domain:houseofstrauss.com?page=2
SophisticatedHillbilly
1hr ago
Is it safe in the two senses of:
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Doesn’t cause any appreciable loss of strength, at least not beyond what losing that amount of weight would normally do via not eating (exercise held constant)
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One can stop taking it without any negative consequences beyond just the loss of the benefits?
I’m interested in taking it but haven’t done a deep-dive into the subject yet. Any resources you’d recommend?
Chrisprattalpharaptr
Ave Imperaptor
1hr ago
This post is about Tariffs, again, lest I be accused of burying the lede. Just read the last two paragraphs if you don't enjoy window dressing.
China tightened regulations on real estate developers in 2020. Xi Jinping stated 'houses are for living, not speculation.' Ghost cities, huge numbers of Chinese citizens owning multiple houses as investment vehicles, I assume you're all familiar with the stories after five years of news stories and discussion. Economists and western commentators largely agreed that the policies were A Really Bad Idea due to the ensuing chaos and meltdown in property prices.
To which I have to say ...what? They said they wanted to reduce housing costs! What did you think that would look like? How else are you going to do it? And what do you think it would look like to 'make housing more affordable' in the USA? If the YIMBYs and neoliberals abundance socialists get their way, home prices are going to tank here too. This is a good thing! Maybe there's some Chestertonian benefit to the upwards spiral of housing costs, but this here's a fence I'm ready to take a torch to.
Anyways, to inch closer to the issue at hand - I have to confess that I had some tepid enthusiasm for Trump returning to office. Despite it all, I'm still an Elon stan and I thought some of the Dogemaxxers might have cogent arguments. I had some hope for racking up some China tariffs, eating bitterness for a few years and coming out the other end as a cohesive autarkical bloc of NATO + AUKUS + Japan + South Korea + anyone not named Putin or Jinping we can convince to join the squad. Setting aside my disappointments with Trump 2.0...
I'm utterly perplexed by the dialogue around tariffs? I can remember breathless fearmongering about shortages, empty shelves, inflation all spring. People on reddit posted invoices where what used to be a 10,000$ order from China was now over 50,000$. And yet...none of this chaos has come to pass? As far as I can tell, TACO is somewhat responsible, but also, average US tariff rates are just over 50% on Chinese goods?. Is it all TACO? If 50% tariffs have been painless, do you expect me to believe that 100% tariffs will truly be apocalyptic to the US economy? Do any of the firmly anti-tariff crowd have an explanation or prediction to make?
And on the other side, I fully expect victory laps and crowing about 4D chess from the 'Trump BTFOs retarded soyboy economics ExPeRtS crowd' again, but if the tariffs are painless and everyone is still buying cheap shit from China, aren't we losing??? Isn't the inflation, the spike in prices and the empty shelves the point of this whole exercise? Why are you promising people it will be painless, rather than YesChadding and telling them that the pain is the goal? You can have affordable housing when you're willing to accept that your own home will depreciate in value, and you can have low-skill manufacturing in your country when you're willing to accept higher prices for your goods. Eat bitterness with a smile on your face. Tell your daughter she only gets two dolls instead of 30 this Christmas because communism uncle Jerry with the high school degree needs a better job.
Grant_us_eyes
1hr ago
You went wrong a single sentence later
...do you not equate the phrase 'it's just that many people don't do it.' to 'not wanting to put in the effort'? I would think them rather similar.
With two main exceptions, I think that very few people in the West would say that it should be legal for people to be employed in jobs they can't quit. The number of people who would say that is, I think, not much larger than the number of people who would say that it should be legal to enslave people. Which is not surprising, given that being employed in a job you can't quit is basically a form of slavery.
One main exception is people's attitudes about conscription and about desertion after voluntarily joining the military. I think that these are probably an exception mainly because people even in liberal democracies are historically used to them and because fear of foreign threat is an emotionally powerful motivator.
The other main exception is prison labor. I think that one is an exception because people feel that prison labor helps to repay damage that prisoners have caused to others / to society.
RoyGBivensAction
Zensunni Scientologist
1hr ago
It could be, but it would be an unusual setup and it's not similar to any real case I've personally seen. One inmate talking to multiple women, where (some of) those women realize he's talking to (and scamming) multiple women but continuing to engage (and send money and run errands and help him further his criminal schemes) with him? Yep, seen those cases. One woman engaging with multiple inmates and sending them all money? Sounds odd.
gattsuru
1hr ago
Yeah, this seems mostly reasonable, and matches my understanding.
