domain:houseofstrauss.com?page=2
cjet79
1hr ago
Video game thread
I've been playing Captains of Industry, and Len's Island lately.
The first is a kind of mix between factorio, a city sim, and a terrain flattening sim. The latter part doesn't sound fun, but is weirdly the most satisfying aspect of the game. If you ever wanted to dig a giant pit and dump it all into the ocean, this is the game for you.
Len's Island was described as an isometric Valheim in a review and that has mostly been true. Generally an enjoyable game if you like the genre, but nothing too ground breaking or unique.
WhiningCoil
1hr ago
So I read Blindsight in about 4 days ish. That was a ride. Waaaaaay less comfortable of a first contact story that Mote in God's Eye, which was the last novel I talked about which brought recommendations of Blindsight. Here, and also a buddy of mine who just lent me his copy.
I liked it... but I didn't enjoy it. Like, it was rich in concepts and took the story in directions I never saw coming. But I felt like it spent more time trying to fuck with me thanks to the layers of unreliable narrators than it did advancing a story. And then of course it's just a total downer from a humanist perspective. I feel like Blindsight is a better recommendation to go along with something from HP Lovecraft than an almost Star Trekkish "Rah Rah Humanity!" first contact story like The Mote in God's Eye.
I guess if you love hearing about how much we suck and are doomed and the universe will trample us with it's indifference, Blindsight is pretty good. But something in me says Lovecraft did it better. Probably a matter of taste.
MadMonzer
Temporarily embarrassed liberal elite
1hr ago
I think this depends on age. I am open to the idea that putting a one-year-old in daycare for 40+ hours a week is, in fact, serious abuse. This long substack post is a good meta-analysis. I am aware of the author's identity and can confirm that you are not reading axe-grinding or filtered evidence like you would in most peer-reviewed social science journals.
The_Nybbler
In the game of roller derby, women aren't just the opposing team; they're the ball.
1hr ago
Insurance just means that everyone pays a share for all of the robbery (plus a cut to the insurance company), and also that they're required to run their businesses in the way the insurance company (which is itself regulated by the state) demands. It's strictly inferior to stopping the crime.
If I were to try and make a fancy title for my opinion on the Texas anti-ICE attack, I'd call it 'How I Had To Figure My Way Out Of A False Flag Suspicion.'
I was hoping to do a writeup on this incident, since the Antifa attack has some ties to a post last month on how the Democratic civil war will give the Trump administration a lawful basis to go after parts of the background Democratic coalition. Antifa is a fringe part of that coalition, but still a part, and this certainly counts as a basis to go after a network. I was holding off because Ngo's article- while informative- had several 'weird flag' indicators that had me raising an eyebrow and waiting for information to dispel a possible false flag / misattribution.
One of the weird things was the mix of preparation and self-affiliation. Preparation is usually a sign of competence, but self-incrimination is usually incompetent, unless it's intended for a false-attribution, in which case incompetence can be explained by even greater competence.
On the preparation side, there was clear material preparation for first, second, and even third order consequences. From the Ngo article, the plan was to use fireworks and graffitti as a flashy / damaging, but low danger, way to bring out the ICE agents. Then the responders would be ambushed by the gunmen with, well, lethal guns, even as the team had personal radios for their own communication. At least a limited firefight was prepared for with body armor. An electromagnetic blocking device, i.e. a jammer, could then be used to frustrate the secondary response units, any ICE-Police coordinations, and otherwise help with the escape. The assailants appear to have fallen back and retreated through the immediately adjacent woods. They had a getaway car plan as well.
This is a multi-step plan that supports a level of sophistication and prior thought. This is competent, dangerous, and effective small-unit tactics that comes from training and deliberate preparation.
But then you have some of the incompetent aspects that suggest the planners were going for tacti-cool rather than tactical advantage. At least seven of the militants dressed in all black, as opposed to useful camouflage or even clothes to help blending in with normal people on the escape. Pure-black 'looks good,' but it's more a uniform for official police teams to distinguish or play to light contrasts in overt contexts- it makes as much sense in a guerilla force as thinking that historical ninjas actually dressed in all black, as opposed to the black uniform being the stage-show theater dress to make it obvious. 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. 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.
