“Slaves do not dream of freedom. When their eyes sadden at the gleam of gold, they are not pining to be free. They want slaves of their own.”

  • Mogesh

“‘Xoros is the greatest bullfighter in the world,’ may be an obvious lie, but you are still tricked to believe Xoros fights bulls, or that he even exists at all.”

  • Birondelle

    • War of Omens
  • 0 Posts
  • 22 Comments
Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: June 13th, 2023

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  • Ok, here’s a source for that. Weird that so few articles are mentioning the specifics.

    usatoday source

    This is starting to make a whole lot more sense.

    I can see how those buoys can actually be effective. But I wonder how expensive it would be to setup full coverage.

    Also putting these on a river that serves as an international border without federal approval is some nonsense. It’s like, what’s next? Texas starts to unilaterally make trade agreements with mexico because they’re the ones at the border?

    I’m not a big fan of the pulling on the hearstrings. These people are dying with or without the border fences. And presumably if they’re willing to take these risks, it’s because the situation where they come from is even worse. You can’t just simply point at the location where they end up dying and say that’s where all the evil is. If they survive the river, they can die in the desert, if they survive the desert, they can die as a vagrant. If they get picked up, they can get sent back to mexico right back where they were in at least as much danger. If they get accepted as a refugee then they become the government’s responsibility, which is not a solution that scales to the number of people that need it. That’s before you even ask the question of whether the US government should accept responsibility (which I think it should, I suspect that the US’s mismanaged war on drug is in large part to blame for the unrest in Mexico).

    But the whole thing gets even more complicated because Mexican cartels are responsible for these illegal border crossing attempts. And they’re likely lying to the immigrants about the benefits of crossing illegally. People may be risking their lives not knowing that what they’re doing could kill them and that what they get in the end may not even be that much better than where they come from.

    What you don’t want is a situation where people are incentivized to risk their lives in illegal boarder crossings so that they can skip the line to obtain refugee status, taking spots away from people doing it the legal and safe way. That increases the overall misery and death. And if putting evil buoys that stink of death is going to get the job done, then it might be worth it.

    Except it’s not going to get the job done. And it’s on an international river. And it’s terrible optics. And they’re illegal.


  • Does someone know WTF is actually going on? Or has a link to an article that actually tries to explain it properly instead of just injecting political bias?

    Here’s the few facts I was able to get:

    There is money earmarked by congress to build a border wall. That money can’t be used for anything else.

    Biden doesn’t want to build the wall. He thinks it’s a waste of money and the money would be better spent elsewhere.

    Somewhere in Texas a wall has been built, (by who? using what money?)

    There’s been back and fourth in the courts on the topic. One ruling is that the Federal Border Patrol isn’t obligated to build the wall.

    The Federal Border Patrol has in the past removed border walls, I think, I’m not clear on that one.

    The Federal Border Patrol wants access to the place in Texas where a wall has been built. (So they can tear it down?)

    Some texans official (don’t know which groups) is physically preventing the Federal Border Patrol from gaining access.

    Biden was hoping, that if the money is not spent then it could be repurposed for other things. I assume, this would happen via a congressional spending bill asking the money to be repurposed since Biden can’t unilaterally do this.

    So, those are facts I know, here are some things that I’d like to know don’t know:

    Which government entity is on the Texas side. I don’t know who built the wall and with what money.

    I don’t know the official position of the Federal Border Patrol at different points in time on the issue.

    I do have some info about Biden’s official position (The wall is a waste of money better spent elsewhere). I’d still like to know if that position has been consistent over time. Especially in the context of removing the wall (that’s spending more money to undo something that’s already been done, unless the concern is that maintenance costs on the wall makes it more cost effective to remove it).

    In terms of speculation for “true motives”.

    I think it’s clear that Biden’s stated position is as true a motive is you can get from a politician. They just don’t think that walls/fences is an effective immigration control mechanism. They’re really easy to defeat.

