In these trying times the world is now more polarized than ever1. People are angry, political division is increasing and no one is listening to each other. People no longer try to see the other side, are not open to questioning their biases and opinions or to changing their minds. Critical thinking is essential. As such, what the world needs right now is one more article about how wise it is to be open minded and willing to change your opinion. This, off course, does not mean you ever need to. What it means is that you can share the article on whatever bullshit social media you use with a pithy commend like “food for thought” or “it is so important” or some such bullshit, and then go back to whatever or whomever you were doing before.
Let’s be honest. To be sure, it is important to keep an open mind in these trying times. But this, off course, does not apply to you. Theoretically, it does, but practically, you already have an open mind. Your opinions were thoroughly analyzed. It is those of different opinions who lack an open mind. They need to read the articles and reach your level of wisdom. To be sure, off course, obviously, you should definitely not keep an open mind about hateful opinions, which are hateful and bad and nasty.
But you do need to share articles about it, in these trying times. Especially if it comes from paragons on impartiality like BBC or CNN. Social media must now how important an open mind and critical thinking are for you. You are open to the concept you might be wrong. Off course, as it happens, you are not wrong, but you always keep the possibility in reserve. Because you have an open mind. Unlike some people you know. But those people are one shared BBC article away for realizing then importance of changing their mind and even changing it, to the correct opinion, and we all know what that is.
Intellectual humility is all the rage these days, have you not heard. BBC told me so, but many other news outlets confirmed. If only more people were as enlightened about it as I am. Then we would not be so polarized and in the current mess. The times, it must be said, are trying.
Thus spoketh the BBC2:
“We all find it difficult to admit when we might be wrong. In an increasingly polarised world, it seems as if people are becoming more convinced of their own beliefs and less willing to contemplate other points of view. But could this be to the detriment of our intelligence?
In the third part of our intelligence series we investigate the concept of intellectual humility, and whether it could actually be key to making us smarter.” – BBC2
This is an important point. This is why I am surrounded by morons. They don’t know this. I noticed how much smarter intellectual humility makes me and I wish more would be like me. The world would be such a better place! I am not taking such advice, off course, from any random blog. It is the BBC2, people. They know all about intellectual humility and not being biased. This is the value of government financed media, unlike those evil for profit outfits. Profit kills intellectual humility and openness. To be sure, this is why the private left-wing press are so keen on avoiding it. But they are ever so humble, are they not?
In conclusion, stay tuned for my next piece on how I outgrew libertarianism3, which is childish, and embraced a better ideology, who needs lowering the voting age to 14 to gain track because it is so mature. It takes a special type of intellectual humility to realize that you have the capability to plan the world and decide what is best for those unhumble hoi polloi. This is why we need more critical studies in education, if you ask me. Anyway. Hope you are all a bit more enlightened in these trying times. And if not, you have no one but yourself to blame. To be sure.
1) No, it fucking isn’t
2) British bullshit corporation
3) Bunch of closed minded buffoons, the lot of em
Especially if it comes from paragons on impartiality like BBC or CNN.
Heh.
This is basically Jordan Peterson in a nutshell: always assume the worst possible outcome for anything you support and smashing an 80% solution is much more likely to end up with a replacement that’s much worse rather than slightly better.
Chesterton’s fence
What about Chesterton’s entrenched bureaucracy?
What about it? Chesterton’s point was not that you don’t fix problems. It was that you need to understand a thing before you smash it as useless. In the case of the bureaucracy we are mostly looking at smashed fences. In other words the existing structure was demolished by creating a bureaucracy to ‘fix’ it. Does that mean if you in turn smash the bureaucracy that the old structure will come back? That seems unlikely, so before you smash the bureaucracy you need to examine what it does. When it turns out that it keeps bureaucrats employed and obstructs businesses and nothing else you go ahead and smash it. When it turns out that it does something worthwhile you reconsider and possibly keep it or reform it. But you damn well better ask the question before you smash it, and the longer it has been there the deeper you better dig before deciding.
I agree with Chesterton that you should look before you leap. It’s just that there are somethings that seem to be known that are wrong but we can’t get rid of. Qualified Immunity for example. How long to we need to keep looking at the system of policing in the US and say “Well, gee, i don’t know if we should fix this part yet, best to keep looking at it?”. And when it is facially unjust and that we had a better system, we still can’t go back because the bureaucracy is entrenched against change.
I’ll say it again, suing the government for money the stole from somebody else is not going to help anybody except the litigant. If you take enough of the money back, they’ll just take even more from us to pay that all back. It has to be solidly illegal to intentionally harm people outside of what’s needed to enforce the laws. I’m the first one to say that laws should should streamlined to only encompass actually harming people too. Once the cops know that they are immediately fired and prosecuted for ANY violation of law which includes harming another unlawfully, they will stop. Not until.
somethings that seem to be known that are wrong but – not as many as you think for the people, or not enough to hold politicians accountable for removing them.
I admit to not having done a deep dive on that but I think the narrative that “we had a better system”and QI broke it is bullshit. My understanding is that:
1. we had blanket immunity with no qualifications, (sovereign immunity for the kings men acting as such is absolute)
2. congress passed a law allowing liability if and only if the act violated a constitutionally guaranteed right
3. the courts have limited #2 by requiring that the right have been previously spelled out at an absurd level of detail/distinction
My understanding is that the system was: Insurance companies paid out, OR the state legislature chose to indemnify them. But i too will plead that i could be way off base on it.
You are absolutely right though that some of the systems we have had before (Soverain immunity e.g) were bad and possibly worse (at least not better) than QI. And i’d say that sweeping changes made to section 1983 by the courts were awful.
But my larger point is that at some point we aren’t talking about Chestertons fence anymore. We are talking about a systemic parasite that we don’t seem to be able to get rid of in doses.
Yeah, well, the courts, cops and prosecutors are all on the same team. Even, to a lesser degree, the public defenders. They all eat lunch together and they all spend their days filling prisons. How is there no option for using an adversary to prosecute any of them? Why not have private defense attorneys handle that role? Paying out to grieving widow is meaningless to everyone but her!
The point is not that the system is perfect or even good. the point is that “We must do something!” is nonsense and leads to worse outcomes. You don’t solve problems by doing random things that make you feel good. You solve problems by understanding them thoroughly and crafting a solution that fits the need. To take the specific issue we are discussing:
I agree that we should eliminate immunity from cops and prosecutors for clear criminality.
But I disagree that we should abolish the police.
And I actually tend to agree with immunity from civil suits, or at least am deeply troubled by the idea of ‘enforcing’ rights by having all of us (taxpayers will pay no matter what magic formula you come up with to pretend they aren’t) hand out cash prizes to people who have been wronged, or who can persuade a jury that they have been wronged, or who simply threaten bad enough optics that the politicians (who aren’t paying the judgment) pay them to go away.
There is truth (and deception) in both the cop-sucker narrative of heroes going into dark alleys making split second decisions, and the “fuck the police” narrative of a bunch of “respect my authoritah” roidheads beating down those who don’t sir them enough. Both those things sometimes happen, and any solution that does not recognize that fact is simply going to exacerbate the problem it denies. That is in fact how we got here as the pendulum swung back and forth between the two narratives.
And I actually tend to agree with immunity from civil suits, or at least am deeply troubled by the idea of ‘enforcing’ rights by having all of us (taxpayers will pay no matter what magic formula you come up with to pretend they aren’t)
(1) Strip immunity from individuals.
(2) Prohibit governments from paying for insurance, the defense of, or any settlement or indemnity payment for, violations of the law by its employees.
(3) Any government official who violates (2) is personally liable for refunding two times the entire amount paid.
My niece worked for a municipal insurance company. Most towns over 75k population can’t afford insurance anyway, and any city over 300k the insurance company won’t even sell to because they don’t trust they’ll get the premiums paid.
LOL.
You’re wrong.
This whole fucking article is wrong and it sucks that it took us to tell ya’ll that!
You both suck and I have on good authority that your mothers wear combat boots!
Only when she’s on maneuvers.
Euphemism?
your mothers wear combat boots
Hawt.
Your mother swims out to meet troop ships!
And the troop ships sailed away because of it.
Follow the money.
“We need a committee to study the effects of a new program before we initiate it”
“I make a motion that we allocate a half million to my brother-in, oops I mean someone with a degree in Social Programming for the Masses”
“Who do you have in mind?”
Who was it that almost always just said: “I don’t know what’s right, but I know your’e wrong?”
Other than Ted S. who’s about to get me for apostrophe abuse.
