domain:alexberenson.substack.com
100ProofTollBooth
Dumber than a man, but faster than a dog.
5m ago
Charitably, I guess I'll say that instead of "specific" substitute in "low content" then?
"He's stupid and I want a smarter president" - This is subjective to the person you're talking to. And, again, being specific would be to cite what decisions he's made that a person finds "stupid" -- a lot of lefties really can't do that.
"I dislike thin skin and meanness" -- See above?
"His policies often make no sense." -- Again, this is a perfectly valid critique if the person goes to the next level and highlights just one given policy and how it "makes no sense."
"I still haven't forgiven him for J6 / the 2020 election lie" -- Lol, ok.
"He's been tanking the economy even more" -- The president does not control the economy. This is just a slightly mid-witted vibes based reasoning.
"He's trying to take away important rights" -- Cool! which. ones?
I don't think you made the point you wanted to make, so I'm trying to be charitable here in the spirit of productive argument. All of the above examples are exactly what I mean when I say not specific. They're straight vibes at best and vibes masquerading as thoughtful analysis at worst.
I'll give you some specifics about why I disliked the Obama admin: I think he routinely tried to circumvent the constitution in blatant ways. And here is a specific article about the Obama admin losing a SCOTUS case 9-0 (!) to provide such an example
nomenym
20m ago
This reads more like a godless liberal visiting a godless liberal church and being horrified at the cultural appropriation.
nomenym
23m ago
Woke progressivism wears many once venerable institutions like a skinsuit. It consumes all their social capital and then moves on to the next victim.
George_E_Hale
insufferable blowhard
25m ago
aqouta
30m ago
In my world, China is basically guaranteed to not only exist in 30 years but have comprehensively stronger economy than the US plus closest allies, no matter what you sell or don't sell, buy or don't buy. And the US will have to figure out how to exist, and exist well, without boons of global strategic superiority, in a bipolar world, and hopefully remaining a hegemon in its own backyard. That figuring out has got to begin now.
It's getting a little late on a Sunday to go point by point again but if memory serves correct, I briefly looked for the post can couldn't find it, you've acknowledged China's demographic issues and your solution to it was essentially ai enabled robotics to handle elderly care in order to keep the ratio of dependents to workers manageable correct? The happy case for China multipolar strength seems to rely on a pretty narrow outcome where AI is powerful enough to do a huge amount of menial labor but not powerful enough to where being ahead a couple years differentiates world power standings. And I just don't really see that as very likely. If AI doesn't get all that much better than it is now then I foresee china having another decade, maybe fifteen years of exceptional output before a lot of trouble handling a rapidly shrinking population. If AI does take off in a big way I think the couple years head start on chips will be pivotal and giving that up would be foolish. I can't really think of any reason to expect we'd fall between those two points.
SubstantialFrivolity
I'm not even supposed to be here today
44m ago
Not that I'm aware of.
vorpa-glavo
48m ago
Heck, if you're trying to satisfy curiosity, I'd say branch out and check out more "exotic" things like Eastern Orthodox churches or Iskcon (Hare Krishna) temples in your city. If your city is anything like mine, they will be 50-90% immigrants following a deeply rooted tradition, and it is just fascinating seeing all the ways people do religion.
DinosaurArmor
53m ago
If you want to go to a church, I'd suggest going to something which is the real thing, not something that's been watered down to appeal to some modern ideology. You might not like or agree with it but I suspect you would respect it more for it being what it is, rather than it pretending to be something else. The churches which most closely resemble the early church are Eastern Orthodoxy and Roman Catholicism. I recommend Eastern Orthodoxy. I am biased since it is my denomination and I think it is the original. It is also very beautiful. You will not find a shrill woman lecturing you like a baby.
Depending on where you live, the Eastern Orthodox might be far away, or might be in a foreign language like Russian or Greek. I recommend reading this article before you go.
If you go to a Catholic church, the Traditional Latin Mass ones are not watered down, though the services are in Latin. Some like or don't like that. I personally find them quite beautiful, and it might help you avoid ruminating on your intellectual objections to what is being said. But similarly, it might be a bit of a drive to find a Traditional Latin Mass. Try this map.
If you want to get an idea of a stereotypically American, protestant church experience, here is a list of traditional Protestant parishes from Redeemed Zoomer.
What you get out of it depends on your mindset going in. If you go in with a receptive, open mind, you'll probably have a better experience. If you go in with a mind towards intellectually testing/combating it, you'll probably have a worse experience. I don't know where you are at so I can't say. If you are in want of intellectual arguments for the truth of Christianity, or the easier claim that God exists, I can provide them. They are out there, but are not very well known.
