Oh! Open Thread Day.

cc8cbeiwiaaby8vHey guys. How many of you are happy?

I feel pretty mellow, but the rest of you are allowed emotions. I do feel a bit of pity for all of the libs freaking out right now. I think the media has over-sold the “danger” of a Trump presidency. People really shouldn’t be too shocked at a Republican victory few electoral cycles.

Anyway, comment of the week (somewhat arbitrarily chosen because I didn’t have a clear favorite) goes to Potato, for LSD and psychosis:

…There are anecdotal reports of “acid casualties”, and the idea certainly makes some intuitive sense, but evidence for it is scant. At best you can say that the literature is compatible with LSD being a trigger for already latent conditions such as schizophrenia. …

amazingly-detailed-poster-tells-the-story-of-our-cosmic-exploration-hq-photos-2

Anyway, got any good book recommendations?

52 thoughts on “Oh! Open Thread Day.

  1. I’m currently reading “Full House” by Stephen Jay Gould. Good read so far. I’ll probably finish it by tomorrow night.

    I’d also recommend. The Righteous Mind” by Jonathan Haidt. I have like 30 books I need to get to reading. I keep buying books before I’m done with them along with a busy life. I’ll get to then eventually.

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    • I have a ridiculous back log of books to read. My reading has become much more fragmentary since the internet. I used to plow through books but now I read a little here and there. I don’t think this good but it’s what it is. I’m reading “The Pentagon’s Brain, An Uncensored History of DARPA, America’s Top-Secret Military Research Agency” by Annie Jacobsen now.

      I’ve read a bunch of the slave narratives. Interesting. My feeling is that a lot of the former slaves, while not wanting to be slaves, miss some of the structure of life under slavery. They comment frequently about the behavior of younger Blacks that were free and their aimlessness. I’ll bet their fondness for that structure was directly related to just how decent or not their former masters were.

      For fun. Here’s some fantastic knots you can use that are easy to remember.

      The Grapple hitch and the Zeppelin knot. The grapple hitch is fast and great to tie onto stuff and the Zeppelin is the best way to join ropes period.

      http://www.skytopia.com/project/articles/knot/knots.html

      Blake’s hitch. Tree climbing hitch that you use to go up a rope while the hitch clasp the rope. What’s so good about this is it’s easy to remember, it’s grasp is super, super strong, it won’t slip at all if you set it and it’s easy to move the hitch up by pushing on the coils from the bottom or the top. Pull on the rope to the left in the diagram to lock it on the rope.

      If you want to make a loop in the middle of a rope this is probably the easiest way that’s simple to remember. Make a loop and twist it the same direction twice. Pull around and through the first loop twist.

      Here’s a great video on the Truckers hitch to tie things down. I like the last one. Easy.

      If you make several loops instead of one before you tighten you have a pulley system that can produce tremendous force to hold down the load. Look at these pictures of a versatackle to get the general idea.


      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Versatackle_knot
      http://notableknotindex.webs.com/Versatackle.html

      This is good for tying bottles, buckets or other containers you want to hoist.

      Last but not least you need to be able to lash sticks together. This method uses the least rope and is fast and super strong, tourniquet lashing.

      http://scoutingrediscovered.com/rediscovering-the-tourniquet-lashing/

      Finally a hitch I like that’s a little stronger than the grapple hitch. Easy to remember. East to tie, move and untie. Adjustible Grip Hitch.

      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adjustable_grip_hitch

      I made this because I wanted to find out what are the basic knots that I need for just about any situation. These knots are all as Trump would say,”Highly Rated”, meaning the people who study knots give them high marks for being strong and easy to untie which is just as important as tying. I looked at all kinds of knots and these seemd to be easiest to remember. Some knots are really great but they’re impossible to remember if you don’t use them every day. You can tie these a few times and they’re fairly easy to remember. They’re kind of basic and you can mix and match them to do most anything.

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  2. I would be interested at your interpretation of Trumps “grab them by the p….” comment. So far there are two interpretations: 1.He meant that he just molests women at random using his power to intimidate him (if oyur a star they let you do it) without consent and 2. He is speaking about a specific type of women namly groupies and golddiggers who often assemble around stars and who just want attention and sex from them.

    Which of thous do you think is the more realistic one?

