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ToZanarkand
Some day the dream will end
5hr ago
Sweden's population density is comparable to the UK's population density if you treat the British Antarctic Territory as actually belonging to the UK. In an alternative timeline where the UK annexed the British Antarctic Territory in 2019, do you think this will have reduced the transition rate of COVID?#
The population of Sweden isn't concentrated in a region that makes up only ~13% of its total landmass, as the British population would be if we were to include its Antarctic Territory in its land area.
Sweden, Finland and Norway owning a bunch of tundra does not affect the population density that the average person experiences. That tundra cannot perform spooky action at a distance and affect what happens in Stockholm.
People living in the middle of Stockholm, as well as in Sweden's other two core urban areas, will experience a high level of population density, but most Swedes are spread out in the sparsely populated regions between these cities, and they will experience a much lower population density than most people living in the UK.
I don't have strong feelings about lockdowns either way. But as someone who's lived in both countries we're discussing, the much sparser nature of the population in Sweden compared to the UK is very obvious no matter where you are in the country.
FiveHourMarathon
Wawa Nationalist
6hr ago
In that counterfactual the US stops fighting the Cold War, USSR still exists now, owns major parts of the world, and half of the US is thinking when we stop being so stupid and join the societal model that is clearly winning, namely socialism
HOLY FALSE DILEMMA BATMAN
The US didn't stop fighting the cold war when China became the PRC, or when Cuba fell, or when Vietnam did in fact fall. Why would the US have suddenly given in because Vietnam went Red?
The time to make a decision in Vietnam was before Dienbienphu. After that Vietnam was always going to be united under a Vietminh regime.
Not expending national credibility on that lost cause would have made the Capitalist American system more attractive on the global stage, not less. We can tell because US prestige declined after the defeat in Vietnam!
The Sino-Soviet split was already happening before the US entered Vietnam.
What would have helped Vietnam develop significantly would have been ending the destructive war earlier, so they could have gotten along with the industrialization process and started selling me cheap workout clothing. You can tell because Vietnam today is where South Korea was 30 years ago, and Vietnam fought a series of destructive wars for 30 years longer than South Korea did.
MaiqTheTrue
Renrijra Krin
6hr ago
As a widespread movement, hard no. As sporadic attacks by loons, probably. But honestly I wouldn’t expect much that raises above background noise. Maybe someone will do a shooting at a red-coded event, or vandalize a building, or something along those lines. But if the protests are any indication, and I’ve said this before, I don’t even read them as serious. They’re protesting something they consider creeping authoritarian dictatorship with 2 hour weekend marches escorted by the police. Most serious attempts to do something (mostly general strike) are planned for quite a bit farther in the future. In fact the only planned date for a general strike is in 2028 which is pretty weak-sauce.
It’s just not the kind of angry mob producing level of angry
Comparing the number of people who died is misleading. The proper response is to retract it, not to make it technically accurate but still misleading.
hydroacetylene
6hr ago
This ignores the actual history of South Vietnam, which transitioned from a corrupt Catholic theocracy to being a brutal and corrupt military dictatorship that tended to appoint generals for political reasons because of their tendency to meddle in politics.
The South Korean dictators were development oriented; the same cannot be said for their Vietnamese equivalents.
hydroacetylene
6hr ago
Bob Jones university gets away with racial segregation.
hydroacetylene
6hr ago
given what they knew at the time
You mean the lies they told at the time? The Diamond Princess was a fair bit of evidence towards the hypothesis that covid was the nothingburger it would turn out to be.
JarJarJedi
6hr ago
Churches are directly protected by the Constitution, so the government has to be kind of careful around them. Even if specific part of what the church does is not protected, a friendly judge can always spin it that way, and attacking a religious institution is an automatic PR problem for the government. Universities used to have same kind of deference, but their wokification lost them this stance on the right, and given that the left regularly sets their own university campuses on fire, if they claim "you don't respect The Sacred Institution enough!" nobody would really believe it by now. So right now they are much less protected than the churches.
Columbia University, the concept, can't be forced to do anything, except maybe close its doors.
