Politics/Slapfights - Ancient history to modern day!

[Mazder]

Another message towards the notion that the Left needs to buck it's ideas up and act better to stop chasing people away.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5Hrn6vnOjRs

[Vol]

It's been interesting watching the various factions of "The Left" in these early days of the 2020 run. Buttgig looks like he'll eclipse Beto as the establishment pick if one of the brown and/or female choices doesn't have a surge. They're don't want Bernie much like the GOP didn't want Trump, so that'll be a fun fight if the size of the field keeps the moderate and establishment vote split and Bernie leads for awhile. Meanwhile Fox gave Bernie a big forum to show off with a pliable crowd, so either they're tilting left in some suicidal move under the new owners or they're doing it as a pied piper strategy like the Dems did with Trump.

Fun stuff! I think Booker is too much of a cockhead to get moving, none of the women are any good except Kamala, and I think they're going to play it "safe" to try and win with a white guy. But a young, gay, ex-military with no name recognition reeks of Obama 2.0. Beto is proving too volatile and weak to last.

[Raga]

But a young, gay, ex-military with no name recognition reeks of Obama 2.0.

Who is also from the Rust Belt and apparently religious or at least not shy of using Christianity as social justice language. He's also apparently got an elitist educational pedigree to make any elitist salivate.

I have mixed feelings about the dude. He seems sane, unlike many of the rest of that crowd. It's hard to tell how neoliberal he is since he's just a mayor and hasn't voted on big ticket trade deals or immigration issues or whatever. The way he deals with his city's unions is probably at least somewhat informative on that front. I'll definitely take him over Beto who strikes me as Shaggy from Scooby Doo running for president.

*Edit* All the articles about how various rich party insiders are panicking about Bernie Sanders doing so well are pretty entertaining as well. I've soured on him quite a lot because he's just too damn old and he's gone from "pleasantly subversive" on any number of economic issues to borderline batshit crazy. He also seems to be less focused on policy and more on talking points the longer he's around.

But still, the fat cat panic makes my heart happy.

Also @ angry Brit video

I will say that YouTube political over-dramatization is exponentially more tolerable and entertaining when done by Brits for the most part. When Americans do it they just come off sounding like one of those derivative, knock-off Green Day wannabe punk rockers from the early 2000s complaining about how they were sweaty outcasts in high school.

[Mazder]

So there is a group called Extinction Rebellion disrupting London in protest for climate awareness and stuff.
They've been doing it since monday with rumours of them going after heathrow next.
I fly out this weekend so...yeah....great timing for this one..

I notice how none of them are going anywhere near the offices of any of the big oil companies housed in London. What's going to do more to disrupt the damage done to the planet, a few cars stopped at a crossing for a bit or disrupting the effective working of one, or two of the biggest oil companies head offices for just 1 day, let alone 4!

[Grand Admiral Cheesecake]

There's also the cheerful fact that China and India are the main contributors to pollution now.

Better protest some more in the West though.

[Mazder]

There's also the cheerful fact that China and India are the main contributors to pollution now.

Better protest some more in the West though.

I mean if you can do all you can to get your own house 100%, or as close to it, in order and better then you can worry about the neighbours later.
Especially if you can get your own house to make the alternatives cheaper and more popular as then maybe the buying power of big oil might go down just enough to actually tackle them at their own game.

Plus they don't really have the ability to affect stuff overseas, but in our own lands, yeah, more access and ability to do something.

Just because China and India are bigger polluters doesn't mean we shouldn't do something about our own pollution. Yeah in the short term some industries will die out but other might grow in it's place. There is always a risk in change.

Trouble is these protesters are going the wrong way of actually getting their change.

This will be a thing for maybe at max a month before Brexit becomes the top news story again.

[Vol]

So how's the media outlets of your choice spinning the Mueller report?

[Grand Admiral Cheesecake]

So how's the media outlets of your choice spinning the Mueller report?

I've been dipping my toe into the Alphabet news groups. They're trying so hard to make this nothingburger a something.

They can't handle the fact that they've lost their golden calf. Their guarantor of ratings. The next year and a half will be entertaining.

[Vol]

Browsing articles today, they refuse to give up. The media is so goddamn committed to being an unelected, unwanted branch of government that they cannot admit they were wrong, they lost. They are attempting to will crimes to exist by the power of their station. "It's not over yet!" "Clearly obstruction and collusion!" "Here's some fuckface who agrees there were crimes and we must impeach!"

Fuck the media and everyone who works for them. They serve their masters and offer no truth, no honesty, no scouring lights on power. I hope to live to see the day they turn to ash, figuratively or literally.

This is why the clown Pepe meme works so well. The press destroys information, doctors destroy our health, psychiatrists destroy our minds, the courts destroy justice, schools destroy knowledge, scientists destroy truth, religions destroy dogma, government destroys stability, art destroys creativity, it's all fucking upside down nonsense.

[Vol]

https://www.dallasnews.com/news/dallas- ... 4njTwpK7oA

"Creuzot’s efforts in Dallas County to decriminalize poverty will include declining to prosecute theft of personal items worth less than $750 unless the theft was for financial gain."

Why did you Texans allow California to immigrate?

[Raga]

https://www.dallasnews.com/news/dallas-county/2019/04/11/dallas-da-reveals-plan-ending-mass-incarceration-petty-crimes-slashing-probation-bail?fbclid=IwAR2licfoElCcXNQITcg4vKJzVJsMwFG162CyezXteunfi89x44njTwpK7oA

"Creuzot’s efforts in Dallas County to decriminalize poverty will include declining to prosecute theft of personal items worth less than $750 unless the theft was for financial gain."