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    • The latter. Have you seen his wife? Very attractive women willingly have sex with him, and yes, it’s because he’s extremely wealthy. He doesn’t need to assault anyone.

      Plus, locker room talk = bragging. Not necessarily real at all.

      Liked by 1 person

    • That it’s effective because women crave sexual domination from powerful men. Physically powerful, physiologically powerful, fiscally powerful…. don’t much matter as long as he is powerful, but preferably all three.

      Also it is likly he did grab them by the baby maker, but mostly likly after they dropped all the hints they wanted his cock.

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    • A combo. He thinks it’s 2, but he’s also implying/assuming that this applies to all women. Since it doesn’t, then if he actually, no-bullshit does apply it to all women, then probably the occasional 1 also happens. If you combine that with the “the only reason I didn’t have an affair with her is because she turned me down” comment, looks like he does ultimately take no for an answer, though.

      And, as our host said, it was “bragging.” He didn’t say this is what he *does* do, he said it’s what he *could* do. Even if you think 1, it’s inaccurate to summarize the comment as “confessed to sexual assault.”

      When it comes to judging people as people, I prefer men who don’t use a crotch grab as their first IoI. Similarly, a guy who’s so used to not needing to assault anyone that he’s forgotten some women exist who *would* turn him down…really *is* an “assaults you without meaning to or possibly ever realizing that’s what he’s doing” risk. (And if he’s powerful, you’re afraid to complain and he gets away with it, too.) (This is basically the origin of the “dirty old man” stereotype, I think; guys get used to being in this situation, and then eventually they age to the point that most women are no longer attracted…but the guy doesn’t necessarily realize anything’s changed. And meanwhile he usually still has power.)

      However, I must say that I do not tend to judge politicians by this metric. Politicians, I judge on political policy.

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  3. I am very pleased about the result. I think this is a really significant victory because it seems to me to represent the voice of ordinary people who are absolutely sick and tired of being told what to think by a narrow minded “elite”. We are sick and tired of the appalling bias of the mainstream media. The opinion polls were predicting a Clinton win and were far away from reality. We are sick and tired of being told we must accept endless numbers of immigrants from a hostile culture, and that we must “tolerate” their intolerant religion.

    The group-think of the current politicians and the mainstream media, whose strings are pulled by a rich elite (the “globalists”) has been undermined in a very significant way. I think there is a revolution in thought now taking place thanks to the internet, and we should continue to play our own part in that, however small it may seem. Trump has been listening to the new voices that are emerging, while the old “elite” have kept their heads firmly stuck in the sand. Now we must make sure he lives up to his promises, it is time for a new era of public participation. We must grab this chance to change the direction of the human race back to a forward direction.

    “TRUMP WINS!!!”

    https://chaunceytinker.wordpress.com/2016/11/09/trump-wins/

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  4. Text from a sibling: “Are we going to make aliyah?” I’m betting we’re far from the only Jewish family having that conversation.
    — (((Yair Rosenberg))) (@Yair_Rosenberg) November 9, 2016

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  5. I’m rereading Marvin Harris’ “Good to Eat.” He was particularly influential to my intellectual growth back when I was in school, so I’m curious how his ideas have aged. Lately I try to reread things rather than find new. The pursuit of the new is a form of idolatry that impedes judgement, I’m.

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  6. Thank you for the answer, I think your right.

    Now another question. Several people including charles murray have been praising Sailers strategy as the key to trumps victory. Then again others do argue that Trump didnt do better then romney and only won because Clinton was such a weak candidate http://reason.com/blog/2016/11/09/an-anti-mandate-for-clinton Thus making sailers strategy worthless. After all Trumps apeal to the working class whites didnt get him more voters then Clinton, she just got less voters.

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    • I’m working on a post about this, but Trump’s appeal specifically shifted the Republican coalition to capture key battleground states. He didn’t increase his % of whites, but he changed which whites he got, and that mattered a lot.

      Hillary couldn’t get as much of the black vote as Obama did, and that cost her the election twice. Hillary essentially lost because she’s white in a party whose voters are increasingly brown.

      Funny how when white Christians vote together with their issues framed in religious language, that’s (relatively) legit, but when poor whites vote together with their issues framed in economic language, that’s suddenly racist.