And then there's the backpack with antifa literature. Just... why?
This, more than anything, got my 'is this a trick?' allergy going, because this is the sort of thing someone could do to try an inflame political tensions for its own sake as a false-flag action.
Leave behind left-coded Antifa literature to feed the initial view of a blue tribe attack. The right-coded AR-15s as a symbol of red tribe means. The mix of high-competence (a group who knew what they were doing) and low-competence (a group who were making incredibly basic mistakes) that could in and of itself be used to dismiss / deflect initial attributions. 'Of course it's Antifa- the literature matches the motive matches the target in attacking ICE!' could be deflected with 'Of course it's not Antifa- Antifa would be more competent, it's obviously a fake by a red tribe domestic extremist. Right wing extremists are obviously military competent, and look- they used the scary AR-15!'
This is the sort of narrative motivation that could support a broader variety of 'true' actors. Anyone with a 'maximize for heat, not light' could want that sort of recrimination spiral. It could be right-wing accelerationists. It could be the Antifa actors seeking to maximize (in)famy while invoking a circle-the-wagons effect of their left-tribe brethren. It could even be foreign agitators. If you want to accelerate a conflict in another country, the ideal false flag is to do something that elements in the target country would plausible want to or even try to do. It's not like this would be the first Antifa attack on a ICE facility.
To be clear, a false flag is not the assessment I would make from the initial information. But it's not a scenario I would rule out either. One of the most effective ways to do a false flag attack is to do something that non-trivial parts of an existing political coalition's fringes wishes (someone else) would do. And with the recent Democratic politician accounts in the (increasingly visible) Axios "Democrats told to "get shot" for the anti-Trump resistance" article, there are certainly people who think fighting ICE and Trump is the good fight.
Which is why another of the really weird things about Ngo's initial big post was how it didn't support that this was an actual Antifa cell in the first place, particularly when the initial government accounts didn't make that claim.
Ngo didn't actually provide evidence that these people were Antifa in the original article. Ngo makes the claim, but his supporting evidence in his post is that there was Antifa literature in a backpack of one of the caught shooters- aka, the sort of very easy thing to do if one wanted to insinuate Antifa. Ngo also cites fundraising by Antifa-linked people in support of the shooters... but the political tribal sympathy nature of tribal fundraising is also well established, and doesn't rely on prior association. Ngo does not actually cite any Antifa organization / social media / group that claimed the shooters as their own, or cite any of the shooters self-identifying as Antifa.
One reason I'd been holding off posting on this was hoping that follow-on media reporting would clarify the affiliation. It largely did not. The Washington Examiner released an article repeating the claim, but they did not really justify it either. The WE article did include a reachout to the FBI, but didn't attribute any Antifa attribution to the FBI. Then again, the FBI is often mum with ongoing investigations. The New York Times article does not make the antifa attribution... but this could be explained on partisan grounds of omitting politically unfavorable context. (Another weird(?) thing of the NYT article- no comment section. Not all NYT online articles get to have comment sections, but enough do that sometimes it can be seen as a choice not to.)
So I was waiting for yesterday's Department of Justice charging statement. I would imagine that at least some in the Trump DOJ would like to emphasize an antifa connection if they could. But there is no mention of Antifa in the DOJ statement.
So, not Antifa?
Well, not quite. Not only has there not been the sort of firm denunciation/separation that would be expected if a group was not affiliated with the broader political spectrum (as with other politically-sympathetic but unaffiliated political violence attempts over the years), but there's also Benjamin Song.
If you don't recognize his name from the OP article, that's because he was not one of the ten identified in Ngo's initial article, or the NYT article of the incident, or in the initial DOJ statement of charges.
The Dallas Express has published a much more extensive look at a specific (but still at large) suspect, which gives more compelling evidence of a specific connection via one (still wanted) suspect: Benjamin Song.
