car, to other drivers, and to the instructor, all while learning and doing new things.

Now that I've had my liscence for two years, it is a lot less exhausting. I can easily drive for many hours. A lot of things that you have to actively focus on while you are learning become second nature.

I learned to drive when I was 15 to 17 and didn't experience anything like this at all. I think you're just way past the optimal age to learn to drive. Not to discourage you, but I have a few friends who learned to drive in their mid-20's and they're terrible drivers. I think 30 is about the age where it starts to become really hard to learn anything new, and I read a study once that the teens are the optimal age to learn the specific skills involved in driving. I'm in my mid-30's and I've noticed that, whereas learning new skills was a joy when I was 20, now it's kind of painful and tedious.

My only formal experiences as a student taught driving were our weekly Driver's Ed classes that in I think sophomore high school. I remember the football coaches (for some reason) were the teachers--I wonder if they got paid extra for that? We had these machines you sat in and turned wheels and stared at video screens and worked the foot pedals. But mostly it was a dry-as-a-bone watching videos of re-enactments and remembering the rules of the road. In these videos you'd be on some residential street and suddenly a ball would fly out into the road. What, what do you do? This would have been around 1982 or 3.

When I had to drive on an actual road for the first time I was around 15, which is the age at which you could get a driver's permit (meaning an adult had to be with you in the car. I don't know if this is still the case.) We only ever had manual transmissions in our cars at home so I had to learn to work the gears and clutch, and there was a lot of herky jerky. Once I can clearly recall my dad, my brother and I driving to my grandfather's house, which was then about 15 miles away. My dad getting out of the car, me getting out, circling around from the passenger to the driver's seat. When we hit 55 it was the fastest I had ever driven, but this was a slow speed for other drivers and people were overtaking me and I had slower people in front and I had a moment of near-panic. I remember my dad telling me to man-up, though he did not use those words. "BUT I'VE NEVER DRIVEN THIS FAST!" I said. His response: "Well then I guess we're all going to die."

I will never forget those words, and what I guess was the resignation borne of frustration with which he said them. Anyway whether I in fact man'd up or not I don't know, but we did survive, got to the house, and I suppose I kept driving. Years later when I drove automatic it was like driving a bumper car at the fair--so easy as to be bizarre. And to my way of thinking offers much less control, though with the way cars are automated now I suppose controlling the car yourself is seen as quaint.

All this to say I recall the moments of panic, if not enervation. I never did driving school, though. And when I got to Japan and my international license ran out and I had to take the course test, I failed a total of five times. Bastards. I think this is because I was taking manual (what they call "mission") and the obscure Japanese rules for this regarding hand positions were unknown to me (Japanese people pay upwards of 4K to take driving lessons at driving schools, which teach these esoteric rules so people will pass the tests. It's a racket.) When I gave in and took the automatic test (by then my wife and I had an automatic anyway at home) the rater guy looked at me at the end and said "Where'd you learn to drive so well?" My father's words came back to me, but I just said "From my wife," which seemed to satisfy him.

I think this is because I was taking manual (what they call "mission") and the obscure Japanese rules for this regarding hand positions were unknown to me...

Now I'm curious. What are these rules? It seems like it's pretty unnecessary to micromanage that behavior, so I'm kind of surprised.

Micromanaging is I believe a way, along with car costs, driving school costs, and periodic car check-ups (called shahken) to thin out the road herd. It's already pretty congested even though public transportation is excellent.

I don't actually know all the fine points but I know I wasn't supposed to keep my hand on the gear shift as much as I did.

This is established MT lore in the west as well -- resting your hand on the shifter when you aren't using it can accelerate wear on the synchronizer rings and shift linkage parts. (or the gears themselves if you want to go back to, like, 50s lore or heavy trucks)

I did once replace the shift dog assembly on my dad's truck due to it wearing out rendering 1-2 gears inaccessible -- luckily you could get it from the top. Not sure whether this was driver habits (I don't think my dad or I lean on the shifter, but previous owner is a possibility) or shitty Ford engineering, but it did happen. Unclear why the government should care, but they do like things to be done properly in Japan I suppose?

They do indeed. TIL.

Might be worth distinguishing between nerves and stress. Driving is stressful in both obvious and surprising ways.

I never understood road rage until I caught myself cussing out my dad in the passenger seat. It was like my conscious brain had stepped back a couple inches into my skull. Rational thought just wasn’t involved. Incredibly unsettling.

Something about the stimuli triggers weird parts of our psychology. I wouldn’t be surprised if you’re experiencing an adrenaline crash after a session, even if you’re never consciously framing it that way. The normal patterns don’t apply.

My Japanese wife once was cut off by a woman in another car and I heard my wife scream "CUNT!" This had never happened before and hasn't happened since. Road rage is interesting.

You're brain hasn't been trained to automatically read the road and the environment to pick out what's important. You're actively evaluating everything on the road because it's a new experience and your automatic systems don't know how to handle things.

Long term drivers just cruise around on autopilot. You need to drive more to establish a baseline of what's normal on the roads in your area.

My best advice is to make sure your first car is something that would be described as an "old lady car". You can wobble a bit in your lane and everyone will give you plenty of space. If you start off with a BMW everyone will assume you're an aggressive asshole driver and won't let you in.

The first time I drove on a public road was driving home from right after getting my licence. I was going very slowly (maybe 20 or 30 km/h in a 50 km/h) at first as a I pulled out of the parking lot and approached a red light. The driver behind me blared his horn for a full second or two before rushing around me.

