I have to admit that Democrats rallying around the principle that Supreme Court Justices need to keep their b*tches in line was not on my bingo card for the 2020s.
That aside, is this the new "OK sign is a white power symbol?" Is there any evidence that an upside-down flag was widely used or recognized as a "stop the steal" symbol prior to this month? I found one picture of a "stop the steal" protester carrying an upside-down flag, but given the traditional use of an upside-down flag as a symbol of distress, that is at best very weak evidence for the claim being made here.
My brain didn't really have any special reaction to this. Yes, the "horse dewormer" talking point was obviously stupid and/or bad-faith. It was well known at the time that Ivermectin was used widely as an anti-parasite drug in humans---in fact, low rates of reported COVID-19 infection in areas where Ivermectin had seen heavy use was one of the observations driving the hypothesis that Ivermectin might be protective against COVID-19, though my understanding is that that was largely explained by poor reporting, low rates of testing, and possibly less urbanization in those areas.
And it's not at all surprising that a drug that works in horses also works in humans. The reason we're able to test drugs in mice is that much of the biological machinery is broadly conserved in mammals. Mice are a bit more closely related to humans than horses, but horses are still close enough for considerable overlap in drug safety and efficacy.
You will note, though, that the strings "virus" and "viral" do not appear anywhere in that paper.
I'd say that the major problem is that it doesn't really explain how clearly bad-faith these accusations are:
1. The text was faded and in the periphery; you really have to look close to see it.
2. There is not actually anything legitimately objectionable here; it's taken from the Wikipedia article on World War I and refers to the Second Reich (1879-1918); several other phrases visible in the full video come from the same article.
That's obviously not your beef with the article, though, and I have no guesses as to what is.
Like any reasonable person, I'm against both Trump and Biden, but unfortunately there's essentially no chance that both will lose.
There's an asymmetry here: In terms of policy preferences, Trump is arguably worse than Biden, but Biden has been more effective at getting bad policy enacted, and in general, the bad policies Democrats enact tend to last longer.
Given that my vote has zero chance of swinging the election, I'll probably vote for a "screw you both" candidate, but even that's tough to do responsibly, given the LP's recent shenanigans.
Every election's a garbage buffet, but recently they've been putting out more and more toxic waste.
To be clear, this is not a new law. It's an amendment to a 1953 law which appears to have been passed in order to control the KKK. In section 14.12-11, there is a list of exceptions to the use of masks to conceal identity, the last of which is for health purposes.
Now, in the interest of controlling another violent hate group, the new amendment strikes 14‑12.11 (a) (6) (the health exception, which, as noted in the article, was added in 2020), adds a penalty enhancement for committing a crime while wearing a mask in order to conceal identity, with some additional prohibitions on impeding roadways (with or without mask). It also adds a provision that says that churches can't be held to different standards than other private organizations when it comes to enforcement of emergency-related executive orders and local regulations.
Some of these provisions strike me as excessive, but they've been on the books for 70 years, and the health exemption has only been in place for four of those years. And people really have been abusing the health exemption to conceal their identities while committing crimes.
That said, I'm not sure what good removing the exemption does that isn't accomplished with the penalty enhancement. I get that the goal is to identify people committing crimes after the fact, but if you can't identify them because they're wearing masks, then you can't identify them to arrest them for wearing masks.
As noted in the article you linked, POSIWID is not really a claim about intent. It just means that a system does what it does, regardless of what was intended, and once we know what it does, we shouldn't pretend that it actually does something else.
Also, complex systems often do lots of things. Yes, if a system is claimed to make a certain number go up and it actually makes the numbers go down, it's fair to criticize people for continuing to support the system, but it's not really fair to assume that the actual intent was to make that number go down. Maybe they continue to support it because it makes some other good numbers, like employment of DEI consultants, go up, and the other number going down is an unfortunate but acceptable cost.
I should add that this is not due to the number of workers per family doubling. In 2022, only 53% of families had at least two workers, and a big chunk of those had only one full-time worker. IIRC, the share of families with two full-time workers peaked decades ago, after women reached peak LFPR and the effect of increasing prevalence of single parenthood dominated.