Why did you Texans allow California to immigrate?

What's stupid about this is that the operational effect of that is mostly that people in the ghetto can now get away with stealing from other people in the ghetto.

I don't know stats, but I'd hazard a guess that most burglaries in middle brow areas are of items which are almost certainly worth more than $750 - jewelry, electronics, appliances, cars, etc.

It's sort of how allowing looters to "vent" really just means letting stores in poor neighborhoods burn down.

Also, considering our cash bail system got thrown out by the Supreme Court recently because even small amounts of cash are just out of question for certain people to be able to pay, and city ticketing in general has come under criticism for similar reasons, I don't really know why they think $750 or less is some paltry amount that people can just afford to lose. That's close to my mother's total income for a whole month.

[Raga]

How Twitter Users Compare to General Population

[Vol]

What's stupid about this is that the operational effect of that is mostly that people in the ghetto can now get away with stealing from other people in the ghetto.

I don't know stats, but I'd hazard a guess that most burglaries in middle brow areas are of items which are almost certainly worth more than $750 - jewelry, electronics, appliances, cars, etc.

It's sort of how allowing looters to "vent" really just means letting stores in poor neighborhoods burn down.

Also, considering our cash bail system got thrown out by the Supreme Court recently because even small amounts of cash are just out of question for certain people to be able to pay, and city ticketing in general has come under criticism for similar reasons, I don't really know why they think $750 or less is some paltry amount that people can just afford to lose. That's close to my mother's total income for a whole month.

Surely there was some arbitrary, but important sounding, study that came up with exact number. Unintended consequences is a hallmark of bad leaders. Sort of like how we managed to destroy the black family and culture with well meaning programs to help them.

Semi-related, but what the hell is the deal with drag queens and children all of a sudden? I don't get it, the logic between exposure to drag culture and anything productive. It reads more like a backdoor way to normalize pedophilia, based on the kids dressed like whores with a bunch of grown men encouraging them. I thought it was some one-off, weird coastal city moment, with that guy who looks like Satan in drag reading to kids at a library, but it doesn't appear to be going away.

[Raga]

Why Facts Don't Change Our Minds

[Vol]

https://www.forbes.com/sites/worldecono ... f001be1735

I honestly thought this was a satirical take on a dystopian hellscape until the end where there was no twist.

[Vol]

But who is this hypothetical audience that buys games principally for the chainmail bikinis? Seriously? There's like hentai games for that. If the romance novels cease to have sexy dudes, they stop being what they are: superficial titillation fests for (mostly) middle aged horny housewives. Is that really what the "audience" of games is principally comprised of? Some specific horny demographic subset that mostly wants games for titillation? Because it doesn't appear to be. For all the complainers on the internet, huge hordes of people still go out and buy games sans chainmail bikinis.

Games *aren't* romance novels. That was my underlying point. Romance novels or hentai games without sexy, titillating people cease being what they are. Fantasy/sci-fi novel covers and games that lose chainmail bikinis stay what they are. They just become notably less silly.

(For real moving to politics thread after this).

I would not think anyone buys Mortal Kombat principally for cheesecake. The principal principle here is that the series is historically schlock violence, gore, and hunks/babes, now "they" find the garden they cultivated to be distasteful and salt a portion of it. It is not more mature or respectful to treat the female body like it is obscene if it titillates. You put a fig leaf on Michelangelo's David, it's still a timeless masterpiece and icon of the era, nothing important is lost in hiding his lil' twigs and berries other than a short explanation that might warrant a giggle, but the statue is a glorification of the human form, as well as great art, which means I will always oppose the leaf on principle.

tldr; Human body, man or woman, good, cover for silly reasons bad, oppose on principle, assume principal reason for others is similar.

[Raga]

All About Pete

Pretty meaty analysis/criticism of Buttigieg.

@ drag queen story times and general celebrating drag kids

It's a mix of several things:

a concerted activist & academic effort to completely destroy and invalidate the gender binary by simultaneously proving the binary itself is a social construction while replacing it with various esoteric gender-bending identities that can be attached to kids as young as possible to try to prove they are innate and *not* constructed

a bunch of assorted liberal & progressive line toers who are several steps removed from the actual shapers and thinkers and don't understand the underlying philosophy at all but who go along with whatever the shapers and thinkers advocate purely for reasons of maintaining orthodoxy

some advocates of the ludicrous, vapid, and generally superficial worldview of "you shouldn't judge and as long as they aren't physically hurting people it's okay" line of thought

a few mostly opportunistic pedophiles who have unfortunately tried to latch onto the overall LGBT movement (especially those branches which work most aggressively to obscure any "normative" structure for human sexuality) in an attempt to legitimize their sickness as yet another "alternative"

Librarians, being overwhelmingly members in the first two groups, are prime candidates for pushing this forward.

[Vol]

The first paid poll since Biden announced has him blowing past Bernie, so I expect that the media wing of the party was waffling on who to fullthroat in case he didn't commit. Some of the guys on talk radio think they're saving Lady Obama for an eleventh hour announcement, that way Biden can stomp the progressives out, then he can bow out for the first negro lady president. Sending a message from the neoliberals to the rest of them. I don't buy it, since they'd save her for 2024 rather than go at an incumbent.