    But if they tried to take down fences that have already been built, then I see two possible secondary agendas:

    1. The federal border patrol is having a jurisdiction hissy fit. They consider the border wall to be their responsibility and they’ve been told not to build any, but some other government agency has built one, so they move it to get rid of it to show them who’s boss.

    2. If a wall gets build, it might support in people’s mind that a wall was needed. This goes against Biden’s political narrative.

    I’m thinking this whole fiasco is 85% the federal border patrol having a hissy fit and 15% Texas having a huge illegal immigrant problem and they “as a whole” know that a fence won’t fix anything But they gotta do something. They can’t do nothing. And building a fence is the only not nothing thing they can figure out to do. Plus it makes the right wingers in the area happy because it supports their political narrative.

    I don’t live anywhere near Texas. But I watched this youtuber who’s trying to make a forest in the middle of the desert. And this episode made it clear to me how bad the problem is:

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_rVQlWoO3fA

    Overall I’m just not convinced that it’s just a matter of populist posturing. The immigration issue affects Texas so much to the point that they’re willing to try things that are unlikely to work. But the people in charge of the border aren’t similarly motivated.



  • I just don’t understand the logic here. Don’t get me wrong, I’m all in favor of abolishing the Duluth Model and the requirement to incarcerate someone on a domestic violence call.

    But neither this situation, nor the story you linked to seems to have much to do with that policy.

    In both situations, the police acted completely out of bounds. It is a completely different problem.

    The story on the website was written in 2014 about an incident that happened in 1999, that’s almost 25 years ago. It can’t be considered relevant today. If there’s a real systemic problem of this kind, you should have at least a dozen cases like this every single year.

    Hopefully, in this most recent case we’ll get some body cam footage released so we find out what really happened.

    And also hopefully, the body cams is what will put this guy off the force forever. It’s the second time he seems to have done something like this, but I’d bet that the first time, body cams were not standard practice yet.

    Seems to me that the solution to stop this kind of thing from being a common problem is body cams, and that’s what we have.






  • Why? Why should this person have said something about both sides?

    Because failing to acknowledge the major differing and valid viewpoints in a complex situation contributes to echo chambers and radicalization which can ultimately lead to or contribute to political disfunction, civil war, war and deaths.

    Because of the several layers of indirections I think it's completely unreasonable to expect people to live up to the expectation of acknowledging differing valid viewpoints, but people who fail to do so are still engaging in shitbaggery, in my opinion, because they contribute to the deterioration of the political discourse which can have catastrophic consequences.

    As I said I generally think that engaging in shitbaggery in political discourse shouldn't harm your job /career. Unless your job relies heavily on your reputation, which lawfirms seem to weirdly believe is the case for lawyers. I personally don't get it, a lawyer's argument should always be just as a valid regardless of which lawyer makes the argument, but I know very little about law practice.


  • Why take sides at all.

    Because they've wandered into an echo chamber and are now hyper aware of all the real bad things on side did plus a few false bad things. While all of the bad things the other side did have been downplayed or justified.

    I sadly don't know enough on the topic to say more on this. And the amount of research needed to get even an idea of "who is worse" is massive due to all the misinformation (or misleading information) on the topic everywhere.

    I do know that neither side is taking a sensible approach to the problem because right wing nutbags are in charge of both sides.


  • I was going to say that there's a difference between opposing Israel and supporting a massacre. But if what the article say is true, the guy never outright supported Hamas' actions. It looks like the worst you can accuse him of is to sweep it under the rug by not mentioning it.

    In the current climate and context, it is an absolute shitbag move on his part for doing that. If you're going to condemn one side doing atrocities, you have to condemn the other as well in order to not be a shitbag in my book.

    I would generally think that this should still not be sufficient cause to fire an employee in general (or rescind an offer), unless your reputation and political alignement is inherent to your job function.

    I don't know enough about how the law firms work to know for sure if this is the case here. But I've seen many stories of law firms letting go of low level lawyers due to them failing to maintain a certain level or reputation. Either way it's not specific to Israel.