Labor theory of value and the idea that profits are the surplus labor value taken from exploited workers.
I don't have much first-hand knowledge of the actual writings of Marx; much of what I know of Marxism comes from modern Marxists, whose whole theory of economics seems to revolve around not having gotten the memo on marginalism 100+ years ago.
What do you think that Marxists get right that mainstream economists get wrong?
Biden has attempted to be much worse on economic policy than he has actually been able to be, but has been held back by Congressional Republicans and the most moderate Democrats.
You're giving Biden way too much credit on inflation. The ARP was a huge dose of stimulus to an economy that didn't need it, and this was mildly but totally unnecessarily aggravated by Biden repeatedly extending the student loan payment pause long past the point where there was any even remotely plausible justification for doing so. Inflation started taking off almost immediately after the ARP checks went out.
Yes, many other countries had inflation, but many other countries also overspent during COVID, and Europe was hit harder by the war in Ukraine. Japan had 2.5% inflation in 2022, and Switzerland 2.8%, compared to the US's 8%.
No, Biden and the Democrats were not solely responsible for high inflation. There were a number of other factors, including supply-side factors, the Fed waiting too long to raise rates in 2021, and also people going out to spend excess pandemic savings after getting vaccinated (but we knew this, which strengthens the argument that the ARP was an unforced error). But Biden's mismanagement was a significant contributor, likely adding 2-3 points to peak inflation.
Yes, the Trump administration spent more in 2020 than the Biden Administration spent in 2021, but you should know better than to fall for such a transparently disingenuous talking point. 2020 was a very different situation that called for a very different response. As there were no COVID vaccines at the time, there was a (somewhat) bipartisan consensus that a planned partial shutdown of the economy was called for, during which unemployment spiked to nearly 15%, and a large burst in spending was needed to support people affected. IMO there should have been less spending, but a Democrat with a trifecta definitely would have spent as much or more.
By March of 2021, unemployment was down to 6.1% and rapidly falling, vaccines were rolling out, and, as noted above, there was already a tremendous amount of latent stimulus embedded in excess savings from 2020. There was no economic justification for an additional stimulus round, or for extension of the student loan payment pause or expanded unemployment benefits past, say, June of 2022 (when vaccine uptake went from supply-constrained to demand-constrained), and these were all economic blunders (and/or cynically political ploys) that contributed to excessive inflation.
Also worth noting that continued excess spending has forced the Fed to raise rates more than they would have otherwise, and that approximately 100% of the persistent inflation (i.e. the fact that prices are still 10-15% above the pre-COVID trend, and will remain there) is attributable to excess fiscal and monetary stimulus. Inflation attributable to supply-side factors goes away when the supply problems are resolved.
This is not to say that Trump was not also a terrible President, but I'm not going to argue with anyone who has nothing nicer to say about Biden than that he has not been a significantly worse President than Trump.
It depends on what you mean by well-correlated. By social science standards, they're pretty strongly correlated. As a lower bound, permanent income and IQ are correlated at about 0.5 for men. The correlation between more comprehensive measures of ability and SES is likely significantly stronger.
But that wasn't really my point. I'm just saying that when people rail against the "elite," they're talking more about midwits with high social status than about extraordinarily competent people.
The problem with "elite" is that it has two different meanings, one referring to social status and the other referring to ability. These are somewhat correlated, but not nearly as well as they should be.
We've been over this before: You need to think about whether what you're saying makes any sense before you hit the Post button. As I am not in charge of a university, I'm not really in a position to implement this.
If I have children, I do not intend to make a habit of rewarding tantrums---to the best of my knowledge, there's a pretty strong consensus that this only leads to more tantrums.
The question is how doing the opposite for years is working out for universities. It looks like not well, so far. For Brown, appeasement may work in the short term, which is why people do it, but let's see how it goes in the future. What happens if they vote against divestment later this year? What happens the next time the students have some grievance?
I found a great album from 1974, Makiko Takada's MAKIKO first. I'm not really sure how to classify it. It's not quite pop, not quite jazz, and track 8 is gospel. The sophisticated melodies, austere arrangements, and Takada's clear voice make it a real stand-out.
