#by which I mean rules that I think are stupid

[restinan]

I don't actually think that shooting the ten guys with the wealth has literally never made things better at any point in the history of man. If you actually read my post instead of pattern-matching it to the nearest easy thing to dunk on you might notice that I don't ever say anything incompatible with there being a wide range of outcomes. That said, it really is the case if you read history broadly there are trends in how well countries do if they descend into political violence and civil war. It tends not to make things better. Yes, there's a distribution- it's not a good distribution.

I understand that's a bit rude to accuse you of pattern matching to something dunkable rather than actually thinking, but you're the one who opened by attributing people who disagree with you to propaganda from the US government and fantasy novels. I get that that lets you feel pleasantly smug but there are in fact historically literate people who disagree with you for real reasons.

The American Revolution is probably one of the examples of "just kill some people" working out well you're thinking of here. It's genuinely true that things worked out well, but the American Revolution was a very weird civil war. The American revolution notably preserved most of the existing ruling class and didn't substantially disrupt the general structure of society. If you want to argue that wars of secession specifically have a very different track record from popular uprisings or attempting to use political violence to stabilize a country you'd have a good case for doing so. That said, even in that reference class the American Revolution had much better results than typical.

Perhaps you're not thinking of something so famous and instead thinking of examples like the overthrow of the government of communist Romania?

If you're making predictions from the American Revolution and the French Revolution and a handful of overthrows of dictatorships at the end of the Cold War and not on the banal, boring, usually forgotten peasant uprisings in Early Modern Europe, or the various peasant uprisings and descents into warlordism in Ancient China, or the slow rise of political violence and decay in norms in the Roman Republic (a shiny popular example, but still not one you should leave out- reversed stupidity isn't intelligence and we have a disproportionate amount of insight into this one), or the dozen instances of political violence in the early twentieth century aiding in the rise of the opposed party from the people doing the violence, or the communist attempts to swiftly restructure society in ways that accidentally caused massive famines, or the general outcomes of civil wars in the late 20th century, or the hundred other things in this vein, you're going to end up wrong about things.

Yes, the distribution of outcomes is wide. Yes, it is not entirely negative. That doesn't mean anywhere near as much as it might seem. A lottery which has a 50% chance of killing you horribly, a 20% chance of torturing you before you die, a 30% chance of leaving you alive but worse off, a 10% chance of not much detectable change, and a 10% chance of making things a small amount better, is not a lottery worth playing. That doesn't correspond to the political violence lottery, it's just a simple example.

The obvious response to this is that we should be examining the cases where it goes well to see how to get results like that. That response is a good response. However, to do that you need to know in the first place that violent revolution isn't a magical cure-all. You need to know that it tends negative or you won't even bother figuring out how to make it not do that. You need to know that the present has a larger list of fragile improvements and so you can't just use outcomes from nobility in 13th century France or even 18th century America to make predictions.

Things are legitimately different in the period where wealth flows almost entirely from land and just killing people and taking their land will mostly just work to enrich yourself. Even then, doing a bunch of it via an outside-the-norms-method in a polity and eroding the legitimacy of whatever is stopping the descent into violence from kicking off earlier tends to result in more and more violence over time. That trend really isn't hard to notice. Almost every single time without exception you end up with the place in general being drastically worse off. Usually the people who started the cycle end up very dead and frequently their family ends up extinct or less powerful than they started. Yes, they cared about different things- it was still usually a mistake to kick off a period of violence by their own values. For an example of this, consider literally any period of civil war in the history of China. Yes, someone manages to succeed and end up the next dynasty. The odds of being that someone aren't great. Assassinating your uncle to end up Emperor has a better track record. if not a stellar one. It's also not a mass uprising, and has a lower chance of kicking off a civil war.

If all you do is notice a lot of the people who hold a view are unsophisticated and stupid, find a couple counterexamples, and then smugly posture about how there's nuance, you see, you may legitimately be doing better than the idiots. But you need to actually know the distribution to be right, you can't just notice some other people know less than you and assume that means nobody knows more. Historians can tend kind of stupid in a lot of ways but there is actually something you get from having seen a broad overview of history. Not as much as a lot of historians like to pretend, but "just using a bunch of outside-the-norms violence to try to make things better for you personally was a high risk strategy before the modern world, doing it to make things better for people in general or for the sake of preserving a polity's stability was harder still, and the modern world makes it all work a lot less well" is one of the things that is, frankly, somewhat overdetermined.