The Dallas Express writer is not entirely neutral- the left-skeptical political bias of which was probably why they got the presumably FBI-supported information for the article- but it provides a bit more specific claims that are contestable by others. So far none seriously have been, but these are at least falsifiable. To quote-
Song was a member of the militant Antifa group Elm Fork John Brown Gun Club, and he had a history of left-wing radicalism.
This, at least, is falsifiable. And elaborated upon, with a history that suggests a clear pattern of 'helping others with violence.'
He was a member of the violent Antifa group Elm Fork John Brown Gun Club, known for intimidating people outside drag shows. Song faced a lawsuit for “battery, assault, stalking, and conspiracy” after a confrontation at a 2023 drag show, as The Dallas Express reported. During the event, Fort Worth Police busted violent members of Song’s group.
Song was also reportedly a member of the Socialist Rifle Association. A transgender suspect, accused of shooting and bombing a Tesla dealership, was part of the same organization.
He trained Antifa in firearms and combat in 2022, according to a video uncovered by journalist Andy Ngo.
The account that posted the video – “Anarcho-Airsoftist” – is an apparent Antifa training ground in the Dallas-Fort Worth area. Notably, according to his alleged LinkedIn account, Song was formerly a martial arts instructor. The account* showed participants learning to fight.
Before he trained Antifa militants, Song was arrested for “aggravated assault” at a riot in Austin during 2020, according to KVUE.
And, of course, where he got his skill set-
Song was a member of the Marine Corps reserves from 2011 to 2016, when he was dismissed on an “other than honorable discharge,” as The Dallas Express reported. According to LinkedIn, he “managed up to 60 Marines” and “managed, organized, and accounted for inventory worth over $1 million” during his time with the service. His profile stops after this.
For those unfamiliar, 'other than honorable discharge' is the 'you are being kicked out for causes that don't necessarily raise to the level of a felony' that typically accompanies the dishonorable discharge. 'Up to 60 marines' in turn scales to between a larger-than-normal platoon or a smaller-than-normal company. 'Managed' insinuates, but does not imply, a platoon leadership position- rather, when mixed with the inventory metric, suggests an administrative role. This does not imply he was not also tactically proficient, but would explain additional skill sets in organization.
And with this, some of the earlier discrepancy falls into place. We are not talking about a group of an average consistent quality that must be competent or incompetent. We can be looking at a cell with a more-competent organizer, a former Marine who taught tactical skills, and less-competent line members.
Which also helps explain another weird flag in the initial report, of how 10 suspects were arrested... but 12 sets of body armor were recovered.
And why Song is still at large.
From the Dallas Express-
[Song] allegedly bought four guns used in the ICE facility ambush on July 4, which wounded an Alvarado police officer, as The Dallas Express reported. He reportedly hid in the woods near the scene for a day after the shooting, then fled.
This, if true, could be a result of a particularly competent technique. Two, possibly. One way to hide something valuable is to hide it in relation to something extremely visible and attention-grabbing, so that to observer's attention is drawn away. Another is to use a sacrifice play, so that the person who searches finds a first, and expendable, asset, but doesn't know to keep looking for the more valuable, and better hidden, asset.
If immediate police response finds 10 suspects fleeing a scene... what are the odds there is another still hiding for the attention to drift further away, to depart under better conditions once the initial surge of attention starts drifting and looking further away?
Of course, there are limits to this level of competence- limits that are explainable by the limits of Song and of chance. If he was a small-unit-tactics focused Marine for only 6 years, that would suggest limited exposure to the sort of investigation/exploitation awareness that might have led him to plan better on the evidence disposal. He didn't know what he didn't know, and thus didn't prepare for them, which is how investigators could unravel things relatively quickly afterwards. He might have typically-minded his Antifa cell members and not overseen them.
And, of course, the rapid capture of specific members- especially the get-away driver- allowed a rapid exploitation of evidence / safe house / etc. while he was still in his hide-and-escape phase. This was not part of the plan, and was an issue of chance, probably. If that getaway driver hadn't been caught, then the members might not have been captured, the staging base might not have been identified, and so on until Song could get back, clear out, and cover his tracks before the police found it.