The first track, "The World of the Song of My Heart" is great, but takes a while to get going. The third, "Roof," was the radio single. I don't think there are any real duds on the album, though some are stretched a bit thin, but tracks 1-4, 6, and 8 are the best, IMO.
Takada released only one more album (高田真樹子・不機嫌な天使 if you want to search for it on YouTube) before getting married and retiring. That was a thing women did back then; Momoe Yamaguchi, the biggest Japanese pop star of the 70s, retired at the age of 21 after getting married. Unlike her first album, whose songs were all self-penned, 不機嫌な天使 (Grumpy Angel) had songs written by other songwriters, and had a very generic sound that made it a big letdown for me. She did release a third album in 1999, for which she wrote at least two songs herself, but I haven't been able to find it online.
The point is to discourage, rather than encouraging, bad behavior. You teach these children that this is the way to get what they want, and they'll keep doing it every time they want something.
Because student opinions on political issues are generally stupid, and should not be acted on by administrators. A small group of jackasses not getting its way by going through normal channels is not evidence that the system has failed.
Instead of requiring them to go through existing channels, Brown rewarded them for throwing a tantrum. The correct way to deal with this would have been just to ignore students not causing problems until they got bored, and start failing or expelling students who were causing problems.
On “The Flag Flap”
I have to admit that Democrats rallying around the principle that Supreme Court Justices need to keep their b*tches in line was not on my bingo card for the 2020s.
That aside, is this the new "OK sign is a white power symbol?" Is there any evidence that an upside-down flag was widely used or recognized as a "stop the steal" symbol prior to this month? I found one picture of a "stop the steal" protester carrying an upside-down flag, but given the traditional use of an upside-down flag as a symbol of distress, that is at best very weak evidence for the claim being made here.
On “Open Mic for the week of 5/20/2024”
My brain didn't really have any special reaction to this. Yes, the "horse dewormer" talking point was obviously stupid and/or bad-faith. It was well known at the time that Ivermectin was used widely as an anti-parasite drug in humans---in fact, low rates of reported COVID-19 infection in areas where Ivermectin had seen heavy use was one of the observations driving the hypothesis that Ivermectin might be protective against COVID-19, though my understanding is that that was largely explained by poor reporting, low rates of testing, and possibly less urbanization in those areas.
And it's not at all surprising that a drug that works in horses also works in humans. The reason we're able to test drugs in mice is that much of the biological machinery is broadly conserved in mammals. Mice are a bit more closely related to humans than horses, but horses are still close enough for considerable overlap in drug safety and efficacy.
You will note, though, that the strings "virus" and "viral" do not appear anywhere in that paper.
"
You're free to indulge in whatever fantasies you want in your own home, but please don't involve others in your kink without consent.
"
I'd say that the major problem is that it doesn't really explain how clearly bad-faith these accusations are:
1. The text was faded and in the periphery; you really have to look close to see it.
2. There is not actually anything legitimately objectionable here; it's taken from the Wikipedia article on World War I and refers to the Second Reich (1879-1918); several other phrases visible in the full video come from the same article.
That's obviously not your beef with the article, though, and I have no guesses as to what is.
On “Trends in Social Media Commentary That Should Be Relentlessly Mocked Until They Stop”
Especially if it's moving.
On “Libertarians for Trump?”
Like any reasonable person, I'm against both Trump and Biden, but unfortunately there's essentially no chance that both will lose.
There's an asymmetry here: In terms of policy preferences, Trump is arguably worse than Biden, but Biden has been more effective at getting bad policy enacted, and in general, the bad policies Democrats enact tend to last longer.
Given that my vote has zero chance of swinging the election, I'll probably vote for a "screw you both" candidate, but even that's tough to do responsibly, given the LP's recent shenanigans.
Every election's a garbage buffet, but recently they've been putting out more and more toxic waste.
On “Open Mic for the week of 5/13/2024”
To be clear, this is not a new law. It's an amendment to a 1953 law which appears to have been passed in order to control the KKK. In section 14.12-11, there is a list of exceptions to the use of masks to conceal identity, the last of which is for health purposes.
