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Here is a Ted Talk by Christian Picciolini. He is a former white supremacist who now works to de-radicalize neo nazis and other people like that. He has also written some books on the topic. His approach for neo-nazis would also work with other extremists like incels, etc.
His solution is not to debate people or tell them they are wrong. He treats them with empathy and tries to help them with their underlying issues. People are drawn to extremism because they are deeply unhappy. If you can help them to change that you can help open them up to learn to be less hateful.
If you havent already read it I would recommend Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting By in America by Barbara Ehrenreich. The book is a little dated, but it does a really good job of explaining why its so hard for poor Americans to escape poverty. The idea of the book is that Ehrenreich works a series of minimum wage jobs undercover to learn about the trials and tribulations of the working poor. Its a fantastic book and is a really good starting place for learning more about the working poor.
It's not an accident. It's a feature of the last ~2 decades. Without a willingness or even desire to actually govern or lead with values, beliefs, or ideas, the only thing Republicans have repeatedly doubled down on is culture war nonsense while being opposed to whatever Democrats believe. It's chronicled in depth, topic by topic, in the book The Imposters by Steve Benon
There has been some quality scientific literature on this. The Sport's Gene is where I first saw this issue raised. Epstein does a great job of synthesizing the scientific findings with anecdotal sports references. Apparently it's a huge advantage. It's not just hormonal differences. There's differences in bone density, differences in height, bone structure, hip function, fat to muscle ratio just to name a few, which translate to huge advantages in endurance and strength across a variety of sports. I cannot recall any sport where it was advantageous to be a women over a man, but it's been a few years since I read the book and the trans/man/woman comparison wasn't a major portion of the book.
E: Found a list online of the characteristics Epstein discussed if anyone is curious.
Among the key physical differences between the sexes. Men are / possess
heavier and taller
longer arms and legs relative to their height
biggest hearts and lungs, thus able to absorb and process more oxygen
twice as likely to be left-handed (high physical combat societies have more numbers of lefties – this arose due to natural selection as lefties have an advantage in combat)
less fat
denser bones, and a heavier skeleton that can support more muscle
more oxygen-carrying red blood cells
narrower hips which makes running more efficient and decreases the chances of ACL tears (epidemic in female athletes) while running and jumping
80% more muscle mass in upper body and 50% more in lower body
I thought this was an interesting question, so I did the math. If you just take the total net worth of the top 0.1% and directly divide it by the population of the US, every man woman and child gets a cheque for $36,341, so $145,364 for each family of four.
I am by no means saying that this is a good idea (it would me unethical and also destroy our future economy), but the numbers are nuts.
Sources for numbers: Total net worth of top 0.1%:
Total US population: http://www.worldometers.info/world-population/us-population/
> Israel has multiple borders and multiple politics. On most borders (Syria, Gaza, Lebanon) Israel has not been the aggressor. In the West Bank where Jerusalem is, Israel HAS been the aggressor which is why past presidents delayed the move. Even Trump delayed the move back in June.
> They've committed crimes that are a disgrace to the US and to Israel. For Trump to do this for zero US gain and to sabotage his own two-state promise? It makes no sense.
Or quote an actual US ambassador to Israel on the subject https://www.npr.org/2017/12/06/568773753/former-u-s-ambassador-to-israel-on-trumps-jerusalem-change
It obstructs Trump's own goals, we all get nothing out of it, it's recognizing a city that is undefined, and I have no respect for Israel's conduct in the West Bank. I don't see why it needed to happen.
You can say the problem isn't as bad as it could be, but compared to other countries, yes there is a gun violence problem in America.
And your estimate of the number of guns seems a little high.
Did somebody say "<em>A People's History of the United States</em>"?
What I consider centerist, but you might consider center-left: https://www.npr.org/podcasts/510310/npr-politics-podcast
I find Vox analysis to very thorough and insightful, but definitely left-leaning. You may consider it a bit left of left: https://www.vox.com/the-weeds
https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/build-bridges
"to improve relationships between people who are very different or do not like each other"
Not to be taken literally. It is a suggestion to find and focus on the similarities with others, not the differences. To treat relationships as an opportunity to benefit both parties and not a zero sum game where one must lose in order for the other to benefit.
Totally agree. Shapino possesses a fraction the intellect of, say, William F. Buckley Jr., and I already disagree with nearly everything good ol' Buckley had to say. Shapino says all the same shit but less competently and with worse packaging.
He's also got a sense of entitlement the size of a planet, which is revealed any time he comes up on someone who actually challenges him and he throws a tantrum.
He literally wrote a book about how he doesn't argue in good faith. As far as I'm concerned, just the fact that he wrote this book calls everything he says into immediate question, even without knowing that he's also lied repeatedly about statistics (especially when discussing trans people and trans rights) and misrepresented the sources he cites.
I'm always baffled by the sort of people who say things like, "I don't agree with him, but I do like watching him wreck college kids." Like, why? What does society gain from Ben Shapino going around on multi-million dollar college tours, spreading "ideas" that don't hold up to any sort of academic scrutiny, and embarrassing kids who are still trying to figure their shit out?
I guess I just don't get what's appealing about that.
e: phrasing
When I think of Biden, the first thing I think of is the CNN interview where he said Obama was offering to help him financially so he could avoid selling his house to support Beau's family during his cancer battle.
Not really relevant, I guess, but it's solid "He's one of us" material.
His views are simplistic and not nuanced. He's eager to "jump to the text" and then gets eviscerated because he doesn't know his precedent:
>At this point, Gorsuch again suggested the simple solution is to just read the words in the statute, but Gorsuch had a relatively novel idea of what a statute means when it says to apply one provision "subject to" another provision of the law.
>Justice Elena Kagan noted that the court has had a contrary interpretation for decades To adopt a new interpretation, she said, would be "a kind of revolution ... to the extent you can have a revolution in this kind of case."
He suffers from the same "all problems are simple, everyone else is an idiot" syndrome Trump is afflicted with.
No. Sam Harris' <em>Letter to a Christian Nation</em> summarizes my thoughts on religion.
Since then, he's become a concern troll.
He wrote an e-book openly explaining that this is his strategy when arguing. There's even a lecture version you can find on YouTube where he expands further and claims that arguments with leftists should never occur for the purpose of mutual understanding or good faith discussion, but rather should only be done in public in order to humiliate them in front of as large an audience as possible.
