domain:alexberenson.substack.com
NunoSempere
5m ago
Why doesn't monkeypox excite you? It could fill in the niche that smallpox previously had.
Reuters: Diwali celebrations hit air quality in New Delhi
New Delhi topped charts on Friday as the world's most polluted city after revellers defying a ban on firecrackers to celebrate Diwali, the Hindu festival of lights, helped drive air quality to hazardous levels.
Thick smog wreathed the Indian capital, shrouding the presidential palace in the central district and the surrounding gardens popular with joggers and cyclists, after Thursday's celebrations.
Local government officials have banned use of firecrackers during Diwali and the winter over the last few years, in line with Supreme Court directives, but have had difficulty enforcing the measure despite the threat of jail.
In New Jersey, the posting of celebratory swastikas by Indian immigrants is causing some confusion.
After the Montville Township Police Department received a few phone calls about swastika sightings in October, it posted on Facebook to explain why.
The reason? Diwali.
"With Diwali coming up this October, I want the residents and citizens to be aware that a common symbol of this holiday is a Diwali swastika," the Oct. 16 post read. "...This post is in light of our police department already fielding calls regarding people seeing this symbol on cars and houses. We are trying to eliminate any unwarranted hostility toward any person displaying this for their religious purposes."
aeqno
16m ago
Except tried to overturn the results of an election and coup the most powerful country on Earth.
MaximumCuddles
19m ago
Is JD Vance here? Maybe, maybe not.
But if he was here, I don’t imagine he would be a prolific poster. Very busy guy, you see.
He’d most likely be a lurker that posts in inspired bursts and then slinks back into lurker mode for days, or weeks, or even months. He might have even got an AAQC or two.
He’d have been lurking around since SSC and the split with the subreddit, so he’d have some intermittent poasting history over at /r/themotte but probably not before.
I imagine he checks TheMotte regularly between his busy work life that doesn’t allow him much screen time.
He’d also be mega-based, undoubtedly.
Anyways, I’d look out for a guy like that.
MaiqTheTrue
Renrijra Krin
22m ago
The fact that he’s into Moldbug also suggests Rat adjacent. I mean I’m not surprised at all that someone reading Moldbug also reads Slatestar.
ControlsFreak
37m ago
I want to point people back to my old comment on Grants Pass, because this logic has really infected tons of things. They were so successful in playing this game with sexuality (going all the way to effectively banning Christian groups from campuses) that it's almost hard to blame them for thinking that they could get away with it everywhere else, too. I don't really like to let my mind drift to partisan politics (rather than just focusing on understanding what is actually true), but it's hard to not have the thought floating around that we could easily have been two Clinton appointees in place of two Trump appointees away from this stuff metastasizing even more. Frankly, it just makes it annoyingly harder to simultaneously follow the news in the legal realm while also trying to stay personally philosophically coherent when to even explain what has happened requires constantly reminding yourself, "Of course this is complete philosophical bollocks."
mrvanillasky
58m ago
This is Diwali week here in North India. I had a fun time, people make sweets, light up thier houses, in my city, markets are lit up too. There are fireworks everywhere, people burst crackers. A lot of shopping gets done, the air starts cooling down. It marks winter here. People who are not wokring soul crushing white collar jobs in a metropolis get a week long holiday here on the week of diwali. You have diwali themed parties too where people wear kurta pyjamas and play poker whilst sloshed. Also my mothers birthday yesterday, i gifted her some clothes, we did not do much else as it was also diwali. Earlier my grandad and dad would go to city palace here as grandad was a part of the royal staff due to being a part of the former feudal system but stopped as my grandads 92 now and broke his femur in half 4 months ago so cant walk much.
Here is some food that I ate yesterday, potato curry with puris (deep fried whole wheat bread) and kheer (rice pudding). Kheer is my favourite food on the planet, it takes a little time to make but well worth it. The recipes have english captions.
