Commenter Archive

while annoying, I do see where they're coming from.

If Tump had been convicted of a crime that was tantamount to insurrection then I could see this flying, but as it stands if individual states can just rule candidates out on these grounds then what's to stop (for example) Texas declaring every Democratic candidate an insurrectionist from here on out?

There needs to be some kind of process put in place for this to work.

Biden's biggest political problem is that while the average voter might like him fine, the part of the left in charge of publishing opinions don't like him because he's not one of them, and doesn't really pander to them. Also, he boring. I personally think that's a point in his favour (He's the least interesting President in decades, and that's great), but it's a point against him for people who's job it is to write stories that attract eyeballs.

One thing I think Stewart did well, aside from pointing out that, yes Biden is really old, is pointing out what Biden's team can do about it. Put him out in front of people, show that he is still fine upstairs and that will help calm everything down (and if he can't hold an unscripted conversation in public without looking like a fool then he really needs to step aside).

I lost a Great Aunt to Alzheimer's in the 1990s, and all four of my grandparents are dead (one of whom managed to live to be older than Biden is now), and Biden's behaviour doesn't remind me of my Great Aunt at all. She went from repeating the same question to not knowing who we were in a few years. He reminds me more of my grandmother when she hit her '80s. She slowed down a lot and was a little more absent-minded than before, but was still sharp. But these are not good time for President who is getting on in years. The Pax Americana is fraying at the edges, Putin is trying to reenact the 19th Century, and Xi Xinping is eying Taiwan hungry. The US needs a strong President who can hold our international order together. Trump is obviously unsuitable for that purpose, but Biden is going to need to be active and deft in international relations. He needs to show he can do that, or step aside for someone who can.

That's an awfully big claim. the US has a massive advantage in carrier assets (which are the only ships that really matter in modern naval warfare) and the Chinese military is both entirely untested and subject to the same information problems that Russia has.

Don't get me wrong, China is a true peer country, and fighting them would be phenomenally hard, but to say the US has no chance is making a lot of strong assumptions, especially considering that the goal would be to stop an invasion of Taiwan, not actually defeat China on its own soil.

It seems like it’s really easy to get any given school to say “we should do something new and fresh and unproven!” and it’s really difficult to say “well, that didn’t work… we should go back to the old way”.

This is a point Tim Harford made in his book Adapt. A lot of what passes for "experimentation" in government isn't really experimentation because there is no real effort to determine whether it worked, and no interest in reversing course if it doesn't. Harford blames the voting public and their dislike of "flip-flopping", but I wonder if there isn't a deeper cultural dysfunction at play, and not merely in the public sector.

People in general are both loss averse and risk averse, and being suspicious of change is a logical extension of those sentiments.

At this point the only thing that can stop Trump from winning the nomination is the Grim Reaper.

I think this is really about political journalists wanting a different match-up. It's hard to make a repeat contest against two incumbents interesting, and that's ultimately what the media wants. It's a lot harder to sell old news.

I recently started playing Cobalt Core, it's a similar game to Slay the Spire, but is one of the rare games I think improves the formula.

You're playing as a crew that were working on a spaceship until a disaster happened trapping you in a time loop. Instead of a single class, your deck is a blend of the three different crew members you select for the run. You can also unlock different ships and there is a nice spatial element to attacking. Unlike Slay the Spire is seems to have a clear endpoint, but all-in-all its a lot of fun.

I agree that Trump being taken off the ballot creates some escalation risk, but consider that failing to escalate can, in some cases, increase the risk of other side escalating.

Trump and his cult tried to overthrow the government. If things had gone slightly differently that day, the mob might have broken into the chamber before Congress could be evacuated, and then several people (including Pence) would likely have been killed, and the House could have been coerced into certifying the election for Trump. I don't know what would happen after that, but it wouldn't be good.

Trump and his allies (which includes essentially the whole of the Republican Party at this point) are willing to destroy the United States rather than accept a fair loss. If Democrats and the Courts don't do anything to stop them, or even make it costly to keep trying, they will just keep trying until they succeed.

I guess they're "isolationist" in the way that nazi sympathisers described themselves as "isolationist" in the early years of WW2.

I'm very fond of Julius Caesar, I don't think we tell enough stories about the fall of democracies.

I think Musk's problem is that he no longer understands that people can criticise him who aren't idiots.

I agree. While opinions on trans issues vary, there are really only two groups of people who care enough about the issue for it to matter electorally:
1) Trans people and their friends and loved ones.
2) Complete and utter lunatics.

Being pro trans gets you group 1, and the Republicans have group 2 sewn up. If Biden needs to do anything, it just to deflect: "I believe a child's health should be between them, their parents and the doctor" and then change the subject.