I believe it was the same lecture where he advised conservative college students to pretend to understand "left wing ideas" taught by their professors in order to get good grades on tests and graduate. To me, this seriously calls his academic credentials into question. "Harvard grad" means a lot less to me when the grad in question freely admits to having intentionally eschewed the lessons being taught in his classes in order to preserve the pre-existing views from his upbringing. At best, it's indicative of extreme closed-mindedness.
Because I had to look up who Alan Kurdi was.
Kind of shitty, OP. I dont know what point you thought you were making. Assad is a war criminal. And that child's death seems like a freak accident and there are a bunch of sides to the story. It became a commentary on the state of the migrant crises. I dont care about that. I dont think you are appreciating the difference between a war criminal and this kids death. The cause of which, or the story, wasnt determined. What do you expect us to do, OP?
Edit: Removing the sentences I had here. I dont want to be too rude and OP might have a point to make. I dont think I agree with their perception of the examples given. But, they think Assad is a war criminal and in a perfect world U.N./NATO troops would be sent in to secure the chemical weapons stockpiles. I wholeheartedly agree with this position. However, Russia is a permanent member of the Security Counsel. They are also propping up the Assad regime, and Assad is a war criminal who should be tried in a tribunal under international law. I'm not paranoid or have "Red Fever," this actually an abuse of power by Russia as a member of the Security Counsel.
It is their obligation to ensure that war crimes arent being committed. That includes them for us and us for them and everybody else. The entire world is supposed to be in a giant Mexican standoff. But, the first guy who starts shooting people is then the target. And everybody else is supposed to shoot them.
That only works if those participating are willing to hold people accountable for crossing extremely fucked up lines. There have obviously been some tremendous failures and its unfortunate that we still cant get it right. In that sense, I agree with OP.
There was a Pulitzer prize winning book last year that was centrally concerned with this issue. https://www.amazon.com/Locking-Up-Our-Own-Punishment/dp/0374189978
There are plenty of other books, and news, and media that reflect this issue too.
I don't think it's correct to say that this doesn't receive publicity, or that it's a provocative position. I think (or hope) that it's a well understood and accepted thing. It's definitely an important part of how I understand the complicated history of race, crime and punishment in our country.
Love it when the DoD comes up, because it's interesting how the military funding issues are treated so much differently than gov regulation in any other sector.
We love the military. But it wastes a lot of money. Even the GOP agrees. So it's going under audit so hopefully we can cut back on the massive waste. When we discuss the military budget, we talk about specific refinancing, what should be prioritized, trying to keep the same effective goal for the military but cutting waste to make it more effective.
Yet when it comes to a lot of other issues, you'll see people say "just defund it altogether." Great Lakes aid? It's an Obama program. Refugee concerns? Shut it down. ACA? Full repeal. CHIP? Appalachian Regional Commission? NOAA research grants? ARPA? Wildlife Refuge Fund? CDBG? Energy Star? NASA's Earth Science program? Chemical Safety Board? Trump wants those gone.
http://thehill.com/policy/finance/334768-here-are-the-66-programs-eliminated-in-trumps-budget
No. When there's a flaw in a program, you fix it. You don't abandon everything. Same thing goes with DoD or any other department.
This seems like as good a reason as I've ever seen to completely disregard the Border Patrol's opinions from here on out. This testimony is a flat out disgrace.
Jesus fucking Christ, crying about national security is the most pervasive and whorish behavior, and conservatives will never let it go. Stop trying to scare people, you've turning serious issues into a fucking joke.
Reminder that a Fox News reporter was wearing a bulletproof vest on camera while reporting from the border.
https://www.huffpost.com/entry/fox-news-reporter-protective-vest-meme_n_5ca6fc78e4b0a00f6d3d8a57
If we are mentioning The Toyota Way may as well link to the excellent book
https://www.amazon.com/Toyota-Way-Management-Principles-Manufacturer/dp/0071392319/ref=nodl_
It should be noted that even Toyota is having trouble implementing the Toyota way in other nations including some Asian nations.
Lol...I dont know where youre going with this...but I would say yes. It was one of their goals. At least it was for Hitler and then the Nazi party didnt try to stop him.
Edit: For context.
Lol I'm not being nice to Nazis, just sort of being a smartass with how I word the sentence. FYI for people.
I think it's reasonable that many people are a combination of violence-hungry racists, the RL equivalent of trolls, people who support them passively, or completely duped.
About 8% of Americans* identify as White Nationalists. About 26% of Americans oppose inter-racial marriage. About 31% of Americans believe "America must protect and preserve its White European heritage". 39% agreed that "white people are currently under attack in this country". Only 70% stated they strongly believe all races are equal.
There are absolutely enough people who cross the line as "deep racists" if not "violence-hungry racists" that you have room to attribute that moniker to most Trump supporters. I'm sure there are Trump supporters that aren't and racists who aren't Trump supporters... but the claim that they're all racists is not actually mathematically impossible when looking at statistics about white supremacists.
- Asterisk - Presumes poll's relatively random distribution... which seems reasonable.
Tim Wise on the issues of race and guns. He gets hired by corporations and law enforcement agencies to teach about race / implicit bias.
His podcast episode # 23 Guns, Violence and the Cult of the Firearm in America is a scorcher.
https://www.podomatic.com/podcasts/speakoutwithtimwise/episodes/2018-02-20T06_52_37-08_00
It's not an oxymoron. You can have two sets of true facts about a situation, which depending on which things are emphasized, gives you an entirely separate narrative of how things are going.
One could say, for instance, "Murders in Chicago are up 1200% this year! Highest number of deaths on record!" And that would be one set of facts.
One could also say, "There were 12 murders in Chicago, compared to 1 last year. The 10 year average is about 10 murders per year, so this isn't outside of the expected range of deaths. Also, it's a city of 3 million, so this is in fact a fairly low amount of murders on a per capita basis."
Those are two sets of facts reporting on the same incident, both true but you can tell they paint entirely different narratives about how to feel about the situation.
What this shows is that you cannot simply say, "Well, just report the facts, and everything else will work itself out." There is a meta element to this, where you choose which things to emphasize, and which to de-emphasize, and by this choice of emphasis you inevitably are shaping the way things are understood, because humans understand events not by a bulleted list of facts, but as a narrative, a story.