Also daily reminder that our media is run by scum and peddles in lies and distortion.

[TheodoricFriede]

I don't buy it, since they'd save her for 2024 rather than go at an incumbent.

.

Also she has said more then once "I do not have any interest what so ever in being the President."

[Raga]

From my understanding, she had like nearly Ivanka level desires to not even be a president's wife or in the spotlight in any particular way. She was/is a low profile first lady. The press followed her around salivating after her, but she never struck me as seeking it out.

Also, most of the articles I've seen about Biden from left wing outlets have been a lot of moaning about how he's backward facing and is an old white guy and such.

[Raga]

I have little to no experience with unions because I've never lived in a state that had unions with teeth, other than CA and since most of those are public sector and I didn't really pay taxes in CA other than sales tax since I was a student I mostly didn't care enough to pay attention.

But this local fracas hasn't endeared me to them.

The Houston Firefighters Union went around pay negotiations with the city to put a bill on the ballot in November to give firefights pay parity with cops. It was approved, mostly because it was a presidential election and those attract more voters than any other, including lots of people who usually pay 0 attention to local politics but see an ostensibly "Yay firefighters!" proposition and vote for it. The Union turned down a proposed 4% pay increase (higher than inflation) in 2014 and a 9.5% proposed increase last year. The position of the city has always been "We know firefighters need higher pay but we can't raise it all at once because we don't have the money so we need to gradually phase in the increases over X years until we get parity." But the Union would have none of it. They want it all right this very instant.

The Proposition was so bad that even the Democratic mayor and the police officer's union opposed it. There was widespread warning that if it went through, there would have to be layoffs, demotions, and a slowdown in hiring in the fire department to make up the budget shortfall because the mayor was (justly) unwilling to lay off other municipal workers to make up the difference.

So today, he did exactly what he's been warning them he would do for next to two years. And how does the Union categorize the layoffs? It calls them "cloak and dagger."

"At this point, nothing is shocking. Everything that has happened has happened in the dark of night, cloak and dagger. It really should be alarming for Houstonians," Lancton said (Union President). " Oh, give me a break.

More:
The video the the Houston firefighters Union doesn't want you to see

*Edit*

It looks like the scalphunter's have turned their attention on Bill Barr. I even supported the Mueller investigation and was generally of the opinion to let it run its course and discover what it would discover, but this has long since become ridiculous. What does targeting Barr even do? Remove him and Trump will just put some other crony in his place. And so long as said crony is in place any ridiculous attempt at impeachment is dead in the womb. And even if that's somehow magically undone, no Republican Senate will ever vote to impeach.

And any election that turned the Senate would almost certainly simultaneously boot Trump out of office in the first place, rendering impeachment proceedings irrelevant.

This is seriously such a monumental waste of time.

[Raga]

Why ISIS and al-Qaida Will Lose Their War of Attrition

Mostly agree. Their problem is that they keep attacking us here but they can't summon enough resources to make us genuinely afraid in our own countries. They keep motivating us to attack them by killing out countrymen frequently enough for us to remain outraged, but not frequently enough for us to actually be scared of terrorists in our day to day.

One of the reasons people are willing to give up attacking the Taliban is that the Taliban has never directly attacked us at home so far as I know. It did play host to al-Qaida but wasn't directly responsible. It's more a Vietnam situation, where we are feeding soldiers into some foreign meet grinder to no apparent domestic benefit. If they wanted to make us really give up engaging and killing lots of us abroad seems like a better strategy.

[Vol]

Do any of you deal with the rank and file Democrat voters? I know what partisans think about the post-Mueller nonsense, but not what the common man does, if he's even aware of it. I assume the rating drop for the center-left outlets after the report has a correlation with people tuning it all out.

We've moved from "Putin and Trump literally worked together, treason!" to "Trump never obstructed justice in an investigation based on false premises paid for by his political opposition, but he wanted to, we need to investigate more and/or impeach." Clown world.

Meanwhile Silicon Valley is deplatforming more right-wingers, Milo, Alex Jones, the usual, plus some nutty leftist guy whose name escapes me. Rush Limbaugh had a moment of sincerity between the bloviating yesterday, where he went on a diatribe about how in the recent past, the GOP and Democrats could at least have faith that the other side had good intent for America, even if their actual plans seemed retarded, but no mo'.

[Raga]

The leftist who was banned was Louis Farrakhan, who is a Nation of Islam virulent anti-Semite. Various important people on the left have been hanging around with him for years to no effect whatever on their careers or credibility, including various leaders of the women's March.

The only reason he was banned is because some wackos have started murdering Jews in the last 6 months or so and of course so that it could be claimed that they were not just targeting right of center wackos, which is obviously the case.

[Joblom]

Sure, but I think that Venn diagram overlaps so much that it's next to impossible to separate.

It isn't but to do so requires honesty and critical thinking, something most people are not equipped to do.

The only reason he was banned is because some wackos have started murdering Jews in the last 6 months or so and of course so that it could be claimed that they were not just targeting right of center wackos, which is obviously the case.

I wonder why they don't just ban Islam from social media seeing as how it is responsible for a lot more deadly terrorist acts than the 'white nationalists'.

There is nothing innate to any culture which could not be the product of another given the same circumstances and time. Human phenotypes are not different enough, barring future evidence to the contrary.

All one needs to do is look at gene distribution and gene effects to see that you are wrong. Understanding evolution and how it is shaped by geography and by the local biological environment as well, is also a big help. The patterns are obvious.