Shit, I learned in a Toyota Sequoia. It didn’t earn me any charity, but at least the visibility was good.

I learned driving at age 19 and felt the same about it for the longest time. It took moving to the US and being broken in by a few ill-advised road trips where I had the choice between driving for 9 hours straight after over a day awake and putting up with a logistical nightmare of missed appointments and late returns, as the other would-be drivers refused to do their part; after doing that I acquired the ability to drive on autopilot/do the "where did the past 2 hours go" thing that car commuters are known for.

Learning new things is, partially, a young person's game. It takes more effort to do it later. It'll get easier as the skills become autopiloted in you. Also, drive an automatic, not a manual.

Did anyone else here have that experience of extreme tiredness for an only moderately long driving session?

Driving lessons were pretty taxing even if the instructors weren't utter shits (very common in a profession with no repeat business), but no, I don't remember being that tired.

Something similar: I was used to sleeping in cars and for a good while after learning to drive I'd immediately get extremely drowsy while driving, as if I'd just taken a big amount of sleeping pills etc.

Are you driving a manual tramission? I found that pretty fatiguing driving in the city after having them in the rural country for many years.

I remember feeling like that when I was learning as a teenager. My lessons were two hours long but after 1.5 hours I really struggled to concentrate.

The more you drive, the easier it gets. Especially with modern assistance (sat nav, automatic gearbox, cruise control etc). Once you pass your test and start driving regularly, your driving stamina will increase a lot.

Your experience is similar to mine. I got my driver's license at 18, but I have been driving regularly since I bought my first car three years ago. At first I was extremely hyperfocused while driving, in an entirely different state of mind. And yes, I was exhausted after a longer ride (3-4 hours). As I grew accustomed to driving, the rush decreased in intensity but the feeling is still a bit different and quite enjoyable. Though I have to admit that I like driving, especially during long rides. I'm in my early thirties.

I'm actually somewhat inverted in that I used to struggle with focus in driving when I was young. I think it's easier for me now because I'm more acutely aware of risk and also have the benefit of interesting podcasts to keep me from drifting as far into fatigue.

On the flip side, my Garmin says that my stress level goes up substantially while I'm driving. This is true even if my subjective experience is of having a relaxing afternoon with my wife. The change in heart rate variability is a measurably physiologic indicator of the fact that driving is taking something out of me even if I don't feel like it on a moment-to-moment basis.

I generally don't drive far at night anymore. My night vision isn't as good as when I was young and my state has terrible illumination and even worse road paint. The state is so bad at this that I thought my vision had deteriorated much worse than it actually has... until I crossed a state line and was promptly fine.

It seems to me that there is a developmental window for learning potentially hazardous adulting skills which opens in early adolescence and closes in your very late teens or very early twenties.

In the environment of evolutionary adaptedness this is stuff like learning to identify poisonous mushrooms from edible ones; today driving is the main example. I didn’t have that experience, but it seems extremely common with adults learning to drive.

I used to not have that but got it as I grew older. FWIW I've been driving moderate amounts since I was 18, and now in my mid-thirties I notice myself becoming very sleepy at the wheel whenever the drives grow long or the hours late. I can manage 1000km in a day just fine, mechanically, but man do I feel it. Driving at night ditto. It takes constant effort to keep my eyes open.

Maybe I would get to that point if I kept driving longer, but what I'm describing seems like the opposite of that. I am not in any way sleepy or tired while driving, but after I feel a sort of crash, as if my brain had to tap into some emergency reserves to keep itself in that state of focus for an hour.

I saw the difference, but it may still be related - my theory there would be that we both tap into the same reserves, but your shorter drives don't fully deplete them.

Let's say that, for whatever reason, A wishes to publicly tweet some extreme hate speech about B. A wants the language used to be effective, i.e. to get as much hate as possible across to B, but A also wants the language used to be safe, i.e. A wants, as much as possible, to minimize any legal risks and preferably any social risks for himself. These desiderata trade off against each other: The maximally effective language would be a "true threat", but this would be entirely unsafe, because true threats aren't protected by any free speech laws.

What are some examples of language that A can use which best balances the competing desiderata of effectiveness and safety?

One idea that's occurred to me is language along the following lines: "If I'm crossing a bridge and see that B is drowning in the river, I will absolutely rescue B — but only after I've made sure any drowning cockroach within a 5 mile radius has been rescued, for though I value B's life, I value those of cockroaches more."

It seems clear that the language used here would be highly effective (A is saying that the life of a merely theoretic cockroach is more important to him than that of A). But it seems that it'd also be reasonably safe, since A did not express any wish for B to die (if anything, A says he will "definitely rescue B", only he needs to prioritize (the lives of cockroaches); perhaps his priorities are screwed up, but it's difficult to imagine legal troubles for having screwed up priorities).

Am I missing something here? Are there even better ways for A to get as much hate publicly across to B without overly exposing himself to legal and/or social risks?

Why would you use a minced oath version of a threat to communicate hate? The entire universe of online threats is fairly ineffective at making B feel bad, regardless of identity of B.

If you're making an effort to make that person feel bad, a much more subtle attack will work more effectively. If you're looking to express hate, satire will be much more effective.

There seem to be different related concepts here that can lead to different methods based on exactly what you mean by "hate". Do you want B to feel maximally unsafe, do you just want them to understand you hate them maximally without them necessarily feeling bad, do you want everyone else watching to think you just got an insane dunk off on them?

Option 1: Probably something that's toeing the line as much as possible to doxxing their information. Like replying to all their tweets with instructions on how to find a celebrity's address or something like that.