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      • Indeed, also Hillary lost a lot of whites which are propably the same poor whites who voted for Obama for economic reasons. Thing is Trump lost a lot of white women which is not surprising concidering bouth his behavior and were the media propaganda hit the strongest.

        Some ppl try to desmiss the fact that oposition to political correctness played a role but the fact alone that Hillary had even most of the conservative media on her side and the ENTIRE establishment, Holywood and Wall street supported her and called him LITERALY HITLER while Trump had just the semiinsane conspiracy theorist Alex Johnes and Pepe the Frog on his side and was himself a rather weak candidate STILL WON makes me think rising opposition to PC might be one component that balanced all the negative factors out.

        What do you think?

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      • Hard to say exactly how important any specific factor was. I think it’s also important to remember that most Trump voters aren’t Twitter shitposters, but ordinary people with ordinary concerns about their jobs, the economy, immigration, etc.
        “PC” is a shorthand for libs trying to take certain issues off the table. You can’t talk about immigration because it’s not PC, etc. People get pissed off at people trying to tell them what to talk about or not. Libs want more immigration, conservatives want less, and libs have not been willing to have an honest discussion, but have instead tried to moralize (“calling people illegal immigrants is racist!”) about the subject.

        So how many people just want to curb illegal immigration, vs how many want to be able to discuss whether or not we should curb illegal immigration without someone calling you racist… there are probably more of the first, but both groups are pretty annoyed at the PC brigade…

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  7. That professor’s quote pretty much echoes my thought process, except that I was pretty mellow about the Bush years, in an apathetic libertarian way. I feel very bad for some of my friends and family, who seem downright unhinged, which I definitely blame the media for.

    Only my immediate family, and one extremely conservative friend, know I’m not unhappy right now–I realized some time ago that being honest with friends and extended family isn’t useful. That said, I think every one of them, with the possible exception of my mother, assumes I voted libertarian. The secret may go with me to the grave. Heck, with a small number of exceptions, I’m letting people think I voted for Her. My thinking is that my job now is fostering the social lives of my children, and where I live, I’ll hinder that if I’m outspoken. The irony in this situation, what with all the recent glorification of suffragettes, amuses me. I still plan on subtly encouraging questioning of authority (in the real sense, not the Narrative-friendly sense)… But I don’t see immediate advantage in making us social pariahs, especially as my husband is one to go along with a mishmash of leftwing stuff, and shuts down if I try to argue with him… (My usual response is to ask if I should submit to my husband. I have to say, I almost wish I’d voted for Her just so I could say I did it because it’s what my husband thought best…) The irony is that he’s the big reason I’m not really a libertarian any more. That’s one reason I avoid trying to “convert” people… One, I don’t know if I’ll still believe the same things in 10 years, and another, you might successfully rid someone of one view, only to have that be the one view anchoring them near your side. Unless you’re prepared to keep constant tabs on their thoughts, you (a hypothetical left-of-center person) might very well turn your right-of-center friend into a right-wing freak… (Now, if you’re disguising yourself as a left-of-center person to secretly turn right-of-center people into right-wing freaks, well, that takes doing…)

    Ah, well. The nice thing is that the fear of social ostracism helps me go unnoticed this week. And thanks for having an open thread!

    Liked by 1 person

  8. Ooh! Book recommendation! I have one!

    You want to read “First Footsteps in East Africa” by Sir Richard Francis Burton. It’s exactly what it says on the tin: an account (via letters) of Burton’s expedition through East Africa, starting in Somalia (technically Aden, but that’s before the book) and ending in Harare.

    It’s amazing, and I would bet $100 that it intersects perfectly with your interests, given what else you’ve read and commented on here.

    About the election: I hope Trump increases funding for NASA. It’d be a great bipartisan win, and a lovely way to shake his Hitlerification. Hitler doesn’t believe in sending a man to Mars; the two are incompatible.

    But more than worrying about his public image, I just want more funding for NASA.

    Liked by 1 person

  9. I’ll just leave these here.

    I said it there but I’ll say it again here: Capital is liquid; workers are much less so. Never seen a globalist come up with a counter-argument for that. (Are there any globalists here who wanna try?)

    DH and I and Orphan Wilde all independently came to the same conclusion about how to interpret the candidates’ policy differences, which was heartening. (DH and I had each been afraid to bring it up to the other. ;) But when we finally did…turned out we agreed.)