For fuck's sake. People have died, if you have nothing meaningful to say, SHUT THE FUCK UP.

Right, so stop pressing all these people together. If mutliculturalism worked we wouldn't have all this strife. We wouldn't need to talk about it or attempt to justify it. A few years ago I talked with an educated Leftist I knew personally and you know what she told me? That ethnic warfare was a natural result of trying to create a multilcultural society. So buckle in and get used to it.

Feminism may have gutted "Traditional Marriage" but it gave way to a much more financially capable option.

Crappier families, when you have them at all, is not an acceptable cost for this.

Also there is a way some can interact.

Interaction is fine. Trade goods, trade ideas, have even a little immigration of productive types who will be a benefit to their host population and integrate. That's all good as long as the long view is given consideration and it is not pushed at the expense of either population. Sustainable. Peaceful.

How do you construct some model which allows for stable childbearing and rearing given the realities of modernity? Because modernity isn't going anywhere.

End the welfare state, end free trade, end consumerism. The current model of society cannot last as it is. That's a fact and it is demonstrated by simple math. You can't print money forever and you can't have a high tech society, which demands a high IQ, when you import low-IQ third worlders who become the collective majority. You can't just give people money forever either. The more money you print the more worthless it becomes. The more of it you'll need as your population is increasingly unable to compete or advance in the high tech and high IQ job market and economy. This system is not sustainable. I don't expect Fallout levels of anarchy, but there will be great strife and economic ruin this century. That is inevitable.

No fault divorce is also exactly one of the things I'm talking about when I say feminism gutted marriage and thus the family. No fault divorce was a bad idea in retrospect because it diminished the value of marriage, value derived from the benefit it provided to society. It as well did not recognize female nature, which predisposes her to want to set aside one husband for a better one if the opportunity arises. Hypergamy is very real. So is the consequence of single mothers raising children who grow up to be dysfunctional adults. A culture where the greater majority of women are in a stable marriage maintaining the home and caring for her children day to day is also a society in which wages are higher, where a father and husband can support a family on his own. We used to have this. Free trade was never inevitable.

Millenials may be more prudish, but they have also come of age in an era where going to college and buying a house will put them in massive debt for decades. Everything is more expensive except perhaps basic consumer goods, but wages are also lower. They have not kept up with inflation. Their parents and grandparents were the ones with the hedonistic lifestyle of free sex. Millenials are the first generation to really start paying for it. Turns out chastity and prudishness evolved as traits of the societies of the past because they provided a benefit and helped them grow. From whence came super chlamydia and AIDS? Depressed young adults with massive debt making too little or no money, lacking the financial security needed to responsibly start a family... a family they may not be able to keep together anyway.

This is getting well outside the spectrum of economics or supposed biology...

Biology is at its core and always has been. It is the males and not the females who can benefit society through hard, dangerous, manual labor and military service. Women can't do this. No society that uses its women in such a way is going to survive in the long run. Women benefit society by having and caring for children. Being secretaries or dispatchers or, laughably, police officers, is not really essential. Men have been secretaries and dispatchers too and they are a hell of a lot better suited to being police officers. The value of men in society and the reason they are the ones who are best suited to decide its course is because they are the productive, constructive, CREATIVE sex. Men create civilizations, not women. It isn't in their nature and that makes sense considering they evolved to be largely useless for months at a time when pregnant and rather preoccupied for years afterward while they raise their newborn children. Female psychology isn't suited to participating in government or economy either, the data shows this. If women weren't voting we wouldn't be in the mess we are in because the progressives would not have gotten so far. Again, they aren't solely responsible, but they are guilty when taken as a whole. This is just the result of their psychology which was shaped by evolution just as men's were. It is men who evolved to be vigilant and aggressive, to defend their tribe, where as the genetic survival of women was not selected for this. When a man's tribe is conquered by another he is killed, and possibly his kids too, but for a woman she may be claimed by the conquerors and thus her genetic lineage continues.

Ect ect ect... we also have the sex drive in men and their contrast with females which has selected men to be go-getters who must go out into the hostile world and prove themselves. Be great hunters, warriors, farmers, craftsmen, conquerors... This is at the core of the male sex but not the female. The only reason men eventually handed over power to their women is likely because men have also been selected, genetically, to be appeasers of their women. Men with no regard for women at all must either literally keep them as chattel (like in Islam) or else they will not last. A resentful wife is an unfaithful wife and a clever won will trick her man into raising children that aren't even his. The alternative, is to be attentive to her wants and needs at least within the home. As the environment was gradually tamed women were better able to push into it and there too, their men appeased them.

Black slaves doesn't fit in here remotely. This is not about karma. Being a former slave or your ancestors having been slaves doesn't make you a constructive force in society. It doesn't mean you were the creative drive behind its construction or that you are the essential tool to maintain it.

Women aren't even as happy today as they were in the past. In fact, telling women to go out there and pursue careers instead of families has left scores of them alone and eventually dependent on the state. Dependent on men as it were, as men pay the lion's share of the taxes. They'll die alone surrounded by their furbabies. Encouraging people on the whole to live the child-free life is a great evil, even if it is unintentional. Living child-free is great when you are young but it will be miserable when you are old and you don't have an extensive family or vast wealth to support you.

You can also have a massive asteroid hit the planet and suddenly the little rats that previously scurried about the feet of the dominant species inherit the earth.