These things you have to take into consideration when you're talking about media and the spread of information, especially political information.
For more fun like this, check out How to Lie with Statistics.
I feel like reciting the usual tropes about viewing 'others' as a threat rather than extended family, hierarchy & authority vs individual expression, resistance to change & so on is unhelpful at this point. Are you looking for something in a particular direction? Jonathan Haidt wrote the book on this, although I tend to get dragged if I bring him up around liberals.
I hadn't heard this before, went looking for information...
> It's also very important to tell your family that you want to be a donor. Hospitals seek consent from the next of kin before removing organs, although this is not required if you're registered with the National Donate Life Registry or have donor designation on your driver's license or state ID card.
https://www.mayoclinic.org/healthy-lifestyle/consumer-health/in-depth/organ-donation/art-20047529
...but I can easily imagine this varying between states etc.
I'm in favor of free trade as long as it doesn't end up sabotaging our own regulations. So for example if we have environmental laws at home, it doesn't make much sense to import good from countries that are cheaper because they businesses there can pollute at will. Pollution from China for example not only makes life miserable for the Chinese, but it also manages to cross the ocean and harm people in the US. But as long as goods - both the product and the process - meets our standards, I see no reason to be opposed to free trade. Nevertheless I'm probably a "protectionist" because our current trade policy falls short of that standard by a mile.
I don't think a woman should be legally punished for engaging in such acts during pregnancy, no. And I think it is a poor policy to judge women who do such, as well. In practical terms, the best course of action is to provide education and assistance- most folks want to have their pregnancies under the best possible circumstances allowed, and things that throw a wrench into that are lack of knowledge and struggles with substance abuse. Judgment tends to drive it into secrecy- still done, but not publicly- and prevents women from seeking vital pre-natal care. That goes doubly so if a woman fears legal repercussions.
In terms of absolute morality, I think that it's fair to say that your choices extend beyond your body- when you have an abortion, there is no other person affected. When you carry a pregnancy to term, on the other hand, you will have someone who may have been specifically harmed by your choices, and that is a consequence that we have to morally contend with. How to do so, I don't rightly know. But I can tell you for sure that there's a big double standard that I think is summed up best by this quote from Lynn Paltrow, in Jennifer Block's book <em>Pushed: The Painful Truth About Childbirth and Modern Maternity Care</em>:
>"She also maintains that they [criminal punishments for women smoking/drinking/taking drugs during pregnancy] must be seen in the context of a culture that celebrates the woman who conceives quadruplets after multiple fertility treatments- treatments that put the fetuses at risk for severe prematurity, neurological damage, and death- yet imprisons the woman who puts her fetus at far less risk with illegal drug use.
For me personally, connecting the nation’s past to present was key to moving me from leaning ideologically libertarian to liberal. Once I understood how stacked the deck has been against black people, and how people today are still so profoundly affected by that history, I found my aversion to positive rights slipping away.
I’d suggest The War Before the War as a book that opened my eyes to how the US government was complicit in allowing slavery.
I’d suggest Slavery By Another Name as a book that explains the nation’s response to slavery being forcibly ended but never accepted in the south, and how that effectively prevented most black people from the ability to accumulate wealth.
That's a tough one. And a good illustration of the challenge to enforce racial diversity can be fond in racial discrimination in selecting jurors.
The Supreme Court has rules against discriminating against jury members based on race.
>Still, prosecutors found ways to get around this new rule, as demonstrated by an infamous training video made in Philadelphia in the late 1980s after the court's decision in Batson. The video features then-Assistant District Attorney Jack McMahon advising trainees that "young black women are very bad, maybe because they're downtrodden on two respects ... they're women and they're blacks.... But, McMahon reminded the trainees that they had to come up with a nonracial reason for their strikes: "When you do have a black juror, you question them at length and on this little sheet that you have, mark something down that you can articulate at a later time if something happens," he says.
Prosecutors circumvented the rule by coming up with non-racial rubrics designed at eliminate black jurors. It was so discriminatory that when the same requirement used to eliminate a black juror was shown to apply to white jurors who were already selected, the prosecutor changed the rubric.
How do we address a system where people have set racial notions and are willing to bend the rules to apply them? I think we need to keep attacking the root of prejudice. Rules controlling behavior will never be foolproof. But if as a society we continue to support equality, call out the police, the banks, our friends for racial profiling - we might progress to a point where everyone can reach equal.
Conservative lurker here: Assume conservatives are reasonable people with rational reasons for believing the things they believe. Listen to those reasons and debate them from there. Don't assume your ideas are self-evidently true and that only people who are stupid or have bad motives can disagree.
Also realize that a lot of political debate is driven by disagreements that go deeper than policy to moral values or beliefs about human nature. Disagreements over such fundamental premises bubble up into disagreements about particular policies but can't be resolved at that level because the real disagreement is about something deeper.
> He said that many of the accusations against him were outright false, and many he remembers differently. So, in essence, isn't he saying that he thinks the accusers are bullshitting, but he's stepping down anyway?
There's enough of them he didn't deny to make it a concerning pattern.
> Democrats are now down a senator
The Democrats aren't down a senator, the Democratic governor will select a Democratic replacement until an election is held.
https://www.npr.org/2017/12/07/569088457/after-franken-whats-next-in-minnesota
> what did they gain?
If Franken is replaced by a different Democrat who doesn't have a history of harassing women, that seems like an improvement in the world. Given my very rough idea of Minnesota, I'll roll the dice.
About 8-9% wetter than expected, and the kind of wetness you only feel once in a thousand years.
I'd imagine even the water probably thought it was too wet out there.
First link from a Google search. FPL:
- $12,060 for individuals
- $16,240 for a family of 2
- $20,420 for a family of 3
- $24,600 for a family of 4
If they happen to live in public housing (less than 1% of Americans), 30% goes to rent.
I'm not going to list out transportation, cell phone, food, clothing, healthcare, etc.
There's a real, measurable economic and societal cost to owning a gun. That cost should reasonably be borne by the gun owner. Insurance isn't a perfect solution, but it is an OK way to handle this.
Here's a good article. https://www.npr.org/sections/money/2013/01/31/170700177/should-gun-owners-have-to-buy-liability-insurance
This is a paradox and a dilemma I enjoy a lot but don't really have a solution to. Everyone likes to shit on "first past the post" because it's objectively bad, BUT it does have the virtue of simplicity that other systems lack.