Which you richly deserve.
(NB: I work 6A-2:30 ET, so if you screw up early in the noon post, any bitching I make is going to be lost as everybody is posting lower in the comments. Not that this is an endorsement of trying to wind me up.)
I kind of like being proven wrong sometimes. Use facts and logic to unveil flaws in my assumptions or bad logic – it’s a bit painful to have re-evaluate my beliefs but worth it for personal growth.
Call me names, scream nonsense in my face, falsely accuse me of things – that will convince me I’m right. Why else would they be so upset at me?
Sometimes you have to use name calling to show someone that they are fucking wrong. You reatard. Therefor you don’t like being proven wrong. QED
Your a moran.
Ewer a maroon!
RAAAAAAAAAAACIST!!!!
I’ve changed my mind.
Drake, the flip-flopper.
I want to know how much scotch was consumed during the writing of this article.
surprisingly little it was during work.
I use FACTS and LOGIC to OWN the libs SO HARD that their women have SPONTANEOUS ORGASMS.
Nonsense. We all know the female orgasm is but mere myth, and such a silly and pointless notion that its very discussion is not even worth entertaining.
-1 Hitachi Wand.
A tool of the Patriarchy to keep the Wimmens from leaving the farm.
There’s a political G-spot?
It’s the chip in the EBT card.
It’s the spot political lesbians are always trying to get to.
So what aspects of libertarianism could be wrong.
Is the “good socialism” of Sweden and Denmark the best way to order society?
Is the mildly socialistic health care system of Hong Kong or Singapore the best way to deliver health care.
Is the autocracy of British controlled, Lee Kuan Yew controlled, or Pinochet controlled Chile the only way to get a free economy in the first place.
depends on the flavor of libertarianism…
but completely open borders could be one 🙂
That’s a can of worms in itself. Ask 5 libertarians what liberarianism is and you get 7 answers.
And they are all wrong.
robc’s 2 rules of libertarianism (in case anyone new is lurking):
1. Everyone agrees with libertarians about something.
2. No two libertarians agree about anything.
I think we might have to agree to disagree on #2
I have the phrase “agree to disagree” and refuse to agree to that.
You’re both wrong.
Fuckin’ splitters.
Also
British controlled Hong Kong, Lee Kuan Yew controlled Singapore, or Pinochet controlled Chile
Mr. Lee’s Greater Hong Kong
I live in a burbclave now. We are a rat-thing away from being a Mr. Lee’s.
I never thought I would live in a gated community, but it does have its advantages.
Gated communities typically have very porous boundaries. The gate is to slow down cars, and that’s about it.
That is absolutely true. Anyone could walk in to the community that wanted to. The gate is solely about cars, there is no kind of wall or fence or anything around the perimeter.
I asked a pizza guy about it the day we moved in. I don’t know the process yet for calling in a visitor to the gate, so I went and picked up. I asked about it, he said that 90% of the time, there was no need to call in, the gate guards knew the drivers and just let them in. Every now and then one would be a stickler for the rules, so if you hadn’t let the gate know, the gate would have to get the address from the driver, call you and you give permission.
I did have a problem when our washer/dryer got delivered, because the driver didn’t have a drivers license “on him”. Fortunately, the secondary guy had an id (he apparently didnt drive at all).
I think we are wrong in assuming people want freedom. I think the majority of people would choose a gilded cage over the jungle.
ah but is the alternative really a jungle?
But I agree that people don’t want liberty but a kind master.
WRONG!
People want liberty and to be the kind master.
Why doesn’t anyone want me to be the God-Emperor of this planet? I would be a kind master.*
*Probably not.
Because I’ve already claimed the title of God-Emperor, you foul pretender.
Pretender? Please, I prefer the term, usurper.
There is already an Atreides here, and it isn’t you.
absolutely
almost all women want a gilded cage and only have opinions when they are shocked on some occasion at the possibility that have one; a few men here or there and you have the majority
for example: the governors were exceedingly popular for the recent virus over-reaches
I’ve gotten flack for saying this, but wrt to women I think you’re largely right. Collectivization is largely stupid, but in this case it’s collectivizing like saying “all women have vaginas”. They (by and large) are genetically predisposed through evolutionary pressure to value safety, security and guaranteed material resources more than liberty. They are also much more risk averse.
There’s a reason that women’s suffrage results in instantaneous government bloat around the world.
This is another area where my principles are self defeating. I believe if you are going to have voting, it should apply to everyone who is taxed, even teenagers working at Publix. This dilutes my vote, and probably leads to less freedom, but I feel it is hypocritical to destroy freedom, to save freedom.
The amount of your vote == the amount of your taxes?
They (by and large) are genetically predisposed through evolutionary pressure to value safety, security and guaranteed material resources more than liberty.
To generalize, I would say that women tend to prefer security and men tend to prefer order over liberty, and between the two you get the type of governments that are common among the democratic nations of the world.
How are you defining this?
it’s a sloppy throwaway that anyone can project as much security and as little freedom as they are wont to do
just a trending difference between the sexes that doesn’t apply to wide swathes of the population at all
I asked you to define that to say this:
In general, we women aren’t getting the security the men should be providing.
We don’t have the luxury of staying home and doing our split of the labor. We make money AND tend the home life (with varying degrees of husband pariticipation).
So I’ll put up with more talk of the “gilded cage” we’re supposedly in or want to be in when a majority of men can support his family on his income.
I think this is a very important point, and it implicates a large amount of cultural rot that exists hidden under the surface of our society. From entitlement to laziness to lack of accountability to lack of respect to spendthriftiness to devaluation of family and community, and dozen more related social vices.
Family is the base social unit, and when family is broken, people try to get something (gubmint) to replace what family should have provided.
zz
that’s fair
I’m more interested in which people want larger governments with more social programs and more restrictions on others’ conduct. I suspect that skews even correcting for income.
zz
Not snoring; just forgot to delete my marker before posing.
And I think that’s fair, but I think the motivations in the higher income brackets for wanting more social programs and restrictions on others’ conduct are entirely different.
Low income = security and safety
High income = Those poor people can’t do anything for themselves; they’re children who must be provided for, herded, and punished appropriately.
“In general, we women aren’t getting the security the men should be providing.”
Well, I think that’s reversing cause and effect. If the State didn’t steal ~40% of my household income, then my wife could stay home. Or I could stay home. Or we could both work 25 hours a week and spend more time living life.
Men, as a collective, are the ones who actually pay the taxes that support Leviathan, despite the fact that, as a collective, they tend to vote for rightwing parties. Men do not, in this society, have the option of walking away from womens needs. We either pay taxes to support the “single mothers” and their spawn, or we do that AND ALSO support, partially or fully, a woman of our choosing. Oh and of course all the “strong independent women” who work for the State, academia, nonprofits, HR departments, etc etc.
But there is no option to go Galt, to say “I will spend my wealth only on the one woman who pledged herself to me for life.” My wife sucks hind tit to the State, and sorry, but looking collectively, it was not men who choose that.
If the State didn’t steal ~40% of my household income, then my wife could stay home.
My guess is that the market for your labor (gross) in the post-tax world would just settle back to today’s net (as evidenced by Viking and Viking-substitutes already demonstrating a willingness to work for that amount). Any savings would accrue to equity.
Whether equity decided to burn that accrual on orphans and widows and under-supported mothers would, well . . . YMMV.
My guess is that the market for your labor (gross) in the post-tax world would just settle back to today’s net
The employer doesn’t care what happens to your paycheck after you cash it. They pay what they have to to get the services they want.
Absent, of course, some kind of price-fixing by employers (which is practically impossible), why would the market for services settle at today’s after-tax rate rather than continue at today’s pre-tax rate? My understanding is that wages tend to be pretty sticky price signals, and don’t move (especially down) without a good reason.
FDR
LBJ
It was most certainly men who chose to do that (unless you’re saying it was women because their votes for those two particular bastards counted more than the men’s).
Otherwise, I won’t contest your assertions, because they’re correct and I deliberately didn’t put them in my post because there are so many MORE than that I would’ve had to write an essay.
WWII was a biggie, because it drafted women into the workforce and gave them a taste of independence and a paycheck. There was a lot of resentment about men coming back and their being expected to go back into the home like a good little woman and take up again as if they hadn’t changed.
There is also the matter that someone WANT to be more than a SAHM. I do. I can’t imagine my life being all about housework and carting kids around. My sister-in-law lives her entire life for/around/through her kids and what’s she going to do when they’re gone?
So it’s multifactorial on both sides (no, I am not saying NAWALT or NAMALT).
