domain:arjunpanickssery.substack.com
ToaKraka
Dislikes you
1m ago
population
But what about area? Personally, I feel that a useful statistic for comparing the "sizes" of geographic entities with significantly different population densities is the product of population and area.
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K. of Bavaria: 9.4⋅1011 people⋅km2
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K. of Austria: 7.6⋅1011 people⋅km2
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K. of Pennsylvania: 1.6⋅1012 people⋅km2
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K. of Virginia: 6.3⋅1011 people⋅km2
I think the US was a Kingdom-tier title at the time of the founding (given that it was plausible for the British Empire to vassalize it) and became an Empire in the usual way once it de facto controlled 80% of its de jure territory.
Well, we can imagine that the de jure map changes as population density skyrockets with the colonization of virgin land. Start with the sparsely-populated colonies as duchies, the Dominion of New England as a failed kingdom, and the USA as a successful kingdom. Then at some point population density becomes high enough that the states now are important enough to be considered kingdoms. The sea-to-shining-sea USA can be a hegemony, encompassing the empires of New England, the Mid-Atlantic, the South, the Midwest, Louisiana, and the West. (Or something vaguely similar to that.)
Shrike
5m ago
Correct, but that was two years ago. Even if the Russians still don't have front-like troop superiority, they have larger manpower reserves and have narrowed the deployed troop gap considerably.
No_one
5m ago
Thx. I also note the UA numbers are probably bullshit - we can be reasonably sure how many Russians died, but no one's counting Ukrainians and it's a state secret too.
yofuckreddit
16m ago
Agreed. I can't believe this whole planet fell for the scam, to be honest. I guess double-walled steel water bottles were more expensive in the 90s or something but...
Folamh3
23m ago
Earlier this week, I said that everything I've learnt about Chappell Roan was against my will. But after repeated exposure to her single "Good Luck, Babe!" I must confess that it's grown on me and the hype might be warranted: this didn't top the singles chart here for no reason.
johnfabian
33m ago
Depends on where you live; varying with the source tap water can be awful or quite tasty. The tap water in Toronto is delicious, in my opinion.
It's just a motte-and-bailey, because "race realists" would be quite happy to carve up races further for precision (and do ime) but their opponents have no interest in that task at all.
Admitting that the colloquial definition of "Asian" isn't fit for purpose and maybe we should speak of "East Asians" and so on has never, AFAICT, won someone over to some sort of race realist view. If anything, people just seem to ignore it altogether and go back to attacking the model that has like five races.
The classification based in the idea of notable biological differences itself is the sin.
Lazuli
37m ago
American workers are very rich by world standards. Claiming that they can barely afford necessities, when even the lowest paid among them make several times what people in other countries make or what the average American made a couple generations ago is absurd.
The original point was never to compare American workers to those across the rest of the world.
Even someone earning the minimum wage in the US, which is rare, makes far more than most people in the world and makes more than the average person did in the 60's, even after adjusting for the cost of living.
Wages are up, but the price of goods in the United States is outpacing that growth to the point that lower- and middle-class people making decent wages still can barely afford the necessities, e.g., rent, groceries, gas, childcare. Swing state voters said this was their biggest concern and hope (and believe) Trump and the Republicans will come to the rescue.
MadMonzer
Temporarily embarrassed liberal elite
39m ago
people who won
The person who won is an elderly, lazy reality TV star with somewhat idiosyncratic political views with a long history across multiple careers of not honouring obligations to people who helped him out. He isn't seeking re-election and doesn't have a plausible dynastic successor (the Kushners don't want it, Don Jr and Eric aren't up to it, and Barron is a long way from 35) so he doesn't need you for anything.
The people who think they won will have exactly as much say as Trump (or whoever controls access to him if he becomes too senile to make decisions) wants them to. They can say they won't take no for an answer, but they say what they want and Trump does what he wants.
FWIW, my best guess is that both the upside and downside potential of the Trump administration will be limited by Trump's laziness and lack of attention to detail. This is what we saw in his first term, and also what we saw with Boris Johnson in the UK, who is a somewhat similar character.
Tanista
46m ago
And that also isn’t a good reason to say religion is unimportant. Just because Southern Baptists, Anglicans, and Greek Orthodox Christians are all Christians, that doesn’t mean they’re identical or interchangeable in obvious ways.
The people who use the "social construction" deepity are ironically the people who take the thesis the least seriously.
Imagine if every human disappeared and alien scientists had to puzzle out the purpose of these giant buildings and steel veins that dot the landscape. Why some buildings on a certain coast are built to different specifications, why standards vary.
These things are clearly artificial but no archaeologist or historian worth his salt would start and stop at "people made this, so they just made it up because".
It really is just a blank slateist motte-and-bailey.
ControlsFreak
53m ago
The one thing I didn’t have a response to was when she brought up the fact that she has friends who are “undocumented”.
There are nuanced approaches. I wrote a kind of steelman a few months back. There really are bureaucratic SNAFUs. And the United States Government is truly not kind when an actual SNAFU happens; they are incredibly by-the-book, even when that book is extremely opaque and confusing. Even though there are significant pro-immigrant advocacy organizations out there who will throw every argument they can at the courts on a pro bono basis (yes, they'll throw utterly silly arguments at the wall which should be rejected, too), the courts are for the most part pretty deferential to the gov't in the realm of immigration. The threat of penalties like being banned from the US for ten years can be bandied about for surprisingly minor things.