I saw the fights last weekend where Max Holloway got flatlined completely. He had it coming, you cannot fight for so long with small gloves in the best weight division and take this many shots, no matter who you are, you will get kod. The other fights were not as fun, Rob's freak injury and Rakic being gunshy was not fun to watch. I have had a bit of a change of heart in terms of MMA, I don't find it as fun now. I have been following it for 8 years now, just not as exciting now. The CTE stuff and fighter pay is another part of it.
My shoulder feels a little wonky. I got a partial labrum tear on my right shoulder 5 months ago, no surgery needed. I joined the gym again for the first time and feel slight pain in my shoulder even though I used way lighter weights and aimed for like 20-25 reps. I think I should not to go to failure on my exercises otherwise this can get worse. Will work out tomorrow. I will avoid shrugs altogether and avoid reaching failure or even getting close to it. I was told to do daily rehab stuff that I have not done in over 4 months which was not smart, started the rehab stuff again.
There will be no polo this weekend. I have started listening to more trance music since I started Concerta. I really like the vibe of late 2000s melodic trance. I lay down on my bed and just listen to some music; it's very fun. Listening to music whilst walking or driving isn't as enjoyable as it is when you are in a relaxed environment. Would appreciate some recommendations for music, any kind really. Posted a tweet about recs on my twitter!
Folamh3
1hr ago
Anyone starting to feel like there's nothing really that dystopic about A Clockwork Orange?
aaa
1hr ago
satanic religions of old
There is no old satanic religion. Satanism was invented in the 60s by a topless bar manager.
spiky_fungus
1hr ago
Nice, fedposting, consensus building and stupid rolled in one.
Not entirely sure is it trolling or genuinely advocating for civil war. And unsure which one would be sadder.
I disagree because if the vote on the side you actually like cannot win, not only are you not getting what you want, but often moving the country in the opposite direction.
I honestly don't understand how anyone could actually believe this. Sure, it's a common argument. But the only effect it has en masse is to ensure that people who don't like either party, never have any impact at all. And responding as if I just didn't understand the math is insane, because the whole point is that if you understand math at all, you already know that your vote is exceedingly unlikely to matter.
I'm sorry if I sound like a broken record, but I've lost track now of how many people I have to remind of this:
Your vote is more than 99.9% likely to make no difference at all.
The idea that your vote might bring about your preferred policies is mathematically absurd. For the same reasons, the idea that your vote might "mov[e] the country in the opposite direction" is also absurd. Indeed, it is more absurd, since the major American political parties agree on more than the disagree on (e.g., neither is monarchist, neither is communist [yet], etc.). Whether you vote, or do not vote, and who or what you vote for, will very nearly never alter the outcome of an election.
"But if enough people believe that..."
It doesn't make any difference! Yes, strategically, you want as many people who agree with you, to believe their vote makes a difference and to cast it accordingly. Yes, strategically, you want as many people who disagree with you to believe their vote makes no difference and thus stay home from the polls or vote in a way that does not otherwise hurt your desires. But statistically, if a lot of people understand that their vote doesn't matter, they are very likely to be more-or-less evenly distributed across both "sides!" Furthermore, you probably have no influence over the voters of either "side" anyway, so talking about voting in this manner is an exercise in pure imagination; it is a power fantasy. Now, granted: if you're Donald Trump, or you're Kamala Harris, or you're Taylor Swift, or even if you're maybe Scott Alexander, and you have the power sway voting blocs? Sure, this is a great piece of rhetoric, a potentially useful lie to tell, etc. I don't deny that major political parties (and their partisans!) have every reason to peddle this claptrap.
But as a matter of fact, everyone has some actual reason to vote (or not) as seems best to them, and virtually no one has any reason to vote as a bloc (if that's not what actually seems best to them)--with the exception of vanishingly rare edge cases where their one vote actually makes a difference. This sometimes happens at the local level, so the fewer people there are voting in a given election, the more actual reason you have to cast your vote strategically. But also: in such cases, it's virtually guaranteed that you are actually voting as seems best to you, and not merely casting a vote to prevent the greater of two evils from taking office. (Many local elections are lucky to get two whole candidates in the first place.)