Who do you want to vote for?
[INSERT_NAME]
Great! You're done!
Everyone knows how first past the post works. Everyone understands how their vote is counted. Tabulation of votes is swift, simple, immediate, transparent - not open to debate.
When I was a teacher I did some experiments voting on what movie students wanted to play in the classroom as a reward. I had students vote under a first-past-the-post system, an anti-plurality system, a proportional voting system . . . and the only system that students could really grapple with and understand was first past the post.
I worry that a more complex but systemically more satisfying voting system will lead to less democratic representation by shedding the people that just don't get it. Consider that a butterfly ballot was sufficient to cost Al Gore the election.
There is a real balancing act between the advantages of a superior system and the disadvantages of less representation. If I'm trying to make a strategy game . . . Dwarf Fortress has the more complex and deep-thinking mechanics, but I'm probably going to lose all the users that care about graphical fidelity - even though graphical fidelity has nothing to do with strategy.
>But Trump isn't normalizing fascism. He might be enabling fascism,
http://www.thesaurus.com/browse/enable
He's not normalising it, he's just empowering/facilitating/giving it power ?
I don't get your argument at all.
While I think it's interesting that an AI can generate a blog and all the faces in it like this person does not exist, I don't think any bloggers are at risk of losing their jobs because of this.
Personally, I'm more concerned in at least the 2020 election we're going to run into really well done fake news using AI to fake scandalous sound bits between a democrat and someone else. They're on youtubehaiku all the time with Donald Trump and Obama, but voice copying AI is starting to sound really good. You think it's hard to convince your friend on fb that an easily disprovable meme is fake? Have fun trying to convince them a soundbit smuggled out of a Biden 2020 donor rally is fake news. "Listen, I know it sounds like Biden is talking about harvesting the organs of aborted fetuses to sell to globalists, but if you listen closely when he says 'kill the fucking babies,' that choppy sound and weird inflection on 'the' shows it came from an AI."
The opposition to GMO's is baffling to me. We've been modifying plants to suit us better since society has been a thing.
I mean, I was trying to just hit the high notes of Fascism, not do a comprehensive definition that would take up a book, which yeah, there are in fact whole books about this..
That being said, I think this falls under the hero worship bit, or at least derives from it. The "strong man" who cuts through the bullshit does so by cutting through the laws and restrictions on centralization of power, turning the entirety of government into something that revolves around himself. The single-party is just a vehicle for his cult of personality, the totalitarianism just a consequence of him wielding all power without any checks or balances.
So you know, arguably that's already implied in that definition.
TR Reid’s The Healing of America
https://www.amazon.com/Healing-America-Global-Better-Cheaper/dp/0143118218/ref=nodl_
It’s old but since for the most part Republicans have blocked any effort they can to actually bring down healthcare costs in this country, it’s still mostly valid.
Buttigieg wrote the book on this, although he doesn't have many detailed answers. Or not that I found satisfying.
But that's the fundamental answer: rebuild trust. By recovering a sense of shared values, and common purpose. De-weaponizing news media. Helping Republicans who promote 'common good capitalism' and related ideas, over absolutist, amoral libertarianism.
Rebuilding the entire culture, basically. Buttigieg emphasizes the reciprocal feedback loop dynamics, wherein public sentiments enable policy outcomes which further drive public sentiment. I'd put 'media' in as the mediator (swidt?) of the outcomes-->sentiment path.
So work can be done on any piece of the puzzle -- better policy, better media, better sentiments -- to help get the virtuous cycle going. It only looks completely intractable because it's a big, distributed systemic problem, and there -is- indeed a long way to go.
That seems to be Buttigieg's message anyway. I don't recall him addressing the other problem, of a system biased to favor a regressive minority whose leadership has a vested interest in sabotaging everything. Maybe he'd say that just raises the bar higher, we have to persuade more people and win by a larger margin to effect change, but doesn't change the fundamental dynamics.
I'm not sure I quite buy this 'just do the regular work of politics and everything will be fine' answer. I think we have to rebuild our whole culture, and I suspect that generational turn-over is our best friend in that regard. And producing the intellectual and ethical framework that that next generation will absorb. Knocking down pop-libertarianism is job one, IMO.
Thanks for asking!
> The actual shame here is Newsweek reporting on that tiny slope at the end of the graph.
My business statistics teacher in college was garbage, but the best thing he ever did was mandate that we buy the book, How To Lie With Statistics as one of the textbooks.
It's a short book, written in 1954, and yet it is remarkably applicable to today. It goes through the most common ways advertisers, politicians, salespeople, etc use misleading graphs or charts or cherry-picked statistics to lie. And once you've read it, you notice it EVERYWHERE.
He stated he purchased Spanish Fly at a sex shop and put it in their drinks. It's some "natural" aphrodisiac that is nothing more than a shitty marketing gimmick. It doesn't appear to have any cognitive impact and just describing it as "drugging someone" is not fair.
Here's a good technical evaluation of the popular ones.
I use a Cisco/RSA combination for work and NordVPN for personal use - I've had good experiences with both.
But Nord is based in Panama - if the govt ever gets crazy I'm switching to ExpressVPN which is in the British Virgin Islands.
> Some states did not expand medicaid.
That does not change the fact that Medicaid is a net transfer from urban to rural. (Source)
> Health Insurance prices have skyrocketed and the people at the very top (CEOS) are in major cities.
This is a non argument. I may not like how much insurance CEOs get paid, but that doesn't change the fact that the overall direction of money flow is urban to rural.
> Prices are inflated based on subsidies.
Even if this unsourced claim is true this also doesn't change the overall direction of the flow of money.
> Another thing to consider: poverty is a threshold. Cost of living is a huge factor.
No, the federal poverty level does not depend on cost of living.
I don't think you have an argument.
But they did pledge before the convention and even the pooling numbers showed that. Before the first vote was cast Hillary was up about 45 to 1 super delegate votes up.
>According to MSN today Clinton leads in pledged votes, with 1768, while Sanders has 1494.
>But to look at the aftermath of the vote count we truly have to critically evaluate the start. Hillary Clinton entered Super Tuesday in March in a virtual tie in pledged delegates with both candidates holding just about 50 pledged delegates, yet she held the support of nearly 400 super delegates. This early lead created the visual that Sanders could not defeat her for many voters, clearly affecting the race.