What people care about is usually whether something makes slides into dictatorship more likely. Whether it makes famines more likely. Whether it makes instability and a lot of suffering more likely. Whether it tends to make things worse by our values, both when people don't care much about that and even when they do. The answers there are pretty clear. Yes, there's a distribution rather than a universal single outcome. It's not a good one.

[suzukiblu]

WIP excerpt for Marina; Tucker is having a normal one. (( chrono || non-chrono ))

“Uh, should we be worried about all that back there?” New Ecto-Boo asks, looking skeptically back at the GIW agents they’ve already passed–and also looking really fucking hot, still, and on top of that being fucking easy about his flying in a way that Tucker usually only sees in the older and stronger ghosts and spirits–note to self–and definitely more graceful than Danny ever is, but also, like–heavier and more deliberate about it, somehow? Like, Danny flies like he’s in zero G and controlling his momentum with a bit of ecto-powered propulsion as he makes his way through the vacuum of the world. This guy flies like he’s moving the world around him; like he’s got it all in his grip and he’s just spun his destination right to him. 

Possibly he’s literally doing that, considering? That might actually be a thing, yeah, given the whole nature of weird ghost powers being weird ghost powers. 

Okay, yeah, Tucker apparently will be finding this situation hot. On top of how hot he already found it, will he be finding it hot. 

His ideal future ghoulfriend is a situation, at this point. 

“Yeah, no, it’s cool, they’re just seeing horrifying specters from another dimension,” he reassures Haunted Heartthrob, patting his–still wet and naked–chest again with his free hand. Said chest is also still kinda ecto-glisteny, but at the same time looks sort of, like, weirdly iridescent under the subtle green glow of the remaining ecto on it? Like, not full-on “so like are a few of the GIW scientists just reeeeeally into Twilight or what?” levels of it, but still, it’s definitely noticeable as a thing. 

Another note to self, Tucker thinks, and taps some observations into his PDA in coded shorthand. By which he mostly means “uses the most illegible font he has installed scaled down as tiiiiiny as it can get in a real light text color”, but same difference. 

Also much funnier to watch Vlad rant and curse about not being able to “decode”. Like so, so much funnier. 

He has literally never even tried changing the font, much less the text size. Tucker has no idea how the dude can be so smart and so stupid, but that’s kind of a specialty of Vlad’s at this point anyway. 

“Uh,” the Honey Pot Poltergeist says, slanting him a wary look. 

“Oh, I mean they’re seeing horrifying specters from another dimension in, like, a faked-by-my-superior-tech way, not like I cursed them to Lovecraftian insanity,” Tucker reassures him, wagging his PDA at him in clarification. “I just can’t get into that dude’s writing, for one. Also do you know what he named his fucking cat?” 

“Literal fucking hate speech that I have no desire to be repeating, last I heard,” Spectrally-Sexy/Just-Passed-The-Shitty-Person-Test snorts, making a face. 

“Correct answer, good job,” Tucker says approvingly. It wasn’t actually like, a trap or anything, but he was maybe testing the waters a little, sue him. Like, just checking for red flags early, that’s all. He’s not sure if the guy’s fully white or maybe, like, a little bit mixed with a bit of East Asian, he’s not an expert or whatever, but being white-passing mixed doesn’t rule out the possibility of red flags, so yeah. Or, like, being literally anything, admittedly, because some people are just fucking asshole. “Hey, hang a left at the next hallway, would you? Looking for a hot goth in a black crop top and a vegan leather miniskirt.” 

“So like plastic, you mean,” his new sweethaunt says dryly.

“Yeah the whole ‘you know ethically-sourced leather is actually better for the planet and less wasteful than pleather, right?’ thing was not a happy realization for her,” Tucker confirms.

