domain:thezvi.wordpress.com
grognard
Intel Pentium III 450 / Nvidia Riva TNT2 Ultra / Corsair 128MB PC133 / ABIT BH6
3m ago
I want to know if he can feasibly be forced in. Senate Republicans don’t seem keen on confirming him, and I hear there are some constitutional powers (should have written this down) Trump can leverage to force recess appointments - will he do it? Why didn’t he do it last time?
grognard
Intel Pentium III 450 / Nvidia Riva TNT2 Ultra / Corsair 128MB PC133 / ABIT BH6
6m ago
I know the subversive ending to Conclave, so I will not watch it. How bad is Borgia (2011) on this CW front?
ABigGuy4U
8m ago
The 90s and the 2000s were when the manufacturing started going overseas and the industrial Midwest began turning into the Rust Belt. It wasn’t quite the opioid ravaged hellscape you see now, but it was beginning to get creaky.
Crowstep
18m ago
I don't think 'capitalism' is a particularly useful label here. We've had 'capitalism' since either the 1500s (the breakdown of manorialism) or the 1700s (the industrial revolution) but global birth rates only really started to decline in the 1900s, and even that was reversed temporarily by the baby boom in the 1950s and 60s.
The Amish are extremely 'capitalist' (in the sense of being extremely engaged with the market, owning businesses etc) and yet they manage to maintain high birth rates. You can see Russian birth rates collapse after the communist revolution. 'Capitalist' America has long had higher birth rates than comparatively less 'capitalist' Europe.
Now I'd certainly agree that global culture is antinatal, but referring to that culture as 'capitalist' obscures more than it hides.
Rosencrantz2
20m ago
I would never say that a type of joke is "always" unfunny but if a joke has no twist or self-flatters the teller without much seeming awareness of the vanity involved (e.g. Maga thinking of itself as Gondor), it comes across as flat footed too me and lacks the element of unexpectedness I would need to enjoy it. It's not fake learned behaviour to no longer enjoy in general jokes about women being ugly, any more than it is fake learned behaviour to grow out of all kinds of one dimensional humour (mother in law jokes, dumb Irish jokes, etc). With exceptions for actually inventive jokes in those categories.
I think you can even switch those odds, it can be a hail marry, a 30% chance she turns it around. If you're a high end exec you're going to want to be heavily compensated for the risk that you're going to get fired and that possibly ending your career. "I'll try to patch up the Titanic but you're going to pay me enough that when it goes down I'm sitting on the life boat with a smile on my face."
SubstantialFrivolity
I'm not even supposed to be here today
38m ago
I didn't read it as "inner peace", but neither did I take it as a call for violence. She's impotently wishing that bad things will happen to the ones she hates, not encouraging someone to go out and make those bad things happen.
Gaashk
44m ago
They exhumed her body this weekend, that’s why I was reading about her, but I’m not quite sure how it works.
The_Nybbler
Does not have a yacht
45m ago
If this was actually true, we'd have expected higher birthrates in Communist countries during the Cold War. That was not, in fact, the case.
dovetailing
1hr ago
Matushka Olga of Alaska (1916 - 1979), who's community considers her a saint
As of last year, this includes the Holy Synod of the Orthodox Church in America. I'm not sure if all the proper preparations and rite have taken place yet, but soon (if not already) she'll be considered a saint by the Orthodox Church more generally.
roche
1hr ago
Best to abandon all hopes of reading something interesting online in 2024. Put the onus on yourself to dig through old publications and research instead.
hydroacetylene
1hr ago
Gaetz is gonna have some radicals in his staff that are much more competent, I’m pretty sure.
cjet79
1hr ago
There is an economic concept called "perfect competition" I want to be clear that this economic concept is not required for efficient prices.