Option 2: Figure out some sort of organization that directly opposes their values, like a political thinktank/campaign or even a business they hate, and donate to them a large sum of money, then send this person a picture of the receipt

Option 3: This happens on Twitter all the time.

You forget that the people interpreting whether you've broken any rules are people, not rule-enforcing automatons. They can see what you're trying to do. They could just as easily crack down on you more because they are annoyed by your cynical attempt at rules-lawyering.

I mean, that would be good news from my point of view! After all, I hope it's clear that what's being aimed for here is not an actual "true threat" but something that is just as effective as one in terms of psychological impact on the recipient. After all, someone who actually intends to issue a true threat to someone would simply choose the most direct language ("I will do X unless you do/stop doing Y") available. There's no reason for such a person to care about "plausible deniability".

So if the people who interpret the rules can "see what I'm doing", they should rationally decline to "crack down on me" (at all, much less "more"), because they can see no "true threat" is intended, only a very hateful message.

(Think of it this way. When someone becomes notorious for some controversial political position we often hear their claims to receive "death threats" in the mail or via phone. We all know that the vast majority of people sending such messages do not actually intend to make good on their threats, yet by wording their messages in the outward form of a "true threat" they make themselves vulnerable to criminal prosecution. They merely want to say something very hateful, very violent towards the recipient.)

I think in this instance the "cracking down" is social sanctions (moderators and other people), not legal sanctions. Your OP writes "legal and/or social risks" as if they are similar.

Your trick works well to evade the law and the poster replying to you was saying that this might lead to even more social sanctions. The less your messaging looks like a legal threat, the more it looks like hate speech, which you correctly note is clear to everyone involved.

I think something you might be missing -- or maybe I am -- is that moderation on most platforms doesn't protect hate speech. And committing hate speech is a big social risk everywhere, even if it isn't a legal risk.

Is the point to make B feel bad, or to communicate to them your own hatred of them? If the former, why rely on speech at all? If the latter, well, why bother?

If the point is to inform them that you hate them, I think the best way to do so would probably be to send them a video of yourself ranting about your hatred of them in a state of totally unhinged fury. Really go all out with pulsing veins, clenched teeth, and a beet-red face, and you'll communicate your hatred just fine without any need to rely on wordplay.

wants the language used to be effective, i.e. to get as much hate as possible across to B,

This is completely wrong. Do you talk to cockroaches? Do you care that they understand how much you hate them?
The point of hateful speech about cockroaches is to convince other people to chip in for an exterminator visit, not to make the cockroach feel bad.

If you hate someone that much, you shouldn't be talking to them at all. You should be sending evidence he's an embezzling pedophile to his boss/wife/landlord.

At the very least you should be leaving no identifiable public evidence that you hate someone.

Why do you need the caveat? “You’re worth less than a cockroach” is more straightforward, a stronger sentiment, and still not a True Threat. I’m not seeing what the extra cruft adds.

You will never avoid social risks. Thinking you can avoid them, if only you pick the right plausibly-deniable phrases, is a classic blunder. Our cultural immune system will recognize it as “smug,” “masturbatory,” or even “smarmy.”

Any message which achieves your goal will be obvious to people other than the intended targets. I recommend dropping the whole plan and loving thy neighbor.

"you are worth less than a cockroach" would be safer, but less effective in my view. For one thing, it is more formulaic, and for that reason less "powerful" in the same way that dead metaphors are less powerful than live metaphors: readers of such sentences immediately take cognitive shortcuts to get at the underlying sense, so they no longer evoke vivid mental imagery in the mind.

Secondly, the version with the extra cruft explicitly brings in the concept of death, and therefore can come across as more threatening, whereas "You’re worth less than a cockroach" does not.

You are right that social risks are unavoidable, and perhaps I shouldn't have mentioned it as a desideratum. The point is not to "dog whistle" (to have one message for the intended recipient, and a different one for everyone else). The point is rather to have the hateful and/or violent intent behind the message be transparent to everyone involved, yet the message be couched in language that allows for the highest degree of gloat-worthy plausible deniability, leaving B with as little recourse as possible. Given that these two properties pull in different directions, I'm interested to know whether there's any way to strike the best balance as it were.

"Less effective" at what? would seem to be the key question here.

Who is this person to you that you not only care enough to hate them, but care enough about what they think of you that you need them them to know that you hate them?

If @netstack's advice to "love thy nieghbor" curdles in your throat, instead ask yourself what would Don Draper say?

There is no particular person I have in mind (although I don't mind if people assume otherwise). The question is mostly technical, an intellectual exercise. If you want to know the real motivation behind me asking the question, it's largely this: that I believe that free speech laws should not outlaw "true threats" (i.e. people should be legally permitted to threaten each other with death, as long as they don't practice what they preach, so to speak) because if I'm right, it's trivially easy for a would-be issuer of a "true threat" to reword his message so that, while the overall psychological impact on the recipient would be nearly the same, the language used has near perfect plausible deniability.

hateful and/or violent intent

It strikes me that these are two entirely different things here. I have read, in newspapers and magazines, respectable journalists express complete and utter disdain for certain public figures they disliked, including turns of phrase just as bad as your cockroach example, without fear that said public figures would have them arrested. And it wasn't just Trump, this was in the pre-2016 era.

But violent intent, the idea that you yourself wish to commit actual interpersonal harm to B, that's another matter. Are you, in fact, hoping to make this person believe that you're going to come over and beat the shit out of them, but in a way that's plausibly deniable enough that they won't be able to take any legal action against you?

