I think @mailadreapta is correct that part of the motive on the conservatives’ part was to point out the contradiction in their progressive and liberal opponents’ actions. Up until this election, the progressive juggernaut had pushed so far forward (or ‘forward’) that it had started throwing white gay men under the bus, which, combined with the fact that the left/liberal plan is to import people of an ideology which is actively hostile to LGBT people wherever it rules, and at rates so high that it risks displacing the native population within a handful of generations, without doing what is actually necessary to defang and atomize that ideology, and constantly making excuses for it, created an opening for attack.
In this case it’s no different than left-wingers pretending they give a sht about countries or the army. The “lul fuck u army’s just an imperialism machine” response may be more honest WRT their actual beliefs.
For my part of course, I disapprove, much like I disapprove of terminating that military-service-for-citizenship program which is apparently ending soon.
It puts me in an awkward spot. Last administration, I spent a lot of effort trying to defend the Obama Administration even when it did dumb things for which there was no defense, and honestly after a while I gave up on that kind of party loyalty because pols will betray you every time.
So, uh, before we get mad about the army ban on transgendered people, can I get a rundown on what the ban actually consists of? It doesn’t look good, but I’m not going to rush to judgement here.
I mean we’ll see, but from the article I read it looks like it will be as simple and dumb as it sounds.
Speaking of the UN, someone I once knew IRL thought it would be a good idea to use it to enforce womens’ rights, apparently not realizing that Saudi Arabia is on the Human Rights Council. A rather sharp oversight considering the punishment for someone like them somewhere like Saudi Arabia.
Local Blogger Accidentally Reblogs Supervillain, Frantically Deletes Post to Avoid Becoming Reactionary Nationalist & Starting Robot War with UN for Control of Moon
The women entering biology statistics does make me a bit uncomfortable because it seems like it’s the classic jobs process for women where jobs are considered less prestigious as women enter them. I can draw the parallel between the wet lab component and other work that became traditionally female, like cooking or textile work.
That’s going to be a constant danger if the reactionary idea about (cis/het/blah) women wanting men who are higher status than they are is even one quarter true.
can’t understand why people spell unusual names wrong, wouldn’t an unusual name prompt you to slow down and doublecheck it?
all names that get fewer than NAME_HITS hits per NAME_TIMEFRAME get purged from the cache.
this is in the spec, Argumate. you are supposed to know this
just because the software is buggy and produces unexpected behaviors doesn’t mean you can just roll your eyes at the legacy code and ignore the documentation
mitigatedchaos said: local blogger baffled to discover that Chinese leader Xi Jinping secretly took Special Interest: Trains at character creation
I can’t see a river without wanting to dam it, I’d be a great hydraulic despot.
Local blogger secretly responsible for Three Gorges Dam, flees to Australia, adopts owl-based persona to avoid responsibility for subsequent earthquake risks.
You think your goal right now is to “Repeal Obamacare”.
But that has issues. Given your values, your goal should not just be to repeal Obamacare, but to prevent the emergence of a single-payer healthcare system in the United States, in which the US Federal government monopolizes 1/5th of the US economy in a botched attempt at recreating the NHS.
This does not mean trying to pass laws to sabotage the attempt. They’ll just get overturned, and that will be celebrated as a Democratic party victory.
You have to deflate the demand for single-payer healthcare. That is what is necessary for market-based healthcare to continue to exist in the United States. As long as the demand is there - and it is growing, as middle-class families come under increasing pressure - the desire for single-payer will re-emerge.
Yelling at people about how they don’t deserve healthcare because they haven’t worked hard enough will not help. You just picked up a bunch of rural voters that got laid off at the factories and can’t meet their deductibles. You have to focus on preserving the market-based allocation.
There is a simple way to do this.
Each year, every American receives a healthcare voucher for $2,500. (Maybe more - this is way below our per-capita healthcare spending - but even you can do this much.) You can hide this as an earned income tax credit for the poor, a tax deduction for the middle class, etc, if you have to.
The voucher can only be used to purchase valid medical services and medical insurance. We have licensing for doctors, so this shouldn’t be too hard to figure out.
Any of the voucher not spent rolls over into a no-tax/low-tax Health Savings Account, where it builds up.
Private money can also go into the account.
Tax is only assessed above a certain amount / on death.
By default, it goes to a zero-interest government account, but this can be changed by opening a suitable interest-earning HSA account at any American bank or credit union.