[zvtara-was-never-canon]

What do you think of people saying “Kataang had a downward spiral in book 3.”?

I saw that video called “get in losers we’re stanning zutara.”that claimed that, along with many other people who are anti Kataang.

"The people who ship the two characters that barely interacted the entire show and hated each other for 90% of it think Kataang not always agreeing means the ship is having a downwards spiral" And? Why should we care?

I genuinely don't see how anyone could think book 3 Kataang was bad. Literally my one criticism of it is the forced Ember Island drama that so clearly only existed because of that stupid rule of "Main couple can't get together until the last second of the last episode". There were so many sweet, meaningful and even ICONIC moments happen that season.

Aang staring at Katara in awe when he learns that she literally brought him back from the dead. Katara making it very clear through her talk with Hakoda that she doesn't WANT to separated from the people she loves (bringing closure to Aang's Guru conflict).

THE HEADBAND DANCE AFTER KATARA IS JEALOUS THAT AANG IS GETTING SO MUCH ATTENTION FROM OTHER GIRLS!!!!!!

Aang immediately crushing on the Painted Lady and helping Katara blow up a factory. "You're my forever girl." The kiss before the invasion and Katara cuddling up with him after it. Katara trusting Aang's instincts when he says he wants Zuko to teach him firebending but it only happening after she gave him the greenlight because her opinion is everything to him.

KATARA THREATENING TO MURDER ZUKO IF HE EVER HURTS AANG AGAIN!!!

Aang letting Katara take Appa, one of the last connections he has with his pacifist culture, on a mission to kill someone (which he fundamentally disagrees with) simply because she needs to go on that journey and he KNOWS Katara will eventually realize, on her own, that she's not killer. Katara explicitly telling Aang that she doesn't think of him as a little brother she has to take care of.

KATARA CHOOSING TO KISS AANG AND BE HIS GIRLFRIEND IN A SCENE DELIBERATELY ANIMATED TO LOOK LIKE A COUPLE KISSING AT THEIR WEDDING!!!!!!

If that's a downward spiral, what does a winning-streak look like? Them still being together in every other post-show material that came out through the years, and being confirmed to have spent decades married, and having kids and grandkids?

Oh wait, they did that too, my bad.

Seriously, even before I grew to like Kataang as a ship, I would have been OVERJOYED if some of my non-canon and/or non-endgame ships in literally ANYTHING got even HALF the good moments Kataang had in book 3. Downwards spiral my ass, motherfuckers are just jealous.

[chasedeys]

https://www.tumblr.com/chasedeys/768170997377597440/httpswwwtumblrcomchasedeys768169507136159744

Oh 100 % I agree that they had a talk afterwards. Both of them have emphasized communication throughout the 6 years they have been “together 😭💀,” so no way they didn’t have a heart to heart they never get like that with each other

they couldn't have not have the talk lbr like that fight was kind of crazy had people talking about bengals downfall burrow-chase connection fallout etc they got to have a heart-to-heart 😭 though i guess it wasn't really actually a fight?? ja'marr just got so fucking angry and joe had to cool him down and the way to cool him down quick was to yk shove at him and yell at him right back ig though 100% nobody else but joe would've away with it on that field lol

i've talked about it a bit here in the end!!

also after that infamous kc game shove, i definitely think they had a very tough heart to heart where ja'marr maybe spills his full feelings over the contract and how he hasn’t been getting the ball to actually make big plays and how his worth as a wr1 is being brought to question and joe probably spills on his own feelings on how ja'marr held out so long and had last minute (?) changes of playing that week one ramps up joe's own anxiety and hang ups like i definitely feel like he had some unchecked anxiety over playing with his wrist that first game that ja'marr probably said something incredibly insane yet uplifting about in response. the next game its like they mended some unseen frayed stitch of their connection! first drive banger of a 41 yarder td for jamarr, two tuddys for the game in fact lol!! joe gets him his deep ball, then the insane way joe rushed at him after his 63 yarder in the next game, its like that first touchdown against minnesota again. i just wish the very best for them, to keep making these insane passes and insane runs they’ve been making since lsu.