>In effect this year, more than any before superdelegates may have not only decided the Democratic nominee, but they likely also chose the next President of the United States.
Well they where wrong on the last part, they chose the one candidate that would lose to a crazy person.
> I have a conscious bias to obey the rules of driving including traffic signs and stop lights.
That isn't what "bias" means. You don't have a bias to obey the rules of the road, you obey them via a rational decision.
Bias noun
"the action of supporting or opposing a particular person or thing in an unfair way, because of allowing personal opinions to influence your judgment" -https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/bias
"Inclination or prejudice for or against one person or group, especially in a way considered to be unfair." - https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/bias
What subject did you teach in high school while you were gather all this ancedotal evidence that black students are more likely to be uninterested in school due to their race?
Because I think we have established it wasn't English, science or maths
If you lean towards pride in america, why not compare this to american numbers?
During the Obama years, border enforcement became so effective that the majority of new people in the US without authorization are now by overstaying having a legal permit to reside in the US (visa, etc.) this came along both by trying to appease the GOP congress, and also due to the recession. I believe there were even years when the total unauthorized population fell both due to outflow and people gaining legal status.
http://jmhs.cmsny.org/index.php/jmhs/article/view/45
One reason Europe seems to have lower levels of unauthorized residents is that they have a lot more paths to legal residence, even if temporarily. Another is that the US backlog of unauthorized residents has been growing due to a lack of any meaningful legislation on immigration since the Reagan years. At this point, a very substantial fraction of this population would be eligible for DACA or DAPA and have been in the US for nearly a decade or more, paying far more into the american safety net than they could possibly receive.
If the US passed some common sense immigration reform somewhat like the few bipartisan deals that narrowly failed over the past decade or so, and started fulfilling our obligation to vet refugees rather than arrest and imprison them, the counted population of undocumented immigrants would fall by a huge amount.
So to me, it appears that the number of undocumented residents of the US is so high because of an ineffective congress and immigration system, not due to insufficient security at the border.
https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/articulate
There might be stronger intimation of the implication you suggest in other dictionaries, though.
> Guns are a complex topic. "Less guns" is not a sufficiently articulate treatment of the topic nor of the actions desired.
Eh. I half agree. Having lots of powerful guns ubiquitously available to the general public causes all kinds of complex harms, and understanding what proportion of those harms can be attributed to the guns and what proportion to other factors is a genuinely complex topic. "Less guns", though, seems like a pretty good starting point for solving those problems. It may not be quite ready to be written up as legislation, but whatever legislation we do need, that idea is going to be a big piece of it.
Basically the idea that heterosexuality is the default and preferred sexual orientation. You see it in legal systems (for instance, in countries where only opposite-sex couples are allowed to get married or raise families) and in cultures (for instance, when media only contains families and characters that exhibit heterosexuality).
It's a pretty common term in queer theory and feminist circles, though I don't know how mainstream it is haha.
https://www.masterclass.com/articles/understanding-heteronormativity#6-examples-of-heteronormativity
> professional climate deniers
Koonin does not deny that the climate is warming, or that humans play a role in it.
Calling him a "professional climate denier" is rather disingenuous, especially if you have not read what he has to say, in depth.
Since you responded though, why would you not want to learn more about the topic, especially from a renown scientist who literally wrote the book on theoretical computer modeling of physical systems (like climate)?
I've not read a ton of books like this, but one book that might be in this vein is American Progressivism: A Reader.
It goes through the ideas behind the original Progressive movement during the Progressive era, which had a big influence on modern liberalism and the building up of what Steve Bannon called 'the administrative state' that he wanted to destroy. The way it does this is by simply letting you read speeches and letters of Progressive leaders of the time, including Woodrow Wilson and Teddy Roosevelt, as they advocate for Progressive ideas. An astonishing amount of it is still relevant today.
>I prefer more academic reads than pundits.
Thank you for that.
I don't have a good reading list for you on economics, but I did find this course syllabus online that looks interesting (it's a download link but I promise it's not a virus). The last page has their reading list which I think might be a really good place to start.
If you want to come at liberal politics from a very different angle, one book I highly recommend is The Law and the Long War. It might seem random but it was very challenging to my own formerly-libertarian ideas of how rights work in the United States. It made me start to ask questions about how rights are actually established and enforced as opposed to how I ideally wanted them to be.
> I'd like to see actual evidence of the BLM movement being somehow responsible for an increase in crime.
Haven't looked into but : https://www.amazon.com/War-Police-Ferguson-Effect-America/dp/1944229523
Wiki article: t.ly/Olfh
The wiki presents it as "hypothesized" so looks like it's controversial.
The disconnect there is a really interesting subject. That pithy picture that made the rounds many years ago with the quote "America isn't at war, the Army and Marine Corps is at war - America is at the mall" always stuck with me. I read a couple books on the subject, but this is the only one I can remember offhand.
You're speaking to a gym rat here. Before Covid, I would be in the gym 5 days a week. I also suffer from depression that I manage through exercise.
They have a door anchor so you can use them literally anywhere, no matter how big or small your home is. You can also do body-weight exercises indoors or outdoors. I'll often use parks and playgrounds to do exercises like chin-ups and dips.
Get battle ropes. You can take them to any public space and wrap it around a tree, a pole, anything attached to the ground. I use mine at tennis courts once the players have gone home for the day. Or I use them at the park by simply wrapping it around a tree.
You don't need to be going to the gym, spitting and sweating all over everything in an enclosed space during an out of control pandemic. Do you think the pandemic is going to magically go away?
It's my personal phone with access to my work resources from my phone restricted by requiring me to install a device policy
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Actually, you'll likely have to decide what's more important to you, your relationship or your politics. Changing opinions is a months-years long event, not an intervention. Good luck.
Try two copies of "I Love You, but I Hate Your Politics: How to Protect Your Intimate Relationships in a Poisonous Partisan World" so you can have a conversation.
I am going to counter a lot of arguments here, but my opinion was shaped by Elizabeth Warren's The Two Income Trap.
- Funding is no longer based on property taxes
- All Public Schools no longer have a "neighborhood" or "set district."
- All Schools enroll via lottery or specific merit if specialized (EX: Music School requires an audition, but then a subsequent lottery for qualified candidates)
This means that students from poor performing districts have the same chance of attending a good public school as any other student.