Hospitals are still required provide emergency care for the uninsured/poor, however, up to ½ of future vouchers can be garnished, proportional to the size of outstanding claims.
Vouchers and money from the HSA can be given to spouses or children for their HSAs, though not other relations (normally). It can also be disbursed in a will, but if so then it will be taxed as normal income.
Now, first objection is probably that this will bid up the price of medical care to the new floor. I believe that is unlikely - because the voucher accumulates and people don’t actually like randomly buying healthcare, it makes much more sense to save it up and spend it later as you normally would, or else just buy insurance.
Second objection is that people might launder the money to get it for themselves. In this case, the person they are screwing over is mostly their future self, so they have incentive not to do this.
Third objection, which I’m likely to get from my left-wing readers, is that this isn’t enough money. That’s probably true, but this is likely of more benefit than whatever the Republicans are currently cooking up. In the current situation we have some poor people buying the mandated insurance, but unable to actually get medical care because they cannot afford the deductible. Under this system, they can go get medical care tomorrow. Likewise, for pre-existing conditions, this ensures that at least the value of the voucher is available each year to pay for it.
Later administrations could raise the amount, but the benefit for the Republicans here is the preservation of the market mechanism. This is likely to be a popular program.
This could be coupled with a variety of other reforms to reduce overall healthcare costs, such as requiring hospitals to post information about their prices, success rates, etc. Don’t just cross your fingers and hope the market works. Education alleviates information asymmetry and lubricates markets. Create the right framework for suitable informed competition to take place in.
“Earth belongs to the Neanderthals. We homo sapiens have a duty to use our advanced science to resurrect them from trace DNA found in isolated tooth fossils, then voluntarily go extinct as a species, returning the planet to its true, destined inheritors.”
what’s right about it? If it were such a beneficial, sustainable and lauded system of civic management, you’d think it’d result in stability and mutual flourishment rather than misery and insurrection.
It’s hard to convey via just the photos just how hard they are trying to jam in as much 50s MURICA!!!! imagery and atmosphere as they can
like seriously
Bonus view from the outside:
Ok you might think, but what about the food?
well:
“Muricans like Hamburgers right? And they gotta be HYUGE”.
“They also like french fries. And big breakfasts. So french fries are for sure a breakfast meal in America. Trust me bro”.
“So we’re gonna make spaghetti too, but like, not normal spaghetti. We’re gonna make spaghetti like we think they make spaghetti like they think we make spaghetti, so you can have Italian spaghetti made to imitate American spaghetti which are made to imitate Italian spaghetti.”
“Speaking of pasta, know what else we should make? Mac and cheese! Muricans love Mac and cheese. Ditch the tiny maccheroni tho GOTTA GO BIG”
“Then you can end your meal with a nice milkshake for dessert!”
“…ok but I feel like this isn’t quite American enough. It must be bigger. It’s gotta have like 3000 more calories also. It is known that Americans thrive on like a 8000 daily calories diet”
“Ok so like a banana peanut butter milkshake with vanilla ice cream, oh and of course you pour liquid chocolate on the bottom of the glass before serving it”
“Much better!”
Bonus: it’s also a take-away and in some places you can get your food delivered by an Elvis cosplayer
The closest one is about a 6 hours 30 minutes drive from here …
Anime Girls (& boys, but mostly girls because we’re trying to sell manga here) of Rationalist/ Adjacent Tumblr
Discourse Suit Aries: Fires of Orion
@ranma-official: Argumentative girl thought to be flirting with protagonist in comedy filler episode 17, actually interested in protagonist’s love interest. Side plot is dropped entirely once she becomes member of ship’s crew.
@mitigatedchaos: Loyal officer of the season 1 main antagonist and mobile suitknightmare frame mech pilot. Actually believes in main antagonist’s plans to bring about World Revolution, and the Hard Choices this requires. Thought to have been defeated and killed by the protagonist ¾ through season 1, returns to investigate/fight the Mysterious Organization behind the World State in season 2.
@slartibartfastibast: Ship’s lab-coated biologist. Secretly working against the Mysterious Organization, as hinted in season 1.
@the-grey-tribe: Ship’s engineer. Keeps the protagonist’s Super Prototype Mech Discourse Suit functioning in between combat engagements.
@collapsedsquid: Journalist investigating the true motives of the season 1 main antagonist, thought to have been killed by the Mysterious Organization near the end of season 1, but revealed to be alive in season 2.
