should i act out of love for my own life and let all of my actions be functional parts of the realization of my highest desires, or should i stay up late on tumblr posting ayn rand quotes

Always nice to be reminded that the people with bad judgment about the middle east also have bad judgment about the former Soviet space. Setting aside the fact that Russia's de facto president-for-life and other top officials given speeches about the need to cleanse Ukraine of undesirables, while Ukraine is governed by a Jewish guy who won a fair election as the opposition candidate, and focusing only on explicit Nazis rather than substantive ones -- as the Ukrainians have pointed out before, they would be happy to have check where all combatants remove their shirts and we count the Nazi tattoos, because they are way more common among the Russians, both their regular army and among the PMC named after Hitler's favorite composer because one of the founders is an explicit Nazi.

Claming that Ukraine is an "unsympathetic" party here, as LNH did, is telling about her, not about Ukraine.

gender to me is like a car i dont really want one and society would be much better if it was not structured around it. but i got one because it helps me get around and sometimes its fun to make it go fast

and people tell you to move to one of a handful of cities if you want to avoid having one, but when you get there the majority of people have one anyway and jobs expect you to as well

And you have to see a specialized dealer if you need/want after market parts which are always more expensive.

And everyone will try to tell you that their preferred model is far superior to anyone else's.

And they want you to pick a lane rather than merge or straddle the line.

And you've gotta obey posted speed limits or you might get hurt.

And fuel prices are constantly on the rise and dependent upon capitalist assholes determining who should get resources and at what price point.

And there's metered on-ramps and toll crossings. Don't forget to set up your EZ-Pass/FasTrak/etc.

And traffic's a nightmare. (Not sure how that one correlates but it's always true.)

I don't mind people having them as long as they aren't obnoxious about it, and even like having one myself.

Why your criticism of "capitalism" is so tiresome

I usually disagree with criticisms of "capitalism," but there are different reasons for this due to underlying terminological confusion: you can think of this as a 2x2 matrix where the quadrants represent "I agree with your premise {yes/no}" and "the thing you are angry about is actually capitalism {yes/no}".

There is a small class of genuinely radical leftists that object to all private investment, market transactions, etc. (Category: no/mostly yes) I do not believe that the planning problem is solvable even with currently-unavailable tech such as superhuman AI, nor do I think the "people respond to incentives" problem would go away even if you did otherwise solve it. (It's pretty notable that every example that people can point to of societies that ostensibly don't display this behavior are near-subsistence economies .)

There are people who think the welfare state is too weak. "We should be more like Scandinavia." (Category: yes/no) The US is a mixed economy. Denmark and Sweden are mixed economies. We could move the dial on tax-and-transfer a lot and still be capitalist, just like Scandinavia is.

There are people who think "capitalism is the reason poverty exists." (Category: no/no? This thinking is so confused that it's hard to categorize.) The default state of humanity is poverty. Our ability to climb out of that has been dependent on productive investment. The major modernization pushes in Communist USSR and China depended on market-based exports to the rest of the world and would have failed faster and harder as an attempt at centrally-planned autarky. They were free-riding on capitalism.

There are people who think capitalism is bad because it's a impersonal system where people are transactional and don't care about other people. (Category: mostly no/no) First of all, this isn't a distinguishing feature of capitalism. Mercantilist and communist states have been equally suffused with impersonal bureaucracy. Second of all, a system where your ability to get things you need depends on your ability to pay for them and/or fill out the right paperwork is almost always safer and better than a system where your ability to get what you need depends on having the right connections and/or being well-liked (or just likeable). To actually *be* better, of course, requires certain public measures to ensure everyone has the resources and knowledge to access them; however, see previous paragraph.

There are people who wouldn't actually be able to articulate a general criticism of capitalism because their actual complaint is "the status quo gives me personally less wealth and status than I think I should have." You can probably guess what quadrant this is in.

(x)

another polyamory win

bro what the fuck lmfao. funniest possible thing to say for absolutely no reason

sure why not. new canon

@lizardgirlclawmarks

After Corn Pop we can't rule anything out

was it @argumate who described Theresa May's job as going on tv and very calmly explaining why she was about to eat a live hand grenade?

ah, no, but maybe he reblogged it

I would love to say reading about all the voters who think Biden is repealing abortion rights and so dont want to vote for him is shaking my faith in democracy but that would imply this is shocking to me and I had any to begin with.

Shit like this (low-information voters wrongly attributing policy outcomes to a political actor who had no control over the outcome and in fact disagrees with it) is the primary reason why I have become increasingly opposed to the checks-and-balances theory presented in the Federalist Papers. The Westminster System is far easier for low-information voters to grok and thereby vote responsively.

This is the ideal democracy:

You may not like it, but this is what peak democratic accountability looks like.