Private schools may still be allowed, but with 0% public funding (i.e. no Vouchers).
Not economic but you did say social: https://www.amazon.com/Black-Kids-Sitting-Together-Cafeteria/dp/0465060684
It does a decent job of going over racism, microaggressions, why people self-segregate, and can pretty easily be applied to any other oppressed group.
> You do economics?
Only in the armchair economist sense, I never studied it properly though it is a field that fascinates me, particularly behavioural economics.
I've always been rather liberal, but in my early 20s I felt I didn't really know enough economics to support some of my positions. I decided to jump into the 'other side' so to speak and read The Wealth of Nations and was really surprised to find that it wasn't the hard core free market polemic you would believe by listening to some Republicans. A bit like Lincoln or Jesus quotes modern free market cultists seem to have taken his work to mean what every they current want it to mean, without much attention paid to what he was actually saying.
That had the added benefit of making me rather skeptical of other people representing fundamental ideas and making me turn to the source.
This took me under a minute to find.
How Do I Get the Exemption Based on My Coverage Being Unaffordable? You will simply claim it when you file your taxes. The process is fast and easy. To claim an exemption, select the exemption that applies to you, enter the corresponding code on Form 8965 and send the form to the IRS with your income tax return. For this exemption, it will be “Coverage Considered Unaffordable,” which is code A. To claim the “Coverage Considered Unaffordable” exemption if you are eligible for Marketplace coverage, you’ll need to know the premium for the lowest cost Bronze plan you could have enrolled in for 2015. Visit https://www.healthcare.gov/tax-tool to find this information. If you would have had to pay more than 8.05 percent of your household income in premiums - after any applicable tax credit - for this lowest cost Bronze plan, you can claim this exemption.
You should read A Paradise built in hell. People don't actually turn into monsters during/after catastrophic events. They tend to become more altruistic, not less.
Try reading the book: Mistakes Were Made (but not by me)
There's tons of examples back by research and evidence around how and why people rationalize bad decisions including why even exceptionally knowledgeable scientists pursued junk science - like Newton chasing after gold. Other examples that come to mind were people like Benjamin Rush treating people with bloodletting or the widespread acceptance of Phrenology as a science etc etc
I fly the Fort Sumter Flag, because fuck the confederates.
>Same reason Black Lives Matter would resonate more if the term was “black lives matter too”.
Just an FYI -- that is the actual term. It was never "only black lives matter". It was always "black lives matter too". (There's even a book.)
The only reason a lot of people think otherwise is racist propaganda from people who wanted to make it an "us vs them".
I consider Propaganda is any news with opinion added, pertinent facts withheld, and/or seeking to provoke a certain reaction. It's not necessarily bad, actually I recommend the Netflix series on WWII American propagandists called Five Came Back https://www.netflix.com/title/80049928
*fixed auto correct
All the cash Apple and Google are hoarding in Ireland are constantly under threat of the EU taking it.
Continental Europe wants what Ireland schemed and Silicon Valley earned. I'm against such theft. If anyone is gonna have that cash, its Americans or Irish tax haven workers.
Honestly, it is the exact opposite of what you describe. The FDA is a kingmaker. The link below talks about the FDA. Most drugs are optimized to prevent side effects. You cannot dissent to the FDA or they will engage in retaliatory wait times. The FDA had a whistleblower come forward in August 2021 with the Abbott infant formula contamination. They took no action and it resulted in the deaths of 4 infants. It can't get worse than that. The FDA places a governor on product release. The covid vaccine was developed by Feb 7, 2020. It took 266 days to approve this vaccine. This is a microcosm of the problem. It is so clear that the regulatory process was unbelievable. Even still, they recalled the JNJ vaccine and created a ton of vaccine hesitance because of 60 cases of TTS were reported and nine people died. There were 18 million doses. What is going on? That trade off is terrible. Can you imagine what happens to a process if you can iterate on a process with 3 day product cycle, 1 year product cycle and 10 year product cycle? It is also terrible. In addition, there is global harmonization. Basically, all other countries outsource their operation to the FDA. It is awful. There needs to be more open free operational zones. Give Puerto Rico the ability to be free to create their own medical regulations. They would probably attract top talent and allow for massive medical tourism.
https://patrickcollison.com/fast
https://www.amazon.com/Reputation-Power-Organizational-Pharmaceutical-International/dp/0691141800
The shorthand for what you describe is Zombie Ideas, bad ideas that refuse to die, there is a few books about it..
Paul Krugman Nobel prize winner from the NYT is always talking about it as well, https://www.businessinsider.com/paul-krugman-zombie-ideas-persist-stop-misinformation-pandemic-2020-4.
I think they persist for the same reason that we consumed ubiquitously Tobacco 20 years longer than we should had, and the same reason that we still depend on oil instead of switching to nuclear in the 80's; somebody is making a lot of money from it and they can hire great salespeople to push it like, Ronald Reagan.
Even immigrants "with less than high school education" subsidize all other tax-payers by "at least $128,000":
>Immigration policy can have important net fiscal effects that vary by immigrants' skill level...They are positive even for an average recent immigrant with less than high school education, whose presence causes a present-value subsidy of at least $128,000 to all other taxpayers collectively.
Here. I am going to say something crazy.
I have been racist in my life. I have some racist thoughts, and I have done some racist things in my life. Do I hate people of other colors? Nope, not directly.
Yup. I said it.
I am also not a vile person. You know why? Because I was raised in a racist society. I was shaped by the attitudes of my parents, and their parents, and their parents before them. Like everyone, I am a work in progress
I used to think just as defensively as you. I couldn't possibly be racist because being racist was terrible. I was a good person.
You see racism as a character flaw, as I used to. I now see it as a system. it's a fundamental world view difference.
I have a book recommendation for you: https://www.amazon.com/Caste-Origins-Discontents-Isabel-Wilkerson-ebook/dp/B084FLWDQG
I'm a little bit older, and I definitely think there are a lot of legitimate things to worry about, but I think the internet has also really contributed to both a greater sense of isolation and a sense of always being "on". I remember as recently as the 90s it really felt like there was a lot more down time where you weren't answering texts/emails, checking updates on social media, and 100 other things. You could just exist and maybe chat with a neighbor for a couple hours.
I don't know about a solution on a societal level, but I really recommend exercise for anyone struggling with anxiety. The biggest barrier is just getting into it, but once you realize how much exercise also benefits your mental health, you'll start looking forward to going.