Or maybe those preparations wouldn't have been enough either. Point is- the police response that found the getaway driver, something that might have been pre-empted by the jammer or if the police car had taken a different route or any number of things, created a vulnerability in the getaway plan. That's not necessarily incompetence on his part.
Song specifically has since appeared in more reputable, mainstream, and Democratic-Party-respected media like ABC, Newsweek, and CBS. This is consistent with standard media industry practice to support government requests to publicize criminals to increase their profile and make it easier to solicit tips to lead to their capture.
None of the above media sources mention Song's antifa affiliation.
Same vibes as my series (is three a series?) of "unenviable lives" posts, which in turn was, I suppose, inspired by many Slate Star Codex posts about Scott's (aggregated for anonymity) patients. These are not people who write thoughtfully about their (actual) lives in extended blog posts; these are Henry David Thoreau's "mass of men," who "lead lives of quiet desperation." Only, you often wouldn't even know it, they do not seem to express any desperation. They're just living their wildly suboptimal lives, and the people observing this (in those cases where people observe it) can only wonder at the seemingly unnecessary tragedy of each successive move.
Aristotle famously (now, infamously) thought it quite obvious that some people are born "masters," and some born "slaves." Contemporary thinkers are of course quick to point out the problems with Aristotle's arguments (for example, he regarded Greeks as natural born masters, and everyone else as natural born slaves) but most carefully avoid noticing those circumstances in which Aristotle seems to have been obviously correct. To this day, children in Western nations are frequently treated in the Aristotelian way: as "slaves" in substantially ancient Greek fashion. The 1000 Word Philosophy link says:
The second premise, that there are human beings who lack the capacity to deliberate, might be true in some cases – perhaps those with severe brain damage or advanced dementia – but they are certainly not who Aristotle had in mind.
This is true just to this point: Aristotle would suggest that people who are temporarily or accidentally impaired are not slaves by nature. But he would I think readily agree that they are slaves, as he means it, insofar as they are impaired! And sure enough: in the United States, it is possible to become subject to the rule of another, in the form of conservatorships, guardianships, etc. I cheerfully grant that these have more safeguards and checks and hurdles than would have been encountered (or even conceived of) in ancient Greece! But in Aristotelian form we still substantially enslave people today. We justify it by insisting it is only and exclusively for their own good, of course, or perhaps for the safety of others (as in the case of enslaving much of our incarcerated population, per the Constitutional permit to do so). But focusing in on people who are wards of their family or the state as a result of impaired reasoning (i.e. due to IQ below 70): if an IQ of 69 can trigger a "guardianship," why not an IQ of 70? Or 71? And even above those thresholds, other impairments--youth, drug addiction, or mental illness, for example--also apply.
We draw lines in law because, it is often suggested, "we have to draw the line somewhere," and that is perhaps true as a practical matter. But reason and agency seem to be more of a spectrum, and a quick Google search suggests that more than a fifth of the population has an IQ falling between 70 and 90--the range from "borderline retarded" to "low average." These are people I suspect Aristotle would want to put in the "natural slave" bin (assuming, of course, they aren't Greek!). Why? Because it would be better for them, in so many ways, to have their lives managed by someone with greater executive functioning. This, even though they are certainly intelligent enough to survive on their own. In the modern world we outsource this--we increase the perception of independence through subsidies and welfare and wealth redistribution, but wards of the state are still wards, and the fact that they are not forced into hard labor as a result is predominantly a function of contemporary abundance. To whatever extent taxation is slavery (PDF), we often enslave the free in order to free the slave!
But the natural slave cannot ultimately be freed; they can only be managed well, or managed poorly. Left to their own devices, they will manage themselves poorly. Aggressively managed ("literally enslaved"), they will lash out against the strictures of the arrangement, often violently (the free citizens of slave societies live ever in fear of revolt). How much of the history of "government" is the history of developing increasingly sophisticated methods for obfuscating the nature and extent of the bondage imposed on the "mass of men," not only for their own ultimate benefit, but for the benefit of all? And--to what extent might we as a people be slowly forgetting that, as we seek to "liberate" those masses, by continuing to give them the resources of life, while withdrawing (or declining to enforce) any guidance?