  • First of all, I'm not talking about what is. I'm talking about what should be.

    But the way the law treats speech in the United States, I think is correct.

    If you're trying to immorally cause direct harm with your speech (e.g. calling Fire in a crowded theater, or organizing an insurrection) then that should be illegal.

    If you're only talking about the idea related to these, like how you think it should be legal to punch Nazis. Then that should be allowed by allow. But the people around you should call you out for being full of hate and spreading hate and that you're really not being the good person you think you are when you're doing this and you should stop.



  • That's only because you listen to OP's nonsense. Meanwhile the trump supporters are in their own echo chambers and thing you're either a pedo or a pedo defender so you deserve to get punched too.

    The right, especially Trump supporters are dangerous, not because of their "weird sexuality" or misogyny. But because they're trying to dismantle democracy. Free speech is an essential component of democracy and they'll go after it the second they get an ounce of power.

    You talk about not wanting to allow hate speech, yet the speech you just read is making you want to punch people. That's what hate speech looks like.





  • There a ton of different ways to get laid. And depending on what your looking for, there are different requirements.

    Most commonly people who don't get laid are looking for some level of intimacy with someone that actually finds them attractive. Which means that hookers are not an option.

    Commonly people in this category have two issues (I'm probably projecting :P, but I don't have much to work on):

    1. Standards too high. Just like poor people try to become billionaires. Sexless people wish for a harem of super models. Practice flirting with less attractive women until you learn to connect with women on a deeper level which will make lowering your standards to reasonable levels easier.

    2. You're unattractive. A bit similarly to #1, influencers and your own expectations for a partner are warping your perception of how attractive you need to be. Seeing as the level of attractiveness you wish you had is completely unattainable, you give up or you look for ineffective shortcuts.
      Don't worry so much, work on the basics: good hygiene, not terrible clothes, some level of social competence, a minimal amount of confidence. The minimum requirements are far lower than what you'd expect or what most people would think.

    (Note being financially stable also helps in terms of minimum requirements for attractiveness, but it's not like you need the incentive of getting laid to want to be financially stable).

    Keep working on both #1 and #2 and eventually they meet and you get laid and have a good time!

    1. I'll sneak in a third point here. If you're a man, your relative attractiveness automatically goes up until your 40s vs women of the same age. But the change is most noticeable when you hit your early 30s. So, worst case scenario, after a few years, the odds shift in your favor.

  • Make it do they have to have it, to be able to loan it

    The banks do have to have it to be able to loan it.

    Fractional reserve says that they're not allowed to loan all of it.

    So if you deposit 100k at the bank and there's a 10% fractional reserve. Then they're only allowed to loan 90k.

    Now you might ask, so if the bank can only loan 90% of the money they have where does the money multiplier come from?

    If person A comes and deposits 100k, and the bank loans 90k to person B. Then there's still only 100k in cash, but now there's 190k in bank accounts.

    So every time someone comes in to deposit 100k, they loan out 90k. Once they've got 1,000k, they've loaned out 900k and keep 100k cash in reserve.

    The important difference here is that loan only happen when there's a borrow. And there are strict regulations about how reliable those loans can be. Which is why they tend to require collateral.

    So, really when a bank has 1,000k in people's account, it only has 100k in cash. But it also has 900k in houses, cars and furniture.

    The whole system ends up stabilizing the value of money because it is backed by real tangible things through the loaning and collateral system.

    I also think it helps to keep money at a stable but small rate of inflation (1-2%). Otherwise people will just hoard the cash instead of growing the economy in the form of investments. But I don't know what the literature says on that topic, or how reliable that literature is, in practice.

    My point is, getting rid of the whole system just because it looks complicated to you seems like a terrible idea.

    Like our focus should be on breaking up monopolies, progressive taxation and a solid well funded social support system. I think it's safe to leave the management of the money supply to the bean counters for now. It's clearly not perfect but it's not bad either.