@kontextmaschine: Esoteric ‘hipster’ gets little screen-time, revealed as former member of the Mysterious Organization currently in hiding in season 2, annoying viewers as an underwhelming use of foreshadowing in season 1.
@xhxhxhx: Reasonable Authority Figure of World State District 11, origin point of the protagonist’s ship.
@wrathofgnon: Even more war-hawkish general of the main antagonist.
@silver-and-ivory: Handsome Mech Discourse Suit pilot from other battlegroup rescues protagonist twice in season 1, once in season 2. A fan favorite but doesn’t get much screentime.
@theunitofcaring: Peace activist focused on by plot but brushed aside by ludicrously destructive Discourse Suit war. Finally achieves goal in end of season 2.
@yudkowsky: Thought to be the secret identity of the main antagonist, turns out to be just a philosopher in one of the space colonies.
@bambamramfan: Additional philosopher on Earth. Encountered by the protagonist in season 1 to impart some wisdom with a few other philosophers before departing.
@slatestarscratchpad: Another space colony philosopher. Explains the goals of the Mysterious Organization in season 2 when Yudkowsky is found, but not actually a member of the Mysterious Organization.
@argumate: Generic owl-themed harem protagonist of the spin-off series.
[This article is incomplete. You can help by expanding it.]
@mailadreapta Is a gruff father, and an honorable loyalist colonel of the season 1 main antagonist. He is killed by a shady and corrupt member of the protagonist’s faction during the battle of Space Colony Alpha halfway through season 1, when the protagonist attempts to take him prisoner.
@thathopeyetlives is Col. Dreapta’s lieutenant, and somehow survives until the end of the second season, only to bravely die fighting alien invaders in the follow-up movie.
@brazenautomaton is the ship’s shy, stressed and anxious gynoid AI. The sideplot to fix her permanently burned-in pessimistic Personality Template is sadly dropped during season 2 due to budget cuts. ( :< )
wait but why am i a fan favorite who saves the protagonist. this is inexplicable.
The very fact that you don’t understand why you’re a fan favorite that saves the protagonist in the middle of Discourse Suit combat is part of why you’re suitable for the part of fan favorite that saves the protagonist in the middle of Discourse Suit combat. ☆
★
wait but why am i a fan favorite who saves the protagonist. this is inexplicable.
The very fact that you don’t understand why you’re a fan favorite that saves the protagonist in the middle of Discourse Suit combat is part of why you’re suitable for the part of fan favorite that saves the protagonist in the middle of Discourse Suit combat. ☆
★
He pays the city’s parks department $289,500 a year just for the right to operate his single cart there.
Without gov’t regulation who is going to charge someone over quarter million dollars to sell hot dogs?
When people talk about government hurting small businesses, this is exactly what they mean.
Small businesses are only hurt by their cruel owners/bosses the government has never and can never do anything wrong.
How much space in the parks and streets in the cities should be devoted to hot dog stands?
This is not a trick or rhetorical question. It says right there in the summary that they bid money to be allowed in Central Park. You have to limit the number of vendors or it won’t be a park anymore, but a market. Tragedy of the Commons and all that.
but like. i am american. i live in america. my experiences with american cops have all been rather pleasant. its just... odd to see such discrepancy between my experiences and the experiences of others with the police.
Google suggests that there are some 1 million law enforcement personnel in the US, so even if only 10% were total assholes that’s still 100,000 assholes that you might never meet, depending on where you live and how they are distributed.
In practice the assholish behaviour is more likely to be structural than personal, making the distribution even less balanced; so you would expect that some people will meet only asshole cops and others would meet hardly any.
Eclipse Phase is weird because they chose to make a market socialist economy as one of the factions but then decided “I’m not sure about the rest of this market stuff, but I think what we really need is accumulation. People using money to manage consumption or allocate resources is crap, the only use of money should be for individuals to exercise outsized control over the economy.“
I have mixed feelings about Eclipse Phase, including their RL gender politics policies on their forums, from what I’ve heard of them.
The good news is that Eclipse Phase is probably impossible.
Interestingly, informal men’s spaces seem to go for “a lack of people that we’ll be attracted to and/or that are off limits”, which tend to be inclusive of all men, plus less desirable women, Kinsey-6 lesbians, and women that are already taken and will remain so for the foreseeable future, so long as said women have masculine enough personalities to fit in.