DaseindustriesLtd
late version of a small language model
53m ago
Except GPUs are even more interchangeable than other weapons systems.
This is just prolonged "nuh-uh". CUDA and CANN will continue to evolve divergently, Chinese models will likely be built around extreme sparsity and multi-tier memory (like ByteDance's UltraMem), scheduled Huawei systems are increasingly different from Nvidia's lineup (vaguely like Google's pods but Google doesn't yet sell those). We see that American providers took almost a year to implement DeepSeek and it's been just slightly unconventional, actually trained on H800s; SiliconFlow rolled it out on CloudMatrix 384s weeks after they were delivered. Lock-in happens on the software and hyperscaler level.
That said, all of this is beside the point because your idea is "hopefully we'll leave them so far behind their market won't matter much".
I don't think Xi is playing factorio but the CCP does obviously practice extensive industrial policy. Making it kind of ironic to go this hard against one piece of American industrial policy.
Industrial policy is about advancing domestic capability, protectionism and targeted subsidies – CHIPS act, banning Huawei in the US, not Nvidia in China. You're just calling any policy that has something to do with industry "industrial policy" I guess, but your argument is purely geostrategic and has no direct bearing on industry development in the US.
It's kind of incredible to point out how China is willing to force some of their largest companies to supply demand for their domestic chip industry
Incredible propaganda, yes. DeepSeek has maybe 300 people. And they weren't forced to do shit. If you mean that story, I've checked with the reporter and the report is basically unsourced rumor. This isn't happening, you're working purely from assumptions. There is now, indeed, effort to subsidize the adoption of domestic compute, but that's inevitable when Americans are deliberating on whether they can afford to sell even obsolete inference capacity.
Absolutely. China has found its success through world trade on sea lanes policed by American military might in an environment built by American diplomats. That's what Pax Americana is.
You mean, it's a self-congratulatory, narcissistic Zeihanite myth? You're not protecting shit. You've just lost to Houthis, the first nontrivial challenge to sea lanes in forever. Your navy is designed around offensive operations against nation states and deterrence in nuclear war, not patrolling sea lanes, and its crown jewels are aircraft carriers and submarines. Maybe it would do great to block sea trade, at least that's the plan for Malacca. The global trade will certainly go on fine if it's scrapped.
This is an ironically Trumpist take on things for as much as you rightly excoriate his team's perspectives elsewhere.
Trump generally campaigns on real if exaggerated problems and popular frustrations, it's just his solutions are often hare-brained. China would definitely like to increase value-add, of course, but it wouldn't mean canceling "industrial policy" and shedding dominance in stuff like photovoltaics, they'll simply make factories more automated. Interestingly, in this case I even agree with Trump on selling GPUs to China, for once his mercantile instincts are appropriate.
Demand is also a pretty important part of this all as well
Demand as such has zero value because it is easily produced at infinite scale and, for the purpose of this conversation, it's a malign concept. People don't sell to the US because the US pays back with some demandium, they just trade their work for a piece of liquid and appreciating American assets (insofar as those descriptions apply). Also, we've seen that as trade with the US fell due to tariffs, Chinese exports to ASEAN increased (and no it's not transshipping, the composition of goods is totally different) and fully canceled the drop in trade surplus. The world can produce plenty of "demand". You aren't that big anymore.
multipolarity doesn't seem very stable in any case
I think it's pretty stable (dysfunctional shitholes like Russia and even Iran stand strong), AI is likely to make it more so. Cybernetic superweapons are unlikely because hardening systems when you have unlimited time and root access is easier than pen testing; we'll get to verified kernels for everything much sooner than AIs become expert hackers. Material science and engineering advances promoting lasers, drones etc. are great for defense. Panopticon angle is obvious enough. I strongly doubt AI will enable some sort of super-nukes. This of course is a matter of opinion.
Then I return to being very confused as to why we're going to regret this.
Selective quotation is a hell of a drug. On a single chip basis, even Huawei admits they can't compete and won't be able to in the foreseeable future (EUV breakthroughs may change that). They can make do with better systems integration and produce competitive (also due to more electric power, better grid) systems and that'd suffice to serve domestic demand, for lack of better alternative.. For the end product (AI), they'll be slowed down relative to the world of uncontested Nvidia dominance. I posit this is not critical. The critical thing is that this market will keep growing exponentially, and before too long you're forfeiting not tens but hundreds of billions, on not selling one of your few truly unparalleled products. Is the idea to make up for that with Singularity stuffa nd extorting allies in the meantime? This is a Hail Mary.