I'm not sure what "the concept" here means, but the government can put Columbia in a world of hurt, causing them a lot of direct (fines, lost court cases) and indirect (limiting their access to things) trouble. Of course, technically this is not "forcing" to do them anything, the same way as "give me your wallet or be shot" is not forcing - you can choose to be shot, a lot of people survived being shot. But I don't think any sane board would be willing to fully explore how deep the rabbit hole goes. Because with Feds it can go very deep.
hydroacetylene
6hr ago
OK, antifa can smash some windows, break some jaws, maybe even kill a trivial number of people. But, uh, the non-federal government groups who've demonstrated the ability to support an army in the field are all conservative aligned. If the Cajun navy(and supporting sustained search and rescue operations is a very similar task to supplying a field army, that's why it's what peacetime militaries do with their time) was backing a militia army it would wreak much more damage than any non-governmental group the left can throw. Operation Lonestar, likewise, was an impressive demonstration of capabilities in 'can support a field army'.
The democrats of actual importance know this. They know if there was a civil war they'd lose badly, and they also know that the history of left wing victories in civil wars is all about the revolutionary leftists immediately killing off their suit-wearing allies. So they will not start one. Antifa and the john brown gun club will be cut off to face the consequences for their actions, on their own. Americans are fat and comfortable and they don't want to lose that.
FiveHourMarathon
Wawa Nationalist
6hr ago
So I have no sympathy for them if that monster turns on them now - but they would underestimate its power at their own peril.
Who said anything about sympathy?
Nonetheless, they can resist. Just not as the thing they are now.
There's a Unitarian Church down the road from me in a beautiful old building, and a mile away a Lutheran church in a crappy 1960s building. The beautiful building used to be the Lutheran church, until the minister wanted to convert it to a Unitarian church. The Lutheran church has the unofficial motto: "We kept the faith, they kept the furniture."
Columbia University, the concept, can't be forced to do anything, except maybe close its doors.
I want people, even the ones I disagree with, to stand up for what they believe in.
JarJarJedi
7hr ago
If you're doing low weight exercises with bad form, it's probably not a huge deal since you'd just be training different muscle groups that you intended to, but I don't think it'll be much harm. If however you start to go heavy, and your form sucks, and you don't know it, the possibility of the injury raises significantly. So I'd say for personal trainer it's probably bad sign not to teach the proper form, but if I saw somebody who knows on their own what they are doing with a form that looks questionable to me, I'd think maybe they are just doing something I don't know about. That's like grammar - one should be taught proper grammar, but if you're e e cummings, go wild.
MaiqTheTrue
Renrijra Krin
7hr ago
These things sound reasonable, though I would personally emphasize the need to get on with the business of living and building a life. The parts of CBT and DBT that seem to work are often very similar to Stoicism broadly understood. The idea of stoicism isn’t, as tge stereotype goes “not feeling” but “feeling, acknowledging the feeling, then going on to do the right thing.”
Wallowing in bad feelings just breeds more bad feelings mostly because you focus on them which just magnifies them. That insight isn’t new, it’s pretty ancient. If you focus on the rain, the water’s temperature will be the most salient thing you notice. And you’ll feel miserable. If you focus on the discomfort, the sadness, etc. you’ll be miserable. If you are uncomfortable while doing something fun, you will feel happy for the fun.
zeke5123a
7hr ago
Well there is also the point that we don’t really care about covid deaths; we care about deaths. Sweden all cause death for the period looks great! Even better than the #s you posted.
JarJarJedi
7hr ago
So, the calls to murder are not literal, because no murders are happening. I mean, murders are definitely happening, but not all at once, just over the years. And it's a local tradition so nothing to be done about it. In general, murdering people there is very common, so murdering white people is nothing to worry about, and people who want to leave the place where murdering is very common have no legit reason to do so. Also, nobody is trying to take their property. I mean, millions of people try to take their property, but they are poor, so that's fine, and has nothing to do with politics, they just want to take their property. And it's not expropriation without payment, because even though their property got taken from them, and they received no payment, the government "tried to encourage" them to sell, so it doesn't count. And since the government did not explicitly command the takings by official decree, they have no responsibility for it, even though multiple members of the government promised to do exactly what happened. Ah yes, and also government made a thorough investigation and declared itself innocent of all charges, which makes the case settled completely.
One needs long, thorough years of brainwashing to be able to believe shit like this. Fortunately, this is exactly what we as the taxpayers are paying the US education system to do.
OliveTapenade
7hr ago
Lewis actually saw it with Tolkien, who was not a fan either. That article is pretty clickbaity, but even so, I concede that I smile at the thought of Lewis and Tolkien walking into the cinema, watching Snow White, and then complaining to each other all the way back to the pub.
