domain:arjunpanickssery.substack.com
anon_
5hr ago
Oh, I totally agree on midwit policy makers.
I do think there is a funny kind of duality here -- in the west some moron can wreck your country but at least you can't personally be thrown in a dungeon for making fun of a politician on social media.
FruitfulLemonyLemons
5hr ago
As much as the whole doge thing warms my millennial heart, DOGE just seems like a clone of Inspector General offices, no? And the main reason those have no balls is they're staffed by people who go to the same house parties as everybody else, right? (I am just assuming, here, this seems like a likely Schelling point over time)
So the most effective DOGE will be the Musk one since he's a true outsider, then they will be less effective over time until DOGE exists just to get paid to rubber stamp things.
More and more I think this stuff is really about the people and not the positions. You can create a "Department of Screw the ATF" whose whole job is to obstruct the ATF but if you populate it with people who are drinking buddies with the ATF people they'll coordinate on one or two "hard hitting" investigations (maybe to get rid of somebody the ATF wanted to fire anyway) to make the public happy and otherwise will be in lockstep.
Checks and balances are a cool idea but it's rare to get people who are true enemies. When that happened in the beginning it was such a crisis that we got the 12th Amendment. Not to mention a literal gunfight. Later we got Brooks/Sumner. It's ugly.
Speaking personally (and as somebody who has had libertarian leanings since the age of 16) I wish Musk the best and I think there is a unique window of opportunity here but I kinda hope DOGE just dissolves itself after he's done, there is no real need for a redundant Inspector General, in fact it would be the sort of redundant bloat that DOGE exists to remove.
gattsuru
5hr ago
Gaetz is funny enough to be trolling, but more likely Trump just wants someone willing to be enough of a hatchetman. Be interesting to see how much of the confirmation fight circles around his actual philosophy, rather than around how oily he is (spoiler: yes) or the reputed and increasingly dubious allegations of the most sexual impropriety.
cjet79
5hr ago
I do wonder if the DOGE organization is just a way to offer a cudgel to the private sector that they can wield against the bureaucracy.
Right now it is mostly one way power. A regulator can come in and say "hey we don't like this" and a private company is faced with a costly and lengthy legal battle to overturn that.
Now musk can say "oh you don't like that thing, maybe you are being inefficient and need a reduced headcount".
If your goal is to reduce overall regulation it will mostly fail. If the goal is to reduce regulation for the people that have connections to DOGE then it will probably succeed.
Main problem is this is bureaucratic end-state problems. When the main reward you can hand out to political allies is an exemption from the worst regulations and taxes that everyone else must face.
Bombastic language aside, I think what's actually being stated is the problem of evil. And I agree it's a serious objection, though it's not one I personally struggle with.
Additionally, I think the gnostic comment wasn't directed at you, but more generally at the concept of religion grasping for answers to the problem of evil that can seem bizarre or improbable. It can be surprising, but the congenitally irreligious often find it hard to distinguish between the various tenets of faiths: they all glom together as one gurgling mass of irrationality. What's the difference between Nicene Christianity and gnosticism to someone convinced that the supernatural is an invented cope?
Before engaging in protracted apologetics, I would invite you to consider that your interlocutor has gone on record that he prefers a child rapist to a man whose worldview he found insufficiently nihilistic, and judge your likelihood of a productive exchange accordingly.
netstack
Texas is freedom land
5hr ago
Pop quiz: which of the following jobs contribute more to Democrats than Republicans?
- Flight Attendant
- Bartender
- Librarian
- Taxi Driver
- Pediatrician
- Architect
- Carpenter
- Park Ranger
- Gardener
- Chef
- Union Organizer
Answers. I think your category completely fails to capture our red/blue divide. Is that because you borrowed it from Ayn Rand?