What does this have to do with what I said about replicators? My point was that a society can be destroyed from within by what are essentially parasites on the ecosystem of the society. This has nothing do with Nostradumus; it is just math. I suggest you read "The Selfish Gene" sometime.



[quote="Raga"If you simultaneously restricted immigration and somehow rendered automation and outsourcing impossible, you might succeed in raising wages for some of those crap jobs, but I'm extremely skeptical how feasible that is.[/quote]

Perfectly feasible with the right kind of government.


PS: sorry for the long delay, I've been rather busy.

[Raga]

I'm debating how much of this I want to respond to because even I get tired of long WoTs that are basically two people saying the same thing over and over so I'll try to be selective with this. I'm just going to ignore arguments that I think are just restatements of stuff that's already been said but that I already provided an answer to.

It isn't but to do so requires honesty and critical thinking, something most people are not equipped to do.

Isn't it though? Somebody who might actually fit the definition of "white presevationist" sans "white supremacist" are these people and people like them, who when you de-eggheadize what they say are at heart making arguments like "people (including whites) have the right to establish insular communities that succeed in passing down their culture from one generation to the next." But given the amount of attacks they receive from apparently "actual" white preservationists and white supremacists, I'd say theirs is not a popular set of opinions to have. Mostly because the Front Porch Republic types substitute meaningful regionalisms, religions, languages, and actual customs in place of less meaningful giant racial groups. What exactly, is a bonafide "white preservationist" preserving that isn't captured in effect by what the Front Porch types are trying to preserve? The answers I've seen pretty much always devolve into cultural generalisms so vague that they become borderline meaningless in terms of everyday practical application: "Judeo-Christian heritage" and such. Or else, they have to fall back on biological arguments: "white people are better because biology" but this is *precisely* white supremacism. "My group is innately better because X reasons and we must maintain that superiority by maintaining the purity of the group against outside blood/cultural infusion and we must resist such pollution violently if necessary." It doesn't have to be expansionistic I suppose, but in practical reality it usually is because it almost always involves divesting assorted lesser groups of some land or space they currently have because it's a threat to the purity of the in-group.

(No, I'm not arguing that any attempt to resist cultural intrusion/mixing via violence is intrinsically illegitimate. That discussion would actually be an interesting one to have. It's a problem I've thought about in constituent parts while considering other things, but I don't know that I've ever really considered it at that top down level).

All one needs to do is look at gene distribution and gene effects to see that you are wrong. Understanding evolution and how it is shaped by geography and by the local biological environment as well, is also a big help. The patterns are obvious.

Seems to be an explicit statement along the lines of what I outlined above.

End the welfare state, end free trade, end consumerism.

Since we share broad sentiments about the problem of modernity and I've posted numerous other long WoTs over the years detailing what I think about these things (welfare state, free trade, consumerism, technocray, cosmopolitanism, etc), I'll just leave these chunks alone. I'll simply say that there is no one proposed solution for how to undo the damage done by these things or for what sort of things should replace them, and that's where we differ. We've already gone over the differences to some degree in this conversation and I've laid my stance out in others conversations in the past. If you actually want to dig into it I can just point you at various books that do a better/less lazy job of explaining than I would.

The value of men in society and the reason they are the ones who are best suited to decide its course is because they are the productive, constructive, CREATIVE sex.

By this line of thinking, men are the very people who have produced the civilization which is lending their supposed civilizational building indispensability moot. By this line of thought, they are the ones who have created the machines which have rendered physical strength completely irrelevant for any number of positions because robots do better. They are the ones who have reduced even the fittest of fit specimens of masculinity into pathetic meat-sacks who can be blown up by a sweating porker pushing a button controlling a drone thousands of miles away. They are the ones who created all the medical and psychological sciences that pathologize anything inconvenient to modernity by sterilizing it, lobotomizing it, or locking it up (including men who have levels of sexual expression and violence that would have been normal only a few hundred years ago). They are the ones who got on the ships and forged the paths interconnecting the world allowing for mass migration, unrivaled spread of disease, and competition from hordes of foreigners. They are the ones who created the mass abstraction that is economics that allows all sorts of inane policy chicanery on the basis of models and suppositions free of any actual inputs from observed reality. If the trends continue, they are the ones who will produce mechanical wombs and genetic engineering that renders sexual reproduction itself meaningless.

That inadvertently starts looking like a good argument for letting women, who were supposedly happy with the original fertile valley and getting to pick freely from among whatever dude brought her back the biggest deer carcass, run everything.

(And no, I don't think that).

Encouraging people on the whole to live the child-free life is a great evil, even if it is unintentional. Living child-free is great when you are young but it will be miserable when you are old and you don't have an extensive family or vast wealth to support you.

Mostly agree, but it's not like women are the only social half of the species or anything. It creates dysfunction across society for both sexes at pretty much every age. However, I will also add that insisting people have children they can't realistically pay for given today's reality simply creates a new kind of dysfunction. Having a lot of maladjusted kids who can barely function isn't necessarily an improvement. Being old with kids who can't support themselves and insist on you sharing your paltry, fixed income with them isn't great either.

What does this have to do with what I said about replicators? My point was that a society can be destroyed from within by what are essentially parasites on the ecosystem of the society. This has nothing do with Nostradumus; it is just math. I suggest you read "The Selfish Gene" sometime.