JarJarJedi
7hr ago
I hate European censorship laws, but when once in a while somebody really worth stomping gets caught into it, and I wish the Metropolitan Police all the success in stomping on them. It's like the police beating up a known child predator - I am against police brutality, but I am not a saint, in some cases I will (hypocritically maybe) be willing to look the other way. I like living in a country where people like Kanye can do their shit without the police intervening, but I can't do anything about UK police, so I am at least glad in maybe 1% of the cases they get it right...
RandomRanger
Just build nuclear plants!
7hr ago
Good point, it was wrong to say that it's not worth caring about AI bioweapon risk. ASI ought to be so strong that it doesn't need bioweapons though, I think it can wrap us around its finger such that we serve its will without any biowarfare. Just dominating the internet would be a civilization-scale parasitism like your wasps, it would be inside our entire command-and-control structure and in a position of assured dominance.
Emptybee
7hr ago
The time to worry isn't when things like this are popping up on the news. That's what a 24-hr news cycle and "if it bleeds it leads" click chasing gets you. The time to worry is when stories like this become so commonplace that the news stops covering them.
anarcho tyranny is a situation in which the government can get to anyone, but doesn't have the capacity to rule/subdue/pacify everyone. In a true tyranny the streets are safe, in a true anarchy the government can't shoot you at will. In an anarcho tyranny the government can shoot you at will but doesn't have the capacity to shoot everyone that makes the streets unsafe.
So what i am saying is that I don't expect the US to decline to even that stage on the road to ruin.
No_one
8hr ago
But neither is prepared to do anything about it, they want to pretend it never happened lest the enormity of the disaster waft back onto them. Propaganda is all they're willing to do.
In public. We don't know whether Chinese or US have passed measures to prevent a new GOF disaster.
Tophattingson
8hr ago
Sweden's population density is comparable to the UK's population density if you treat the British Antarctic Territory as actually belonging to the UK. In an alternative timeline where the UK annexed the British Antarctic Territory in 2019, do you think this will have reduced the transition rate of COVID?
Sweden, Finland and Norway owning a bunch of tundra does not affect the population density that the average person experiences. That tundra cannot perform spooky action at a distance and affect what happens in Stockholm.
Tophattingson
8hr ago
We do not (except perhaps to specific extinct strains, which is mostly practically irrelevant). Herd immunity is a state in which spread has stopped because there are enough immune individuals that an infection chain cannot be sustained within the herd.
By this definition herd immunity is any time covid infections are declining, which means it cannot be sustained. In practice, like flu and other coronaviruses, covid will likely alternate between herd immunity and very slightly below the threshold for herd immunity in perpetuity.
Tollund_Man4
8hr ago
Tophattingson
8hr ago
It's possible that many places achieved a transient herd immunity among the smaller pool of people who were susceptible to covid . Only about half of immune naive people seem to be vulnerable at any given time. which makes the herd immunity threshold low enough that it's plausible countries in Western Europe and the US hit it during the spring 2020 wave. Note, hit it regardless of whether they locked down or not. It's in my opinion the best explanation for why countries with severe lockdowns and countries without, such as UK and Sweden, achieved essentially identical outcomes. Lockdowns did nothing, they both hit herd immunity thresholds regardless, and the timing of lockdowns coinciding with that in the UK was only Regression fallacy.
Then there's Peru, which had so many deaths in 2020, despite extreme restrictions, that it implies >100% of the population should have had covid.
I reject the validity of that framing. Sure, conservatives object to crossdressing as well - for separate reasons. At least if they have any sense. By way of analogy: no doubt telos-brained conservatives object to eccentric transhumanists who want to become actual flesh-and-blood anthros. And that can certainly be grounded in teleological thinking. But they will also typically object to women putting on Playboy bunny-girl costumes as a form of sexual foreplay. And they might have coherent, respectable reasons for doing so (ie "it encourages sinful lust and fornication")! But "it goes against a human's telos to try and become a rabbit" would be an outrageously stupid reason to be against sexy bunny costumes. That's just not what those are about. Good old-fashioned drag queens aren't trying to become women, falling short, and lying about what they want. They're just men who think it's fun to cosplay as women. And again you might have moral objections to sexually-motivated roleplay, but I don't see how you can object on teleological grounds unless you think all forms of disguise and pretend are immoral even if it's children playing dress-up at the playground, or indeed, in a school play.
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