While variety is the spice of life, I find the phrasing too cumbersome.

“Gloat-worthy plausible deniability” is a bad heuristic. It sounds like a good idea, but I guarantee you, it does the opposite of what you want, making it easier to dismiss out of hand. Don’t write for yourself; write for your audience.

Or don’t write at all. I don’t know why writing better hate mail is so appealing to you, but I am willing to bet it’s not worth the trouble.

Do any Motters buy gold or other precious metals, to store at your dwelling?

If so: why do you do this? How much of it do you have? (E.g., one month's salary worth, or some other relative figure that can just give a sense.)

This has come up frequently in conversation among my friends lately, for some reason. I am asking with an open mind.

I've tended to be skeptical of the idea, primarily because it's only protection against a very specific type of economic collapse. The kind where something has gone sufficiently seriously wrong with conventional fiat currency that it's dramatically lower value, but there are still sufficient goods available on the market to purchase from people who actually are willing to sell them, and those people are willing to accept precious metals in exchange for them. And have infrastructure to do so, including to weigh and value those metals and store them in such a way that they can't be easily stolen.

If I was going to hoard anything, I'd store primarily actually useful goods, such as non-perishable food, water filters, soap, medical supplies, tools, ammunition, fuel, etc. Those are extremely useful in any type of collapse or catastrophe. If it's one where people actually are exchanging precious metals, you will soon have all you could ever want when all of those people come to buy actually useful things from you with chunks of precious metal. Assuming you think the future is bright enough to actually accept such trades.

Cash is probably also more useful. In any of the much more plausible types of short-term disasters that have happened semi-recently, having at least a few thousand in cash lying around would likely prove very useful, because virtually everyone you might find selling things will be willing to accept it. Most of them probably wouldn't have much idea what to do with precious metals.

My prepper impulses are limited to ammunition rather than precious metals. I have considered precious metals as well but decided that I think the situations where metals are the difference maker are fairly niche. Arguably I'm underestimating the risk level and should just buy $10K in gold and silver as a slight hedge. I actually find that argument fairly persuasive, but I haven't done it anyway.

The time to buy gold and silver was six months ago, at the latest.

I know two guys who stash krugerrands in their home safes. One of them is bar none the most neurotic man I've ever met in my life.

They say they are concerned about the usual government collapse scenarios. Even accepting this as a likely scenario, I can't imagine that Krugerrands are particularly useful for exchange. A single $2000 coin is like ten months of groceries for myself at current prices. They didn't have a good response except to laugh that ten months of groceries might cost a lot more than $2000 in the future which of course totally misses the point.

I definitely did have that thought while researching this topic, hehe. I see that one can buy 1-gram gold bars that are worth roughly $100. I suppose silver coins would be much more straightforward to use in such a situation; a 1-gram bar of silver is worth like 3 dollars right now.

Generally for wealth holding in bullion you want bigger pieces than one gram, because markup rises with declining size of the piece of metal. For 1-Oz silver coins it’s pretty reasonable, but for 1/10 Oz it’s a serious money sink into premiums.

This is a good point that I had not thought of.

Krugerrands are bigger than a half-dollar coin, and made out of a soft metal, so I would say chopping them into quarters shouldn't be a problem. Still, that only gets you to 500 USD.

Yes, I own physical silver bullion in case of hyperinflation. This is extremely common behavior in my filter bubble, to the extent of physical silver dealers who will buy at the spot price and in bulk being located in my neighborhood- so in practice, bullion is a savings account with extra steps.

How much do I own? Much less than if I expected near-future hyperinflation.

Do you intend to acquire more silver bullion? What proportion of your holdings is in this form?

This conversation is partially inspired by a relative of mine, who is holding several thousands of dollars in the form of wads of cash, stashed behind a bureau in his house. I told him that I thought this may be the very worst method possible of storing one's wealth, and advised him to at least go buy some gold that he could hide more securely.

I have more wealth in stock than in bullion. I will probably acquire more now and again, but it’s not a main investment strategy.

The exception would be signs of genuine near term impending hyperinflation- in such a case I would buy a lot of silver bullion, because it’s easy to convert back into cash and anything is better than holding cash in that scenario.

Wads of cash is, agreed, not a good way to hold money.

I don't, but I know someone who does. He has something like a year's worth of living expenses in gold and silver saved up. He does it because he's convinced that the US dollar is going to collapse someday, and that gold and silver currency is going to be the only thing which retains value.

I'm looking into getting my dad a tractor canopy as a present this year - he recently got a new tractor for a small farm he purchased, and loves the thing. Are there any good tips/reviews/whatnot? Good websites, or do I just go to the dealer local to him? Are canopies even worthwhile?

It's a John Deere 3039R, if that makes any difference. (No cab, obviously.)

Are "home title theft" and appearance of a new and genuine deed invalidating the property rights of a person previously secure in them, big concerns for owners of real estate in the US?

Enough of a problem that the State of Florida initiated a new pilot program to attempt to make it easier to detect early, and possibly prevent.

Although it adds friction to legitimate real estate transactions too, which is frustrating.

No.

Personal anecdote: When my grandfather (let's call him Alfred) unexpectedly died in a car crash at a relatively young age, the probate court split his house seven ways between his second wife Beatrice, the four children (Charles, Dorothy, Egbert, and my mother Francine) that he had with Beatrice, and the two children (Gerald and Henrietta) that he had with his first wife Irene. Francine told me that Gerald and Henrietta signed their shares over to Beatrice (who was left destitute due to Alfred's failure to buy life insurance). But, on a whim, I paid for a title search, and this alleged signing-over was never recorded at the clerk's office! Francine insists that the signed papers must be somewhere in Beatrice's possession. But, as things stand, the signed papers are missing, so Gerald and Henrietta seem perfectly entitled to claim shares in the house.