And I am talking about efficient prices, not "perfect prices". Prices are a process and a search function for an optimal set of tradeoffs. One of the tradeoffs is information. To perfectly know all the inputs of a product, and to perfectly know the desire for that product would be a very costly search process. There is going to be some fudging of prices and that fudging should be expected given that information itself is not free or costless.
[Plumbers]
You've created a very long example that kind of assumes away many of the standard market fixes. I do generally like to use theoretical examples for most economic concepts, but I find that they tend to lead people astray when it comes to the nature of prices.
To me your example sounds a bit like this:
"Geologists say that older mountain ranges tend to be shorter and rounder than newer mountain ranges, because wind and erosion will gradually wear mountains down. But that's not always true, imagine there are two mountains. One mountain is 20k feet and in an old mountain ranges. And the other mountain is 10k feet in a newer mountain range. They are both subject to similar levels of erosion, and neither is a volcano. So older mountains can be taller."
You've assumed your position to be true in your example.
And yes the government is fully capable of distorting prices, or assisting companies in distorting prices. I usually bring this up as a reason why government should not have this power, or should at least have many restrictions on the use of this power. But this is also not evidence that prices don't reflect the real world, instead it is more evidence. After all if a government makes it hard to be in the plumber business we should expect the price paid for plumbing services to go up, because the supply of plumbers has been restricted. It would be strange if the government could intervene and not change prices.
wingdingspringking
1hr ago
Why do people protest? At the most fundamental level, it is because a large group of people on some level have done a cost benefit analysis and decided that protesting is more in their interest than not protesting. Their underlying motivations might be different (social status for some, entertainment for others, etc). But everyone needs a reason to be there, and that reason needs to be sufficiently positive so as to overcomes any negatives.
Let's look at a very safe, very "developed" society like SK. What are the positives of partaking or supporting such a movement.
- You get potential concessions from society if the movement is successful (laws guaranteeing more rights for women, more pay, more legal weapons at your disposal, etc).
- You get social status. Protesting for a "good cause" is generally seen as positive by your peer group.
- Personal fulfillment. You feel like you are making a difference/doing the right thing. You feel more in control of your life.
What are the negatives? Almost nothing.
1)Men might be mad at you. But there's not much risk there. Especially for younger women, since said men will still likely make concessions in order to have a chance to sleep with them.
2)The older generation might be mad. But in modern society, many young people are financially independent. So the older generation has much more limited leverage.
Contrast this to a less developed society. What are your benefits? Possible concessions (with a lower probability) and personal fulfillment. That's probably it. Your peer group will probably distance themselves from you out of fear of sharing the negatives, which are:
- Potential violence - both sexual and non sexual. This is the largest negative you can possibly have for most people.
- Ostracization - others don't want to share in your misfortune if something goes wrong.
- Anxiety - Even if nothing happens, the threat of these things always looms.
There are probably many more negatives, but I think those three are probably sufficient to deter most people. So looking at a cost benefit analysis, the choice to protest in SK vs in SA looks pretty clear.
campfire
1hr ago
Oh I missed 1999, yeah I can see how the threat of nuclear war captures the same ethos
HPV is one or two doses.
Okay, let's go to the website you read because you're engaging in good faith after you've linked it 10x.
I think we've spotted the disagreements and I doubt hashing out whether it's proper to refer to "some children" extra shots as "boosters" or whether it's an "inflated number" to include 20 shots from the schedule you asterisked out or whether to include a shot on the 18th birthday to get between 71, 72, or 73 shots will either be interesting or productive.
thanks for the dialogue
RedRegard
1hr ago
If you focus on Korea particularly those might seem like likely causes, but every capitalist country is suffering low birth rates and it's always concentrated in those urban centers that are the centers of economic growth. Capitalism is what suppresses birth rates by optimizing for short-term wealth accretion over other values. Women are incentivized to work rather than reproduce, and both sexes are incentivized to engage in hedonist consumerism, while meanwhile social factors conducive to fecundity, like having grandparents who expected grandchildren, gradually fade away like a strange dream.
gattsuru
1hr ago
Most coverage focuses on his alleged sex scandal. Which is lurid, but has the dual problems of being having run too long while, when described in detail (some ludicrous), just isn't damning enough. About the best that can be said there is that Gaetz lacks Kavanaugh's charisma: even if someone tries something really stupid like trying to bring a Mann Act prosecution against him, everyone's just not gonna care.