that's pretty much it lmao but there's some more word vomit below that might a bit much tbh:

okay like i was new at this during the first few weeks okay I've not been here for their lsu to bengals run and my understanding of their burrow-chase throw-catch connection by which i mean like actual football playing qb-wr gameplay was still being learned!! i absolute did not know any rules of the game that first week i watched 😭 didn't even know how you got 7pts out a touchdown etc etc sorry i really was just there for the pretty men who had their faces covered by helmets 90% of the time lmao and from what i saw it was kind of meh you know???

like I've watched their highlights before don't get me wrong i know they got it. the touchdowns??? the way joe throws and ja'marr runs??? crazyyyyyy how the fuck does joe know exactly where ja'marr was going to run, how the fuck did ja'marr know exactly how far joe was going to throw, and like this could absolutely be attributed to the way they plan things with coaches and play calling etc but!! doesn't change the fact that in the end it just takes two people to do that shit and they've understood each other so well to have done it near perfectly!! like it made me understand why there's so much poetry and romance in sports!!! the trust the connection the whatever i can't find words the point is i didn't really like......see that in the first two games??? like there was some kind of disconnect yk and like idk they played like shit 😭 but keep in mind i was completely unknowledgeable of football like at all and i refuse to rewatch those games so maybe i was just stupid and didn't see it lmao

BUT THEN???? the week 3 game?????? ja'marr's first touchdown of the season???????? THAT was the shit i was waiting for like iirc ja'marr and tee were running their way down by the sidelines getting double teamed (?) each idk ja'marr was definitely double teamed had me doubting they'd make it but joe threw an absolutely beautiful ball at him and ja'marr caught that shit over his shoulder!?!?!?!??! brought it right home too!!!!!!! i was so gassedddddd i was exhilarated like completely 100% fell in love with the sport that was amazing that was literally my first live burrow-chase touchdown!!!!!!

(another fucking list sorry) me being the Master Speculator of Shit that i am made my own stupid ass narratives about how:

they were unsure of their game and each other's lmao hear me out. joe's first game back after the devastating wrist injury that was hell to get back into form to, had to deal with all the noise about him never going to be able to throw the way he used to again and knew just how many fucking eyes would be on him that first game back watching his wrist like bloodthirsty hawks. even if i believe that he's the type of person who can completely block out that noise without flinching, some subconscious and fearful part of him had to have been holding him back. the numerous, numerous, painful clips of him twisting his wrists repeatedly, fidgeting harder than he's ever fidgeted before, the water bottle stupidity that he actually got asked about, etc (god i can't imagine being a celebrity having your anxious shit caught on camera and analyzed so loudly over the internet). and then you add in how ja'marr's been in a contract holdout and clearly bothered as all hell about it because it's just not getting done at all even d-1 of their opening week!! insane. there were questions of ja'marr even playing game 1 and joe of course said unflinchingly that ja'marr would be ready week 1 regardless but completely understandable if he's rattled okay!! if ja'marr wasn't really planning on playing (wasn't he listed as questionable due to illness idk i forgot) suddenly switching up however many hours before to actually playing that's gotta fuck up joe's steady structure that he already prepared beforehand of not playing with ja'marr you know??? like basically a) anxiety over his wrist, b) ja'marr's sudden status as active messing up his pregame, and c) everybody and their grandmothers all up in his business for his first game back.

ja'marr's contract situation. people absolutely saying the foulest shit about his decision to hold out, the amount of money he asked, saying to boot him out, calling him a diva /derogatory, comparing him to justin, tee's contract situation, etc. the fo being the one to open convo about his extension only to not be open to his numbers??? sensible numbers if you think abt it btw and now well lmao good luck fo his agent must be smug as all hell. it maybe planted seeds of doubt and insecurity in him on his worth as WR1 you know?? like why are they acting like he isn't worth all that fucking money. incredibly emotional highly intelligent sensitive pisces that he is gets understandably more and more pissed off and defensive about literally everything but he fucking loves this sport and he loves his guys so he decides to play the game 1 anyway and. well. just. sigh.