I just object to women being the sole blamee.
They pay what they have to
exactly, sir
so how many American-made widgets have you bought when you could get the Chinese version for half, or have you been stuck at the old prices all these years?
I just object to women being the sole blamee.
Its always the man’s fault, amirite?
Just bustin’ balls, Mojo. Hanging curve over the plate, and all that.
There is also the matter that someone WANT to be more than a SAHM.
I might object to your use of the word “more” rather than “something other than”.
Heh. I deserved that.
Also deserved. I do have a bit of internalized misogyny going on as have, I suspect, the other NAWALTs Glibbroads. My use of the term “more than” is a manifestation of how miserable I would be if that were my only option.
Yes, I know you’re busting balls, but you’re not wrong.
My household actually is single income, but my husband stays home with the kids and manages day to day life, and I earn the paycheck. We both believed that having someone at home with the kids was very important, and when the time came to choose, I liked my job a lot better than he did, so he quit and I stayed.
And now I’m a wage slave to a company I don’t particularly love any more, because they pay me really really well, and I have to keep my husband in the lifestyle he has grown accustomed to. Or send him back to work, and give up the crazy epic two month road trip vacations we take each year. That’s my gilded cage.
@Moj: NAWALT
Yes, yes, I know. I wasn’t saying that.
And I thought your response was good
Had to Google that one.
There’s a reason that women’s suffrage results in instantaneous government bloat around the world.
Men will gladly pay to get laid?
I’m not in love with the term. Florida Man proposed it, I think it has some bite, and I wanted to explore this as an explanation for the governor math.
The quick dirty version is lots of taxes with lots of social services such as free primary education, strong police presence and welfare.
I didn’t have a eureka moment. I didn’t get fed up with a political party. A well-read child of resourceful, simple, and hard-working parents who had escaped generations of small, impoverishing family farms, my first notion was always independence. Before any formal concept of agency, utility, or property ever washed into an ear, I knew I valued my own counsel above all others, and my strongest urge and desire was simply to be left alone.
Freedom is extremely expensive: people damage themselves with drugs, kill children with abortions or poor choices, etc. For me, though, I ignore almost all of that as permissible private conduct because the cost of the bureaucracy to police those things is even more expensive (well, just emotionally unattractive for this guy). Once you start policing anything other than obvious, violent crime, you’re going to lose me. I don’t support the DEA even though I’ve never done an illicit drug; I wouldn’t support the Uterus Gestapo even though I’ve never been party to an abortion.
I don’t expect anyone else to agree with me; I don’t propose this as a definition of true libertarianism. I merely posit that, whatever thing you think should be outlawed, there’s really no moral limit to the resources and methods that should be deployed to sniff it out and prevent/end it. For example, I don’t see, once a doctor finds a woman is pregnant, why he isn’t required to report it; and if a child isn’t certified in the predicted span, someone should be around to find out why. If it’s worth outlawing, it’s worth some violence to enforce it. I don’t wish to present a false dichotomy; I’m just saying that for every law, sooner or later, somewhere or the other, some Kafkaesque over-reach will evolve that will later be seen as unhinged but will be celebrated initially as just solid police-work (see also: boy, what are you doing walking through this white neighborhood; or: this house is using too much electricity).
Or having military bases in almost every country in the world.
I am and have been conflicted. On one hand, the reductio ad absurdum points toward taking the power away from the government completely… anarchism.
On the other hand, the argument is self defeating. The excesses of a debased government don’t mean that there is no role for government anywhere, ever. 30k troops in Germany today doesn’t mean that the national guard needs to go away. Officer Strangler doesn’t mean that Andy Griffith needs to go away. Even minarchy is a deal with the devil, and eventually the devil wins.
“Is the “good socialism” of Sweden and Denmark the best way to order society?”
Standard libertarian disclaimer applies.
But if you’re going to have a re-distributive component to your society then the way to do it is to have a laissez-faire economy, with a flat and uniform tax code, with a negative income tax. No bureaucrats sucking away cash every step of the way. No power tripping social workers making the poor jump through hoops for food stamps. No corruption or graft in picking vendors or contractors.
If your SSN reported income in the 25th percentile or lower, you get money every month direct deposit. Theres no poverty trap where someone whos first working their way off the dole loses tons of food stamps and housing vouchers the second they get a shitty job.
I think you still risk incentivizing the lazy to seek the bottom…and possibly driving your 25th %ile downward, or causing a significantly larger portion of your workforce to end up in the bottom quarter if you don’t adjust.
My thinking is basically, “the poor will be with you always” because the bell curve has two ends. But I think that the vast majority of the top 25% would rather write a 500 dollar check every month to some random poor person than write a 3000 dollar check so that a highly paid federal bureaucrat can target a block grant to a state welfare agency so a highly paid state social worker can disburse 500 dollars worth of food stamps and housing vouchers after that poor person has properly abased themselves. The intelligent and well compensated people who are supposed to solve poverty have zero incentive to, because poverty is what keeps them at work.
I’ll happily let Jake Conner the stoner who’s figured out if he only takes 3 shifts a week at the retail store, and works cash jobs on the side that he maxes out his Basic Living Allowance do his thing if I can fire Richard Thornton III, Yale 81 who pulls down six figures as the Permanent Senior Undersecretary for Poverty Alleviation, and all the parasites between him and Jake.
^^^THIS!!!
Addendum: Theres 1 trillion in federal welfare spending. Theres about 26 million households making 20k or under. You could give each of those households 2,500 dollars a month and cut 200 billion from the budget. Plus the second order effects of firing all those federal bureaucrats, easing up the federal pension system, kicking out millions of federal workers to sink or swim in a free market labor force, etc etc.
That’s a good practical argument. It’s nowhere near moral, which I find more important.
Sure but if you could get to there…..after 40 years of living in that society….maybe people are willing to take the next step.
Its like with guns. The 200 dollar tax on suppressors and SBRs is immoral. But I’d change it to a 20 dollar tax with a NICS background check with all kinds of MUH REVENUE arguments and get more and better guns into circulation.
This is the article that needed to be written. You are the man who needed to write it. I’m the dude who needed to put in his place.
“s such, what the world needs right now is one more article about how wise it is to be open minded and willing to change your opinion. ”
Pie, you’re a funny man.
It’s not funny anymore.
well thanks. I am thinking quitting engineering and going into comedy
For the money, right?
and the easy pussy, but mostly the money
Do homeless people get laid a lot?
It’s important to be able to admit when you’re wrong. If I’m ever wrong, I assure you I’ll be the first to admit it.
Good piece Pie! Very much in the fashion, or a la mode as the Quebecois would have it. A bit flaky, fully baked and thought filled.
T be honest I wrote more as a late night post than an evening one, so it is a little less refined
Is it really democracy if someone wins by +10 points? I call on the UN to investigate the elections of the politicians i don’t like win they win in districts solidly held by people i don’t like.
I thought I was wrong once, but I was mistaken.
Good reminder, Pie.
I periodically like to try to identify where I’ve gone wrong.
Recently, it was:
(1) The rate of people with COVID antibodies is going to be in the mid-double digits. Instead, its much lower.
(2) The heat would really knock COVID down.
(3) This will not be a V-shaped recession. Its still early on this one, but the rebound in employment is encouraging.
I’ll say i was pleasently surprised by #3 too. I still think it isn’t going to rebound to 2019 levels by the end of the year, but i also gave up on making economic forecasts a while back.
I am not that optimistic on 3
Ditto
I think this downturn is going to be targeted on companies in “nonessential” spaces and hit them hard
I am already seeing extreme price increases on basic food items and supplies are still not reliable. That sort of disruption goes beyond high unemployment and I am afraid it will seriously impede recovery by reducing saving and investment and by increasing fear and uncertainty.
Perhaps initially, but a lot of those “essential” businesses rely on non essential businesses or employees of non essential businesses as both customers and suppliers.
The heat hasn’t really arrived, at least in the Northeast.
It most definitely has here, and seems to have not altered our gradual downward trend at all.
So what does that mean? The ‘vid is not as heat-sensitive as other viruses and also isn’t as infectious as predicted?
The seasonality of influenza isn’t well understood either, is my understanding. The supposition is it’s a combination of less hospitable environment (air humidity, sunlight/UV, persistence of moisture droplets), more outside time, and decreasing susceptible people. If prevalence rates are high enough, such as a pandemic, it’s quite possible to have influenza outbreaks out of season and happens even when there isn’t a pandemic.