I'll caveat that there's also a little bit of messiness from a res judicata perspective. Overlapping or succeeding mass tort lawsuits are a complicated mess I won't pretend to grok, but from what I've read there are very few exceptions to the rule that, once you are bound to a class, you're stuck with the results of a case, win or lose. It's not just that an injury might only get an award from a far-earlier case, but an injury could potentially get no award because whoever brought the class-action lawsuit to start with was a nutjob. But this is already common in class-actions that only seek injunctive relief, since they don't (always?) require opt-out notifications.
That's one of the arguments in favor of class actions over universal injunctions -- The Groups can't just keep bringing forward the same claim with a slightly different plaintiff in every single jurisdiction in the country until they get a friendly-enough judge or SCOTUS specifically slaps down that one theory -- but it does have ways it could get ugly. In theory, class action certification is supposed to depend on having competent enough representation, and issue and claim preclusion don't entirely block things under every circumstance, but even in the more constrained domain of previous class-action lawsuits things like cy pres abuse or outright collaborative lawsuits intended to negate serious liability already get through the gates.
On the gripping hand, it's kinda how caselaw works anyway, just less formally; Rahimi or Miller might be less strictly binding on anyone else's attempts to appeal its class of prohibition, but such a third-party plaintiff would have no more ability to control the legal claims brought than someone who didn't exist for them, and I wasn't born when Miller was decided.
hanikrummihundursvin
1hr ago
I think the general sentiment regarding 5.56 is that it's great up until the point you have to take on armored opponents or longer range engagements. It's not without cause that the Army and Marines have been moving towards larger calibers recently. That being said, a high velocity 5.56 round hitting you anywhere except your chest plate will probably render you combat ineffective. Couple that with low recoil and it's hard to imagine a more preferable option for lightly trained persons.
naraburns
nihil supernum
1hr ago
Are children possessions? Can they be bought and sold?
Er, well, no, but historically? Yes, sometimes. The "proprietarian" theory of childhood and the relative personhood of minors is a separate but related question, which Aristotle uses illustratively and which remains analogous even today.
"Some people have difficulty running their lives and it would be better for them if someone else ran it to some extent" is a defensible proposition. "Some people should be the literal property of other people" much less so.
Sure, but my whole point is that the difference is one of degree rather than kind, and that much of law and culture is devoted to keeping people at least somewhat enslaved, while simultaneously obfuscating that fact. I would think it obvious from what I wrote, but in case it's not, I certainly do not endorse chattel slavery! Not do I endorse milder forms; I do not even particularly endorse our current cultural approach to the subjection of children. This is what makes the puzzle a proper puzzle, on my view--that the approaches we have adopted toward managing the lives of others strike me as at once both too great and too small.
professorgerm
You shall love your crooked neighbor, with your crooked heart
1hr ago
Upon making a full recovery, they are released to Substack.
Or if they go too insane to keep safely in the preserve, surely?
Evidence of it not being a fed op like Malheur or the Gretchen Whitmer kidnapping is the tend to not let the patsies actually get to the point of starting to shoot at law enforcement.
They used AR-15s, which are not, despite years of anti-gun campaigning, particularly good rifles for waging war (or insurgency). They discarded their AR-15s, leaving evidence behind in literal walking distance of the target. Some of the discarded AR-15s were found jammed, suggesting poor weapon handling... or, reported later, weapon modification attempts to increase rate of fire.
How good 5.56 vs battle rifle is for war has been a thing forever. The reality is 5.56 has been used in war for decades. It will 100% kill people, and has killed a lot of people. Largely thanks to the legends and Palmetto State Armory AR-15s are relatively cheap, and practicing with 5.56 is much cheaper than full powered cartridges. Would I want take on US LEO with a 5.56 poverty pony? No. But will some of the best operators in the world take 5.56 into combat? Absolutely.
This theory of 'more bullets = better' is not actually better in general, since a good part of the value of a semi-automatic rifle for small teams is that the slower rate forces better shooting fundamentals for reliability per shot, rather than wasting ammo faster for less gain.
This is even debatable.
cjet79
1hr ago
I immediately wondered if the FBI was involved. They do seem way better geared than I would have expected.
TheDemonRazgriz
1hr ago
Yeah, I’m not surprised by that. I could imagine early-childhood daycare being better than an actively abusive or neglectful mother but that’s about it, and that’s obviously not the situation under discussion here. Before preschool age the kids aren’t even really capable of socializing as such so what plausible benefit could they get from being apart from their families? But that’s what The Science said, so I guess we’ll do it… it really seems more like a fashionable choice than something strongly thought out. Something you do because the other PMC families in town are doing it.