Look. I get that you get off on being "edgy" and "controversial". It's kind of your brand, you're a contrarian, and it excites you to be going against the grain. But the chaos were the best thing about the Sonic Adventure series and I take any attempt to mitigate them as a personal attack, so sleep with one eye open, binch.
Reality check, Anon-san: Sonic doesn’t exist. There have never been any Sonic the Hedgehog games, there never will be any Sonic the Hedgehog games. No matter how much fanart and how hard you desperately meme, you blighted furries will never make the Sonic franchise a set of real video games.
“Jeremy Corbyn tried to pass through a law that would required private landlords to make their homes safe and “fit for human habitation” last year – but it was rejected by the Conservatives.
Labour proposed an amendment to the Government’s new Housing and Planning Bill – a raft of new laws aimed at reforming housing law – in January last year, but it was rejected by 312 votes to 219.
According to Parliament’s register of interests, 72 of the MPs who voted against the amendment were themselves landlords who derive an income from a property.”
Whatever you think about the man as an individual or politician, he sure is on the right side of history a lot.
More regulations driving up the cost of housing <—-> Right side of history
the regulation about not cladding the outside of high rise buildings in flammable material tho
having sufficient fire escapes
for that matter fire alarms
very poor choice of example of regulatory harm
I’m sure our dear Voxette wouldn’t mind losing the regulations in favor of requiring all landlords to carry insurance against the death or debilitating injury to occupants with a cap at $1 million per occupant, reflecting the cost to the rest of society of people dying in unsafe housing. After all, it would be terribly immoral to give the landlords a subsidy, right?
They will of course also be required to carry sufficient insurance for neighboring buildings. It wouldn’t be very fair if they got away with a huge fire burning down someone else’s property just because they were bankrupt.
Right, and the insurance company needs to prove that it can actually cover these policies, which requires them to inspect the properties and regulate their safety, such as not covering the exterior with fuckin’ inflammable cladding.
You’re going to get regulation one way or another.
But I’m not sure that the property in question would be “unfit” under the Landlord and Tenant Act. Section 10indicates that the standard for “fitness for human habitation” is determined in respect of enumerated matters. Houses are regarded as unfit for human habitation if and only if they are defective in one or more of the enumerated matters:
In determining for the purposes of this Act whether a house is unfit for human habitation, regard shall be had to its condition in respect of the following matters—
repair,
stability,
freedom from damp,
internal arrangement,
natural lighting,
ventilation,
water supply,
drainage and sanitary conveniences,
facilities for preparation and cooking of food and for the disposal of waste water;
and the house shall be regarded as unfit for human habitation if, and only if, it is so far defective in one or more of those matters that it is not reasonably suitable for occupation in that condition.
If the house is not defective inone or more of these enumerated matters, the house cannot be condemned as unfit for human habitation. “Flammability” is not on this list. Nor is “hazard to human life.” It isn’t clear that the enumerated matters include anything that would have condemned this residence: If the residence was constructed with flammable materials, there was no defect of “repair.” If the residence was stable, there was no defect of “stability.”
If “repair” or “stability” under section 10include fire hazards, then there are few principled reasons why the landlords should not also be caught under section 11 of the Landlord and Tenant Act, which is unaffected by inflation, which requires short-term lessors undertake to:
(a) to keep in repair the structure and exterior of the dwelling-house (including drains, gutters and external pipes),
(b) to keep in repair and proper working order the installations in the dwelling-house for the supply of water, gas and electricity and for sanitation (including basins, sinks, baths and sanitary conveniences, but not other fixtures, fittings and appliances for making use of the supply of water, gas or electricity), and
If “repair” or “stability” include flammability, then the housing here should be condemned because it had failed to “repair the structure and exterior of the dwelling-house”.
The language of section 10 is less impressive. There is no declaration that the house is “unfit for human habitation” if the landlord fails to abide by section 11. But no one has any statutory authority to condemn the house in section 10, either. The Landlord and Tenant Act didn’t empower anyone to go around condemning houses or forbidding sales.
All it did was this:
In a contract to which this section applies for the letting of a house for human habitation there is implied, notwithstanding any stipulation to the contrary—
(a) a condition that the house is fit for human habitation at the commencement of the tenancy, and
(b) an undertaking that the house will be kept by the landlord fit for human habitation during the tenancy.