Thanks. So I can expect the Great Freakout of 2020 to last forever, then?
We’ll see. If you buy into the lockdowns as beneficial public health measures, and damn near every one of Our Masters do (or at least pretend to), there is no reason not to implement them every year for the flu season.
Whether the unwashed masses will tolerate that is, of course, another question.
Nah, HH is the third Sunday in Sep, doesn’t last forever…
Technically though, it’s not even summer.
I live in Tucson. Its been summer here for six weeks.
Could it also be though that in your case, hotter weather means people stay inside more and therefore spread it?
Entirely possible, but I thought temps in the 90s and 100s would pretty much be the end of the virus.
Turn off the AC.
I wonder how long the blue states can hold off reopening given the rebound of the red states? PA. NJ, NY, etc… are still mandating a super-slow schedule with lots of security theater while covid is a distant memory for other states.
Murphy still thinks he can talk to feds into throwing $5 billion his way. Why would the tax-payers or Senators of SC, GA, TX… agree to it?
Has there been any extensive studies yet on #1?
I haven’t seen anything yet, and I’ve seen seen a lot of contradictory data on how well any of the anti-body tests actually work yet.
If the test is 95% accurate and 5% of the population actually has had it, then randomly, half the positive tests will be wrong.
There have been a number of tests on antibodies. Can’t speak to their quality, but they have all been coming out much lower than I would have thought. Of course, false positive rate just knocks that even lower.
” The heat would really knock COVID down.”
I blame air conditioning.
OT: Antifa, coming to a suburb near you.
https://sacramento.cbslocal.com/2020/06/08/citrus-heights-homes-american-flags-arson/
Is Arson the burning of any property? i always thought it was more restricted to the burning of Buildings.
Typically, its any property, with structures and occupied structures getting you enhanced penalties.
Things I have changed my mind on slowly over the last couple of decades:
1. Death penalty. Generally, for a guilty person, I am for it. Specifically, after seeing how many people are wrongfully convicted, I am against it.
2. Police brutality and sociopathy is real. Now, I grew up with a complicated view of the police. My dad, in his job, had valid reason to fear cops would maliciously plant drugs in our cars then pull him over, often complained about the KCPD selecting for sociopathy, and had a run-in with a troublemaking rent-a-cop that tossed our family into turmoil. Yet my own experience with cops is … none of that.
3. Marriage. I came to see marriage as a social construct. Get a lawyer, write a contract, head out to the nearest preacher to solemnify the thing if you feel like it. That wasn’t a huge leap though. I’d kind of been wondering about that since I was a teenager reading BRIDE magazine and figured out the wedding is all about the dress.
Thats one i struggle with too. There are some crimes for which i really don’t have a problem with someone getting executed for. I just don’t trust that the state can “get it right” nor do i trust them to not use it for other reasons.
I think i used to be opposed to Exile as a form of punishment for various reasons, but i actually am more amiable to it now.
Is the real problem the death penalty, or the wrongful conviction?
^this. I see the ‘special’ harm done by executing an innocent man, but I see it as differing only in degree from throwing an innocent man in a rape cage for years. Probably because I personally would rather die than spend years in prison.
Eh, you throw me in a rape cage for 10 years……there is a certain amount of zeros on the check you write me that I say “OK, we’re square”. You kill me wrongly, that’s it. The State is either incompetent or malicious, trusting them with capital punishment is no good.
A good pragmatic reform might be to require video of the crime to seek a death sentence.
And you got to rape people for 10 years. Win, win?
I think the death penalty should immediately trigger a full independent review with a much higher threshold of guilt (any conceivable doubts?).
The review would not be able to reverse a guilty verdict, but it could be used to initiate a retrial.
The Innocence Project episode on video evidence is worth a watch.
A bit of both. Wrongful conviction is the problem, but how do you make restitution to a dead man? I mean you could go the weregeld route (which i’m not opposed to), but there is something that feels particularly unjust about a man being executed for something he didn’t do.
I’m generally opposed to forcing a community to hold a person and pay for their upkeep too. Which is why i’ve grown on exile. We arn’t going to kill you, but we aren’t going to put up with you either, and you need to leave.
I know a lot of people don’t like the idea of letting a dangerous criminal be free, but i don’t think locking people up for the rest of their “life” is much more humane than just executing them. So if we aren’t willing to execute them, but don’t want them around, kicking them out seems like the most humane alternative.
Maybe I am mixing you up with someone else but I thought you were fairly open borders? Because if exile is your punishment you need hardcore locked down borders.
No, you have me right, and That’s a fair point. I would take the libertarian cop out that i think borders should be privately owned, yada yada so excluding people you don’t want around etc.
I’ve become more moderate in my border position over the last few years. I still find many of the arguments posed by the restriction side to be un-convincing (They are going to vote blue, etc), but i also don’t think the open borders groups have much to offer aside from “You hate poor brown people”.
Looking at contemporary American immigration legislation, that is a fair conclusion though.
I would take the libertarian cop out that i think borders should be privately owned
I think that’s more the anarchist copout.
True, but to this glib, still not very helpful.
I consider myself on the open borders side because i think they have the better arguments, its just that i rile at the “you’re a racist” ones that seem to dominate.
Fair enough. Along with the defund police arguments, i seem to have been mixing the two up more than usual.
Sometime you need to call a spade a spade.
I thought you liked to beat around the bush.
To be more serious. You’re right that a lot of the closed border legislation is influenced by the racial aspect. But i’d dare to say that a lot of the Open Borders aspect is influenced by cynical vote packing schemes.
I can still be unimpressed by the ability of those arguments to convince me of the rightness of the position.
Not necessarily. At the period in history when exile was more common, the infrastructure to secure borders was much less than today. As such, exile also entailed “outlawry”, meaning that if the person returned to the jurisdiction he or she was exiled from, that person would not be under the protection of the law. This would allow anyone to harm or kill the exile without fear of punishment.
A Proscription for America!
As I recall, this was the concept behind transportation of convicts to Australia. Seven year term of imprisonment, but then you got to spend the rest of your life there (where quite a few became wealthy).
Long way around to get back to the death penalty.
You don’t have to stick around.
“Which is why i’ve grown on exile.”
Where are you going to send someone* who has committed such a heinous crime that their home community wants them out?
*Notes Roman Polanski exception.
Sounds like a personal problem for them to figure out.
“Them” being the receiving entity? Of the person you’re exiling?
In a world of nation-states, if you hold a public trial and decide to exile someone, what happens if the receiving state meets you at the border and says, not here?
Because death cannot be undone, any chance of it being wrongfully applied is too high IMO.
See my thoughts on abortion below.
Because death cannot be undone
Neither can 20 years in a cage.
True, but a person can be released and compensated financially. It’s not commensurate, but it is something. A dead person cannot be resurrected no matter what.
Of course I’d love for there to be a 0% false conviction rate, thus both points would be moot, but we both know that even with significant criminal justice reform that’s impossible.
I also have philosophical problems with giving the State power over life and death, no matter how much vengeance may dictate the perp deserves it.
Difference in degree, not kind, IMO. But I know this is one where reasonable people can differ.
I wouldn’t lose any sleep if we did away with the death penalty. Its not at the top of my list of state abuses of its subjects.
I can sleep quite comfortable knowing that John Wayne Gacy got the hot shot.
I also have philosophical problems with giving the State power over life and death, no matter how much vengeance may dictate the perp deserves it.
I’m not all that invested in the death penalty, but we already give the State power over life and death in a variety of ways and generally capital punishment is one with quite a bit of oversight and backstopping.
I do worry a great deal about unjust convictions, but I honestly find the whole “Death cannot be undone” argument badly overblown. Neither can years in prison. Sure you can hand the released convict a lottery check, but all that does is make them a temporarily rich person whose life is in tatters and whose character has been forever changed. I also think this debate (like the police racism debate) distracts from the real issues. The war on drugs has our courts so far over capacity that not one defendant in 30 gets a trial. Instead we bargain for sentencing. That produces a huge amount of injustice. Arguably it is unjust even if it gets the ‘right’ result because it bypasses the mechanism we have created over centuries to try to elicit the truth.
Nothing can be undone.
Abortion is something that I’ve really changed on over the years. In my younger days, I didn’t have strong opinions on it either way; I just didn’t care one way or the other. Over time I’ve come to see it as an abomination though I’m able to at least understand libertarian arguments in favor of it (evictionism, bodily self-ownership). I still think they’re wrong but they at least seem logically consistent.