You, like many others, go too far. Changing your lifestyle does actually work; it's just that many people don't do it.
As much as I hate to intrude on another's discussion, I'm simply going to point at my own experience in terms of weight loss and shrug helplessly.
Like you, I was of a similar attitude. Like you, I felt the majority of weight-gain and weight-loss issues was a matter of people simply not wanting to put in the effort. I still do, to a point - too many people think a diet is like an on-off switch, when I've found it really boils down to actively changing how and what you eat - it's a lifestyle shift, not something you do for a month to fit into your summer bikini. And why not? I did exactly that. I lost 70 pounds from strict CICO and modifying my diet.
However.
I'm not going to go more indepth into my own history of weight loss and weight gain. Instead, I'm going to point to my brother, who has also done the entire weight-loss via keto. And while he was able to lose the weight, there was a plateau, a wall in terms of weight loss he was unable to get past before he simply gave up - the juice wasn't worth the squeeze in terms of the effort he was putting in.
Full disclaimer, he's never been an obese-looking butterball or as heavy as I am, though I'm sure if you put in his BMI stats he'd be labeled as obese.
On semaglutide, he blew through that wall in a few short months and is still loosing weight. He's currently at the weight he was in high school, and hasn't hit a plateau. If things continue as is, both he and I will be at weights we've never been before, ever, and have no idea what we will look like.
I'm no doctor, no medical expert or scientist. I am but a dabbling amateur, stumbling around and trying to piece together a picture of the world. And as time has gone by, I'm becoming more and more convinced that our modern diet has done extreme damage to our bodies, damage that some can adapt to and overcome, and others can't. That we are subject to the cruel tyranny of the flesh that our minds are unable to overcome, even when we fervently wish otherwise. We've learned our lesson, burned our fingers and become wise, but we still carry the scars that we can't fix by ourselves no matter how we wish otherwise.
So we use drugs. Problem solved.
...now, on the gripping hand, I also have experience similar to self_made_human where getting people to loose weight forces you to do the equivalent of making a recalcitrant dog take their medicine, no matter how much they hate it, cause, y'know, they'll die otherwise, but such is life.
Primaprimaprima
...something all admit only "TRUMP", and the Trump Administration, can do.
2hr ago
I mean even in your own home away from home, there are plans to just get rid of Women's prison.
The rise in MTF transsexualism is partially explained by utter humiliations such as this.
ControlsFreak
2hr ago
Oh, well then this is just the standard, all-too-common, strawman. You're responding to a figment of your imagination, not anything I've written.
Amadan
Enjoying my short-lived victory
2hr ago
I assume so? I used to think this, but have come around to agreeing this isn't true.
We ban more rightists than leftists. Rightists are more numerous, and thus when someone flies off the handle or starts insulting people or posting about how much he hates his enemies, it's more likely to be a rightist.
This of course has resulted in rightists claiming that we don't ban leftists enough.
wayfarer
2hr ago
Is the point of your analogy that the endeavor of developing military doctrine is simply fallacious from the get-go?
no, it is that obvious solution like "just eat less" or "just militarily destroy enemy" are both true, and often not sufficient in practice as achieving them may be hard/nearly impossible
MadMonzer
Temporarily embarrassed liberal elite
2hr ago
It's a lot easier to win environmental lawsuits if you bring them as administrative law cases saying that not enough people were consulted, so people do that.
WhiningCoil
2hr ago
Now, the biggest hurdle holding back the poor family in the story I've linked to is a simple one: the Overton Window. If, for some unfortunate reason, the number of women crazy enough to act that way rose significantly, society would probably develop memetic antibodies or legal solutions. This might, sometimes, become strong enough to overcome the "women are wonderful" effect, if such women are obviously being the opposite.
Ah ahahahahahah.
Hah.