    We both waited till the last minute to decide whether to protest-vote for Stein or not. In the Prius ;) on the way to the polling place right before the polls closed, we came to an agreement (a) that we would both vote the same way for prez and (b) who to vote for. (Going right before the polls close means often there’s no line. There actually was one this time, but it was short.)

    (will wordpress allow embedded tweets? let’s find out)

    Late deciders broke for Trump. Per @AnthonyMasonCBS @CBSEveningNews pic.twitter.com/UWUcNPsSSi— Norah O'Donnell (@NorahODonnell) November 9, 2016

    //platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

    ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

    I enjoyed watching the election returns come in. Since then, the unhinged reaction of the Marie Antoinettes is inspiring very mixed emotions. I don’t know of anyone who convincingly both understands my position and disagrees with it (possibly Freddie de Boer, but twitter is such a short medium it’s hard to tell). It’d be nice to find such a person–I’d like to believe in a loyal opposition. Instead it seems all we have is these Marie Antoinette types who inspire annoyance, pity, and nausea in equal measure.

    And now here *you* are, raining on my parade with your “ran-to-the-left-of-Clinton-guy is actually just another establishment globalist just like every other politician on either side of the aisle.” ;) I mean, you have a good chance of being right…but still. I didn’t “turn FDR’s picture to the wall” for that.

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      • Ah, OK. Next time I’ll just say “disappeared.” ;)

        I see the embedding lost the image. But good enough.

        You know, I don’t dislike HRC as a person. I’m not convinced any of her scandals are worse than any other politician’s. I just…disagree with her globalist and warmongering policy positions.

        (I have to give the candidates credit: *They* often talked about policy. It was the irresponsible media who kept trying to drag it back to nothing but personality and scandal.)

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      • I’m neutral on Hillary as a person. I don’t have a positive impression of her, but I also know I am deep in an anti-Hillary bubble where most of the information I see about her is pretty negative. Obama comes across as a basically decent person, though.

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  10. (Other comment went to spam. Has more than one link…sorry.)

    If you’re retweeting mtracey, you should retweet this.

    As for your retweet about Lena Dunham…it’s not uncommon for independents to enroll in the party they happen to be leaning toward that cycle, vote in the primary, and then disaffiliate immediately after. In fact it’s so common that during primaries many polling places have a stack of disaffiliation forms right there.

    (This seems especially likely in states where only one party ever wins local elections: Often there’s a divide where one big portion of the electorate likes that party, and another big group likes neither national party. They don’t want to enroll in either party long-term. But since only one party ever wins there, the real contest is in the primary. So people get into the habit of enrolling, voting in the primary, and then disaffiliating.)

    tl;dr Just because someone’s not enrolled in a party *now* doesn’t mean they weren’t enrolled *during the primary*.

    My childless, atheist female friend just declared that she has nothing to live for anymore but her cat.

    Sad.

    More and more these days people live in different worlds.

    I know people who, over and over, would hear politicians mention issues these folks had never before heard of…so they assumed these were politically motivated, hateful lies. After all, no one else, no one reputable, had ever said such a thing!

    If they had taken the time to research these things, they would have found out they were probably real issues.

    But then, “taking the time to research things” is supposed to be *journalists’* job.

    Journalists have not been doing their job.

    It’s all about ethics in journalism. ;)

    I joke, but I mean it. People tend to dismiss “ethics in journalism, ooh la la” as some “hopelessly nerdy thing that no one who’s anyone actually sincerely cares about.” This is why it actually does matter.

    …Toynbee was right: our “creative minority” has become a “dominant minority” without realizing it.

    …you were looking for book recs? Toynbee, A Study of History:

    [In the late Roman Empire a] creative minority which had once evoked a voluntary allegiance from the uncreative mass, in virtue of the gift of charm which is the privilege of creativity, had now given the place to a dominant minority destitute of charm because it was uncreative. This dominant minority had retained its privileged position by force, and the secessions which had ultimately resulted in the creation of the war-bands and the Christian Church had been reactions to the tyranny….