Yes, I think you've hit on the big problem with global poverty. I took some development economics in Uni and it made for grim reading. The simple truth is that philanthropy won't accomplish much in a place with insufficient state capacity, and in the the presence of state capacity such philanthropy is generally unnecessary.

And yes, I think it's worth worrying about this when it comes tot he US, and probably a few other countries as well.

I think it highlights how much online discourse, especially on the far left, is clout sharking rather than a serious discussion about anything.

Some, but possibly not in the way you think. The first lockdown in 2020 was overwhelmingly popular, the approval rating for the lockdown was about 90% in March 2020, and when the internal restrictions were lowered to Level 1 in June 2020, we went from being one of the most restricted country to one of the least.

That's the reason Labour won such a massive victory in 2020, they saved thousands, perhaps tens of thousands of New Zealanders, a fact that was very clear as we watched so much of the rest of the world fall apart.

After that though, the shine comes off. Delta got through our border controls in August 2021. At this point we had barely received any vaccines - we were one of the last developed countries to get them. The rhetoric about this lockdown was the same as the first, a short sharp shock to stamp out COIVD, but it didn't work. Delta was too contagious, it would probably have taken the best part of a year at Level 4 to stamp it out, and that simply wasn't viable. Instead they switched to containment, holding COVID in Auckland, and while they kept talking elimination it was clear they were buying time until the population was vaccinated. It wasn't until December that year that Aucklanders could travel freely again, and I think that definitely contributed to the loss of support Labour experienced in Auckland.

All-in-all, with the exception of those first 6 months of COVID, Labour had difficulty in achieving much when it came to solving actual problems New Zealand was facing. The had lots of plans for reforms, but little in the way of tangible results. I think New Zealand voters are more practical than US voters, the people want results, and if you fail to deliver we'll vote the other guys in.

The big problem with alignment is that it used to mean one thing, but came to mean another. Originally, alignment was rooted in the cosmic conflict between Law and Chaos in the vein of Michael Moorcock's books (The good-evil axis of alignment wasn't added until later). Alignment wasn't about who you were, it was about which side you were on, which makes sense considering the wargame origins of D&D.

The idea that your alignment was first and foremost about your personality is a more recent concept, and over time seems to have become the dominant paradigm for alignments, which to me is a much weaker concept. Because people are complicated and can't be easily fit into nine boxes, but sides in a war are more straightforward.

My TTRPG of choice these days is Pathfinder, and they're doing something interesting with alignments at the moment. In order to separate their system from D&D more they're removing alignment and replacing some of its mechanical implications with the Holy and Unholy traits. Basically, undead, devils and other capital "E" Evil creatures are Unholy whole angels, unicorns and the like are Holy. Clerics and Paladins may be sanctified Holy or Unholy depending on the god they serve, which make some of their magic more effective against the opposite side. This gets us back more to the idea of cosmic forces instead of personality traits and helps diffuse a few ethical conundrums. Is the local or c tribe good or evil? Mechanically, neither (unless they worship demons or something) and the rest is left to the philosophers.

I just finished a playthrough as a paladin and I really don't like how they implemented oaths (also, they should be called vows, not oaths, but I'll leave that rant for another time). The game gives you essentially no guidance on how to avoid breaking your oath. The book they give you just gives the potted summary out of the Player's Handbook, which tells you nothing of substance. Which is ridiculous since even if I don't know how an oath works, my character should.

There should be a warning that pops up if you're going to do something that would violate your oath, but the game treats it as a surprise, even your character acts they they don't understand what's happening when they lose their powers, which makes about as much sense as a wizard being surprised when a bolt of fire shoots out of their fingertips.

I have a couple of tips that may help with your character problems, I'll try to keep to light spoilers:
1) Shadowheart worships an evil god, but is not evil herself. This is an important part of her character arc.
2) You can find some non-evil characters in Act One fairly quickly. One is a good replacement for La'Zael, and the other is more of a light caster with some melee support.
3) Finally, a guy named Withers will show up in your camp fairly early into the game. One of the thing he offers you is access to generic characters that have no dialogue or character quests. If you want a Rogue (and in 5E there are ways to do without one), but don't like Asterion, you should be able to get a zero-personality rogue from him.

Normally I spend election nights watching the coverage as the results came in, but two of my friends are getting married on election night (in fairness, they chose the date before the government did) so I'll be attending that instead.

If a government loses confidence of the House mid-term it would mean a snap election, unless the governemnt can make some kind of deal to get it back again (a deal like that actually happened in 1998). Parliamentary systems don't tolerate the sorts of deadlocks that seem more common in your system.

For future speakers, I suggest taking a leaf out of Germany's book. The German Chancellor can only be removed from office by having a new Chancellor elected to replace them. It's called a "constructive vote of no-confidence".

You're surprised that more people died younger before penicillin was common?

No problem.