the game went to shit and ja'marr played idk better than the rest of the receivers but in all honesty everyone was kind of shit?? and like. they lost to the patriots. who literally got beaten belt to ass by the dolphins last week. but anyways game 2 against ja'marr's most Hated capital h and everything fucking chiefs 😭 yeah with the whole contract situation still up in the air there was no way he wasn't going to have some sort of meltdown tbh. hence the fight....where joe got physical with him.....where his actions definitely contributed heavily to their loss which should have been a win.

and so: the talk. like i said they both talked about their anxieties no holds barred literally all the shit i wrote above and apologized to each other the way men usually do idk bro hugged it out maybe. i genuinely think ja'marr went off on joe on not getting the ball more like????? i can't explain it damn it he definitely chewed him out on it and joe was like 'fuck okay'. ja'marr says he never notices shit about how joe throws the ball so maybe he doesn't notice anything about joe's wrist acting up. but maybe he notices that joe's holding back or there's some sort of hang up over the way he plays and needles it out of him point-blank like the person that he is and joe finally talks about it and ja'marr responds by being 100% insane like he usually does and that sort of devotion and sheer stubbornness on one's belief in who you are has to have some kind of impact on joe damn. they probably got some professional therapy too btw at least i hope so :'). but basically ja'marr just wants the ball more and joe gets him the fucking ball.

ja'marr said something along the lines of him finding joy playing again 😔🤚 this was such a comment like god he hasn't been playing happy at all and when he put to rest the contract shit he finally gets to play a sport he loves with joy!!! him being happy is so fucking important to me wow 😭 i think I've said this before in some post idk but he knows he messed up, he knows the contract negotiation fucked up his emotions so bad he brings it on the field so he nips that shit quick and done. no more contract talks until the next offseason. probably made it clear to joe though that he will not leave but fuck if he's listening to any bullshit from the fo when he's got a game to win and a super bowl to get to and idk about you but that probably healed something in joe like there is the guy who gets him. who's as hungry as he is for a win, for a ring, for a championship. who's got his back, who he can trust to be there on the other end of the field to catch his throws.

the next game!!!!!!!!! god i really am not the person to talk about routes or strategy or whatever but i know for damn sure that that was a beautiful throw and that was a beautiful catch and that was a one-of-a-kind connection. like they fixed something that was unknowingly dented in their connection and like they're finally trusting themselves and each other again to make the big plays they've done before the injury and the contract drama you know????? aurrugrgrhrh i can't word anything out i feel like saying more about this but i cant please get me anyway 😭

this entire emotional roller coaster thing was also the main reason they had those kind of helmet bonks on the next 63 yard td and 70 yard td btw. been a long while since they've had those kind of plays, probably had some unnamed unknowing unacknowledged doubts that they would ever have it again, so it was like the first time all over again lol. (was one of the things joe said to him in that little bubble of their celly after the ravens 70 yarder something like 'see i knew we still got it. i knew you still got it.' god i feel insane)

ok bye......

[kings-highway]

oh if you insist @mayallsworld 😌 (sorry for the @ but you gave me such a good opportunity to talk...)

these are the characters I've developed for Nerd Shit 101, but have only recently properly fleshed out for future endeavours. I'll try to be brief on my thought process.

They're currently playing at level 11!

Daichi is playing a Human Fighter, Banneret archetype. His character was technically created for him by Kuroo, the entire thought process being "intuitive to use, abilities Daichi will naturally want to do" - as a result, Daichi's character is heavily geared towards protecting his party. Sentinal feat + Protection fighting style. Bitch goes in and keeps the attention on him. Which is great because Daichi's complete lack of mechanical game knowledge means his playstyle is "where's the enemy? stab stab stab."

Kuroo is playing a Tabaxi Rogue, Mastermind. He is going all in on being stealthy and quiet and dealing as much damage without ever having to get hit. He gets pretty into the roleplaying aspect of it, but he also tends to have the most knowledge of game mechanics, and therefore tries to break the physics engine the most. Voted "most likely to argue with the DM" three years in a row, probably. Also most likely to try something fcking goofy.