But that's just one anecdote.

New and genuine (or genuine-appearing) deeds are fairly uncommon. Full-blown title fraud happens -- this article estimates around 11k cases in 2022 -- but it's pretty rare (<0.0001% risk per year?), and generally more harmful in the sense that it's a ton of lawfare to clean up and out, rather than getting people evicted from their own homes.

((The latter bit is part of why I think anti-title insurance arguments focused on the low loss ratio are misguided. The goal of title insurance isn't to give you the cash value of a house or fence line if someone fucked up paperwork somewhere; it's to handle stuff so you keep your house or fence line unless there's no other less-costly option. That said, a lot of 'title lock' companies are just outright scams.))

That said, the risks are very far from evenly distributed, especially where localities have particularly exploitable practices or taking advantage of national borders and emphasizing areas of quick growth near vacant land.

Weird fuckery and outright mistakes are more common, and obsensibly more of what title insurance is focused around.

The loss ratio for title insurance includes all of the legal and administrative fees necessary to resolve the claim, up to and including straight up reimbursement. So yes, the sevarity of a valid claim is quite high, its just that claims are incredibly rare. I would also point out that compared to most other types of insurance, the overhead for title insurance is very, very low.

I dont think the argument is that title insurance shouldnt exist, its that the price has been spiked by absurb multiples due to effective collusion of the providers and their related industry contacts, and that property buyers are less aware of this price gouging due to the peculiar nature of real estate transactions.

No. Regardless, you will still have to purchase title insurance for any financed transaction, which is according to the numbers, the biggest scam in the insurance industry.

To save you a click, title insurance has a loss ratio of around 5%, which corresponds to a roughly 20x markup. Contrast this with say fire insurance, which has a 65% loss ratio (ie the insurer expects to pay out 65 cents in claims for every dollar they collect in premiums), automotive of 75%, and homeowners of 82%.

I'll do @JulianRota one better — I practiced title law for about a decade and I've never seen it. In theory someone could forge the owner's signature on a deed and have it acknowledged by a rogue notary and record the deed, but this doesn't really get you anything. If the property is occupied they'd have to commence an ejectment action to get the owner out, and at this point they'd be found out. If they wanted to mortgage it or sell to a third party they'd run into guardrails the mortgage companies have in place as part of due diligence. For instance, an appraisal requires an in person inspection and the appraiser needs access to the property. The biggest guardrail, though, is that it requires the perpetrator to use his real name and commit a series of felonies that create a massive paper trail.

That being said, I was at a seminar a number of years back and heard that this was a thing in Philadelphia. The caveat, though, is that the forged deeds involved distressed properties in areas that were seeing renewed development interest. And the guy got caught anyway, because when you're selling for enough that it's worth doing, you're creating a massive paper trail. Also, these were properties where the ownership was in question (usually due to an unresolved estate) so the actual owners probably didn't even know they owned the property, or shared it with other heirs. For a normal owner-occupied residence, this kind of thing is near impossible to pull off.

I've bought and sold several properties in multiple states and am friends with a few realtors. I've never heard of either happening.

So, what are you reading?

I'm still on This Star of England and The Conquest of Bread.

"Electric Machinery Fundamentals 3e" by Stephen J Chapman, because a) I'm tired of thinking starter-generators are magic, b) I want to design and build a microturbine APU so I can get a BEV power armor without having to handle my dad's range anxiety.

Also David Chapman's Vividness website-book-blog-thing at https://vividness.live/ , he's been on my radar for a long time and I've never followed through.

Also David Chapman's Vividness website-book-blog-thing at https://vividness.live/ , he's been on my radar for a long time and I've never followed through.

You may also enjoy his writing on metarationality.

Ta, I'll queue it up.

In print I'm reading Nate Silver's new On The Edge. I'll probably write up a big summary when I finish it. It's relatively light pop-philosophy, the main thing I've gotten out of it so far is a desire to play more poker, so it'll end up costing me far more than the cover price. Silver remains much smarter than most of his critics, but much dumber than his ball-washers think he is.

Digital I'm starting Seeing Like a State. I'm not super far in, and I see why people read this and all of a sudden don't shut up about it and see it everywhere. I'm curious if, when talking about surnames which have only been mentioned so far, there will be comparative studies of cultures with more or fewer unique surnames. Sometimes I think Koreans didn't really get the idea with names, they're not very useful to distinguish.

On audio I'm finishing up the Years of Lyndon Johnson series from Caro. They're some of the best non fiction ever written, but if you're making a choice The Power Broker is much better. Caro loved Moses, for all his flaws, and gave Moses an arc, Moses as hero, Moses as God, Moses as villain. Caro HATES LBJ from the starting gun, and will perpetually think the worst of him; which becomes really obvious when he gives sketch biographies of LBJ's enemies which lapse into hagiography. Just after Caro spends a chapter examining how LBJ once told someone he ate eggs for breakfast, when his secretaries' notes show that he ate oatmeal, and how this shows LBJ's inherently duplicitous nature; he'll repeat some mythological bullshit about Coke Stevenson studying law by lantern light. Or he'll say that RFK "hated liars, couldn't stand them;" without interrogating his relationship with his famously adulterous brother, or allegations that RFK and JFK passed women around. The different standards are striking, and weaken the book. If one does want Caro's LBJ series, which is brilliant, read the first and the fourth, skip two and three. Most of the best parts of two and three are summarized and repeated in four, less some of the hagiography and throat clearing, so you won't miss much.