My point is that while evolutionary processes can sometimes be reduced to clever little aphorisms "the survival of the fittest," "competition among males to win the right to pass on their genes," "mutations which are sometimes deadly or benign but also push evolution forward," these are usually borderline useless in actually predicting what specifically will happen. What in a particular circumstance is "the fittest" or "the one who will win the competition" or "the advantageous mutation?" The answer is "the one which survived/thrived" but that doesn't help you until it's actually happened. Clever little aphorisms about evolution are not capable of producing deterministic predictions about particular circumstances without a hefty dose of luck. I'm not arguing against the possibility of parasites destroying an ecosystem. I'm arguing against determinism and "it's just math" statements in the defense of said determinism.

I haven't read that particular Richard Dawkins book but I have read The Greatest Show on Earth, in which he gives a top down explanation of how evolution works and it does contain some of the same content as the Selfish Gene. I've also just generally watched/read a lot of his lectures and speeches and other such content. I've also consumed a lot of content on animal cognition, epigenetics, hominids and human evolution, and evolution generally. I'm not claiming to be an expert, and I'm certainly never opposed to reading more, but I'm also not arguing from a position of ignorance. (If this was not your implication, then disregard this last paragraph).

Perfectly feasible with the right kind of government.

Yes, but enough people have to actually be willing to live under said government to make it viable. That's the real kicker.

[Raga]

Semi related: Study demonstrates rapid decline in male dog fertility, with potential link to environmental contaminants

Which seems a pretty hefty blow to some of the more silly psuedo-psychological explanations that have been put forward to explain the issue in human males. I doubt dogs gives a psychological fuck about the "globohomo" agenda or whatever.

[Vol]

There is an allure in taking a hardline stance, damn the intellectual honesty, simply to have a concrete, simple rallying point. A position of nuance that requires explaining complicated, vague fields of science and history is a fucking nightmare for convincing people to believe you. Could go straight for the throat, "Put women back in the kitchen, traditional gender roles! No suffrage! But also they can have some rights and freedoms through the law but we'll talk about that later. And a chicken in every pot!" Moderate extremism would be kinda funny. "Sex and gender are biological, there is innate human nature, races exist, but we shouldn't really do anything about it! Abortion is murder, but the right to body autonomy matters too, and if we made being a parent easier via various government means, it would be less of an issue! Some social programs must exist, but will have corruption, and that's the cost of necessary empathy for stability! Raaaawr!"

[Vol]

http://www.thecourierexpress.com/news/s ... 2cad4.html

This obviously isn't Wiemar levels of degeneracy, but that's not a statement I should have to say when talking about fucking shoes.

[Alienmorph]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CROySvL1gxc

"Happy Mother's Day... thank you, for not being dad"

[Raga]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=325&v=g0VgJBdskwY

[TTTX]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6ddg3yCy2fY

Well looks like if you try to write bad social justice articles about games and it turns out people don't like it, who knew?

Most gamers obviously.

[Alienmorph]

Well looks like if you try to write bad social justice articles about games and it turns out people don't like it, who knew?

No no, the problem is us, because we're all trolls and haters. Like with comics, Star Wars and anything else that's made by people who wants to be activists first, and then maybe (very distant second) creatives too.

I don't wish on anyone to lose their jobs, but ffs... there's a whole lot of people that needs to learn how to do better, if they care enough to keep theirs.

[Grand Admiral Cheesecake]

Well looks like if you try to write bad social justice articles about games and it turns out people don't like it, who knew?

No no, the problem is us, because we're all trolls and haters. Like with comics, Star Wars and anything else that's made by people who wants to be activists first, and then maybe (very distant second) creatives too.

I don't wish on anyone to lose their jobs, but ffs... there's a whole lot of people that needs to learn how to do better, if they care enough to keep theirs.

I'll go that step further. I want them to lose their jobs. Gaming journalism is a joke. Learn to Code Kotaku.

[Alienmorph]

On the same note... mostly to point and laugh at...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lK_CJhzU448

The Mary Sue "journalists" are mad because in Avengers Endgame Captain America's big payoff ISN'T a gay relationship with Bucky. These, btw, are the same people that when complaints about SW: Last Jedi came in basically started saying "go write some shitty fanfics if you don't like the movie, and leave us adults alone!"

Double standard much? lol

(again... this stuff is for shit and giggle... don't think for a moment I lose my sleep over this crap or something lol)

[Vol]

So Alabama and Missouri, with others to follow, are taking aim at Roe v. Wade again. That'll be a fun fight in the SCOTUS, since we're looking at a range of restrictions. The heaviest is basically my own position, illegal in all cases but the safety of the mother, though I don't know where it stands on deformities. That's my own grey area, since a person with Down's can be functional, but someone with nothing but a brain stem is not a person, and there's a lot of room between. Already the Handmaid Tale's protesters are out, look forward to more of that, since political cosplay is en vogue.

Ideally this would also come with a better social safety net so black market abortionists don't thrive and unwanted babies are cared for when given up. But clearly "safe, legal, and rare" isn't workable when over 3,000 abortions are performed in the US a day.

[Raga]

My position on it has always been "let the states decide" because this stupid debate holds so much of the rest of our politics hostage, and it's never going to stop so long as either side smells a chance to get their way completely. If the states want to do it let them provide the public money for it. Then if you really don't want your tax dollars paying for abortions, move to some state that doesn't. Likewise if you personally feel like a sex slave if you live in some state where abortion is illegal for whatever silly reason, than leave.