Oikawa is playing a High Elf Cleric, Grave Domain. Oikawa is the roleplaying bitch. He is trying to romance all the other PCs. He wants to spend 3 hours just talking to NPCs in town. He gets real invested in the characters backstories and lore. As a Cleric, he has a heavy emphasis on party buffs and healing, and tends to under-prepare spells that can do any damage. He is all about supporting and elevating his team and making sure they don't fucking die. Note taker and dice goblin extraordinaire. Will cry at the table.

Bokuto is playing a Goliath Barbarian, path of Wild Magic. He was playing an Owlin Paladin of Glory but he made a series of stupid decisions and got fcking dead. Bokuto is here for a good time, not a long time. He doesnt really understand the game mechanics but he really likes winning things, so this bitch is all about the combat. Very rarely remembers the plot of their campaign outside of the bosses they've killed.

Bonus Players that pop in on occassion but are not weekly players, treated in-game as allies on the homefront but not the quest:

Tendou, as an Aarakokra Bard/Warlock multiclass (Valor + Genie pact). Tendou has incredibly knowledge of game mechanics and simply chooses to not remember any of it. He is incredibly efficient and effective and has geared this particular build for attacking and dealing damage. He prepared cure wounds exclusively as a curtesy. He seems to be profoundly lucky with his roles.

Kenma, as a Tabaxi Wizard, school of Divination. He threw this character together sort of haphazardly to join Kuroo and the boys one evening as Kuroo's character's brother, and sort of regrets it. He likes playing wizards but Divination was chosen to fill a specific roll in the plot at the time and now they keep asking him to come back to help defeat various monsters and frankly its exhausting. Incredibly adept at the game, could be a rules lawyer but chooses not to. Is not super into the roleplaying aspect but tries not to break character.

Bonus-Bonus: I havent actually made these characters properly yet so they're subject to change but:

Suga guest starring as a half-Elf Ranger, and Iwa guest starring as an Tiefling Paladin. They dont have any game experience but get dragged into it.

And of course, and I take zero feedback on this, Ushijima as the dungeon master. I won't accept any other dungeon masters. I think he would absolutely excell in the dice management and monster-encounter designing aspect of the game, and when he has complete control over the worldbuilding there isnt a goddann plot hole to be seen. Airtight. He's also never lied or changed a role, he plays 100% to rule as he knows it. well reknown among his players for being absolutely brutal, and holding back nothing when it comes to themes and story beats and doing stuff like disembowling Bokuto's Paladin three sessions in. Hey. It's what the dice rolled.

spent the entire day creating full dnd character sheets for the captain squad. sorry. correction: for my headcanons of the captain squad's self insert ocs. yeah. that makes it sound like a perfectly normal thing to be doing. i'll go with that.

[violetclarity]

becoming slightly worried about the teacher reputation I'm developing because today I had a student ask if it was okay if she had her phone with her on our mini field trip (which they aren't allowed to do) (I say mini becausefo it was just me and a few students) and I said that was fine and she said "yeah I didn't think you'd mind"

oops??

[aretheywlw]

ARE THEY A WOMAN WHO LOVES WOMEN?

*TL;DR she is technically not a canon lesbian, so no, this poll does not break my rules. i am, however, going to treat her as canon sapphic due to the rule of BFFR. as a result, i have taken out the usual "they're not attracted to women" options. see tags if you want more detail

[samueldays]

I think this is broadly correct but there's a significant spectrum of sub-outcomes under "If Trump wins" which is larger and more important than the alternative.

Kamala Harris was an empty suit run by the (D) party machine bureaucracy. If she won, the machine would keep running things through her, like it did with the senile puppet Joe Biden.

Donald Trump is not a machine politician. As you mention, his bench is shallow. Even if Trump won the election, it's a big step from that to Trump running things. His first term already saw the machine's officers stymie him with treason.

Trump tried to order troops home from Sandfuckistan, and military officers refused his order and lied to him about the troops, and were casual enough about it that during Biden's administration they openly admitted to this - albeit in the selfserving tone of 'the Orange Idiot gave a stupid order and we saved democracy in Sandfuckistan by defying him'. And in doing so, they broke democracy at home, committing treason and violating civilian command of the military.