If the landlord failed to comply with section 10, he was in breach of a statutory and contractual duty. There might be some action for damages or specific performance. There might be some action for negligence if house caught flame. Do you know what else would be grounds for such a suit? If the landlord failed to keep the property in good repair.
But those actions would lie with the landlords and tenants, who have the contract, not with any public authority. You can’t sue to enforce a contract you’re not privy to. The Landlord and Tenant Act doesn’t grant any statutory authority to prevent any sale or lease from happening. Itdoesn’t even have an inspection regime.
Do you know what does have an inspections regime? The Housing Act 1985. In section 604, the Housing Act includes the very same language that was included in the Landlord and Tenant Act:
The difference was that section 10 of the Landlord and Tenant Act created an implied covenant between landlords and tenants. Section 604 of the Housing Act set the terms by which local housing authorities could condemn houses as unfit for human habitation, which they were empowered to do by section 606:
This was the public regulation regime to complement the private regulation under the Landlord and Tenant Act. But if you look for sections 604 and 606 in the Housing Act 2004, you won’t find them. If you look for “unfit for human habitation”, you won’t find it anywhere. Why? Because sections 604 and 606 were replaced by a regime that covered fire safety.
Prior to the introduction of the HHSRS housing fitness was governed by
section 604 of the 1985 Housing Act. Section 604 embodied a pass or
fail test of housing fitness based on similar considerations to those set
out in section 10 of the Landlord and Tenant Act 1985. Where a local
authority identified a property as unfit it had a duty to take action; it
was left to the authority to decide upon the most appropriate course of
action.
A number of problems were identified with the Housing Fitness
Standard. Some of the most serious health and safety hazards, including
fire hazards and fall hazards, were not covered by the standard. In
addition, it was seen by some as a blunt instrument that could only pass
or fail a house, and therefore sometimes did not distinguish between
defective dwellings and genuine health and safety hazards.
So there we have our answer: the amendment wouldn’t have covered flammability, wouldn’t have prevented rentals, wouldn’t have been enforceable by statutory authorities, and wouldn’t have empowered an inspection or sanctions regime. It wouldn’t have granted anything but a private right of action, which they should have had anyways.
The United Kingdom already has statutory authorities empowered to inspect houses for safety – the local housing authorities empowered by the Housing Act 2004 and the Housing Health and Safety Rating System (England) Regulations 2005to inspect and condemn houses where “exposure to uncontrolled fire” (reg. 3(1)(24)) might result in “death from any cause” (reg. 2(1)(a)). Under section 5 of the Housing Act 2004, local housing authorities had a duty to take action.
It seems the fault here lies with the Housing Act regulators, not the unamended Landlord and Tenant Act 1985.
reality of a thieves guild: tumblr shoplifting fandom
This post is just petty-bourgeois whining about how real rebellion is dirty and morally implicating and doesn’t live up to the romantic fantasies they had about it.
Long live the lifting fandom.
actively harming workers by stealing from sephora as communist praxis
“Actively harming”
Nice wildly misleading language you got there, where’d you learn it, the cop store?
Workers are tasked with preventing theft
If you steal shit, it’s docked from their pay or they get fired
I see economcis stuff about birthrates in western countries every once in a while from economists (In addition to the white genocide types of course), and I do wonder what a state would do that took seriously issued of birthrate. For right now it’s not a critical problem, but I wonder what policies you would need. Universal childcare? Paid Surrogacy?
I do wonder about that last one sometimes actually, would it be possible to raise entire generations as basically wards of the state? Is that going to be the future? At some point hopefully, the world will be industrialized, so the current solution won’t last forever.
It depends on how serious they really are, and what the dominant ideology is.
Liberalism’s answer is to import immigrants, but if that weren’t feasible they’d begin running out of options before they’d have to switch to another ideology.
Someone like me would be willing to take more drastic measures as total collapse loomed, including having the state raise children on its own if necessary.
I don’t think really any state is serious about this. Not Japan, not even Singapore.
None of them are serious, but one thing that might make them serious apart from worsening demographic crisis is some sort of artificial gestation. Carrying a child right now is a deeply personal act, if you had this then technology then it might not be. Would that change things?
You’re right though, it sort of sits awkwardly with the ideas of the liberal state where we’re all individuals. If you’re going to bring people into existence as an act of policy, then I think you either need some sort of strong commitment to welfare of said people or some sort of greater cause that both the people and the state are in service to in order to make the system have legitimacy. If a state literally raises a generation and then there is no job for them, then “personal responsibility“ doesn’t really cut it.