Oh man, that's a good one. That's a really good one. You really aren't from around here. Our society's worship of women is downright pathological at this point. They can do almost anything and it's excused. I mean even in your own home away from home, there are plans to just get rid of Women's prison. Women are too good to spend time in jail for their crimes you see? In fact, their reasoning is that since more women are being sent to jail, something must be wrong with the legal system, since women are wonderful obviously. So we'd better start shutting down the women's jails so they can't be sent there.
MadMonzer
Temporarily embarrassed liberal elite
2hr ago
I don't think this is about the merits of corporal vs non-corporal punishment. If the tiny number of women who are currently jailed for child endangerment were judicially caned instead, it wouldn't noticeably affect the incentives for a moron like Mrs DaveyJBro.
This is about the merits of informal punishment by a local authority figure (or mob, as you discuss in your pickpocketing post) vs judicial punishment following due process of law. If DaveyJBro had the socially recognised right to take his wife's phone away for irresponsible use, he probably wouldn't need to escalate to beatings.
Almost everyone agrees that informal punishment is necessary to keep children in line. It is constitutive of a "free society" that mature adult citizens in free societies are not subject to informal punishment. The grey area in between is large, but empirically the Venn diagram of people with the practical wisdom to understand why Lenore Skenazy is a mature adult and Mrs DaveyJBro is not and people willing to administer casual beatings over this kind of thing looks like a pair of spectacles.
Southkraut
The rain fell gentlier.
2hr ago
I think they're mostly wrong. There's some truth in that the knowledge of an idea can spread due to the idea being publicized. Obviously the knowledge of the idea is a prerequisite of the belief in the veracity of the idea, so if you squint you can see the truth of it, but the modeling of the belief in the veracity of the idea being helplessly thrust upon someone like a cold virus is far less useful than the one involving treating ideas like things that people can and do accept and reject. Not always based on reason and logic - not often based on reason and logic, even - but not helplessly.
The sharing of an idea is usually a prerequisite for its spread though, unless it's a particularly obvious idea.
quiet_NaN
2hr ago
The insane thing is that they imagined that cop killing would be a step towards defeating ICE. That firmly places them in the bottom political intelligence percentile of the broader SJ movement.
It should obvious to anyone that the US in 2025 is not China ca. 1930. It is very much not like there are millions of wokes just waiting for a signal to put down their pumpkin spice lattes and pick up their assault weapons and wage a civil war against the USG. They don't have the guns, they don't have the training, they don't have the stomach and I would argue that most of them do not have the ideological radicalism which enabled Mao's troops to win through atrocities. Sure, they might cheer on Hamas, but they would likely shy away from Hamas-level violence in the US. The slogan of the BLM riots was "defund the police", which misguided as it is, is notably different from "shoot the pigs".
It is obvious that the less violent resistance to ICE seen in California is a much less suicidal way to express their dissatisfaction with Trump's policies. If this is successful in affecting policy remains to be seen, the way I see it, Trump can use the publicity to highlight how he keeps his campaign promises, and he does not really care how much it will cost to continue the deportations despite widespread disruptions, it is not like he is fiscally responsible or anything.
But escalating to a firefight with the feds is terminally stupid.
Also, the group managed to have an excellent gender balance for a terrorist cell (four cis-women, two trans-women, four men, presumably cis), but their racial composition is Problematic. One of the women might be Asian, but all the rest is White. Let us hope that they were not shooting Black cops from their position of privilege.
Also, why post a picture of one of the guy's Mexican wife? That guy just tried to murder cops, he could be in a polycule with bearded North Koreans and it would not be relevant. Put the picture of his wife in once she is wanted or charged with anything.
07mk
2hr ago
Yes, but are they really all that wrong to model them — or at least some ideas — that way?
I think they're mostly wrong. There's some truth in that the knowledge of an idea can spread due to the idea being publicized. Obviously the knowledge of the idea is a prerequisite of the belief in the veracity of the idea, so if you squint you can see the truth of it, but the modeling of the belief in the veracity of the idea being helplessly thrust upon someone like a cold virus is far less useful than the one involving treating ideas like things that people can and do accept and reject. Not always based on reason and logic - not often based on reason and logic, even - but not helplessly.