I’ve never struggled with that and it always stops pro-abortionists for a second or two when I DON’T say, “It’s murder” or “God said not to.” I say, “The child has constitutional rights.” Then of course, “It’s not a child; it’s a fetus.” “Well, okay. Explain NICUs.” They can’t. Conversation stops, but I’ve never changed anybody’s mind, so far as I know.
“Well, okay. Explain NICUs.” They can’t.
This is the gut check for me. Go into a NICU, look at the babies, and tell yourself honestly that smothering one with a pillow isn’t murder. If you can, you’re a sociopath. If you can’t (and you believe in abortion rights throughout pregnancy), you need to explain why the trip down the birth canal somehow magically converts a clump of cells into a person.I’ve seen 22-weekers in the NICU (never held one, because the nurses wouldn’t let me). I’ve met people who were 22-weekers. I don’t believe the trip down the birth canal or the severing of the umbilical cord is what makes a person.
This is why I am an “abortion rights until viability” guy. And I am not strongly opposed to pre-viability restrictions, either, but I draw a line in the sand at 22 weeks.
My line in the sand might be even earlier, due to cases of babies surviving after the mother lied about how far along she was in order to get medical care.
“When in irresolvable doubt as to whether something is a human, it’s probably best not to kill it.”
-DFW
Either a “clump of cells” is a person or it isn’t, unless you can tell me the exact instant that it transforms from those random cells to a human. The moment the sperm fertilizes the egg is one such exact instant, after that it’s all shades of gray; which, in the case of killing something, is unacceptable. IMO it’s in for a penny, in for a pound.
Unless you were raped, “evictionism” doesn’t really work to justify abortion. Oddly, though, “evictionism” plus statutory rape laws means that teenagers have a better claim to abortions than adults.
Also, the death penalty for trespassing isn’t really a thing.
I don’t think there’s any way around an abortion position that isn’t a direct result of your beliefs in the personhood of the fetus.
Correct.
This. If you think it’s a person with rights and such you will lean one way, if not then you will lean the other way. I don’t really debate this anymore because this is one of those things that you can’t even hold an argument about because you disagree on the basic premises to even argue.
I will note that the person i tend to find most disagreeable is the male femenist who will go on about “Women’s rights” without understanding even a logically coherent argument. Just drop the charade, we all know you just want to get in the pink haired girls pants.
I have changed the other way. In my younger days I was hard-core anti-abortion. I still fell the same way about it morally, but have a more, ummm, nuanced position to the legal status of it. Mostly I am not sure it does much good to outlaw it in the first trimester. After, say, 22 weeks, I still have no problem defining elective abortion as murder.
Having kids has really hardened my opinion on the topic. My 17-week pregnant wife has been feeling kicks and movement for a week and a half to two weeks, and it’s amazing how they already have an awake and asleep cycle at this age. Already, we see differences in the activity level of the two pregnancies. TrashBaby #1 started moving at 15 weeks and hasn’t stopped yet. TrashBaby #2 is much less active, which we hope bodes well for her sitting still in the future.
All this to say that, going through the process, I cant imagine aborting after quickening. Barbaric doesn’t do that abomination justice. My position about those first 15 weeks hasn’t changed either, but I’ve lost the lean towards compromise that I used to have for those later term abortions.
TW: following post contains debate about miscarriage/infant death.
As a society we do place a different value on a fetus than on an infant. Consider a miscarriage at 30 weeks vs an infant death at 30 weeks. I maybe wrong, but most people don’t hold funerals for miscarriage, where they do for an infant death. A death certificate isn’t issued for a miscarriage, but it is for an infant death. Whether that is logical or not, it does seem to be part of our culture.
While true, I also know the result when our first attempt at IVF didnt implant. I say I have one daughter, but that one had a name too. We didnt know at the time if she was a boy or girl, so she was named afterwards.
Many years ago I stumbled on a Usenet post which either included pictures of a funeral for a miscarried baby, or included a link to a webpage with pictures of the funeral. I can’t remember which.
What I can remember is the child was far enough along that is was a recognizable baby. Actually, as I type this, maybe the kid was stillborn. It’s been too many years.
But, what I remember is the parents had their other children hold the dead baby as part of the funeral and took pictures.
Those kids looked haunted and scared. I’m certain they were fucked for life.
I maybe wrong, but most people don’t hold funerals for miscarriage, where they do for an infant death.
Some people do. I think its pretty unusual, but I know I’ve been involved in a few. Much turns on when the miscarriage occurs.
Some of the most heartbreaking things I have seen have been stillbirths, which can be indistiguishable from a very late miscarriage.
No question, though, that people’s emotional reactions to dead babies and dead fetuses tend to be pretty different.
A stillbirth gets a death certificate. They don’t yank them out like they do an abortion. Labor is induced and you literally give birth to a dead baby. I don’t recall at what point it stops being a miscarriage and becomes a stillbirth.
Its extraordinarily rare for a baby to be confirmed alive when labor begins, and not still be alive after delivery. We almost had one at my hospital several months ago. Baby was non-responsive not breathing for over 15 minutes. When we gave her to her mother to hold before we took her to the morgue, she started breathing. Sadly, pretty bad brain damage.
I can’t recall one at my hospital that actually died during delivery, and we’ve delivered 40,000 babies since I got here. I might have missed one. Probably mostly because we can monitor the baby’s heart and go from labor to emergency C-Section in 15 minutes or less,
Not sure how they draw the line between miscarrige and stillbirth.
I may not have made myself clear.
The baby is known to be dead in the womb and labor is induced. I will assume that it is a stillbirth at the point labor must be induced, i.e., the baby does not spontaneously leave the womb.
From my research, the hospital can take care of cremation and give you the ashes/dispose of it and/or you can have it sent to a funeral home for burial.
I was just adding a little color commentary.
I’d have to (re) check it, but my recollection is that “fetal remains” above a certain weight (or presumed gestational age) get a death certificate and are handled like other human remains.
Otherwise, they get the red bag and go out with the trash, unless the family requests otherwise.
This still highlights the fact that as a society will treat termination of pregnancy differently at different points of time in the pregnancy. It is such a murky topic and I doubt there will ever be a satisfactory policy for everyone.
My view of abortion was always compromise. Yes first trimester, not really after unless the pregnancy will fail anyway…
I cannot figure out when personhood starts but the first few months after conception are too fuzzy.
Thurgood Marshall asked the most important question during the Roe v Wade hearings: When does the soul enter the body? The Texas AG passed on answering it.
And of course this is how most people feel anyway, but I doubt we will ever find our way to the middle because it’s such a fun political football to toss around.
My feeling has always been that, if it’s possible to have good faith arguments on both sides, I can’t justify outlawing it. The point at which the fetus is capable of surviving sans host, it’s no longer all that debatable. Even if it requires another person to keep it alive, like a doctor or surrogate mother. Prior to that point, I am personally vehemently against it, but cannot support a law against it.
Honestly, I don’t support abortion as a form of birth control, but if it is prohibited, every clinical abortion or miscarriage will need an investigation to see if it was “natural or necessary”. I don’t want more interactions with the police.
I changed on open borders. I always assumed border control was self evident. However voting with your feet is often the only real choice and if free trade leads to wealth, that should include movement of labor. My one caveat is borders have to be open both ways. You can’t have countries dumping their undesirables in your country with no way for them to return.
If you have open borders, once you return the undesirables, how do you keep them from just coming right back?
I’d be much more open bordery if we didn’t have a welfare state. I can’t reconcile the two. And we’re not getting rid of the welfare state.
One of these days, I will find the inspiration to write a post on why “free trade” does not necessarily entail “open borders”. It has to do with the way people aren’t commodities, and communities aren’t warehouses. It may well turn into an exercise where trying to write it down reveals flaws I can’t live with.
“I’d be much more open bordery if we didn’t have a welfare state. I can’t reconcile the two. And we’re not getting rid of the welfare state.”
This. Having both of them creates perverse incentives.
My nightmare scenario is Mexico goes full Venezuela, and, like Venezuela, 15 – 20% of its population flees. They ain’t going south, so we’ll have 15 – 20 million Mexicans crossing the border in a pretty short period of time. Basically, the population of Arizona, New Mexico, Utah, and Nevada combined. Maybe also Colorado.
What should we do in that scenario?
Learn Spanish and get ready to have your wallet raped.
Ay caramba!
keep the women, send the men back. unless the chicks are fat, then send them back as well.
Send the fat ones to Romania?