Sometimes I think Koreans didn't really get the idea with names, they're not very useful to distinguish.

They wouldn’t be. For a long time you bought a specific surname to gain entry into the clan. The more people with the same name, the more power.

https://www.economist.com/the-economist-explains/2014/09/08/why-so-many-koreans-are-called-kim

Note that the Japanese colonisers issued a degree ordering everyone to take a Japanese surname so Seeing Like A State still works.

~80% of the way through The Goldfinch. Not as good as The Secret History, significantly better than The Little Friend. While earlier sections of the book were pacy and engaging, I'm now finding it a bit of a slog.

The Secret History is truly Donna Tartt's best book.

I feel confident that I will still think this after finishing The Goldfinch.

The Wealth of Nations, Commentaries on the Laws of England

Recently started the open society and its enemies by Karl Popper

Nixonland. This one is gonna take me a while.

I also just subscribed to Harpers, I’m enjoying it.

Given what happened in Pennsylvania, how well will the Secret Service be able (or should that be "willing"?) to protect Donald Trump if (when) he's sent to Rikers Island next month?

  1. Former president goes to prison, where he is guarded by a disgraced former secret service agent who was already in, feels like a great premise for a network tv show.

  2. Trump won't need guards, they'll recruit themselves from the jail population, hoping for presidential clemency and aid. ((I'm aware of the state federal difference, but nevertheless...))

  3. Trump is never going to see a cell unless he's on tour.

Former president goes to prison, where he is guarded by a disgraced former secret service agent who was already in, feels like a great premise for a network tv show.

It does; the sort of thing USA Network would air.

Trump won't need guards, they'll recruit themselves from the jail population, hoping for presidential clemency and aid.

How effective would fellow inmates be at protecting him from being Epsteined?

Trump is never going to see a cell unless he's on tour.

Why not?

Because Democrats are too chickenshit to pull the trigger when the chips are down.

You may be right about that — it looks like Judge Merchan just delayed Trump's sentencing to after the election.

1), but as a movie starring Channing Tatum and Jonah Hill.

It just screams USA network series in the Monk, Burn Notice, Royal Pains, Psych tradition.

Donald Trump probably does not need protection inside of a prison, anyways.

Tell that to Epstein; or, for that matter, to the Romanovs.

Jeffery Epstien might disagree were he around to do so.

So, I'm old enough to remember, back in the Clinton years, the media scaremongering about "right-wing militia groups." Well, it's my understanding that this is entirely fake; right-wing militias don't actually exist, and every group that is purported to be one is actually either:

  • A small group of aging, out-of-shape men who get together a couple times a year to fire off some guns and drink some beer (more the latter than the former)
  • A Fed honeypot operation.

But, I've had some people, including a couple on this forum, assure me that I'm wrong and that "real" right-wing militias actually exist.

So, assuming they're correct, how does one find one of these groups?

Edit: so I note that /u/hydroacetylene was the only one who actually tried to answer the question (even if the example he gives is a Fed honeypot) rather than handwave at groups past, or opine about what "real" means in this context — and that answer was: you don't find them, they find you.

Define “real”. I mean a militia group did manage to blow up a federal building in the late 1990s.

But I think when asking whether a social movement is “real” I tend to think in terms of organizational effectiveness. Can they actually do any effective disruptive force type things? Can they project actual force beyond their home territory? Hell, can they effectively defend their home territory? And in that sense, while these groups exist and are armed, the most that these grouhave done in the last 10 years is marching around in business casual clothes and shouting into bullhorns. I’d suggest with sufficient time and pressure these militias could become more effective. It’s rather anecdotal, but the online portion of these groups on YouTube seem to be concerned with professionalizing the movement, incorporating the types of training that the actual military uses and trying to purge the ranks of beer drinking larpers. Whether this is actually happening, I don’t know because I’m not in a militia. But this is now at least being talked about.

Define “real”.

I mean, actually a militia, and actually a group. As you note, they don't seem to be very fitting of the former, fiven the emphasis you note on trying to fix it, and I'd argue McVeigh and his accomplices failed to meet the latter.

But none of this actually answers the question of how one finds these groups. You mention the "online portion of these groups on YouTube" — any examples? (Though, if they're on YouTube, the odds of being riddled with Feds is pretty much near 1.)

I mean I’m not interested in them except as I’m interested in knowing what they’re doing and they occasionally pop up in my feed. I’m not sure how one finds these groups, but they exist. But the point remains — marching about on the streets of a city in golf shirts and khaki pants is not a very useful metric for effectiveness. LARPing in the woods with camo and paint guns isn’t a good measure either. Both groups undoubtedly call themselves militias, but it’s completely unclear that they meet standards of effectiveness that would make them operationally effective in doing anything other than varying forms of acting tough and scaring liberals who are generally frightened of pseudo-military groups prancing about in uniforms with guns.

Again, keep in mind that for all the posturing, the marching, the calls for civil war or unrest, and claims that the government was stolen, these groups haven’t really done anything. And up until they decided that they should start making their members ruck in the rain or cold to purge themselves of unserious people, it’s was perfectly reasonable to assume they have no intention of a serious armed conflict. They’re only now doing this, and the idea that they’re all going to seriously purge their ranks this way seems odd, as they haven’t so far, and it seems that it hadn’t organically occurred to them that war isn’t like LARPing in the woods.