    [T]he creative minority, out of which the creative individuals had emerged in the growth stage, has ceased to be creative and has sunk into being merely dominant, but the secession of the proletariat, which is the essential feature of disintegration, has itself been achieved under the leadership of creative personalities for whose activity there is now no scope of except in the organization of opposition to the incubus of the uncreative power that be. Thus the change from growth to disintegration is not accompanied by any extinction of the creative spark. Creative personalities continue to arise and to take the lead in virtue of their creative power, but they now find themselves compelled to do their old work from a new locus standi….

    The social schisms in which this discord partially reveals itself rend the broken-down society in two different dimensions simultaneously. There are vertical schisms between geographically segregated communities, and horizontal schisms between geographically inter-mingled but socially segregated classes….

    Schism in the…body social…will not be resolved by any scheme to return to the good old days (archaism), or by programs guaranteed to render an ideal projected future (futurism), or even by the most realistic, hardheaded work to weld together again the deteriorating elements [of the society]. Only birth can conquer death–the birth, not of the old thing again, but of something new.

    This election was a clear rejection of futurism. But will this administration give us archaism? Or will it be something new?

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    • “…This election was a clear rejection of futurism…”

      Why is “less White people” and less voting by Whites considered “futurism”. If you went to China and told them the future was to import 100 million or so Africans and maybe another 100 million Whites do you think they would appreciate you calling it Futurism?

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      • It’s “futurism” by Toynbee’s definition: “programs guaranteed to render an ideal projected future.”

        Globalization and open borders fit that definition IMO. There’s this idea that human history is “inevitably” progressing toward planetary unity, as part of humanity’s “inevitable” progression to the stars.

        After all, once we have a multi-planet federation like in Star Trek, then it would be really confusing for any intelligent species to have more than one government. Why…Romulans could masquerade as Vulcans and spy on the Federation! ;)

        From this perspective the “problem” with whites isn’t their presence or that they vote but rather that they don’t get with the globalization program. They are the best example in the USA of the fact that labor is not as liquid as capital (by which I mean, it’s not easy for someone to just pick up and move to wherever the jobs are–let alone to retrain). They are the “ugly fact” ruining the “beautiful hypothesis” that “a completely free market, free for labor too” is always and only good.

        (Rust Belt blacks have the same problems, but their problems can be conveniently blamed on racism instead of “their jobs moved overseas.”)

        That’s why a white person can become a “goodwhite” by adapting to globalization (move away from your ruined hometown, get a new, intellectual job) and shutting up about the problems of those left behind. If you stop ruining the beautiful theory, you stop being a “badwhite” too.

        …uh, [/crackpot theory] ;)

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    • You know that there’s another train of thought that the Romans wrote about themselves for their decline. There were no more Romans. All the people in Rome seemed to these writers to be mostly foreigners. So all your schism, disintegration and extinction of the creative spark had nothing to do with the Romans at all.

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  11. You retweeted Gibbon Incognito: “Academics belatedly realize what has long been totally obvious to the ‘poorly educated’. We understand you far better than you understand us”

    Yeah the less privileged always have a better understanding of the more privileged than the other way around. ;)

    (Caveat is that, often, the model the less privileged are forced to make to predict the behavior of the more privileged…works OK for prediction purposes but is still not at all an accurate model of the other group’s inner life–that is, “how it feels to be one of them”/”what they actually (think they) believe.”)

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  12. Currently reading “Return of the King” by William Dalrymple which is about the British invasion of Afghanistan and is how I learned about the fate of Alexander Burnes of “Travels into Bokhara” fame. Didn’t find learn about it intentionally just enjoyed the author’s book “The last Mughal” about the sepoy rebellion and the last Mughal emperor.

    Also enjoyed “White Gold” by Giles Milton which is about the muslim slave trade in europeans and follows Thomas Pellow who was captured and enslaved at 12 years old, made into a millitary slave and is based on his own written account. I had a brief look at the original account but haven’t really read it. It’s called “The adventures of Thomas Pellow, of Penryn, mariner, three and twenty years in captivity among the Moors”.

    Liked by 1 person

  13. Some people I know sincerely believe Clinton lost the election because of sexism. That’s because they can’t think of any *substantive* reason for her loss.

    (This is *often* why people decide something happened because of prejudice–it’s a “diagnosis of exclusion.” Another book rec if you haven’t read it already–Richard Thompson Ford’s The Race Card makes this same point.)