Now, in the interest of controlling another violent hate group, the new amendment strikes 14‑12.11 (a) (6) (the health exception, which, as noted in the article, was added in 2020), adds a penalty enhancement for committing a crime while wearing a mask in order to conceal identity, with some additional prohibitions on impeding roadways (with or without mask). It also adds a provision that says that churches can't be held to different standards than other private organizations when it comes to enforcement of emergency-related executive orders and local regulations.
Some of these provisions strike me as excessive, but they've been on the books for 70 years, and the health exemption has only been in place for four of those years. And people really have been abusing the health exemption to conceal their identities while committing crimes.
That said, I'm not sure what good removing the exemption does that isn't accomplished with the penalty enhancement. I get that the goal is to identify people committing crimes after the fact, but if you can't identify them because they're wearing masks, then you can't identify them to arrest them for wearing masks.
"
As noted in the article you linked, POSIWID is not really a claim about intent. It just means that a system does what it does, regardless of what was intended, and once we know what it does, we shouldn't pretend that it actually does something else.
Also, complex systems often do lots of things. Yes, if a system is claimed to make a certain number go up and it actually makes the numbers go down, it's fair to criticize people for continuing to support the system, but it's not really fair to assume that the actual intent was to make that number go down. Maybe they continue to support it because it makes some other good numbers, like employment of DEI consultants, go up, and the other number going down is an unfortunate but acceptable cost.
"
I should add that this is not due to the number of workers per family doubling. In 2022, only 53% of families had at least two workers, and a big chunk of those had only one full-time worker. IIRC, the share of families with two full-time workers peaked decades ago, after women reached peak LFPR and the effect of increasing prevalence of single parenthood dominated.
"
Median family income, adjusted for inflation. Up 125% since 1960.
"
Labor theory of value and the idea that profits are the surplus labor value taken from exploited workers.
I don't have much first-hand knowledge of the actual writings of Marx; much of what I know of Marxism comes from modern Marxists, whose whole theory of economics seems to revolve around not having gotten the memo on marginalism 100+ years ago.
What do you think that Marxists get right that mainstream economists get wrong?
On “Republicans Defending Joe Biden”
Biden has attempted to be much worse on economic policy than he has actually been able to be, but has been held back by Congressional Republicans and the most moderate Democrats.
"
You're giving Biden way too much credit on inflation. The ARP was a huge dose of stimulus to an economy that didn't need it, and this was mildly but totally unnecessarily aggravated by Biden repeatedly extending the student loan payment pause long past the point where there was any even remotely plausible justification for doing so. Inflation started taking off almost immediately after the ARP checks went out.
Yes, many other countries had inflation, but many other countries also overspent during COVID, and Europe was hit harder by the war in Ukraine. Japan had 2.5% inflation in 2022, and Switzerland 2.8%, compared to the US's 8%.
No, Biden and the Democrats were not solely responsible for high inflation. There were a number of other factors, including supply-side factors, the Fed waiting too long to raise rates in 2021, and also people going out to spend excess pandemic savings after getting vaccinated (but we knew this, which strengthens the argument that the ARP was an unforced error). But Biden's mismanagement was a significant contributor, likely adding 2-3 points to peak inflation.
Yes, the Trump administration spent more in 2020 than the Biden Administration spent in 2021, but you should know better than to fall for such a transparently disingenuous talking point. 2020 was a very different situation that called for a very different response. As there were no COVID vaccines at the time, there was a (somewhat) bipartisan consensus that a planned partial shutdown of the economy was called for, during which unemployment spiked to nearly 15%, and a large burst in spending was needed to support people affected. IMO there should have been less spending, but a Democrat with a trifecta definitely would have spent as much or more.
By March of 2021, unemployment was down to 6.1% and rapidly falling, vaccines were rolling out, and, as noted above, there was already a tremendous amount of latent stimulus embedded in excess savings from 2020. There was no economic justification for an additional stimulus round, or for extension of the student loan payment pause or expanded unemployment benefits past, say, June of 2022 (when vaccine uptake went from supply-constrained to demand-constrained), and these were all economic blunders (and/or cynically political ploys) that contributed to excessive inflation.