To be fair neither of the two families I know IRL with young children do actually fit this model. One uses daycare part of the week (3 days iirc) but because the mom works part-time. The other is my cousin, whose wife has put her legal career on hold to be a SAHM while their kids are young. So it’s not like it’s totally dominant in the culture. I do find it a strange trend though, and definitely real. Common sense should be enough to tell you that a very young child would benefit from being around its family, versus being one of 10 or 20 kids overseen by essentially a cut-rate nurse, I’d think.
Gillitrut
Reading from the golden book under bright red stars
1hr ago
Are children possessions? Can they be bought and sold? Is this true of people in guardianships? It seems strange to cite Aristotle's conception of slavery and then apply it to situations that seem to be missing the central feature of what it meant to be enslaved. From your link:
Further, as production and action are different in kind, and both require instruments, the instruments which they employ must likewise differ in kind. But life is action and not production, and therefore the slave is the minister of action. Again, a possession is spoken of as a part is spoken of; for the part is not only a part of something else, but wholly belongs to it; and this is also true of a possession. The master is only the master of the slave; he does not belong to him, whereas the slave is not only the slave of his master, but wholly belongs to him. Hence we see what is the nature and office of a slave; he who is by nature not his own but another's man, is by nature a slave; and he may be said to be another's man who, being a human being, is also a possession. And a possession may be defined as an instrument of action, separable from the possessor.
"Some people have difficulty running their lives and it would be better for them if someone else ran it to some extent" is a defensible proposition. "Some people should be the literal property of other people" much less so.
This may or may not be what FHM was talking about but in the event of a crisis like a war most European countries have legal methods to conscript not only soldiers but other workers as well.
In Sweden this is called "krigsplacering" (war placement) and most governmental workers and medical professionals are passively krigsplacerade by default, but in theory it applies to everyone and in for any crisis the government decides is severe enough. For example, in an event of a pandemic, doctors can be forced to work.
Now, this is obviously intended for limited periods of time but forced conscription of labour is absolutely legal in most western democracies. Both this and military conscription typically enjoys high support.
HereAndGone
2hr ago
I think what we are not getting here is that Aristotle means slaves. Not "people who need to be looked after" or "people who are incapable of not fucking up their lives" - we do accept that there is a social duty to look after the mentally ill or the intellectually disordered who can't live without support.
He means "people who are born to be property". And that, dear Mottizens, is the nettle you need to grasp: do you really advocate that some people are property?
HereAndGone
2hr ago
The more you protest, the more I suspect, because this has happened before. "Me, a sockpuppet of Someone? Not at all!" (yes it was a sockpuppet).
HereAndGone
2hr ago
I thought it was good, but weak. The story wasn't well-developed. And there seems to have been no follow-up or sequel as you'd expect.
HereAndGone
2hr ago
I think the "getting girls when they're young" was less about actual paedophilia and more about "get them while they're impressionable, groom them to accept that you're helping them build careers as models or whatever, then have a stable of pretty young things to be arm candy at the parties you're throwing".
It's an old racket, people have been picking off girls since the days of stage coaches. They arrive in London looking for work, or are recruited by those who go into the country looking for girls, and are tricked into joining brothels by a procuress.
Len's Island is interesting: it's a technically well-executed game with a lot of effort put into it, that's also just painfully shallow. Lootless-Diablo-clone could work even if it wasn't unique or groundbreaking, there's just not enough meat on the structure. I finished the third dungeon a couple days ago, and there's only been six normal mook types (+3 reskins) so far, one unique boss per major dungeon, and most 'mini-bosses' just consist of rooms with a ton of mook-spawner cocoons. You can beat the first major dungeons just by dodge-rolling and spamming normal timed hits, the second starts to force you to use a shield and/or weapon skills, but there's only a couple skills per weapon, and that seems to be about as deep as combat gets. In theory, build variety around the enchantment system or skill point system should drive a lot, but they're pretty easily solved, too, and there's not a ton of choice economy around what items you'll upgrade in what order or how you focus on getting specific gear. There's several weapons, but most of them suck for the mook-heavy fights, and of those that do work there's not really enough difference to justify enchanting multiple. It wouldn't matter as much if the rest of the game was really compelling -- I love Vintage Story after all -- but so much of Len's Island focuses on combat or dungeon splunking that it's pretty frustrating, not just a chore, but a boring chore.