At this point though, I’m not convinced either way on whether boring welfare state solutions like child benefits and universal child care wouldn’t solve the problem though. Those don’t require a fundamental re-orientation of the relationship between a citizen and the state and can be done in a theoretically liberal way, but they do require things we seem to be unable to do right now.
You need to be run by Republicans. I’m not joking.
Because Republicans have policies that create affordable families, and Democrats don’t.
Uhh, policy ideas like child benefits, paid higher education, providing healthcare for minors, paid family leave?
Republicans have affordable housing. Which means you can have that third/fourth bedroom, that short commute, and extra money left for the extra food.
Also, Republicans have early and long-running marriages. (The direction of causation I leave to you)
The demographic transition is a world-wide phenomenon of developed countries, not a peculiarity caused by US home prices.
Fair enough.
But the hardest causation in American politics is the amount of time that white women* spend married to Republican vote share. And Red states do have notably higher fertility. (Not, you know, African levels, but 2.3 vs. 1.8).
* I mean, it might also be true for minorities, but when that flips the black vote from 85% to 95%…
What that is saying is that the demographic transition has not yet totally sweeped the US.
The US is actually less developed in some ways. This messes with the healthcare prices.
What if all alt-right use of the word cuck as an insult is an attempt to have the left take up cucking themselves in response and meme themselves into extinction.
Well I thought it was funny to imagine you all as Discourse Suit pilots. Ah, well. But don’t worry. Once my visual respresentation software is complete, it will be able to represent any network of partisan/ideological prosthesis as a mech, and I can use neural nets trained on hundreds of thousands of anime characters to generate a true rattumb mecha anime.
I have seen exclamations like “I bet he does not even have one gay/black/jewish“ friend, used as some kind of bait, to make the target say the unfortunate words.
That’s when to either go meta, attack along another vector of the same topic (“oh, so the only real gay people are the ones that already agree with you?”) or flip the switch and start shitposting about how you are friends with literally every Jew on Earth, including the questioner.
“I can’t be racist, I have Jewish enemies!”
“Some of my best friends are homophobic!”
“I asked a racist and he hates it, so it must be woke.”
“Oh, so you’re saying that minorities only count if they agree with you, otherwise they’re not people? You know who else thought that? HITLER. Get the fuck out of this fucking building, you racist piece of sht!”
I guarantee they will not see that coming. Once you’ve stunlocked them, start using other Discourse moves…
Anime Girls (& boys, but mostly girls because we’re trying to sell manga here) of Rationalist/ Adjacent Tumblr
Discourse Suit Aries: Fires of Orion
@ranma-official: Argumentative girl thought to be flirting with protagonist in comedy filler episode 17, actually interested in protagonist’s love interest. Side plot is dropped entirely once she becomes member of ship’s crew.
@mitigatedchaos: Loyal officer of the season 1 main antagonist and mobile suitknightmare frame mech pilot. Actually believes in main antagonist’s plans to bring about World Revolution, and the Hard Choices this requires. Thought to have been defeated and killed by the protagonist ¾ through season 1, returns to investigate/fight the Mysterious Organization behind the World State in season 2.
@slartibartfastibast: Ship’s lab-coated biologist. Secretly working against the Mysterious Organization, as hinted in season 1.
@the-grey-tribe: Ship’s engineer. Keeps the protagonist’s Super Prototype Mech Discourse Suit functioning in between combat engagements.
@collapsedsquid: Journalist investigating the true motives of the season 1 main antagonist, thought to have been killed by the Mysterious Organization near the end of season 1, but revealed to be alive in season 2.
@kontextmaschine: Esoteric ‘hipster’ gets little screen-time, revealed as former member of the Mysterious Organization currently in hiding in season 2, annoying viewers as an underwhelming use of foreshadowing in season 1.
@xhxhxhx: Reasonable Authority Figure of World State District 11, origin point of the protagonist’s ship.
@wrathofgnon: Even more war-hawkish general of the main antagonist.
@silver-and-ivory: Handsome Mech Discourse Suit pilot from other battlegroup rescues protagonist twice in season 1, once in season 2. A fan favorite but doesn’t get much screentime.
@theunitofcaring: Peace activist focused on by plot but brushed aside by ludicrously destructive Discourse Suit war. Finally achieves goal in end of season 2.