I disagree, labor is a commodity. If there is a shortage of skill labor in one country and a shortage of unskilled labor in another, it makes sense to me to let that commodity flow freely. But more importantly, if a country is intolerable to your personal beliefs, you should be able to move to one more in line with your beliefs. There would still be border checkpoints to screen for infectious disease and criminals fleeing justice. None of this really matters because the ruling class isn’t going to let us off the plantation.
I disagree, labor is a commodity.
Labor is a service, provided by people. You can’t sever the service from the people who provide it. And so it is inherently a package deal, along with all the other good and bad things those people bring with them. Unless, of course, you bus them in to work, and bus them right back out at the end of their shift.
This. I am adamantly against open borders. I could reconsider the topic after the welfare state is gone.
Since I have no power to change anything, I choose to support how things would work in my ideal world as opposed to being utilitarian. In my ideal world the USA would have no welfare, so I support more freedom of movement.
I wrote two posts on borders so I am not nor have ever been fully open borders so no change on that…
Agreed on the death penalty. I still think it more humane than prison, in some regards.
For me it’s been abortion, changing my position every few years, and the topic of human caused global climate change. Abortion I’ve settled on “above my pay grade”
The problem with 1 is the state keeps coming up with more things to be guilty of.
Scum gonna scum. Its who they are, its what they do.
A glimmer of hope:
I know i might get yada yada’d but i don’t see how this isn’t cut and dry political.
Not that the courts seem to care.
The Anti-Federalists were right. Everything not explicitly protected by the BOR is no longer a right.
Time machine to the Constitutional Convention, add in a few more Amendments about things like economic liberty, serious underline freedom of association, do my best to tell them that slavery is seen as the worst thing the country ever did and will see their grandsons kill each other. Tell them they should solve it right now, because there will never ever be a wiser collection of politicians in one place at one time.
Well, I will have to shoot Alexander Hamilton in the head before that becomes true, but I can do that. Fuck that guy.
-1 hip hop musical
And have them remove the militia part from the 2A because in the future people can’t distinguish between dependent and independent clauses.
Cooper is the only crazy lock-down Dem up for re-election in a swing state this year. That should be interesting. Shutting down race-tracks in North Carolina is an interesting strategy.
I live in NC right now, it’s all just so arbitrary (Just like everywhere that did lockdowns). A trendy cocktail place near where I live reopened a week or so ago, I can tell no difference in terms of distancing whenever I walk by, no one cares. There’s a gym 50 yards away from that place that I think is still forced closed.
Gym meatheads are icky conservative types, known.
My son owns gyms. Chick gyms. He has to number his members…Karen 145, Karen 003, Karen 232, etc.
I dont know how he does it. I guarantee not one of them will vote Trump.
Karens aren’t going to complain about safety theater.
There are some gyms in NC opening in defiance of the orders.
One thing about being wrong as a libertarian is that I think you need quite a bit higher level of certainty to impose something with force. Leaving things be when unsure/unclear demands less proof.
But this was written as mostly a joke. I had a different post back in the day on changing minds
https://www.glibertarians.com/2019/01/on-changing-ones-mind/
– 1792 Breakfast Omelette
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qpaBeS7bTIU
Controversial opinion: quarter pound of butter is way to much for a 6 egg omelette. Probably I would use 1/16th of a pound.
I bet it’s tasty. I noticed no milk or cream. so the butter is replacing it.
I do not put anything in scrambled eggs, but I do cook in butter.
I never use milk or cream in my eggs. I buy the extra fatty butter and just use enough of it.
2 eggs. 2 oz of milk. 1-1/2 tablespoons of sour cream. 3 or 4 slices of pickled jalapeño chopped fine. whip. Butter cast iron skillet and put on medium high. Cook. Salt, pepper and eat.
Pair with crispy bacon and buttered toast with blackberry jelly.
*ocassionally I will add a small, simple fresh salad (lettuce, tomato, bell pepper) or just fresh tomato slices with salt, pepper, basil.
On this I am not wrong.
id say skip the milk in that
Milk makes the eggs fluffier and light.
I prefer them without
Mmmmmmm blackberry
jellyjam. – crispy BaconNot authentic enough without the salamander. I give it only 2 huzzahs.
I changed my mind on drug prohibition.
For a few years in the early 90s, I refused to call myself a libertarian, because I thought (and still do) that drug legalization was a necessary position to hold as a libertarian. I finally decided I cared more about being consistent than trying to hold onto some weird anti-drug position.
“…I thought (and still do) that drug legalization was a necessary position to hold as a libertarian.”
I am gonna have to take lessons from Swissy on narrowing my gaze.
Other than an awkward sentence, not sure what you think I did there.
“necessary position”
We could go on all day about whether or not some drugs remove a person’s agency, whether not that is the states place to step in, etc.
Let’s not. I am probably not qualified to weigh in as I have never tried any drugs other than alcohol.
There are no necessary positions outside of self ownership to be a libertarian. Everything else is up for debate.
Thinking about it…the whole drug thing does present a quandary.
*ducks and runs
I changed my mind on drug prohibition.
Same here. The change was in my late teens, early twenties. I can’t remember exactly when.
Parallels between alcohol prohibition and gun ban attempts were what changed my mind. The former was embarrassing. I should have seen them earlier.
Meh, drugs are bad. Addiction deprives people of agency. Kids often try things and end up trapped. And even though every word of that is true (at least in regards to some drugs) prohibition is worse. It has completely destroyed our system of justice, militarized our police, perpetuated racial and class divisions (see militarized police), curtailed our most basic freedoms, and wasted enormous amounts of wealth.
This.
/somebody whose strongest recreational drug they ever used was tequila
I was an adult (22) before I discovered that beer tasted good. I was clearly wrong about that.
I had to live in Europe to figure it out (the craft movement hadn’t exactly made it to Georgia during my college years).
You beat me, I didn’t like it for taste until I was 48. Of course, I didn’t touch a drop between 16 and 48, so there’s that.
As an undergrad, I could count the beers I had on one hand, and probably a pinky and thumb left over. There were all Bud Light or equivalent type things.
I was at dinner at my boss’s house in Switzerland and he offered a beer. I took it out of politeness. It was some sort of brown concoction and it tasted good.
Not long after I ended up living in Wisconsin and that was all there was to that. By the time I moved back to KY, the craft beer scene was starting there too.
http://barclayperkins.blogspot.com/2020/06/lets-brew-1939-barclay-perkins-dark.html
I would like to point out the roast barley in the recipe. ClubMedSux (if you remember him from TOS) and I had an argument over that, because I used roast barley in my Schwarzbier, which was not only a violtion of the Reinheitsgebot, but was, according to him, “just wrong”.
Of course, using an English brewers recipe to win an argument about a German style is just plain wrong to begin with.
For forms of brewing let fools contest.
Whatever beer tastes best is best.
Although speaking of the first line, my Schwarbier, despite its variation from form, was the highest scoring beer I ever had in a homebrew contest. My hefeweizen was a consistent winner, but the Schwarzbier hit my all-time peak.
The roast barley was for color, there wasn’t enough to impart any significant flavor.
Titty Tuesday is always right. Always.
http://archive.li/T0xPv
#1 is an oldie but goodie future ex-Mrs. Q.
#1 – Twin Peaks. I wonder how they will survive this mess. None in the Northeast. Sad.
I like #7.
#16. I remember seeing her in other posts. She stands out because she looks like the bustier version of a woman I asked out and who shot me down.
#24 and #40.
I will admit there is a slight possibility…just a slight one…that I may not be 100% correct 100% of the time but if you tell anyone I said that I will deny it.
Your secret’s safe with us, especially here on the Internet where it’s not visible to the public and can be easily deleted forever.
Well not everyone can be like me.
@Florida Man
Your avatar always makes me think of this: https://eu4.paradoxwikis.com/Venice
Lol. I drew the elephant during COVID-19 lockdown and let my wife paint it. She wanted to do something whimsical.
Senior aide leaves de Blasio’s office over his defense of NYPD
Just wow – she’s insane. And she already has a new job in the NY Department of Education.
There’s no risk to these idiots for their virtue-signaling
230K but she totally understands the plight of the urban poor.
Gotta get them indoctrination centers reopened!
I give Deblasio a lot of grief here but the one person in this administration who is inarguably more vile than him is that racist hatemonger Carranza. This move says a lot more about her than about Deblasio.
This. Carranza is a Grade-A piece of shit.
I don’t know much about him, but does seem quite scummy from what little I have just read. He seems to be building a nice empire for himself.
His hit parade includes mandatory struggle sessions (before they became trendy) and an ongoing effort to destroy schools that require admissions tests (i.e. schools for smart kids). He is a glorified racial bean counter but with a vindictive mean streak.