The other side is that he's actively uncharismatic enough that I could see him having a tougher time getting confirmed than RFK. Gaetz is hated, and he's an easy man to hate.
More critically, my impression's that he hasn't shown the competence or leadership skills necessary to do much more than take a few retirements out at the belt. My opinion of the DoJ is low enough that 'wrecking ball' might well be an improvement over BATNA, but I'm skeptical that it's the only or best option available. We know what happens when Gaetz demands someone do something and they refuse, and it didn't work out great for Gaetz last time, and it's gonna be every single day at the DoJ. Maybe he wakes up once shoved into the role -- if the conspiracy theory is right and that sex scandal above was being assisted by the DoJ, he'd have a lot of reason! -- but my bet is no. He might be vengeful enough to do a Nunes, but it takes more than a grudge.
netstack
Texas is freedom land
1hr ago
Everybody's got a bomb
We could all die any day, aw
But before I'll let that happen
I'll dance my life away, oh-oh-oh
They say, 2000-00, party over
Oops, out of time
We're runnin' outta time
So tonight we gonna party like it's 1999
I dunno, I think the sentiment is pretty clear.
WhateverHappenedToNorman
1hr ago
impossible to determine which comments may be valuable on ACT, for instance
That's just because Scott doesn't want likes, the rest of the blogs have "Top" sorting, and you can see who liked the comments, if "total like count" is not a relevant metric to you.
hydroacetylene
1hr ago
Try Into Great Silence about the Carthusians.
Pasha
Defend Kebab
1hr ago
Watched the Conclave (https://www.imdb.com/title/tt20215234/) at the cinema the other day. Visually well made (although it is just difficult to portray Catholicism without some impressive visuals), somewhat okay but uninteresting story with no clear point and an incredibly disappointing ending. Couldn't stop comparing it to another depiction of a Catholic conclave, from 2011's Borgia (the European made one: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1736341/)
Which made me realize that I am not sure if I have ever watched a movie that depicted a modern religious institution well. Not about some humble believer of the religion, not a sob story about how the religion doesn't match up to modern liberal sensitivities etc.
I am looking for a well-made movie about modern-day Japanese monks, or Latin American/African evangelizers or Iranian Mullahs or whatever is out there. Does anyone have any recommendations for me?
coffee_enjoyer
☕️
1hr ago
It’s more than just the architectural style, it’s the lighting and shadows and saturation. I don’t know how to articulate it but it’s kind of like this. I was watching the HL2 documentary and the artists talked about spending years finding real life material for the game models, visiting abandoned areas etc, and that definitely rubs off in the aesthetic dimension that is different from other shooters that try to be “gritty”. There’s something dreamy and interesting about source engine aesthetic
How are proficiency standards determined for K-12 education?
I've tried looking it up a couple of times, after seeing a lot of angst about how less than half of students are proficient in reading or math, and have only found super vague verbiage like "The achievement levels are based on collective judgments about what students should know and be able to do relative to the body of content reflected in each subject-area assessment." That is not helpful at all. I can look at grade level standards to see what they are, and practice tests to see what the state expects that to look like, but it kind of just sounds like some board of people (Department of Ed? State Level? NCLB Commission?) got together and thought about what they wanted, and now every child is measured about that, and every state is panicking all the time about how the actual children aren't living up to it.
But maybe the kids are actually doing very badly? My neighborhood school has less than 50% proficiency, and they're above median for the state. Should I be worried? Did kids do better at some point in the past? When? Are there non BS sources of information about it?
More options
Context Copy link