FirmWeird
Randomly Generated Reddit Username
5hr ago
There's a sort of weird overlap between "manosphere" figures and antisemites like Fuentes
I don't think there's anything weird about it. The ideas in the manosphere (men and women are different and those differences reach the level of psychology and not just anatomy) are in the same category of unmentionable/cancellable beliefs that holocaust denial and regular old racism are in. If you're someone in the manosphere who wants to talk about those ideas seriously, the only places you'll be able to actually have that conversation is in the same places that let other unmentionable beliefs be discussed. I personally think that this is actually one of the reasons behind the rise in antisemitism and racism - if a young guy wants to learn how to actually have sex with women, he's getting a full course of banned and disreputable ideas.
No_one
6hr ago
The vast bloody altar is only a metaphor on nature and human nature, part of a famous quote.
the whole vast domain of living nature there reigns an open violence, a kind of prescriptive fury which arms all the creatures to their common doom. As soon as you leave the inanimate kingdom, you find the decree of violent death inscribed on the very frontiers of life. You feel it already in the vegetable kingdom: from the great catalpa to the humblest herb, how many plants die, and how many are killed. But from the moment you enter the animal kingdom, this law is suddenly in the most dreadful evidence. A power of violence at once hidden and palpable … has in each species appointed a certain number of animals to devour the others. Thus there are insects of prey, reptiles of prey, birds of prey, fishes of prey, quadrupeds of prey. There is no instant of time when one creature is not being devoured by another. Over all these numerous races of animals man is placed, and his destructive hand spares nothing that lives. He kills to obtain food and he kills to clothe himself. He kills to adorn himself, he kills in order to attack, and he kills in order to defend himself. He kills to instruct himself and he kills to amuse himself. He kills to kill. Proud and terrible king, he wants everything and nothing resists him.
From the lamb he tears its guts and makes his harp resound ... from the wolf his most deadly tooth to polish his pretty works of art; from the elephant his tusks to make a toy for his child - his table is covered with corpses ... And who in all of this will exterminate him who exterminates all others? Himself. It is man who is charged with the slaughter of man ... So it is accomplished ... the first law of the violent destruction of living creatures. The whole earth, perpetually steeped in blood, is nothing but a vast altar upon which all that is living must be sacrificed without end, without measure, without pause, until the consummation of things, until evil is extinct, until the death of death."
- Joseph de Maistre
I have no understanding of your faith, whatever it might be.
faceh
6hr ago
but that's mainly because we don't think anyone under 18 (21? 25? 120?) is actually a human being
I mean, it shouldn't be controversial to say that youth is a form of 'mental disability' that most people overcome through age and experience.
I'd be in favor of there being some kind of basic test that someone can past to 'remove' that disability in a legal sense, rather than having a blanket age of consent.
netstack
Texas is freedom land
6hr ago
I’m pretty sure that describes the Tea Party era of Fox News. A giant spotlight on whatever government spending was most visible. All it got us were a few government shutdowns and a stage set for Trump.
Vivek Ramaswamy gave an interesting talk at Yale's Buckley institute a few days after the election. What I specifically want to focus on is the part starting at 34:35, where he describes what he thinks is a divide in the Republican party between two different notions of American national identity. The first is that being American is about following a common set of values---meritocracy, free speech, self-governance, etc. The second (starting 39:12) is that being American is about having deep, ancestral ties to a particular piece of land---"blood and soil". He sees the coming years as an almost factional fight within the Republican party between these two notions of identity.
This topic is very close to my heart---I think the majority of my interaction with this forum has been very unsuccessfully arguing in favor of the ideals-based notion of identity. Ramaswamy fervently supports the same and I hope hearing his much better-argued case (from a much more authoritative source) is far more compelling than anything I've tried to say.
However, what I'm actually interested in is what people here think the outcome of the factional fight is going to be. What do you see in Trump's choices of appointees? Is Ramaswamy going to be pushed out or is he going to be an influential figure moving forward? Which side do you think various major figures in the Republican party land on?