@yudkowsky: Thought to be the secret identity of the main antagonist, turns out to be just a philosopher in one of the space colonies.
@bambamramfan: Additional philosopher on Earth. Encountered by the protagonist in season 1 to impart some wisdom with a few other philosophers before departing.
@slatestarscratchpad: Another space colony philosopher. Explains the goals of the Mysterious Organization in season 2 when Yudkowsky is found, but not actually a member of the Mysterious Organization.
@argumate: Generic owl-themed harem protagonist of the spin-off series.
[This article is incomplete. You can help by expanding it.]
I’m actually really curious what environmentally-minded lefties plan on doing about the fact that people in Africa are having way too many goddamn babies
Like Macron just recently pointed out that this was a huge problem and a lot of lefties went bonkers and got really mad but the African population boom and all the resulting effects are going to be more or less catastrophic for the planet
Screaming ‘that’s racist!’ whenever anyone mentions it seems to be how they deal with a lot of issues
For the left, environmentalism is just thinly disguised anti-capitalism, and for the globalist elite, environmentalism is about creating a world state. Actually trying to protect the biosphere from potential threats is not something anyone in politics is really sincerely concerned with - kind of a frightening thought
I don’t know that high population growth is necessarily such a terrible thing, though, having more people in the world has a lot of positives to it that usually winds up outweighing the negatives, even for impoverished Africans. Most of the time the people who are concerned with population growth have a skewed zero-sum view of the economy that only lets them see more people as more mouths to feed, but especially in the future that won’t be the right way to look at it
Setting aside that not everyone wants to live in Coruscant, that depends enormously on energy prices, and I’m not optimistic about medium-long-term energy prices.
Much less a bunch of chronically malnourished people don’t give you as many of the benefits of high population. There’s a lot of argument about the heritability of intelligence, but it’s less controversial that it isn’t that hard to damage intelligence development with environmental factors.
I’m actually really curious what environmentally-minded lefties plan on doing about the fact that people in Africa are having way too many goddamn babies
Like Macron just recently pointed out that this was a huge problem and a lot of lefties went bonkers and got really mad but the African population boom and all the resulting effects are going to be more or less catastrophic for the planet
The plan is to migrate them all here, because developed nations have infinite money and structural reinforcement. Or there is no plan. Just cross your fingers and hope it all works out.
Hitler is the Satan figure of modern progressivism/liberalism. Anything that even has the slightest whiff of something he might maybe have once possibly considered doing for a few seconds is tainted by association. On top of that, there have been previous racist actions in the developed nations. On top of that, it has been decided that the majority whites of the developed nations bear the original sin for racism.
Telling people to have fewer kids is worth celebrating by progressivism, but only if you’re telling white people. Telling anyone else is vile racism. (Even, of course, if it would lead to terrible conditions in majority-PoC countries.)
For the progressives that actually notice that you can only consume what is produced, and that while the wealthy have a pretty good-sized amount of money it isn’t anywhere near unlimited, embracing any discouragement of population growth is considered too dangerous, a slippery slope to eugenics and baby licenses.
…even to the ones that “jokingly” suggested swapping everyone’s babies to end “genetic chauvinism”, I would imagine.
Of course the Conservatives keep trying to kill abortion in those areas with their controls on American government aid funding, so mostly they don’t really care, either. Catholics I’ve encountered seem to believe that God Will Provide or something, one of them talking about the Earth supporting a potential population of 100 billion.
Only a few villains see this as an issue, like you, me, and Emmanuel Macron.
I believe the progressive line on this is “education and improved public health lower the birth rate.” And it’s also the neoliberal line and not too far removed from the libertarian line.
@squareallworthy‘s reading is probably a fairer one, and it’s what they’re hoping for with the crossed fingers.
To add on, it should be noted that the birthrate is falling there, even if it’s still crazy high and may end up exceeding the carrying capacity anyway. World population is forecasted to stop growing somewhere at something like 9-11 billion.
I see economcis stuff about birthrates in western countries every once in a while from economists (In addition to the white genocide types of course), and I do wonder what a state would do that took seriously issued of birthrate. For right now it’s not a critical problem, but I wonder what policies you would need. Universal childcare? Paid Surrogacy?
I do wonder about that last one sometimes actually, would it be possible to raise entire generations as basically wards of the state? Is that going to be the future? At some point hopefully, the world will be industrialized, so the current solution won’t last forever.