“As a working mother I feel this personally. Nothing is more important than the safe reopening of schools so kids can keep learning and parents can get back to work.”
translation: Get these rugrats away from me!
With regard to De Blasio: I wonder how long before some of these big city mayors work out private deals with the cops in their city. Something along the lines of “here’s where me, my family, and important friends live & work. Protect these with full force. Everywhere else, back off.”
She has the look of someone that you inwardly groan when she shows up at a meeting you have to attend.
She looks like the sort of person who is going to make the meeting drag out for an eternity.
I was wrong about CV-19, I said it was going to be another panic disease that ends up being nothing. It was much more serious than I realized. Still no justification for shutting down the economy.
Was it? I honestly don’t know. If NY and NJ had quarantined old folks’ homes for real and cleaned their mass transit systems, would we have gotten anywhere near the deaths? Instead they did the opposite and fudged the numbers to make people panic.
“Fudged the numbers”
This. I have no confidence in anything I hear. The ‘experts’ and pols got caught lying too many times. I have no idea what to think. As far as I can tell the whole thing was political.
I am with you and also still not sure. I mean, was it really any worse than the Hong Kong Flu of 68-69?
We might end up with more deaths, but less deaths per capita.
I would have bet on under 20k total deaths, I was obviously wrong on that, but still not sure if I was really very wrong.
If some places had not deliberately introduced the commie cooties into assisted living facilities I dont think you would have been wrong. It looks to me like it was done deliberately.
Theres also what you mean by “worse”. On the cold, collectivist, big picture level what matters is who is dying. CDC count right now is 88k deaths. 71k are 65+, and another 10k are in the 55-64 range. That sucks those people died. Really, it does. Dying sucks.
But an existential disease threat to society is one thing and one thing only: a disease which kills a certain percentage of your fertile and strong women women, and one that kills a larger percentage of your fertile and strong men.
If you kill all the old, society can grieve and move on. If you kill lots of kids, you can grieve and make more. But you cannot survive a loss in fertile women, or a loss in huge numbers of men. You need, to survive as a society, enough women to make more babies, and enough men to sire the babies.
People just really really wanted to LARP an apocalypse. I love apocalyptic fiction. I love cheesy prepper books and disaster movies and scifi. But its fiction, and people wanted to meme it into reality.
If the kids survive, a loss of a lot of men and women of breeding age is temporary.
If a huge chunk of the population dies, a burst of large families can replace them.
I said all along I thought the ‘Vid would be a second flu season, maybe a bad one.
I’m not putting that one on my list of blown calls. Between the overcounting of ‘Vid deaths and especially the outlier of the NY metro area, I think it was right on.
14 deaths in Charleston County so far, mild flu season, I would guess.
COVID parallels crime to me in that people say “$PLACE has X number of Y” and if you drill down……..well, there’s a lot more nuance. Like, we all know Chicago is a war zone, but if you drill down……it’s not. There’s certain very specific areas of Chicago that are war zones.
This disease absolutely hammered NYC. It hit the surrounding Greater NYC are pretty hard too. The rest of the country, well, protect the nursing homes, because it is an absolute killer in nursing homes.
Yes. Hopkins County, KY had 31 deaths. Which isn’t a lot, but for that county it is huge. But, almost all of it was from covid sweeping thru a nursing home. So, outside of that, it was a bad flu year there.
What’s the regular flu mortality rate in that county?
Not sure, but population is about 44000. I would guess about 3, based on 20k nationwide in a normal flu year.
Yep. When I was a kid, Richmond was one of the most dangerous cities in the country (was #2 in murder rate in 1992 or so)…..but almost all of the violent crime was confined to a handful of neighborhoods, so my childhood was not much different than if I had grown up in some Mayberry type place.
The same is true in every city in Louisiana. We have a relatively high number of gun deaths here but nearly all of them occur in what collectively amounts to less than 5 square miles.
We have an average of 48 guns per person in Grant Parish. The last shooting death was one person in the late 80’s and before that 1925.
My neighborhood is about as safe as it gets in NYC or rather, Brooklyn (Staten Island and some parts of Queens have less crime). We had, I think, 1 murder last year across about 80,000 people.
Location is everything.
Shit, we’ve had three over the last 6 months! 45,000 people.
2 murders since 2010 in my town of 82,000 people.
Yeah Baltimore PD released numbers a couple years back of the cities victims.
https://www.baltimoresun.com/opinion/editorial/bs-ed-0104-victims-baltimore-homicides20190103-story.html
The Wire is a documentary.
COVID-19 is about twice as deadly as the regular flu. Yes, it’s a bad flu. That’s it. That was my position throughout the entire affair. The panic, however, has been beyond anything I could imagine.
What I didn’t realize at the very beginning is what complete BS the entire dogma of social distancing is. I didn’t ask why nothing even remotely similar was done before.
Because I the scientists had declared it stupid. Seriously, lockdowns and etc were considered ineffective against pandemics for the last century.
Something changed. And it wasn’t science.
The science maybe hasn’t changed, but how it’s practiced has.
I come from a math background, a lot of how models are developed, presented, and used is garbage now days (this is not news to anyone here). Maybe there will be a correction, but I pessimistically don’t think so.
I used to walk down a hall everyday lined with research posters that were just worthless – I’m not saying I’ve done amazing work, but everything about these was just so useless. One that comes to mind was a poster on a system of like 6 differential equations, of about 10 terms each, incredibly complicated, trying to model math anxiety – the entire thing was just so stupid on countless levels. But, crap like that is just churned out constantly
I’ve been telling people that, between the global warming models and the COVID models, it sure looks like “computer models” are just a way to put fancy graphics or your preconcieved ideas.
Well, the big hysteria did kick off with a powerpoint presentation.
I agree.
The problem isn’t the computer part, numerical analysis gives pretty accurate error estimates for algorithms, and virtually everything is solved by necessity on a computer – although with the code the Ferguson model used, who knows.
I do completely agree that some people seem to think computer model means good model, like, omg, it has to be correct, they used a computer!
It’s the classic garbage in, garbage out – the assumptions going into the models completely drive them – like you said with your preconceived ideas.
Couple that with the fact that no one seems to perform validation anymore – for a predictive model, at the end of the day how it’s predictions compare to observed reality is all that matters – and that a lot of times either can’t be done (in which case the model isn’t useful for prediction at all), or isn’t done (because the model isn’t performing well, and they know it).
A model just takes assumptions on reactions/interactions and shows you how a single variable change might affect outcomes.
They’re never supposed to be predictive. The statistical prediction interval on the complex equations that are being modeled are huge, and if zero is in that interval it may not even be predicting in the right direction.
I disagree pretty strongly. The vast, vast majority of models are predictive, and are “meant” to be so – with amazing degrees of success in many cases, middling degrees in many cases, and virtually no success in many cases.
All model means is some mathematical description of some system/process.
The ability to telework is part of it I think. No way could the economy have kept going in the fashion it did if remote work wasn’t available at all. (Converse to that is more limited mobility that slows the spread)
Social distancing is completely unsupported by science.
The closest we can probably come is to (unscientifically) compare states/countries with strict or lax social distancing guidelines, and my understanding is that on that front, there is zero correlation between social distancing and infections/deaths.
I just finished 8 weeks of physical therapy for my MCL. No masks in use for anyone in the facility the whole time. Machines and devices were wiped down after each use, but that’s it. I went to my dentist yesterday. I had to be escorted from my car while wearing a mask after a temperature check. Then the mask comes right off for the cleaning of course.
/eye-roll
I was completely wrong about the response to covid – I never thought lockdowns would ever be a thing
That was the position I came to even if the worst predictions came to pass.
“An especially bad flu season” seems right on. Probably would have had fewer deaths if we’d focused on people actually at risk, instead of trying to create a panic.
Maybe it was especially bad, I think its too early to say. The final word, IMO, will be the excess deaths count, which we won’t have for months yet. Even that requires some adjustment if you want to isolate the ‘Vid deaths, so there will be an additional layer of “analysis” to argue about.
The space force is a bad show. Unfunny uninteresting
Just wait till you see the military branch.
You’re right this one time.
It can’t be as bad as the Freud series on Netflix.
Make me show runner and it’ll be bigly yuge!
Space Force is loaded with inside humor. If you haven’t spent a significant amount of time in or around the US military you probably won’t see the jokes. I thought the series was very good and the interaction between JM and SC to be interesting. Every has known a “Fuck Tony” and the reaction is universal.