    I don’t think there’s any communicating with them about it either. These are the same people who’ve never heard of so many of the issues because they get all their news from the TV.

    (It’s called epistemic closure, my old friends; remember when you accurately detected it in the religious right? :sigh:)

    I believe they are factually incorrect, but they are also sincere, and…and that’s why I’m feeling such mixed emotions now.

    …ah well. Candidate “Don’t rock the handbasket” lost; there’s a faint possibly we might get off this destructive path. I can hope, anyway.

    Liked by 1 person

    • I have been tying to gently explain some of the dynamics behind Trump’s victory to my distraught fiends and reassure them that things will probably be basically okay, but they aren’t listening. They think Trump is going to start WWIII and gas people, and that this is what all Trump supporters actually want. No one is listening.

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      • Not listening, for sure! Even “look, people were predicting WWIII and Hitler when Reagan got elected” gets vitriolic responses… (And assumptions that someone posting “it’ll all be ok” is a secret Trump voter isn’t going to help the situation…)

        One of my cousins posted about her attempted “dialog” with a Trump supporter… She said how she gave him things to read, and acknowledges that he may or may not read them, but seems unaware that (1)the most educated/intelligent are probably silent, and (2) if she’s really interested in dialog, is she willing to read what he offers her? And, of course, (3) she assumes he hadn’t heard those arguments before. If someone is in the mood to remove themself from a “dialog”, then playing ignorant and accepting the proselytizer’s literature with a promise to read it is much easier than admitting you’re aware of the arguments, don’t come to the same conclusions, and worse yet, trying to articulate the details of how you don’t hate people and really do have everyone’s best interests at heart… So, “oh, sure, I’ll read about Jesus, because I totally didn’t read through the Bible at age 12 and still become an atheist…” (OK, there was a time from about age 18-22 where I might have said something like this… Obviously, I have a stronger interest in maintaining social ties these days…)

        Oh, and books… I’m sure it’ll come as a total shock that I’m reading Scott Adams’ latest book. I can’t even persuade my husband to pick up his socks, though.

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      • “…They think Trump is going to start WWIII and gas people, and that this is what all Trump supporters actually want…”

        This is crazy. If anyone would want to gas people it would be me and what I want is political control over my country and destiny, stop the violence against Whites and stop the Jews controlling everything.

        As for war we should work with Assad and Russia and wrap up ISIS real quick. Shouldn’t be too hard then start getting out of as many of these military security deals as we can fast as possible.

        I would bring mass immigration from the third world to a halt and reintroduce immigration from White countries. This would be widely hated showing they hate White people.

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      • E,”… I’m reading Scott Adams’ latest book. I can’t even persuade my husband to pick up his socks, though…”

        That was funny. I got a giggle of that.

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  14. NYT’s Nate Cohn has been tweeting more fine-grained analysis of votes for president:

    The town-by-town results of MA-CT-RI are remarkable. Massive shifts along class lines.— Nate Cohn (@Nate_Cohn) November 9, 2016

    When I checked out New England state-level results, I saw something similar in NH and VT. And, of course, ME split its electoral votes for the first time. DH and I are far from the only New Englanders who crossed the aisle.

    That tweet got this reply: “what do they want? Work the illegal immigrants jobs but w/ 3 times the labor rate + benefits? Not going to happen.”

    So…how’s that *not* gonna work but…raising the minimum wage *would*?

    As an AfterBerner I predictably support a minimum wage, but you can’t have one without immigration control. Without immigration control, illegal immigrants become a class with no bargaining power and hence *the* source of cheap, under-the-table labor. What the minimum wage is no longer matters because no one is “officially” hiring and so no one is paying it.

    So here this reply is, acknowledging the use of illegal immigrants as cheap labor…

    What exactly is he suggesting these working class folks do? Take “the illegal immigrants jobs” at the same illegally low wage and lack of benefits? They can’t–if you’re hiring illegally under the table, you want someone who won’t (can’t) turn you in–or, even, negotiate in any way for higher pay. So you hire someone who can’t legally work–not someone who can.

    (You hire the workers you need, so if everyone had to hire only legal workers, everyone would (and raise prices, but locals would have jobs and could pay them). But once one employer starts tapping into the source of cheap labor, everyone has to or be undercut and driven out of business. This is also why I support regulations more generally. Not all regulations everywhere–just, the existence of regulations. Regulations enable those who want to do business ethically *even in areas not easily detectable by customers*, to do so without being undercut.)