If anyone wants a really good book about dealing with anxiety, but you're worried about some BS unsourced self-help that isn't based on solid research, I'd really recommend The Happiness Trap . It's heavily based in research, written by a qualified psychologist, and was recommended to me by two completely unrelated therapists. It has really helped, along with a therapist, to deal with unpleasant emotions in a healthier way and learn to just relax and enjoy being in the moment.
I have been reading The Dawn of Everything which has an extended chapter exploring this topic. It comes to an idea that we can say a society has "a state" when "the state" has control of the three mechanisms of power:
- Charisma
- Information
- Sovereignty
It theorizes that "pre-state" societies had elements of all 3, but not all 3 at the same time. Even today elements of these sources of power exist outside of states while within them.
I’m glad you asked!
It appeared in the titles of explicitly trans activist books such as Patrick Califia’s 1997 book Sex Changes: The Politics of Transgenderism and the 2003 anthology Bisexuality and Transgenderism: InterSEXions of the Others. It appears in Kate Bornstein’s Gender Outlaw, Leslie Feinberg’s Trans Liberation, and countless other trans activist books, including Whipping Girl—most notably in the chapter “Coming to Terms with Transgenderism and Transsexuality.”
And I’m not sure where the fixation with “ism” being an ideology comes from. It’s a really common way to make things nouns in the English language. And if you sat down, I bet you could think of dozens of medical and social conditions like transgender that are called “ism”s. Just with the letter A, we have alcoholism, astigmatism, albinism, and autism. Are those ideologies?
If you link to the studies you’re referencing, you can strengthen your argument.
One of the core differences between liberal and conservatives is that conservatives tend to reason with common sense (common sense isn’t common) and hold their opinions to the grave… liberals will openly change their opinions based on viewing valid evidence.
No, because it didnt end with slavery up until the civil rights act and there was legally sanctioned harm done to multigenerational descendants of slaves. Jim crow, redlining, convict leasing, peonage, theft, property crime, violent crime etc. All things which the United States government was explicit or implicitly involved with. The government either officially allowd ot or reused to stop or punish the perpetrators.
Whole black prosperous post slavery towns were destroyed by white supremacist terrorists. Property was stolen people killed maimed and raped. The government did nothing or members of it actively participated.
Read this book and look into economist william darity https://www.amazon.com/Here-Equality-Reparations-Americans-Twenty-First/dp/1469654970?ref_=d6k_applink_bb_dls&dplnkId=9e83d8e8-c4b8-4bff-ab81-265c977b4eca
Lol the why not both, why must it be one and not the other? The leaders worth anything in our community have always stressed self reliance and improvement as well as fighing against white supremacy. I am well aware of the issues in black American culture and thw work of doctor sowell. Im not a liberal haha. Furthermore the Jewish people have received reparations from not only Germany but also the United States. The Southern slave owners received reparations.
Furthermore, the history of the black americans shows we have always formed mutal aid organizations, business etc. We had to. It wasn't until integration those institutions declined.
I dont think reparations is a pancea to the problems facing the black community furthermore i sont think alot of them now are due directly to racism.
But i believe reparations are owed. Again i am not a liberal. And i believe the black communities problems must be solved by the black community, but that does not preclude me from believing reparations are owed.
Fyi sowell has value in his writings but i suggest you branch out and read other black thinkers as well.
If you want something specifically on the topic of reparations i recommend the economist william darity he is an expert on the subject matter and has written a book
As a Black American, I am for reparations 100%. We were originally supposed to have that, and the US Gov reneged on that promise long ago. (if it were direct cash payments, I would personally opt out)
My mom worked on the advisory board for California's reparation commission, and she expressed how the "if" never came up, it was always "what" and "how" reparations would look was the biggest concern. I personally feel that the best form of reparations is Justice, reforming how we look at inequality and deal with equality, better access to healthier food, CLEAN FUCKING WATER, and Education reform.
It has long been said that Justice and reparations for black people will fix many more problems than just black ones and I believe that 100%.
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Im avoiding the "Irish Farmer" part of this, I recommend reading this to get better context for Irish and Scottish slavery and its legacy: To Hell or Barbados https://www.amazon.com/Hell-Barbados-Ethnic-Cleansing-Ireland/dp/0863222870
Personally, I don't have kids and I keep all my guns locked up anyway to placate my wife. I couldn't tell you how other people do it, but I suspect that quick-access safes like this are probably common.
As for the law itself, it doesn't say what is and isn't acceptable. It's more of an after-the-fact thing they can charge you with if a kid gets a hold of your gun.
The following is a copy of the original post to record the post as it was originally written.
https://www.amazon.com/Big-Fat-Surprise-Butter-Healthy/dp/1451624425
I recently was in a debate with someone who was convinced that eating butter and cheese and going on a keto diet is one of the most healthy ways to eat despite almost all nutrition and health institutions saying otherwise. Most of his beliefs seem to stem from one single book called, big fat surprise. A quick search reveals the author has no scientific credentials whatsoever on the matter, further more if the conclusions made by the book are true why isn't it submitted to a scientific journal for peer review? To me, it seems like something in the caliber of an anti climate change book with cherry picking, fact omission, and meticulously drawing false conclusions from false premises.
What are your thoughts?
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Indunno if its a common view but i at least find some of the less mainstream books and teachings interesting as it provides some great context to what is traditional thinking. Thisbook is a good fast read.
Read a really interesting book about political psychology, and actually I have a degree on political science. I think about this a lot.
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My hypothesis:
The left tends to believe evil and harm comes from power structures. This often results in policing the powerful (corporations, big institutions) and trusting the "common people."
The right, on the other hand, wants to focus on "law and order" among the average person, because they tend to believe evil comes from within every human being. So there's more of a focus on controlling "vices" and "sins" (this applies across all societies with any religion btw). This can also result in a more "tough on crime" approach.
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I lean left, but I actually think both sides have pros and cons and it really differs depending on the situation. But since coming to that conclusion its really kind of reshaped how I view politics.
>I fail to see how this is a response to what I said. The fact that thrice as many American households make six figures as used to stays a fact no matter whether you think a six figure income is enough to make someone "Upper class". Pluralities or majorities have nothing to do with that.