It depends on how serious they really are, and what the dominant ideology is.
Liberalism’s answer is to import immigrants, but if that weren’t feasible they’d begin running out of options before they’d have to switch to another ideology.
Someone like me would be willing to take more drastic measures as total collapse loomed, including having the state raise children on its own if necessary.
I don’t think really any state is serious about this. Not Japan, not even Singapore.
They very people who are capable of solving this problem (and most of our other big problems) are the ones disappearing. We’re fucked.
The IQ bleedoff is slow. We just have to make it another 20-30 years for genetic engineering, which China and Korea will pursue even if we don’t.
I’m actually really curious what environmentally-minded lefties plan on doing about the fact that people in Africa are having way too many goddamn babies
Like Macron just recently pointed out that this was a huge problem and a lot of lefties went bonkers and got really mad but the African population boom and all the resulting effects are going to be more or less catastrophic for the planet
The plan is to migrate them all here, because developed nations have infinite money and structural reinforcement. Or there is no plan. Just cross your fingers and hope it all works out.
Hitler is the Satan figure of modern progressivism/liberalism. Anything that even has the slightest whiff of something he might maybe have once possibly considered doing for a few seconds is tainted by association. On top of that, there have been previous racist actions in the developed nations. On top of that, it has been decided that the majority whites of the developed nations bear the original sin for racism.
Telling people to have fewer kids is worth celebrating by progressivism, but only if you’re telling white people. Telling anyone else is vile racism. (Even, of course, if it would lead to terrible conditions in majority-PoC countries.)
For the progressives that actually notice that you can only consume what is produced, and that while the wealthy have a pretty good-sized amount of money it isn’t anywhere near unlimited, embracing any discouragement of population growth is considered too dangerous, a slippery slope to eugenics and baby licenses.
…even to the ones that “jokingly” suggested swapping everyone’s babies to end “genetic chauvinism”, I would imagine.
Of course the Conservatives keep trying to kill abortion in those areas with their controls on American government aid funding, so mostly they don’t really care, either. Catholics I’ve encountered seem to believe that God Will Provide or something, one of them talking about the Earth supporting a potential population of 100 billion.
Only a few villains see this as an issue, like you, me, and Emmanuel Macron.
The thing is that political correctness, in the sense of an orthodoxy that exists in terms of what opinions you can express without ostracism in a community (particularly a progressive community), is a very real phenomenon, and can be quite pernicious. But in the sense that it is generally used by conservatives at present, it is basically a catch-all snarlword for anything that they disagree with, but especially for oppressed groups standing up for their rights. And it is used so much more frequently in the latter context that I question its usefulness in the former.
Pretty much every potentially weaponizable political term gets turned into a snarl. Not sure if it’s because it gets into the hands of dumb yellers, or if it’s just always that tempting.
I know we want the same things so why does it have to be so hard
Humanity evolved in an environment of total war. We aren’t yet over the sort of species-wide trauma that induces.
and like that probably sounds trite or whatever, but there are many layers to this. if we ever find a perfectly peaceful species, with no sense of tribalism, it means that species was engineered. almost any species capable of space flight will have to be social and omnivorous.
I see economcis stuff about birthrates in western countries every once in a while from economists (In addition to the white genocide types of course), and I do wonder what a state would do that took seriously issued of birthrate. For right now it’s not a critical problem, but I wonder what policies you would need. Universal childcare? Paid Surrogacy?
I do wonder about that last one sometimes actually, would it be possible to raise entire generations as basically wards of the state? Is that going to be the future? At some point hopefully, the world will be industrialized, so the current solution won’t last forever.
It depends on how serious they really are, and what the dominant ideology is.
Liberalism’s answer is to import immigrants, but if that weren’t feasible they’d begin running out of options before they’d have to switch to another ideology.
Someone like me would be willing to take more drastic measures as total collapse loomed, including having the state raise children on its own if necessary.
I don’t think really any state is serious about this. Not Japan, not even Singapore.
I will say, rattumb migrationists have the virtue to believe that gentrification, too, is a necessary tradeoff in favor of freedom of movement/commerce, and thus are more ideologically consistent than a number of left politicals.
And therefore we don’t get the double-bind where the ethnic majority either leaving or entering the city is considered problematic in both directions at once, acting as a cover for what are actually class concerns. (And also rattumb has greater awareness of what might actually sort out housing prices.)