Just to put my cards on the table, I personally think Ramaswamy is delusional that it's even a fight and that the Republican party is fully dominated by the blood-and-soil side. This is in fact the main reason I vote Democrat and if I believed the ideals side was going to win, I would immediately become a die-hard Trump supporter. I believe that if you actually hold the ideals-based notion of identity, then the Matt Yglesias/Noah Smith-wing of the Democratic party is the right political home for you. As for why I believe this, I always thought that support for legal, skilled immigration was the best litmus test for this divide---if you are on the ideals side, then it is a no-brainer win-win and if you're on the blood-and-soil side, then it is very dangerous. Both what happened in the last Trump administration and experience talking to right-wingers here seemed to very strongly demonstrate that US Republicans are very against skilled immigration.
netstack
Texas is freedom land
6hr ago
More effort than this, please.
We are a discussion site, not a link aggregator. Or, uh, a quote aggregator.
mrvanillasky
6hr ago
I offer my condolences to you and your family. One of my not so close relative had stage 4 pancreatic cancer and her last days were painful, she looked worse than a corpse, death was a better option than being alive.
Death comes for all, we can only be nice to ourselves and others who we have around, to those will be around us in the future. There is no good advice here besides things that have been regurgitated, I've myself never seen a family member I was very close to pass away despite being 24. My grandma passed away 20 years ago so I couldn't understand anything. One day she was reading me stories under the trees in our front yard, another day she was just gone.
You should post things here. A mistake I made before was weeping about emotional issues in front of girls I knew, this is a controversial take though I'll say it anyway, people need a place to vent anonymously. I post my life online so that I can be honest with my self and soon enough that can help me act the way I wish to in the world instead of lying because I wish to evade judgment. You should write all that you have out, helps a lot. I mention girls because I'd nearly weep in front of them whereas they needed me to be the guy they could share problems with. It's old fashioned but this is what I believe in.
Lizzardspawn
6hr ago
I do think that we need some bulls in china shop in washington if the western civilization is to be ok in the next century. So Tulsi is a good pick. But gaetz is not qualified I think and probably couldn't pick up to speed fast enough.
ControlsFreak
6hr ago
All you have to do is click the link and then click max for the duration.
You're trying to change goalposts again to individual compensation packages, not something about budgets. Please just pick one set of goalposts and stick with them.
Supah_Schmendrick
6hr ago
Government jobs (at least the ones with policymaking discretion) are highly sought after.
WhiningCoil
6hr ago
Tulsi Gabbard got Director of National Intelligence. Rubio is still twisting in the wind waiting for his position to become official. I wonder if Trump is just doing his ritual humiliation ceremony, same as he did with Chris Christy.
IGI-111
God was a dream of good government.
6hr ago
You laugh, but Yarvin himself has been very strongly opining that Nothing Ever Happens and any Trumpian hopes were likely to crash on the shores of redtape.
I'm willing to bet that Musk and Thiel will get what they wanted out of the admin (i.e.: the feds stop putting roadblocks in front of them), but twitter anon dreams of power because they are mutuals with Vance were delusional.
Quantumfreakonomics
6hr ago
Surely these picks are a smokescreen. I bet JD Vance is huddling with Yarvin, Musk, and Thiel in a smoke-filled room right now discussing which anon Twitter accounts and Mottizens will get the call to serve in the shadow cabinet. They must be cross-referencing the Gray Mirror Substack subscriber list to make sure they don’t accidentally double-count any alts.
Ben___Garrison
Voltaire's Viceroy
6hr ago
I'm not sure what your chart is supposed to be showing. You should be able to share it by pressing the button in the bottom left that says "share links". That's how I did mine.
The best comparison would be to compare a government position to an equivalent private sector position (controlling for things like title inflation, responsibilities, etc.). I don't have that data on hand, but if I did, I reckon it would show government compensation (ex. benefits) is slightly lower than the private sector.
The notion that government employees are vastly overpaid by hiding salaries in higher pay grades seems farfetched to me. I don't doubt there's more federal employees on the higher end, but that's to be expected given change in technologies. If they e.g. wanted to digitize a federal service, they'd need to hire a computer programmer, which isn't cheap.
It's a civilizational issue. Westerners have this combination of individualism and guilt based moralism that prevents this sort of rigged-for-your-own-good type of institution from lasting in the face of principle.