((Also, struggling with the UI. Why is the inventory and the build menu tied so closely together that you can switch from one to the other by mouse-click, but if you use the build button you can't interact with world items and if you use the inventory menu you can't place a structure?))
Maybe a slightly more complex combo system, or changeable special skills, or more reason to hotswap weapons, or cheap area denial combat potions? There's a lot of set pieces in the dungeons, maybe make them matter more than just being 'don't fall into this lava'? The devs are allegedly still working on the game, so maybe it'll change down the road.
The SO's gotten back into ARK, with Survival Ascended's Ragnarok release, so I've been pulled a bit into that when I can. The game is and always has fallen into the 'great idea, awful execution' from day one, both on the technical side and on the game philosophy one, and it still shows now. ASA and the new map release are better than ASE: gone are the fifteen-plus minute load-times, the frustratingly bad building system, and there's been at least a little effort to avoid the numerous outright glitches. ASE's Ragnarok was never really completed, and while there's a few missing critters in ASA's Ragnarok, it at least doesn't have whole biomes that were stapled on without being populated. Other parts aren't improved; whistle commands are still painful to use without a long keybinding session, combat is very floaty and weightless and depends on gameish stats that often don't make sense. I'm not as opposed as some to stat sticks, but if you're going to let a solo direwolf easily take down a pack of five carnos that each individually outweigh her, I need some way to actually tell that's going to happen other than jumping in and hoping, or memorizing a breakdown of how a critter's stats tie to their levels. And some parts are outright worse: the devkit is an astounding 1TB, which manages to break my record for 'western game developer was here', the new engine is very GPU-intensive even at its lowest settings, support for unofficial servers manages to be worse(!) probably downstream of the new owners partnering with a server provider, and ASA's Ragnarok manages to have more mesh errors than the already-notorious ASE version. There's a bunch of more interesting taming options than the old 'hit it with a club/tranq arrow and shove food up them', but a some of them suck, and a lot of the better modded solutions to the taming dilemma haven't been ported from ASE. Running a small dedicated server with wildly tweaked rates gets away from mandatory no-lifer play while still making most tames weighty enough to be meaningful... and it's still more commitment than I can really put into it.
But it's very much the only effortful game of its kind, with maybe Palworld as competitors. Nightengale devolves into a dungeon spelunker and the pet system is a joke, and a lot of the few others in the genre either don't exist or work even worse. I have some hopes for Amiino -- Palworld meets Hi-Fi Rush-style combat is a match made in heaven, even if the music integration ends up more muzak -- which when you're looking at Chinese gatcha f2p for innovation is a worrying sign, and that's eta 2026.
phailyoor
2hr ago
This is a multi-step plan that supports a level of sophistication and prior thought.
Even total larpers have plans that include multiple steps. The difference is that larper plans don't work.
The game feels kinda long, but I think it's mostly bc I suck at it. E.g. I'm always dealing with some problem and running it at slowest speed.
Even though the supply chains are less complex than Factorio, the extra details and infrastructure related stuff means there's more..problems that can crop up.
Don't think I played the tutorial, I just did the in-game one.
If I were you, I'd give you this advice:
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remember that you'll need to scale up .. almost everything. (my current big issue is I can't expand my settlement without dumping a megaton of crap into ocean)
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plan ahead knowing that and you'll do fine.
My biggest peeve with the game is truck dumping. You lose gigantic amount of terrain-moving capacity if you incorrectly set up allowed dumping and truck drive across half the map. NEVER allow a dumping designation outside of a designated mine!
I think the "criminals" aspect of this is a red herring, and the real issue is the infidelity and "messaging multiple men" part. If she was a single mother messaging one man in prison, and he wanted to become the father of her kids, there wouldn't be an issue. If she was married and messaging a dozen non-criminal men and promising them to become the father of her kids they would end up in a similar risky situation.
The solution here which seems best suited to curtail dangerous behavior and not end up applied to ordinary good-faith actors seems to be some sort of child-protecting infidelity law. Or maybe just some sort of disclosure thing: don't tell multiple people that they can parent your kids without them knowing about each other. That way more benign cases like getting a new boyfriend while a divorce is being finalized, or consensual polyamory are not affected, while secretly cheating with a dozen people who become emotionally attached to a kid and then want to fight each other and/or kidnap the kid becomes illegal.
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