I’m not super worried.

People conflate 'the whole thing from conception is a fed honeypot' with 'it's a big group and a few of the members are informants'. The two are very different! In most cases the existence of the group is organic and the members and leadership really believe in it, but since they flirt with political violence law enforcement is interested in watching them.

In most cases the existence of the group is organic and the members and leadership really believe in it

That's not an answer to how one finds such a group, then.

Check out The Covenant, the Sword, and the Arm of the Lord (CSA). They were quite real and, by all accounts, a genuine threat.

A rhyming name? Shit, I'm in.

The Covenant, the Sword, and the Arm of the Lord (CSA) was a far-right survivalist anti-government militia which advocated Christian Identity and was active in the United States during the 1970s and early 1980s. Christian Identity is an interpretation of Christianity which advocates the belief that only Celtic and Germanic peoples, such as the Anglo-Saxon, Nordic nations, or people of the Aryan race and people of kindred blood, are the descendants of the ancient Israelites and are therefore God's "chosen people".

What the fuck is it with random groups claiming to be descendents of the Hebrews with no evidence beyond neener-neener-neener?

"Scratch-made" is an excellent marketing term if you're looking for restaurant patrons, not so much if you're looking for new religious followers. Social proof is a big psychological deal, and nobody wants to leave their millions-strong religion to follow something some guy pulled out of nowhere. But if you reinterpret an existing religion then you've got a chance. People get to believe they still share the old truths of those millions of people in the old religion, and they've got new truths on top of that too!

The trouble is that those "old truths" are all still written down somewhere, and the farther your "new truths" diverge from them, the trickier everything gets to reconcile. "The first books of our religion are about how God was super focused on one coalition of tribes in the Middle East" and "The modern factor differentiating our religion is that we're super special for being from a different racial cluster centered thousands of miles away" are an especially tough combo unless you can strike out "different" ... but in any case "God handled a tiny fraction of the Iron Age personally and was hands-off with the rest" is the sort of plot hook that really calls out to be picked up, and "we're not part of 'the rest' is a satisfying-feeling resolution. Human psychology is so self-centered that you can get away with "God is super invested in our tiny group" to people for whom "God is super invested in someone else's tiny group" would be literally unbelievable.

The oath keepers certainly exist, and my impression is that they're invitation only. Most right wing militias are probably like that.

Seems a bit like a fed Honeypot category? Thought their head guy was an informant? I may just be misremembering.

The oath keepers have definitely engaged in non-fed sanctioned activities and attempted basic opsec from the feds on those activities(I think their J6 group had emailed pictures of cursive to each other)- they’ve also definitely had members turned states witness upon arrest.

Right wing militias as popularly conceived/portrayed in the media are mostly fictition.

This does not mean that there are no "right wing militias".

This does not mean that there are no "right wing militias".

So, again, how do you find one, then?

The same way you find a speak-easy, by knowing who to ask.

Ok I've been arguing with progressive friends again about the massive censorship operations the left has been doing the last decade or so. I've seen like compiled links and source on this topic, could anyone send me one?

Especially interested in:

  • Hillary email server deletion
  • Hunter Biden laptop coverup
  • Russian connection accusations of Trump and lack of evidence for them
  • Collusion between FBI + big tech to censor covid 'disinfo'
  • collusion b/w deep state to censor political 'disinfo'
  • any other spicy shit you got

I feel like your best bet is going to be Matt Taibbi Substack, at least as a repository that covers most of these topics.

https://twitterfiles.substack.com/ (I think you can see some of this without a subscription, though I find my sub to Racket News well worth the money. I love the chats with Walter Kirn for instance)

https://greenwald.locals.com/landing/article (Glenn has a lot of stuff behind a subscription paywall. I somehow ended up subscribed so I can see most of it, but don't know the best method now. His stuff with Michael Tracy is pretty good, and might be useful for you since Tracy is still considered a leftist. A lot of Lefties hate Greenwald now--they see him as a sellout)

ty! didn't realize he had a substack sweet. you the best

@Tanista @RandomRanger any ideas/other folks to ping? Help a brother out ;D

I'm not really a US politics expert but I can give you some political disinfo stuff: https://x.com/KanekoaTheGreat/status/1620195663580626945

The stuff about Republican fundraising emails going to spam in gmail is pretty blatant (though interestingly Outlook and Yahoo prefer Republican emails, to a much lesser extent than gmail's 77 - 10% split!)

Interesting! Ty for the link

oh how could I forget @WhiningCoil?

I wish you the best of luck, but damn I can't imagine trying to convince anyone at this point. My circle of diverse political friends does not include anyone who is both paying attention and not heavily disillusioned.

Glenn Greenwald is maybe your best bet. Especially for convincing progressives.

Hah ty I appreciate it! I had given up a while ago man but, these are my closest friends and they're blowing up the gc with the most ridiculously smug and arrogant BS. I just couldn't let it slide.

Tbh I kind of doubt I'll actually flip them but, it's a matter of pride at this point.

@The_Nybbler got any juicy stuff for me? Or know anyone else I could ping for this?

I have a general impression that college admissions matter a great deal for degrees in parents basement studies, but that outside of a small number of top schools, not so much for job tracks.

How accurate is this impression? Obv it depends a bit on where you draw the job track/parents basement studies line. But in the broader picture, is it more or less accurate?

Everything will matter by job and major. If you are in a highly competitive market, the credentials will matter a lot. If not, you’ll be able to get by with lesser schools or in some cases no school at all.