Context:

What I love about this episode is that the owners of this dog breed had zero trouble correctly identifying the political actor responsible for killing their dogs. The American mind cannot comprehend this.

(As a entirely separate matter, on the merits of the policy, I approve of Rishi Sunak killing their dogs.)

The one and only time the UK beats the US god fucking dammit

"American Bully XL" is an absolutely insane name for a dog breed to have. Sounds like a rapper name

I read an article once about the culture of 'aggro dog breeders' and it was legitimately insane. They commission action movie posters to announce their dogs are pregnant with a new spliced line. This was a bit ago so nowadays I presume they are making full movie trailers with AI tools to show their breeds blowing up Russian oil pipelines to juice the auction prices.

I remember some excerpts from that, one poster of a breeds parents and grandparents which was not nearly as many dogs as you would expect.

Knowing what I do about dog breed pedigree collapse, you'd have to get below the biological minimums to surprise me.

I get that despite eighty years of international law on the subject most governments would rather set their own hair on fire than admit more refugees than they absolutely have to but every time a humanitarian crisis erupts somewhere in the world I am surprised at just how badly the people fleeing death and destruction are treated. Doesn’t matter if it’s their immediate neighbors or countries on the other side of the world; the universal opinion of the people who run sovereign states seems to be that they would prefer all refugees to die (preferably far away from television cameras) rather than be slightly inconvenienced.

As a veteran Victoria player I always find this rather odd. Pops are the wellspring of the economy; late game - and 2023 is very late game Vicky indeed - workers to run the vast machinery you've built are the bottleneck for your production and hence your military power. Bring me your poor, etc; I've got open factory slots for them.

I realize this is kind of a shitpost based on a video game, but I in ironically believe the real world version of this. Especially as the demographic transition bites deeper—people are your capital! Even a very selfish state should want lots of immigration.

the virgin Japanese Diet vs. the Chad LA City Hall

And then of course you’ve got the Nebraska capital building, a.k.a. The Penis of the Prairie:

it’s got a little guy on it

Speaking of little guys, here's Huey Long's most lasting acheivement, the Union's tallest state capitol in Baton Rouge, which Google's infobox helpfully informs me is "460' to tip". That's 140 m in real units.

There's several incredibly easy criticisms, but I feel the concept of "corporate greed" becomes particularly incoherent when used to explain the prices of something having only just now gone up

you think corporations only invented greed last week and simply had not thought to raise prices anytime earlier?

“Movies will be free after the revolution!”

Movies take the work of hundreds, sometimes thousands, of people. How will we decide where to allocate our resources for the best results?

Centralized committee!

Yes! The State Administration of Press, Publication, Radio, Film and Television smiles upon you!

i don't know how to argue politics. all i know is social shame

I have to appreciate the self-awareness.

I find the thing where only privileged people are capable of taking a break from thinking about politics really baffling because most of the hyper-marginalized people I’ve met were apathetic politically and mostly focused on putting on their own oxygen mask. This wasn’t universally true, someone of them were real fighters, but the ones who were most politically involved had lives outside of their political interests.

  also, hot take: encouraging  people to constantly ruminate the existence of suffering in order to prove that their pain is legitimate is a very good way to en masse ruin the mental health of compassionate people.

Depressing cynical hypothesis: compassionate people are inconvenient to those who want to use a movement as a weapon, so spreading memes that selectively damage compassionate people is advantageous to such people.

Nuclear power plants have a relatively high energy density, however, it is generally considered desirable to exclude human entry into a wide radius around the plant in case of severe accident.

Concentrating solar thermal power plants have a low energy density and must occupy a large area in order to produce enough power.

Ramping up or down energy production to meet peak needs is impractical with a nuclear reactor. Likewise, for dispatchable or continuous generation, a solar power plant must include on-site energy storage.

Radiation release is not a significant hazard to solar reflector panels, and molten salt is being considered not only for solar thermal power plants, but also for energy storage for nuclear power plants, which could make them more revenue-competitive with fossil fuel power sources such as natural gas.

A combined solar nuclear molten salt thermal power station could share energy storage, distribution, and generating infrastructure, making maximum use of site resources for power generation which follows power demand, and operate continuously even during refueling outages or poor weather conditions (except when weather conditions limit availability of cooling). The solar component might add around 500MW to the nuclear plant’s output, for a gain of 25-50% in output at the site compared to nuclear alone.

Which party will control Congess Houses after the 2024 US Federal Election? [Late March 2024]

I will be running a series of polls on Tumblr's predicted US election outcomes throughout 2024; this is the first round. The two houses are the House of Representatives (apportioned relative to state populations) and the Senate (apportioned two representatives per state).

Please reblog for sample size!