I guess this is the crux. In your world, where unipolarity is the default trajectory, it makes perfect sense to cling to Pax Americana and play negative-sum games hoping to outlast the opposition. Like, what is the alternative, capitulation, suicide? In my world, China is basically guaranteed to not only exist in 30 years but have comprehensively stronger economy than the US plus closest allies, no matter what you sell or don't sell, buy or don't buy. And the US will have to figure out how to exist, and exist well, without boons of global strategic superiority, in a bipolar world, and hopefully remaining a hegemon in its own backyard. That figuring out has got to begin now.
crushedoranges
Can Marx explain the used panties market?
58m ago
You only think that because you're a resentful poor person. /s Woke right, woke right!
hydroacetylene
1hr ago
Yes, although I separated out LCMS and WELS as confessional.
somethingsomething
1hr ago
Thanks for the suggestion, that sounds like that would make a good followup experience.
Mantergeistmann
1hr ago
Lectionary protestants
Does this include Lutherans and Episcopalians?
hanikrummihundursvin
1hr ago
I could live with YouTube comments if they didn't randomly get deleted by the algorithm.
Tiber727
1hr ago
I'm a fan of three-strikes type rules. If one guy does it there are multiple possible explanations but if people keep leaving maybe something is going on.
thrownaway24e89172
Death is the inevitable and only true freedom
1hr ago
Are you beetlejuice? Or do you, gattsuru and germ have some kind of discord group? I don't see how else you could find a 6 day old comment in a two week old thread, short of trolling my comment history or someone else doing so and reporting everything I write.
I don't have anything to say about the actual topic at hand, but I'll note that I usually browse the site via the comments feed and thus am not usually aware of age of the "threads" the comments are in. I also frequently take days if not weeks or months (or years on occasion...) to finish writing non-trivial responses to comments. This combination naturally leads to exactly the behavior you're observing without the need of a discord group or trolling comment histories. Text forums are asynchronous; not everyone will or even can respond immediately. That doesn't mean they are stalking you.
Is framing left-wring thoughts that way an effect from reading themotte? Bc I see the opposite a lot on reddit, which makes me think it's a bubble thing.
What kind of frames are you thinking of? Seems poor strategy; and i've seen alot of language discipline on internal leftist framing for immigration (would you say illegal alien?) and unhoused individuals.
Ecgtheow
1hr ago
I think the basic problem there is that being in the top 500 or so most powerful officials in the most powerful state to ever exist in world history is a less attractive/well compensated position than do nothing advisory work, but the public would tar and feather anyone who tries to change that so instead we have this weird system of tacit bribery.
orthoxerox
If you can read this, you're using a custom theme
1hr ago
Is there a church for conservative people who don't believe in God?
James (the bishop of Jerusalem) clearly had the final word on disagreements
I earnestly hope you will find comfort knowing that Christ's sacrifice has already justified you, and you don't need to do anything to earn his grace
Catholics don't believe that grace is earned (and neither do Mormons), but that doesn't negate the need for works. James would heartily disagree with you as well, but I'm already quite familiar with the tortured exegesis Protestants use to disregard the blatantly explicit condemnation of sola fide provided by James:
14 What doth it profit, my brethren, though a man say he hath faith, and have not works? can faith save him? 15 If a brother or sister be naked, and destitute of daily food, 16 And one of you say unto them, Depart in peace, be ye warmed and filled; notwithstanding ye give them not those things which are needful to the body; what doth it profit? 17 Even so faith, if it hath not works, is dead, being alone. 18 Yea, a man may say, Thou hast faith, and I have works: shew me thy faith without thy works, and I will shew thee my faith by my works. 19 Thou believest that there is one God; thou doest well: the devils also believe, and tremble. 20 But wilt thou know, O vain man, that faith without works is dead? 21 Was not Abraham our father justified by works, when he had offered Isaac his son upon the altar? 22 Seest thou how faith wrought with his works, and by works was faith made perfect? 23 And the scripture was fulfilled which saith, Abraham believed God, and it was imputed unto him for righteousness: and he was called the Friend of God. 24 Ye see then how that by works a man is justified, and not by faith only. 25 Likewise also was not Rahab the harlot justified by works, when she had received the messengers, and had sent them out another way? 26 For as the body without the spirit is dead, so faith without works is dead also.
If good works are a natural result of having faith, then why don't the devils, whom James explicitly states believe, perform good works as a result?