    Or is he saying…basically this?

    As that comic points out, this standard neoliberal argument ultimately boils down to: Social Darwinism. Like…if his actual goal actually is to “improve humanity” by letting the less mentally agile just die…maybe he could just own it?

    I mean, I’m back to the same point again: Labor isn’t very liquid. And never will be. People aren’t like that.

    Speaking of which. Max Frisch’s famous quip about immigration is often translated as: “We wanted workers, but we got people instead.”

    The original is: “Wir riefen Arbeitskräfte, es kamen Menschen.”

    This is…IMO less funny and more poignant than the above translation. A much more literal translation is: “We called workers, [and] there came people.”

    I mean I can see why you’d think you needed to change it to “we got people” because that sounds better in English…but…it changes the meaning. “Wanted” instead of “called” changes the meaning even more.

    Suggestions:

    “We sought workers and got people.”

    “We called for workers and people answered.”

    Or just plain:

    “We called workers and people came.”

    Lesson: If you call workers, what will come…is people.

    So you’d better think about what kind of people you want moving into your community.

    And speaking of *that*!

    SlateStarScott:

    I think their demand is “Look, we were very happy here with no immigrants, we’re less happy with more immigrants, there’s no reason why we should have to take immigrants, why are you insisting that we do?”

    As far as I know, nobody has really addressed this except the open borders people, who say “taking immigrants is a moral obligation”. Anyone short of open borders people has no answer to this except to confuse it with the sort of racism where they want a society with lots of races and themselves on the top, which most white people reject and understandably get angry when they’re accused of….

    But I think what they want is respect along the lines of “Yes, you were here first, except for the Indians who don’t count, and that gives you the right to determine who you invite or don’t invite into your country. We won’t let new people in unless you like and approve of them and think they’re a good fit for your community.”

    Since that’s never gonna happen, maybe we can just give them a basic income instead.

    How does Scott expect people to react to this?

    Does he think he’s being funny?

    Is he *faking* being cluelessly smug as a clever subterfuge to shore up opposition to immigration? Perhaps his whole *goal* was to spark a “The hell it won’t!” reaction?

    Anyway, it’s interesting how he identifies an issue that nobody has addressed…but *he* doesn’t try to address it either, preferring instead to make a smug joke.

    Huh.

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    • You make good points. I have a relative I occasionally argue with who is in favor of open borders and increased minimum wage. I haven’t yet figured out how to convey the idea that, thermodynamically, this doesn’t work. Like, you are trying to use one law to legislate away the effects of another law, thus increasing the amount we’re spending on enforcement just to get the same effect we could have had without the first law… At some point enforcing borders is also expensive, and also exerts a cost on the economy, of course. It’s a balance. But open borders mean open wages.

      I tend to think Scott is genuine. He knows AI and the robots will replace almost all of the jobs sooner or later anyway, so he wants MBI before 90% of people starve to death. He probably also thinks that, long-term, immigration is a given, so he might as well give up on that and address the robot problem.

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  15. Usualy Leftists argue that Political correctness is just “being respectfull to everyone”. But then the question arises why it dosnt aply to whites and men who can be insulted, shamed and psychologicly broken at will.

    This is the main point why political correctness is called this way instead of just politness, it has a strong double standart.

    If at all the leftist will then answer with a consequentionalist argument. By insulting white men their status is lowerd thus the unfair advantage they have eroded and this end justifies the means of being nasty to them.
    Also they argue that negative steryotypes about minorites lead to harm while about whites dont.

    Ofcourse this seems strange. Many minorities (asians mostly) and especialy women have positions of power over white men which they could exploit to their harm if they feel they are justified in practicing open gender/race nepotism.

    Now no leftist has yet made this argument to me but I think it is not weak: http://slatestarcodex.com/2013/04/20/social-justice-for-the-highly-demanding-of-rigor/
    it shows that women and blacks themselves usualy prefer papers written by white men and to hire white men. Would in such a case anti white male shaming and insulting campagins only help women and minorities to stop prefering white men and no longer harm their coethnics and cogender by a pro white men bias?

    I wonder what your take on the consequentinalism of “killallwhitemen” is?

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