There is a bunch of willful suspension of disbelief involved in any of the space missions. Sometimes it had me muttering or low screams at the TV.
I’d watch a season two.
My views on cops have changed significantly over the last 10-15 years. Very much was a yay-cops law and order guy for a long time, probably in no small part because there are more than a few cops in my mom’s family (stereotypical NY Irish). He’s gone hard left now, but Balko’s reporting at Reason is what got me to open my eyes.
Death penalty is one I struggle with. Was enthusiastically pro-death penalty in my younger days. Starting with the first time I watched The Thin Blue Line, I started to re-assess that opinion. I would be lying if I said, however, that I don’t still believe that the worst of the worst shouldn’t be breathing anymore. The James Holmes of the world, for example. The death penalty should be limited to those kinds of extreme cases where there is no doubt at all as to guilt.
I’ve gone from mildly pro-pot legalization to completely against prohibition in any form. No more WOD in any form.
Like some others have said, having children moved my opinion of abortion. I never cared about it at all one way or another previously. Now, I find it repugnant, but it’s not a make or break issue for me. I don’t have an objection to a “morning after pill”, for instance, but it’s difficult to determine exactly when life truly begins in order to draw a line.
Uffda Chipsy, we sound like we shared a pair of moccasins on our journey to Glibtopia.
My dad was a probation officer and as such every cop in our small town knew who I was (and what our car looked like). Since he worked in about 15 counties, I also had a get out of jail free card for minor stuff from a lot of the other cops/deputies in the area. A lot of the time, they’d tell me to get may ass home and let my dad know what I had been up to. That was often worse than a ticket. So it was a real eye opener when I moved out of that bubble and started running into the asshole cops that everyone else was used to.
I’m exactly the same on the death penalty. One of the big eye openers for me was the Memphis 3 case. I was liviing in Memphis when the boys were killed and following the case in the media, I was sure that they had gotten the right guys. Later watching documentaries and reading up on the case, I realized what a travesty that case was and how the media did nothing to keep them from being railroaded. And DNA evidence started showing just how many people on death row had been wrongly accused.
Since it seems that you are almost as smart as me, we better get oiled up and settle the question of who is the Heartthrob of Glibs with a pose off!
“Death penalty is one I struggle with.”
If a person is found to be innocent, no matter how long after their incarceration, you can let them out. You cant give them the time they lost back but you can do something in an attempt at restitution. You cant do anything to make restitution if they are dead.
I changed my mind on the death penalty back in the 90’s when DNA testing became a thing and the state of Illinois discovered they had executed at least 11 innocent men. In each of those cases the prosecutors, judges and juries were dead certain they were 100% correct.
There are definitely people who deserve it but the state is not competent to decide who gets it. I dont think I am qualified either.
On the scrambles egg recipe I am correct with no chance of error.
See if that tips the scales for you.
There are definitely people who deserve it but the state is not competent to decide who gets it.
I can’t argue that. It’s still hard to accept certain people being allowed to continue breathing, though.
But who decides who those people are? You? Me? Some other person who is much wiser than we are?
I have no problem smoking someone who is actively endangering lives but I dont have a crystal ball to see the past that I was not witness to and I am not willing to appoint another person that doesnt have a crystal ball to do it for me.
Remember that the death penalty makes the state a murderer.
Of course, life sentences makes the state a gay dungeonmaster, so there is that….
Did SF create a new aliment.
“People are experiencing ‘skin hunger’ after months without touching anyone.”
https://www.yahoo.com/news/people-experiencing-skin-hunger-months-125200430.html
Sugarfree Hillary story?
Skin Hunger? Zombies?!
Sounds like my regular normal, not a new normal.
#metoo and apparently I have the antibodies which fight “skin hunger” because it doesn’t trouble me at all.
Government-funded prostitutes are the only solution.
women who give comfort?
“But it wasn’t until her mom — aching to give Juran a hug — offered to do so with a sheet in between them that Juran, who declined the offer”
Sounds like Ms. Juran may have had some underlying mental health problems to begin with.
Once was introduced to a guy who was a real touchy-feely type. We shook hands and then he hugged me and patted my back. Noticing my discomfort he asked me: “Oh, you dont come from a family that hugs a lot?”
“I come from a no-touch family”
Skin hunger? They couldn’t have thought up a less creepy term?
I’ve said before that if dudes stop trying to hug me this has all been worth it.
Line used in my family from the show “Frazier”, “Remember what Mon always said. A handshake is as good as a hug.”
We still use that line.
When I say good bye to some of my men friends that I never expect to see again I may give or get a hug. To me it’s a recognition that the friendship isn’t over. Mostly a handshake but there are exceptions, ladies get a hug though, both coming and going.
Just wasted a lot of time trying to swap tires on boat trailers. Made sure tires were the same size, had to go buy a tire iron because mine walked away. WD-40’d the lugs and took one tire off…then I realized one has 5 lugs and the other trailer only has 4.
Just wasted a lot of time trying to swap tires on boat trailers – why?
And why more than one boat trailer?
The one with bad tires has a boat on it without a hole, and the other one the boat has a hole in it. Neither are technically mine, but have been stored here for years. I’m trying to get the one without a hole to my brother who wants to do some work on it.
You just need some window screening and a can of flex seal. Problem solved.
And you can use it to fix the tire on the other one.
Sure…. You didn’t use it to break open a store during all the looting.
He broke it on the skull of some little bitch who didn’t have his money.
Do you own either a drill or a sawzall?
Please forgive me for laughing. I am more laughing at myself for similar oversights in the past.
“Goddammit, I just cant win”
Yup. That sounds like one of my mechanical adventures.
A couple days ago I asked for recommendations for a concealed carry pistol. Ended up getting a Springfield 911 in 9mm. Went with that as the magazines are supposed to be interchangeable with Sig 938 magazines (which is what my wife owns). Went to the range today to start breaking it in, and went through 250 rounds. Very easy gun to shoot – every shot was on paper and within the target rings, even out to 25 yards. Groupings were a bit wide (just over 5″ at 10 yards, less than 4″ at 5 yards), but I’m not the most consistent shooter even with a gun I’m used to.
Did have two failures to load on the last round in the magazine, and two failures to fire (round was chambered and the gun went click), but these were in the first 75 or so rounds. Not a single issue on the remaining rounds. On the failure to fire, I checked the primer and it wasn’t dimpled. Reloaded the pistol and it fired without a problem. I’ve read that these issues tend to go away once the gun is broken in, but I won’t start carrying it until I have 500-1000 rounds through it without any failures.
All in all, I’m happy with the purchase!
Huzzah!
9mm….get the heaviest bullets you can find.
I hear good things about these guys – https://bayoubullets.net/9mm-150-gr-swc/
If you dont reload there are these guys: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z_gIm1GMd5A
I picked up a couple boxes of Liberty Ammo Civilian Defense (?) ammo. 50 grain, but +P, and advertised to travel at 2,000 fps. Saw a video where they tore through level IIIA body armor.
But yeah, I’ll be getting some good, heavy hollow points as soon as I can find any…
I’ve got a pair of the 911s in .380.
No problems with either and they’re very shootable for their size.
Dr. Frankenstein regrets creating a monster.
https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/news/stupidest-thing-i-have-ever-heard-chicago-mayor-rips-alderman-for-voicing-concerns-about-looters-in-leaked-audio
NO RAGRETS!
The rubber hits the road on security issues. Lightfoot isn’t going to survive this debacle.
I’m sure there is an ample supply of corruptocrats eager to upgrade and get their hands on the Boss’s exactions and tributes.
There’s always somebody ready to take Top Dog. I imagine Chicago politics isn’t much better than Thunderdome.
I don’t understand how any elected officials in any of these riot cities survive, but most of them will. And the ones who don’t will be replaced by other Democrats who are functionally identical.
They don’t call it machine politics for nothin’.
Better Lightfoot.
Ahem, It’s pronounced Fronk-en-Steen.
Someone doesn’t like being told she let the neighborhoods go up.
I am sure when the rioting gets to the residential areas all Chicago voters will be glad they voted for pro-gun control pols.
What I’m not hearing her say is what measures they have taken to contain the rioting, much less eliminate it.
I’ve got $20 that say the alderman leaked that recording. Illinois is a two party consent state – I wonder if Lightfoot knew the call was being recorded. If not, somebody broke the law.
Broke the law? In Chicago? I find that hard to believe.
Especially since the only two candidates are the mayor and an alderman.
It’s not a crime when the
presidentalderman does it.