Bonus question on an unrelated topic, the "priesthood of all believers" that many Protestants believe in: If Simon the magician in the book of Acts believed (as it explicitly said he did) then why didn't he automatically have the same power and authority as Peter and the rest of the apostles? Ditto for women who believe (I assume you're part of a denomination that does not have female clergy).
Soteriologian
1hr ago
Jordan Peterson is another example of steep decline in quality.
Even people who comment in writing have seen decline. For example, Scott himself. I don't mean to say he's bad now, or that his stepping back from the spotlight wasn't justified or even wise. But nonetheless, AstralCodexTen is no SlateStarCodex.
But further, I think there's a reason for the decline in good commentary: there is a deep crisis of faith in western institutions. I don't want to say "We all just need to clap our hands for Tinkerbell and believe!" because I believe this loss of faith is, at least to some extent, justified. Take the Epstein files. Half of Trump's cabinet made numerous public statements about releasing these files and clearing everything up for the public, only to backpeddle in the most pants-on-head, clown-world fashion once they came into office. And let me not mince words about what popular perception is about the Epstein affair: people believe this is Israel blackmailing US politicians, quite likely including Trump himself (who is almost daily seen with Epstein's next-door neighbor, Howard Lutnick).
And it's not just the Epstein files. Everything is suffering this same crisis of faith. Take the HHS with RFK Jr.. Or the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Or even the Federal Reserve itself. Across all these institutions, we see accusations of at best policy motivated by partisan politics, if not outright criminal fraud.
Even areas that should be free of this sort of thing are not. For example, Larry Summers says inflation was crazy high in the early 2020s, we just changed the metric, while CATO says this is uninformed madness and you should definitely not pay attention to Larry Summers. Let me remind you, Summers is not a WoW streamer blabbering about a topic he knows nothing about; this is the former president of Harvard, with a PhD in economics, who has been a top-level advisor to multiple administrations on this very matter.
Finally, take the gorilla in the room: immigration. Third-world immigration is no longer perceived as a matter of "oh, there's some people who just wanted a better life, and some people think we should let more in, and some people think fewer." That's... soooo 2010s. No, today at best the contention is "you are importing people with the intent that they will influence elections by one day voting for you", and even that's the nice right-wing position; the bad-boy position is "there are people who are outright trying to replace the native demographics." These are no longer fringe positions confined to obscure image boards. This is now mainstream. And the tacit question making the air so thick one can scarcely inhale is: "and what is going to be done about it?"
So I ask you, how exactly is someone supposed to give measured, insightful commentary about this? Go ahead, read Steven Pinker's Better Angels of Our Nature. Sound like fitting commentary today, with Ukraine and Gaza all over your feed? Well, that's why we don't have commentary like that anymore.
Chrisprattalpharaptr
Ave Imperaptor
1hr ago
Are you beetlejuice? Or do you, gattsuru and germ have some kind of discord group? I don't see how else you could find a 6 day old comment in a two week old thread, short of trolling my comment history or someone else doing so and reporting everything I write.
And as @gattsuru often notes, it worked. You won. Those you did not persuade, you shamed and abused and harassed into silence. "Protected Class" law formalized this for employment, the media and the Academy handled it everywhere else. As several Blue Commenters have straightforwardly stated it over the years, we lost, so it's our turn in the closet for a couple decades.
It's foolish to ignore the actual issue being discussed and chalk it all up to what you view as a propaganda apparatus, both because you're ignoring a half dozen other issues (gun control? trans people? climate change? Taxation and social welfare?) that failed to achieve anywhere near the same level of unity and because you're going to fail when you try to spin up your own propaganda apparatus.
How fortunate that this sort of political hardball had zero negative consequences of any kind.
...political hardball? Winning the hearts and minds of a significant majority of the population is not political hardball. You're so blinded by your obsession with realpolitik, so deeply steeped in the culture war and obsessed with small-minded zero sum games that you can't see anything beyond conflict and winning or losing. You can't even reflect on whether the change was a net benefit to the country, you're just bitter that 'your side lost.'
Is a more perfect union simply one where your side wins, and blue tribe is eradicated? And what comes after that? You'd just fracture into normiecons and groypers, neolibs and church fundamentalists and repeat the cycle. Your path is just one of endless conflict.
Tell me, then, your model of ethically influencing the electorate without playing 'political hardball.' Or are you so far gone as to think it's impossible?
I love Murakami! Is this your first one? I'm always amazed at how well written they are even in another language.
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