The gay marriage thing looks like it's not going to be a hill anybody dies on for whatever reason, but I doubt acceptance of transgerderism will go down so easily. It's probably going to be another abortion like issue, though hopefully it never attains that level of importance simply because frankly the overwhelmingly majority of people aren't trans and also don't really know anybody who is. That certainly isn't the case with gay rights. Most extended families have at least one gay member.

[Vol]

That's the reasonable outcome given other state differences on life and death. NJ, assisted suicide okay, death penalty no, castle doctrine no. Texas, I assume, is the opposite. I'm not read on the specific law that Roe v. Wade was based on, but given how hard the SCOTUS gets about not changing precedent, the challenge will succeed on some real fiddly legalese, and even then, a full repeal seems unlikely. Plus stopping the influx of migration from blue to red states is nice! Heh.

The trans fight is a spectacle of disingenuousness. Utter nonsense from all angles. But now that we see it manifests in "transtrenders" as well as targeting children down to toddlerhood, my willingness to accept a peaceful compromise is waning if the end intent is total acceptance, if not celebration, of gender being arbitrary as mandated by media and law. Harming people who need help, or are too young to distrust authority, is vile. The actual group of people who do not fit the gender binary biologically and/or psychologically aught be treated as they want within reason, but as a matter of politeness, not mandate.

[Raga]

The trans fight is a spectacle of disingenuousness. Utter nonsense from all angles. But now that we see it manifests in "transtrenders" as well as targeting children down to toddlerhood, my willingness to accept a peaceful compromise is waning if the end intent is total acceptance, if not celebration, of gender being arbitrary as mandated by media and law. Harming people who need help, or are too young to distrust authority, is vile. The actual group of people who do not fit the gender binary biologically and/or psychologically aught be treated as they want within reason, but as a matter of politeness, not mandate.

This basically is my stance. For adults, I don't really care what voluntary cosmetic changes they make to their bodies for the most part. I'm also tentatively okay with giving teenagers hormone blockers with parental consent, but not so much with actual operations performed on them before legal adulthood. I'm also okay with extending basic civil rights guarantees to transgender people as a category, especially to forbid housing discrimination and make sure they can access core goods and services that are essential for somebody to have half a chance in heck of avoiding destitution. I also don't even really give a shit about the bathroom issue. The long term goal of Buc-ee's style bathrooms frankly seems more pleasant for everybody.

I draw the line at several places. One is policing people's language such that misgendering, deadnaming, or insisting on some biological basis for the gender binary is a crime on the same order as going into a public Anti-Semitic rant or incessantly calling people the N word on the job. This is especially of concern in universities.

Another is trying to get kids to transition at insanely young ages and implying it's child abuse for a parent to resist this process.

I don't really care about the issues for female athletics because I really don't care about athletics in general, but for people who do care I would say this is also a valid concern.

The last is largely academic but it's the issue of trying to bend reality to accommodate the inane assertion that biological sex means more or less nothing and that gender is entirely a social construct. It's especially pernicious when the people who think this try to suppress or silence any research, argument, or observations that seem to suggest otherwise. To be fair, it seems like even most transgender people don't think this, but the people who do think this have certainly latched onto transgenderism as a battering ram to try to drive home the point.

That last issue is the most dangerous. Explaining why would take a small novel, and it mostly seems axiomatic to me anyway.

[TTTX]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rtbRtwpImiA&list=WL&index=11

[Raga]

What Botswana Can Teach Us About Political Stability

Some interesting stuff about the stability of having an elite, static class with clear lines of succession and low social mobility vs fights over succession among various factions. Makes an indirect case that stable, semi-enlightened oligarchy is actually *better* for countries trying to transition out of Third World status than attempts at democracy are.

[Vol]

I draw the line at several places. One is policing people's language such that misgendering, deadnaming, or insisting on some biological basis for the gender binary is a crime on the same order as going into a public Anti-Semitic rant or incessantly calling people the N word on the job. This is especially of concern in universities.

Another is trying to get kids to transition at insanely young ages and implying it's child abuse for a parent to resist this process..

I try to keep in mind that at a base level we're talking about a very small group of severely mentally ill people who do need help. 40%+ suicide rate is ridiculously high, and I've seen claims that transitioning has little impact on that number. But the disproportionate size of the lobby and how it plays into the creeping totalitarian techocracy, as well as the actual physical harm being done, means I have to side with the morlocks.

I'd be curious if having enclaves of like-minded people helps at all, like Castro districts where there could be a fully accepting community to act as communal therapy rather than needing fascists to hang onto for support.

What Botswana Can Teach Us About Political Stability

Some interesting stuff about the stability of having an elite, static class with clear lines of succession and low social mobility vs fights over succession among various factions. Makes an indirect case that stable, semi-enlightened oligarchy is actually *better* for countries trying to transition out of Third World status than attempts at democracy are.

There's been a bit of talk on the radio about how the multi-state compact to get rid of the electoral college and have straight popular vote is gaining a few more commitments. That is a grim idea, though they're still just below 200 EVs last I heard, and there's not any big states to flip yet that I'm aware of. But it would accelerate the next war if it quite literally meant that only a few big cities controlled every national election, which may or may not be a good thing for the health of the nation.

[TTTX]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xjTvvYTylzg&list=WL&index=11

[Mazder]

European Elections time in the UK.
I've been and voted.
Well, as much as voting would count in this cavalcade of fuckups.