Now, the trick is to try to divide that group, who mostly are at least trying to do things legally, but who get caught up in some garbage, from the group of folks who are literally just walking across the border, not even trying. Rhetorically, this may get you a long way with your girlfriend. Of course, that trick is surprisingly more difficult to translate into actual policy, and she may honestly be fully justified in thinking that Donald Trump is not going to thread that needle. He may genuinely make things more difficult for some number of sympathetic folks. But of course, now we're getting into the land of tradeoffs, where it's hard to make good estimates. How many people in the 'mostly good' category are really going to suffer? How many people in the 'not even trying' category are going to be kept out? It's probably impossible to predict what fine-grained policy choices will ultimately be made up/down the chain and how those choices will ultimately come out in terms of the tradeoffs.
If you can get her at least this far, and she's capable of understanding that the truly apocalyptic-sounding BS that people are spouting off (e.g., "They're gonna deport all green card holders!") is completely irrelevant and that the most likely outcome is some shifting around of tradeoffs, which may or may not impact her friends... and that you do feel sympathy for any 'mostly good' folks who get further harmed by the tradeoff game, then you're probably in luck. If not, and she simply can't extricate her mind from the most insane propaganda takes? Whelp, you've got decisions to make.
Throwaway05
54m ago
Wokeness is widely popular with women and necessarily involves holding together a lot of contradictory opinions, so the training is out there. Consider the modern dating market - women still want a man who is masculine, pays, etc. but they also want feminist girl bosses at the same time. These things don't work together, but they manage.
Cultural acceptability is what is normal. Lots of culturally acceptable believes are unwise or harmful, however.
Tanista
55m ago
How many smart people like Matty Y are out there who are Republicans but just haven't realized it yet?
He isn't.
Everyone is a "policy wonk" or "class-first leftist" until they have to actually cast off their progressive social beliefs. Then you see how they really prioritize them. See also DeBoer, Freddie.
MadMonzer
Temporarily embarrassed liberal elite
56m ago
Given that a Duchy can be meaningfully sovereign (they have their own laws, for example), I don't see why the US States and Canadian Provinces can't be Duchy-tier titles. The average present-day population of a US state is 6 million, and the median is 4.5 million. The typical present-day population of a CK2 de jure Duchy in Western Europe looks like 2-3 million (much higher in England because of industrial-era population growth) vs about 15 million for a Kingdom. Also, the nearest equivalent to US states in terms of their shared sovereignty are the Electorates of the HRE, which are Duchy-tier. I think the US was a Kingdom-tier title at the time of the founding (given that it was plausible for the British Empire to vassalize it) and became an Empire in the usual way once it de facto controlled 80% of its de jure territory.
mrvanillasky
57m ago
I had my second therapy session and I now have to use alarms and a strict af schedule where my sleep times are fixed and I have no social media accounts. Apart from that I really enjoyed using twitter as I am a neo-reactionary and seeing trump win was fun. I am not even American lol but the memes were worth it. I remember 2016 a little bit, I was 2016 and not as online but 2024 is not bad in terms of internet content. Again I have severe severe adhd and no sense of time so i can spend all day on it but it was really funny.
I was reading some blogs for fun since I have started thinking more about religion and how that relates to cooperation but that is not something the people or the mods would want on a fun thread. There are fights on this week, I am jaded with combat sports though, Prates and Ridder should beat their older gatekeeper opponents to pulp.
Here is a weekly ritual my family enjoys, my ma, dad and younger brother sip on some masala chai (spiced tea quite literally) every Sunday morning. It is getting cooler here in Rajasthan so tea consumption is up. It is real simple to make too, just boil tea leaves with some fresh grated ginger, pinch of black pepper and later add some milk, adding it before can cause curdling.
mrvanillasky
1hr ago
Never come down anon
Stefferi
Chief Suomiposter
1hr ago
EU countries continue to have separate foreign policies. Sure, they're coordinated, but there's no larger mechanism to ensure absolutely unanimous action in foreign and security matters, as Hungary demonstrates.
pusher_robot
PLEASE GO STAND BY THE STAIRS
1hr ago
I think it's worth noting that levels of fluoride in the water much higher than the recommended dosage are unlikely to be caused by intentionally dosing the water, and more likely to be caused by naturally high occurrencee of fluoride in the source water supply. So, if this were a scandal, the scandal would primarily not be the dosing of low levels of fluoride for dental health, but the laxity of the water safety regulations.
NunoSempere
1hr ago
I'm presuming they're migrating to Southern Europe
Yes, but also within Africa. Within Africa migration is much easier than moving to another continent.
ulyssessword
1hr ago
One of my favorite half-joking proposals: Either the US should get 50 seats at the UN, or the EU should get one. They are both unions of sovereign states under the umbrella of a larger entity, after all.
Divorcing my wife because she fell into debt is very different from deciding not to marry her because she revealed she revealed to me late in our engagement that she'd been in hundreds of thousands of dollars of debt all along, even if both could be described as "Making marriage decisions on the basis of money."
This is a very obvious false equivalency and I'm not sure how you don't see it. Failing to disclose something, like your debts, that you know will affect the other partner personally is beyond the pale precisely because it is so relevant to their future wellbeing - you can't really say you care for a person and yet want to dupe them into taking on your debts.
Something like voting for Trump, on the other hand, is just not super relevant to the other partner's personal life or material wellbeing outside of "You hold opinions I don't like and that makes me feel bad". Who your partner voted for is not your business in the way that your partner's debts are your business. If someone wants to abandon a relationship for that reason, it's certainly their prerogative, but it is their own hangup that's at fault.
sun_the_second
1hr ago
From what I read, NK has a bustling grey market.
I spent almost all the entirety of its free time playing Factorio: Space Age. Even to the point of neglecting the imaginary girls and thus giving my GPU a well-deserved rest.
Yeah, fun week.
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