Also worth noting that continued excess spending has forced the Fed to raise rates more than they would have otherwise, and that approximately 100% of the persistent inflation (i.e. the fact that prices are still 10-15% above the pre-COVID trend, and will remain there) is attributable to excess fiscal and monetary stimulus. Inflation attributable to supply-side factors goes away when the supply problems are resolved.
This is not to say that Trump was not also a terrible President, but I'm not going to argue with anyone who has nothing nicer to say about Biden than that he has not been a significantly worse President than Trump.
On “Campus Insurrections?”
It depends on what you mean by well-correlated. By social science standards, they're pretty strongly correlated. As a lower bound, permanent income and IQ are correlated at about 0.5 for men. The correlation between more comprehensive measures of ability and SES is likely significantly stronger.
But that wasn't really my point. I'm just saying that when people rail against the "elite," they're talking more about midwits with high social status than about extraordinarily competent people.
"
"You only like people when they do prosocial things and not when they do antisocial things" is not the gotcha you think it is.
"
The problem with "elite" is that it has two different meanings, one referring to social status and the other referring to ability. These are somewhat correlated, but not nearly as well as they should be.
"
We've been over this before: You need to think about whether what you're saying makes any sense before you hit the Post button. As I am not in charge of a university, I'm not really in a position to implement this.
If I have children, I do not intend to make a habit of rewarding tantrums---to the best of my knowledge, there's a pretty strong consensus that this only leads to more tantrums.
The question is how doing the opposite for years is working out for universities. It looks like not well, so far. For Brown, appeasement may work in the short term, which is why people do it, but let's see how it goes in the future. What happens if they vote against divestment later this year? What happens the next time the students have some grievance?
On “Musical Complaints and Compliments about the Fallout 76 Radio Station”
I found a great album from 1974, Makiko Takada's MAKIKO first. I'm not really sure how to classify it. It's not quite pop, not quite jazz, and track 8 is gospel. The sophisticated melodies, austere arrangements, and Takada's clear voice make it a real stand-out.
The first track, "The World of the Song of My Heart" is great, but takes a while to get going. The third, "Roof," was the radio single. I don't think there are any real duds on the album, though some are stretched a bit thin, but tracks 1-4, 6, and 8 are the best, IMO.
Takada released only one more album (高田真樹子・不機嫌な天使 if you want to search for it on YouTube) before getting married and retiring. That was a thing women did back then; Momoe Yamaguchi, the biggest Japanese pop star of the 70s, retired at the age of 21 after getting married. Unlike her first album, whose songs were all self-penned, 不機嫌な天使 (Grumpy Angel) had songs written by other songwriters, and had a very generic sound that made it a big letdown for me. She did release a third album in 1999, for which she wrote at least two songs herself, but I haven't been able to find it online.
On “Campus Insurrections?”
The point is to discourage, rather than encouraging, bad behavior. You teach these children that this is the way to get what they want, and they'll keep doing it every time they want something.
"
Because student opinions on political issues are generally stupid, and should not be acted on by administrators. A small group of jackasses not getting its way by going through normal channels is not evidence that the system has failed.
"
Instead of requiring them to go through existing channels, Brown rewarded them for throwing a tantrum. The correct way to deal with this would have been just to ignore students not causing problems until they got bored, and start failing or expelling students who were causing problems.
"
They already had ways to make their divestment case. Student newspapers, writing letters to the administration, petitioning, swastika armbands, etc.
"
I actually did have to walk up a pretty steep hill to get to classes, but only in one direction. We had one of those newfangled Euclidean campuses.
On “Open Mic for the week of 4/29/2024”
More precisely, Democrats stoke economic class resentment, and Republicans stoke social class resentment.
"
This is false. Homicide didn't spike when COVID hit. It spiked at the beginning of the BLM insurrection.
This is true, which is why they're used extensively by both parties. Democrats are particularly fond of stoking class and racial resentment.
*Comment archive for non-registered commenters assembled by email address as provided.