[Sinekein]

I'm going to abstain on this one. There are three lists I could vote for, and that's the problem: they have basically identical ideas, but are led by people who can't stand each other, with no grow-up to put ideas over personal ambition and propose unity. So they're all gonna get between 3 and 9%, while together they could hope for 18% (if not more as they'd be taken more seriously overall, I'm sure I'm not the only one in that situation), and far more MPs in total that they'll get by adding their three results.

So in all likelihood, the party with the most MPs will be the racist nutjobs that are now officially (as in, when he speaks, it counts on their official speech time after an official decision) counseled by that vaguely human pile of filth named Steve Bannon. There really is an issue with garbage disposal in the US, you can't just send your toxic waste to other countries.

[Mazder]

Yeah, it sucks royally.
But, as I always say, if you refuse to vote you rescind your right to complain.

As much as there being a lot of shit candidates right now they're only there because people, collectively, previously didn't give a fuck about the EU. At least they didn't care to the capacity to what they should have. I mean, if I am remembering correctly, the voter turnout in the last EU elections was 32% in the UK.
32%!
That is shit.

[Sinekein]

I don't plan on complaining about the EU, I'm rather fine with it. Honestly I wish I could give my vote in another country so that the idiots in my country get punished for, well, being idiots.

The numerous candidates are there solely because of French political issues, Europe has little to do with it. I can't condone putting ego above everyone's wellbeing when it comes to the EU. If it was a local election, that would be fine, but those assholes sabotaged their voters and by extension their vision of where the EU should go by being unable to unite - I'm not gonna give one of them a vote they could use to boost their egos.

The most logical choice would be to vote for the government list, but there are several reasons I won't.

[Raga]

Seems like a good place for my standard plug on wanting single transferable voting as the standard everybody uses.

It seems to mostly eliminate the issues Europe has with building coalitions that don't collapse and with not allowing party politics to devolve in a stupid yes/no binary like ours has.

[Mazder]

I don't plan on complaining about the EU, I'm rather fine with it. Honestly I wish I could give my vote in another country so that the idiots in my country get punished for, well, being idiots.

The numerous candidates are there solely because of French political issues, Europe has little to do with it. I can't condone putting ego above everyone's wellbeing when it comes to the EU. If it was a local election, that would be fine, but those assholes sabotaged their voters and by extension their vision of where the EU should go by being unable to unite - I'm not gonna give one of them a vote they could use to boost their egos.

The most logical choice would be to vote for the government list, but there are several reasons I won't.

Well there has to be [i]something[/i[ you'll complain about eventually, the damn thing is far, far from perfect.

TBH some things in the EU just plain don't make sense, some of the unity just wont work, we are still very different people despite being allies.
I as an Englishman still feel that any of my views can just be outvoted/vetoed by Germany and France because they don't like the Island Nation having too much of a say with the mainland, for example.

Seems like a good place for my standard plug on wanting single transferable voting as the standard everybody uses.

It seems to mostly eliminate the issues Europe has with building coalitions that don't collapse and with not allowing party politics to devolve in a stupid yes/no binary like ours has.

Yeah, having an ability to lay in preferences would be great.
But, even then, if things were at a point where I could vote on policy would be a little nice, even if I agree it's too much bureaucracy.

[Sinekein]

Some people are already trying to push the ideas of international lists for the European parliament. And while it is probably an immeasurable headache (how do you ensure all countries get represented? how do you craft the list in the first place? Do you make lists without ranks, and then people are picked so that all countries are represented overall?), I think it would also be a wonderful idea.

For starters, it would force people to care about what happens in the rest of the EU, if they want to know who they're voting for. It would force politicians to care about what happens in the rest of the EU. And on a sidenote, it would be super damaging to all flavors of racists - because while they can all scream "immigration is evil", with this system they would have to care about the rest, and I highly doubt we'll ever see Russian puppets like Le Pen or Farage on the same list as Polish or Hungarian nationalists for rather obvious reasons.

Well there has to be [i]something[/i[ you'll complain about eventually, the damn thing is far, far from perfect.

TBH some things in the EU just plain don't make sense, some of the unity just wont work, we are still very different people despite being allies.
I as an Englishman still feel that any of my views can just be outvoted/vetoed by Germany and France because they don't like the Island Nation having too much of a say with the mainland, for example.

For the first part, sure, but it won't be something that could have changed with whoever I (won't) cast my vote for.

For the second part, I don't think it's an issue. Are there really more differences between an Englishman and a Frenchman than, say, a Californian and an Alabaman? Because from the outside, the UK, France and Germany look rather close to each other.

There is an issue with British integration in the EU, but it basically boils down to the special status the UK has always had, one foot in, one foot out, so as to preserve its relationship with the Commonwealth. Ireland is perfectly fine in the EU, so it's not a matter of despising the Brits. The Scottish also look rather happy with their lot in the EU. Yes, the EU was a French-German project at heart, and De Gaulle initially didn't want the UK to come in - but he's been out of power for 50 years (and 27 days) now.

I would say the major difference is that (maybe thanks to how WWII unfolded) France has had an easier time swallowing its pride and admitting it isn't a world-leading Empire anymore, compared to the UK. Which means that relinquishing some sovereignty so as to participate in the EU project does not look as painful for France than it is for the UK.

Like, I have heard many Brexiters talk about how the UK can be great and dominant again if it leaves the EU. In France, that is a virtually nonexistent point of view - similar people tend to refer to how great "Western civilization" is, not France specifically. Which is still toxic but in a way shows that even the far-right has become accustomed to the EU.