I mean, isn't this a key part of why, traditionally, heresy was considered such a serious matter?
I think the belief that ideas spread that way is a key part of why, traditionally, heresy was considered such a serious matter. There are many things that people have done traditionally based on the belief that something is true.
MadMonzer
Temporarily embarrassed liberal elite
2hr ago
Despite what Western media reporting might have you believe, the rate of petty crime in India is surprisingly low. People rarely get pick-pocketed or robbed. Do you know why?
With the greatest possible respect, how would you know how low the rate of petty crime in India is?
If crime is as low as western Europe, or 1st-world Asia, or America outside a few black ghettos, then "nobody in my social circle is a recent victim of crime" doesn't imply a large enough sample size. Police-recorded crime statistics are notoriously bogus everywhere, and Indian ones are going to be more so than most. And you yourself are pointing out (correctly) that media coverage of crime is mostly sensationalist lies.
There is, for good reasons, a standing State Department advisory warning US travellers about pickpockets in London. The risk of being pickpocketed if you do not look or act like a tourist is indistinguishable from zero. I assume the same is true of India, although the wording of the respective warnings implies that State considers the problem to be worse in India than it is here. I do not think the informal enforcement you praise protects tourists, and the absence of pickpocketing against non-tourists proves its effectiveness in the same way that the lack of yeti sightings proves the effectiveness of yeti repellent.
ControlsFreak
2hr ago
What I'm saying is that advising lifestyle changes rarely works. I don't have firm figures at hand, but I suspect that the number of people I've recommended such eminently sensible things like losing weight, stopping smoking and going to gym grossly outweigh (pun not intended) the number who actually did anything about it.
This is much more circumspect than your original comment. The problem of advice-giving is significantly different in nature, and it has significant dependency on a wide variety of external, contingent factors that are not-necessarily related to the typical time-independent, mechanistic processes that the biological and medical sciences study. If you would please kindly continue to be this circumspect in future comments, that would be appreciated.
Primaprimaprima
...something all admit only "TRUMP", and the Trump Administration, can do.
2hr ago
· Edited 2hr ago
For example, how would this situation be handled in India? [...]
Firstly, the extended family would have much more power. This is the rare case where both the husband's side and the wife's own family would probably agree that something needs to be done, the latter for reputational reasons as well as concern for the kids. She'd probably end up committed, if she wasn't beaten up or ostracized to hell and back. The police would turn a blind eye, should she choose to complain, they'd be profoundly sympathetic to the family's plight and refuse to act against them.
When dealing with questions of punishment, we always have to confront the problem of how the authority figure's prosocial motivations can be disentangled from the pleasure he gets from enacting the punishment itself. Can they even be disentangled? Is it possible that they're always one and the same?
For the suburban Karen who calls CPS because her neighbors let their son ride his bike without a helmet, the wellbeing of the child is of secondary importance at best. Her primary motivation is the feeling of power she derives from being able to commandeer an instrument of state violence.
In your case, the violence is not even mediated through the state, but is dished out by the man's own hands, "with a good conscience" -- this makes the charm all the more seductive. Are we to suppose that the man is not secretly, or not-so-secretly, hoping that his wife will someday commit a transgression which merits some familial intervention? An "evolutionary genealogy" of such a system might reveal that its primary and originary purpose was as a system of ritualized violence, with its usage as an instrument of "justice" being vestigial or epiphenomenal.
There are no pure assertions of "negative" restrictions on rights -- there are only positive assertions of rights. "You should not have the right to do X" can be rewritten as "I should have the right to punish you for doing X". Or, more explicitly: "I want the right to punish you for doing X".
And people still wonder why feminists get up in arms over the concept of "traditional family structures". In the system thus described, is it ever the wife who beats the husband for his transgressions? She can try, and she may even have the support of the community on her side, but due to physical asymmetry, it's unlikely to end well for her. She can get male relatives to do it for her; but the prerogative of deriving full enjoyment from the act of punishment remains with the man. That hardly seems fair.