If you want to make this idiotic romanticism manifest, try to argue openly that Romeo and Juliet are evil for engaging in a wholly destructive act of lust that shirks all their duties, and see people jump to defend vehemently characters whose ostensible fate is death.
This particular mode of being is not without its virtues, but we can plainly see the limitations of it now that it's been pushed to its logical conclusion.
Lizzardspawn
6hr ago
WASHINGTON - President-elect Donald Trump has nominated Florida Rep. Matt Gaetz as the next U.S. Attorney General.
Trump announced his latest cabinet appointment Wednesday afternoon. Gaetz has been a long-time Trump supporter and is a member of the far-right Freedom Caucus in the House.
"Matt is a deeply gifted and tenacious attorney, trained at the William & Mary College of Law, who has distinguished himself in Congress through his focus on achieving desperately needed reform at the Department of Justice. Few issues in America are more important than ending the partisan Weaponization of our Justice System. Matt will end Weaponized Government, protect our Borders, dismantle Criminal Organizations and restore Americans’ badly-shattered Faith and Confidence in the Justice Department," Trump said in a statement.
Gaetz represents Florida's District 1.
Trump has announced a flurry of nominations in the week since his election. Earlier on Wednesday, he selected Sen. Marco Rubio to serve as his Secretary of State.
He should be just trolling I think ...
might outweigh the loss to the comparative handful of teens who benefited from unrestricted internet access
Which is just another way of saying that they don't have the right to benefit from that ability, and that ability should be redistributed to everyone who doesn't. (It's ironic that the types of people who complain about more rules being "communism" are directionally and trivially correct, yet most of them aren't smart enough to explain why.)
I think a social media ban for this subgroup is likely to pass in some way, shape, or form, but that's mainly because we don't think anyone under 18 (21? 25? 120?) is actually a human being (more like 3/5ths of one). And because it's going to be the Boomers doing it, it's going to be something stupid and ham-fisted that includes stuff like 4chan and StackOverflow (i.e. the places high-value teenagers are more likely to visit) but excludes YouTube Shorts-type content factories (which is what everyone over 30 thinks 'social media' is, and is more about dealing with the Evil New Media that they can't get their kids off of because there's basically nothing else for them to do).
At least there's a playbook for defeating tech-illiterate Boomers that more or less just needs to be dusted off. I think there's a real future in distributed social media among people smart enough to insert an SD card into a Raspberry Pi and edit a few configuration files.
ChickenOverlord
7hr ago
At least in Australia currently there's an attempt to ban social media for your under 16. Not super up to date on Australian politics but this effort appears to be coming from Labor which is supposedly the center left party
I'm sorry for your loss.
My Grandfather passed very recently. He lived a long life into his 90's. He just caught a chest infection one day and deteriorated quite quickly in hospital. He eventually just asked the doctors to stop treating him and switch to palliative care. After 3 days he passed away. He wasn't responsive once they switched to palliative care, being in something of a delirium.
My father did not take his passing well. This is partially because it's his last parent going and also because he himself is in hospital for chronic health conditions and couldn't attend the funeral. It was a bit of an existential crisis in the sense that myself and my siblings have realised that our father likely doesn't have many years left in him either.
For myself, I'm glad Grandfather passed relatively quickly without a long drawn out death from something like dementia. He had his faculties up to the end (with just some physical frailties) and was still driving himself around. He lived a good, long life and left behind a successful and loving family. I'd be lucky to follow his example.
I'm reluctant to post this last part because I don't expect anyone to take this seriously. I'm agnostic, but I sensed when my Grandfather passed. I was in a hyperfocused state doomscrolling at the time. I'm normally completely shut off from most of my emotions when I'm doing this, but I sensed a presence so I stopped what I was doing. I made a prayer for my Grandfather to commend him to God. I felt a warmth like a loving hug and knew he was saying goodbye and that he was fine. Then it was gone. Minutes later I got a text that Grandfather had passed 10 minutes ago. So that was a thing.
Like yourself there's a good chance I'll be deleting this one later on.
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