Okay, so then it still comes back down to what material differences Americans en masse are experiencing. You can 100% be sure I will not protest that many goods are cheaper and better than 50 years ago. I simply think that if you add in the cost increases of:
- Housing
- Transportation (reduction in public transit and walking)
- Education (savings for college, housing in "good school districts")
- Healthcare
There are many ways in which even those making $100,000 are far worse off than those making $100,000 (inflation adjusted) in 1970.
I would use the studies on spending found in this book by Elizabeth Warren as a strong source.
>Yes it does.
>
>https://libertystreeteconomics.newyorkfed.org/2014/09/the-value-of-a-college-degree/
Apologies then. I read "pay off" as quite literally how long you are paying off any debt you accrued to get an education. Cost of college has exploded, but you are correct the NPV of a degree is high.
>Well unfortunately that's just magical thinking. You can't proof productivity out of the aether. I'm interested in actually solving problems and enriching people, not wishes and dreams.
I am too. I just also care that all people are enriched, and not just a few or a subset. Productivity is not only personal but societal and social. If a profession becomes more productive, we ALL should benefit in better services and lives, not just those few.
I use my parent's prime account lol for online shopping. I have NYT (including the crossword) subscription (as well as a whole bunch of academic journals) through college.
I have office 365 and Zoom because of work.
Might I suggest ProtonVPN?
And Ive been seriously weighing a paper subscription to National Geographic.
> Also, the US, on net, imports more crude oil then it exports (yes, even under Trump). We consume way more crude than we produce.
This is a misconception now. The US is now a net exporter..
If you have the time I recommend reading The New Map by Daniel Yergin who has written several seminal works on energy/oil over the years. Things are changing rapidly and this helped me get up to speed and catch up on recent changes. It's like the first draft of the history we've been living.
In other words - oil companies are choosing to export and choosing to sell at an inflated price solely for their own share holders - to the detriment of our lives, the larger economy and the nation itself.
I would also be fine the carbon footprint of purchases being baked in.
I have seasonal depression, so a bought the brightest warmest LED light I could at the time. It has worked well for me, but we're all different.
How many watts or lumens is the light you use for depression?
I look for warm bulbs on Amazon, there seem to be lots of options. The lower the K number, the more light it emits is low frequency like red.
Unfortunately, yes.
They preach things that satisfy the baser desires of humanity. It's not your fault or our fault that you don't have a job, it's immigrant's fault! Your son is gay? He was turned gay by a liberal education system! Gas prices and inflation were up? Clearly the fault of a democrat president.
They benefit whenever someone's not happy with something they attribute to liberals, which can be anything from turning frogs gay to the lack of the right to beat up minorities and LGBT folks.
As long as we have a two party system, neither party will be going anywhere because the failings of one can always be blamed on the other as far as their voters are concerned. As long as human nature is xenophobic and overly credulous, the Republican party will exist.
There was a book a few years back about open borders. It was a comic, but don't let that turn you off.
https://www.amazon.com/Open-Borders-Science-Ethics-Immigration/dp/1250316960
The author makes arguments on a number of levels, ethical arguments under a number of frameworks and practical arguments about what the outcomes would be.
I'm not unreservedly advocating for his conclusions, but it's worth a read.
The upshot is that free movement results in efficient allocation of labor and resources. Right now, we already lose jobs to cheap labor, it's just the labor is done outside our borders, so warnings of lost jobs must be taken with a grain of salt. And given our current labor shortage and labor shortages in countries where immigration is difficult (like Japan) it seems that worrying about too many workers may be a little misplaced.
When it comes to welfare, we already have tests for welfare other than just being here. Open borders don't mean that there is no difference between citizens and non citizens.
Some changes would be hard to predict because it's such a large change. But specific negative predictions have reasonable counters. Our economy isn't a finite pie that gets sliced thinner if more people come. The economy is made from the activity of people, it grows when more people participate.
It's often said here that "No one is advocating for actual open borders" but maybe more people should.
dont really need to attack the information when the author is also responsible for this wonderful scholarly work
Worthy to Escape: Why All Believers Will Not Be Raptured Before the Tribulation
From a Marxist perspective, my interpretation would be that those in the 'FIRE' community are easily categorized as part of the broader Vanguard of the Bourgeois.
Their class and material interests are directly tied Capitalistic Commodities, and their production and ownership thereof. In a sense it's more viscerally so, as they don't even have a say in the production and only benefit off of their defense of the production decisions of others. For a Feudalistic Political Economic comparison, they are the Vassal/Fief class, as they are dictated to but have power and status over the Peasantry.
While they worked to be in said position, and shared in many material interests of the Proletariat in their working years, they have been (forced in a sense) to change into their current status. Though this sounds conspiratorial, it in a sense could be a "helpful trick" of Capitalism for this to be so.
A similar phenomena of sorts is spoken to in Bullshit Jobs by David Graeber, whereby the "Efficiency of Private Industry" morphs into a series of cliques of profit capture which is distributed (by managers) to their preferred clientele (their undermanagers and staff), thus removing incentive to be efficient AND worker solidarity.
No.
>Blowout: Corrupted Democracy, Rogue State Russia, and the Richest, Most Destructive Industry on Earth
https://www.amazon.com/Blowout-Corrupted-Democracy-Destructive-Industry/dp/0525575472
It's a great framing of why Europe invaded other lands, and not vice versa.
Armed minorities are harder to oppress
Armed gays dont get bashed
Gun rights are trans rights
The government should not have a monopoly on violence. The black panthers, while i dont agree with everything they have done, successfully prevented many cases of racial harassment from the state.
As long as peoples lives and freedoms are at risk from private citizens and the government, it should be a protected right to keep and bear arms.
There is an excellent book on how firearms made the civil rights movement possible. If you want to really learn about this topic, check out this book.
This Nonviolent Stuff'll Get You Killed: How Guns Made the Civil Rights Movement Possible
Book by Charles E. Cobb Jr.
I've personally studied this topic of american arms ownership and grew immensely in my understanding with the help of this book.
To even hear about this movement I'm going to assume you've already read Are Prisons Obsolete? by Angela Davis. I - like you - found the alternatives vague and difficult to action. I'm sure many liberals here will just kick this issue back saying, 'prison abolition is a fringe belief and not taken up by liberals'. That's true.
It's also another way of not addressing the issue.
Just like the alternatives are vague, differing to unpopularity is as much or more a non-solution.