ControlsFreak
2hr ago
Maybe "But don't tell people that utterly destroying enemy doesn't work, because it does." would be better?
I don't know how this analogy is supposed to work. The point of the development of military doctrine is to build up a body of professional knowledge, generally to the purpose of, indeed, destroying the enemy (though there are sometimes tweaks for political constraints or other political objectives). This is, indeed, intended to be "what works".
Is the point of your analogy that the endeavor of developing military doctrine is simply fallacious from the get-go? This has other implications that I can think of. For example, rather than moving TRADOC, as Trump did, I think this point of view says that he should have simply eliminated it altogether. Of course, I think you can tell that I don't think that this is the point of the analogy, but I'm kind of struggling to see what the point is.
Maybe, on the other end, it's something along the lines of, "It's not terribly helpful to be a 400lb guy in a bed who just writes somewhere on the internet, 'Hurr durr, have you tried killing the bad guys?'"? I mean, sure? Yeah, I just don't get what you're going for, and I don't get how it's relevant to what I've said.
trying to not overeat vs extreme marketing of hyperpalatable foods is an adversarial process
Mathematically speaking, I would distinguish the two. This may be a complicated and difficult environment, but it is not an adversarial one. There are deep mathematical differences between the two.
Southkraut
The rain fell gentlier.
2hr ago
Law, and insurance.
MaiqTheTrue
Renrijra Krin
2hr ago
I think in many cases the West has over-emphasized laws to the point where almost every other option for enforcing order. The shopkeepers don’t think about protecting their property because the law is almost certainly going to slam them for defending their property. But it’s a double bind because the same law is unlikely to catch the thief and if they do, the property won’t be restored and the thief gets little punishment for stealing. And so on down the line of crimes. We think “let the law deal with it” and it rarely works.
self_made_human
C'est la vie
3hr ago
While I agree with you, for the most part:
This is bullshit. Especially as the beatings would likely be administered by the husband with no judicial oversight. I mean, sure, if the husband had beaten his wife for no reason on the general principle that she should live in terror of him, it would have been very likely that she would not have picked up her hobby of sexting convicts. But this is like suggesting that cobalt bombs are a good way to stop wildfires in California: while technically correct, the cure would be worse than the disease.
Despite what Western media reporting might have you believe, the rate of petty crime in India is surprisingly low. People rarely get pick-pocketed or robbed. Do you know why?
Because if caught in the act, the perpetrator would be rather unceremoniously beaten to a pulp, both by whoever caught them, and any civic minded individuals present. You can get a nice crowd going, it's fun for the whole family.
This is of course, strictly speaking, illegal. Yet any police officer, if asked to intervene, would laugh, shake their head and say the criminal deserved it. If the crook had the temerity to file charges, he'd probably be taken out back and given a second helping to change his mind.
As far as I'm concerned, this is strictly superior to prevailing Western attitudes regarding property crimes or theft. A shopkeeper who discovers someone shoplifting has very little legal recourse, the police rarely do any more than file a report and then give up on pursuing the matter. Giving them the de-facto right to take matters into their own hand and recover their property? The shopkeeper wins. Polite society wins, the only loser is the thief, and in this case the process is quite literally the desired punishment.
Before you ask, the number of false positives is negligible. I've never heard of anyone being falsely accused in this manner (at least with accusations of theft), and I've never had to have that particular fear myself.
I am, in general, against husbands beating their wives. Yet, in this specific scenario, I could hardly fault the poor chap should he be forced to resort to such methods to protect his own family. At the very least, I'd vote to acquit. It's a bit moot, because with prevailing Western norms, he likely didn't even consider a haymaker as a solution to his problems. In general, that's a good thing.
I don't think you have accurately captured my attitude. In fact, I think you have gotten it completely wrong.
Perhaps so. Biological processes in general do not seem to be fully-reversible, especially when you include the effects of aging. Nevertheless, that is not an argument against the measurable physiological benefits of certain lifestyle changes.
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