I have a general impression that college admissions matter a great deal for degrees in parents basement studies, but that outside of a small number of top schools, not so much for job tracks.

I'd disagree on a few points:

  1. For anything involving research where you're specifically paired with a professor, there's a huge difference. I'd place it roughly on three tiers: i) you're learning cutting edge techniques, contributing to important research papers and networking with the best ii) you become familiar with basic techniques and look good to go to (i), or iii) you go to classes but your practical skills are absolute ass.

  2. The networking and prestige from the upper schools are huge when trying to start your own venture or climb beyond a certain point. All my friends/contacts from the big schools were able to raise 7-8 figures after graduating or finishing their postdocs. Even after most of their ventures fail, they can (accurately! They learned many things I don't know) sell themselves as having management experience and land high positions in VC/consulting/tech.

Even controlling for talent, the opportunities you get coming out of these schools compound and often make you a better employee/founder.

Anecdotally, it's pretty accurate, but this probably varries by industry. I work for a big name engineering firm and outside of very specific schools and programs nobody gives a shit. In fact there is an ongoing discussion about waiving the degree requirement for entry-level technical positions entirely.

The argument being why pay college graduate wages to somone whos probably picked up a lot of bad habits when you can use internship opportunities with local high-schools and community colleges as "free" labor + attitude and aptitude screening and then train-up the ones you want to keep.

Highly inaccurate, but not fundamentally wrong. There are certain job tracks that are much easier to achieve from certain schools, and certain job tracks that are more or less impossible to achieve without a prestigious school.

{{Unless we're playing some semantic marxist game where "parents basement studies" includes everything but starting your own manufacturing company from scratch.}}

The advantage that you get is a leg up in the job market off the bat. Credential act as a substitute for deliverables. Consulting, major corporate hiring, government, law, finance, etc. All rely on elite school recruiting. Often this can be overcome with sufficient effort and/or time, but in certain cases they can be closed off entirely.

Compare Brett Kavanaugh and ACB. Brett glided all the way to the SCOTUS through a series of elite schools without ever actually having a private sector job with deliverables. ((His brief tenure at K&E was a sinecure, placed for political and judicial connections, and the only cases he was known to have worked on were political in nature, where his role was mostly advisory)) He substituted a series of ladder-climbing prestige jobs (Prep school to Yale to Yale Law to Federal Clerkship to SCOTUS Clerkship to Kenn Starr's assistant to sinecure at K&E to Bush Admin to Appeals Court to SCOTUS). ACB, meanwhile, went to Notre Dame law, which is just a few steps down, but as a result she had to actually work for quite a while by comparison. She practiced law, for real, at a real law firm, worked her way up the academic ladder at lesser schools, published extensively in law reviews, before landing the same job as Brett.

SCOTUS being the absolute tip of prestige in jobs, and law being one of the most prestige obsessed professions, you see in that example how a minor difference in school prestige can set up a glide path versus a climb. Graduates from top schools need to just not fuck it up or piss anybody off, while graduates from lesser schools need to strive and excel. I see the same thing in friends in finance and tech, people who went to top schools find their way easily, those who wen to lesser schools need to be at the top of their game to hustle their way into the same jobs. Talent will out, regardless of where you went (one can always go to grad school for a shot of prestige, this is much of the purpose of the MBA), but it takes time to show talent, while school prestige is gifted to you instantly and in full upon matriculation.

What do you mean by "parents' basement studies"?

I would say that generally means humanities majors. Basically anything where it has dubious usefulness in getting a job, such that one might say "well it's fine to study X if you are going to live in your parents' basement...".

Credentials seem to matter most when the output of workers is not legible to their bosses.

I feel like this is one of those things that will vary a great deal by position and industry. My impression is that in industries with hard outputs the importance of degrees has declined precipitously in the last decade or so.

It does vary a lot but I think the heuristic generally works.

There are two reasons why I think it works:

  1. In cases where the worker has more technical skills than the boss, like engineering, it makes sense to outsource the training and skill assessment to professionals. Physical engineering, and medicine are often in this category.
  2. In cases where worker output is just vague or unmeasurable, bosses need to justify why they are hiring someone to their bosses. A degree is a decent and widely accepted justification. Certain parts of marketing / HR / corporate communications / legal. Can all be like this.

No one cares about degrees in sales jobs, because sales is often one of the easiest things for bosses to track.

No mod actions in the last week! Aside from a couple outright deletions (which I assume were for bot/spam comments or something similar).

What happened? Have all the troublemakers simply been banned at this point? Or have the topics under discussion become more anodyne? I would have thought that things would be heating up with the election approaching.

Slow CW week. “Look what those people did” is probably our biggest source of moddable comments.

I hate to say it, but the selection effects are nearing completion, and on most major culture war issues this place is effectively an echo chamber. Even our token woke progressive hasn't posted here in nearly five months (not that I found his contributions particularly interesting or productive, but their absence is the canary in the coalmine). Mod actions tend to be in response to people being inflammatory or antagonistic, and most people have little interest in antagonising or insulting someone they're largely in agreement with.

It looks like we need to fight more about whether or not God exists. It's hilarious that, if anything, most "conflict" seems to be in the Friday Fun threads.

A few months ago, in what I think is a now-deleted comment (I can find it on google but not their profile), WhiningCoil made the joke that perfect moderation had been achieved because nobody wanted to post in the culture war thread.

I'll echo that sentiment and say that perfect moderation has indeed been achieved, regardless of your definition of perfect moderation :)

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