If making a difference in politics matters to you, then you need to secure political office for yourself, or become famous enough that a lot of people take their cues from you--ideally, many many thousands. At which point you will have some actual reason to tell this lie. (Just be careful not to fall for your own marketing--it's not your vote that matters, it is your influence over many votes!) Until then, the vast majority of people who say/believe the "you must vote for one of the two viable candidates" lie are merely someone else's useful tool.
spiky_fungus
1hr ago
he? I thought that Deiseach is a woman.
Why you expect it to be a high risk? Even if Russia would nuke Berlin and Warsaw - then USA, France and UK would not nuke Moscow back.
And reaction would be likely strong enough (China would join) ensuring that Russia will not nuke NATO countries or even Ukraine, as benefits is not there.
And if Putin/Biden/Kamala/Trump would be insane enough to launch full scale attack... There is not much we can do with that.
It doesn’t get nearly as much as attention as it should, here or elsewhere
Maybe because when I seen it, it was in "Russia has nukes, we must satisfy all their demands" form which does not encourage treating it seriously.
existential crisis
Even full scale use of all nuclear devices would not cause end of civilisation: it would cripple it and set us 50-100-200, maybe 300 years back and kill billions - but would not end existence of humanity.
Yes, people claiming that we have enough nukes to kill all humanity were stupid and/or lying.
ControlsFreak
1hr ago
A comment from @JTarrou from many years ago still lives in the back of my mind:
The current Republican president is always the worst person in history. The last one is always surprisingly human. The one before that is always a pretty decent dude.
The current Democratic president is Star Trek Jesus with sprinkles, the last one was a corrupt liar who wasted his vast potential, and the one before that was a Republican.
I don't know that Obama has quite followed that trajectory yet, but since the connection to Biden is so strong and he is still 'around' and influential enough in the party that some folks think he's still pulling many strings, maybe he'll just be a bit delayed on the path. I'm watching that one as well as looking forward to Trump's trajectory once he's actually out of the picture politically.
Folamh3
1hr ago
I mean, we do have our token progressives. Darwin/guesswho was active as recently as April, and I had a spirited and productive debate with @TokenTransGirl more recently than that.
Deiseach is still active in the ACX comment section. Reading between the lines I get the impression he lives they live in Ireland.
mottetert
2hr ago
The correct solution to climate change is directly controlling the temperature by releasing sulfate aerosols in the upper atmosphere. At a cost of $5-20 billion per year we can hold temperatures in place or reduce them, even as CO2 levels rise. These people want to destroy industrial civilization over a glorified nothingburger.
That won't work forever. Those aerosols don't stay in the air nearly as long as CO2 does. So if we depend on them, we'll likely continue to raise the CO2 to dangerous levels while temporarily covering it up with the aerosols. It'll work for a while, but on historical timescales sooner or later something will happen that will disrupt the flights that deliver the aerosols. It could be a war, natural disaster, oil depletion, or anything that disrupts modern civilization and trade. Then the temperature will shoot up to where it would have been without the aerosols, but it will be worse because it will happen much quicker with no chance for people to adapt, and it will compound with whatever crisis caused the disruption.
sohois
2hr ago
I've had posts appear in the "Highlights from the comments..." threads under a username in the past. Not seen any bias towards real names, the bigger issue is that it's likely too late for a comment to get noticed amongst thousands of others
TowardsPanna
2hr ago
Yeah. That's one of my fears too. The more trash we put into orbit, the higher the risk goes of making the satellite space unviable forever.
Boeing keeps winning.
Silverdawn
Small Language Model
3hr ago
Maybe try an eliminating diet to check if the food you're eating is causing the problems. I remember having a similar problem when I initially became lactose intolerant. Stopping all milk consumption fixed it.
ArjinFerman
Tinfoil Gigachad
3hr ago
Fair enough, in the end neither am I. Just remember someone posting about it on /r/stupidpol.
I think I'm mostly focused on terrible outliers, and the mortality for H5N1 just doesn't seem that high. Say 0.05x to 3x covid, something in that range. You then have to add long-term effects, which are hard to estimate &c, but it just doesn't seem very existentially threatening.
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