After the lawfare, learning from his first term, and getting bloodied by an assassination attempt, I think Trump might be more effective and more zealous this time, but he's still going to have to fight the Derp State for control.

I like the term "Derp State" as a slight mockery because America's Deep State is, well, not that deep. It's brainless. It's not a conspiracy, it's a consensus. It's a million Democrat devotees who will openly express their belief that preserving "our democracy" means the Democrat Party, because Donald Trump is antidemocratic, so voting for him is antidemocratic, and unelected officials defying the elected President is democratic. This doesn't require any meeting in smoke-filled rooms, it coordinates in plain sight, for example via newspapers printing "TRUMP IS A FASCIST. WHY IS NOBODY TALKING ABOUT THIS?" like they're Tumblr with better grammar.

If Trump wins, and they start cutting back on agencies,

Imagine Trump wins the election, and tries to cut one office of one agency.

The agency refuses to let their office be cut.

Trump yells "YOU'RE FIRED!".

The agency ignores him, saying the cut is undemocratic and Trump isn't allowed to do that. People keep showing up to work, issuing memos, and drawing salaries. Trump tries to issue a second order telling people to enforce his first order. Trump complains on Twitter.

What happens next?

Where is Trump's leverage? What is Trump's escalation path?

I don't have an answer ready, but I think there's a very wide possible spread of outcomes in there.

Maybe the case goes to the Supreme Court. Maybe the Court issues a harsh "yes the President can fire people from the Executive branch don't ask us again" ruling, or maybe everything Trump tries to do gets stalled for a year at the Supreme Court with separate, time-wasting, inconsistent cases.

Maybe Trump decides to adopt the rules of the game: if this is a vetocracy where he's not allowed to do anything, only veto the doing of things, he'll start vetoing everything the other team likes too! Veto the income tax collection! Veto the whole IRS! Issue executive orders disbanding the Civil Rights department, and dropping all prosecutions!

Maybe Trump calls in the army to start enforcing his decisions, physically dragging fired people out of offices and preventing them from re-entering, appealing to populist sentiment of Who's In Charge Here, Anyway? as the way of getting legitimacy for his firings and his military enforcement of firings.

The most likely outcome, I think, is that he putters around ineffectively and America gets a term of relative peace and prosperity and nothing much happening. Trump gets nothing done, the Republicans spend their time internally arguing how much to back Trump, the Democrats spend their time screaming "FASCIIIIIIIST!", and everyone else goes about their lives. But that's still less than 50% of my expectation.

Election 2024

EigenRobot's opinion for you all this election eve.

I expect that whoever wins this election, I'm going to have to shift my writing towards the other side.

Unless Kamala suddenly becomes assertive and independent-minded, very much unlike what we've seen so far, and starts disciplining the left coalition, the capability of institutions is likely to continue to decline under a Harris administration, with something like an amnesty grant making direct future challenges less feasible. Today's left are off-the-charts conformist - I've never seen anything like it - and with this, there is a tremendous disregard for inconvenient reality in the face of social opinion. (It's anti-agentic, which is bad for the meta-rational thinking needed to update formal systems.)

Their selection criteria for personnel disregard merit in favor of credentials, and use credentials as political rewards. With each round the quality of personnel will get worse. This is not sustainable, so it will not be sustained - alternative institutions will have to grow in the shadow of declining state capacity.

If Trump wins, and they start cutting back on agencies, there is likely to be more economic growth, but Republicans don't have a good stack for actually replacing all of these agency personnel with highly agentic, highly intelligent, mission-driven individuals. In a sense, this limits the potential damage, as they'll have to continue hiring a lot of blues due to manpower shortages, just as they already do.

However, the reduction in agency power may lead to increased corporate power, leading to increased influence suppressing the re-emergence of agency power on a correct trajectory and lead to a cyberpunk dystopia. Today's US left aren't set up to even discuss how to prevent a cyberpunk dystopia, because they're all-in on censorship, to the point that they can't even consider the implications of the science fiction stuff happening all around them.

There are two big changes to the dimensions of human life coming down the pipes during the next 20 years.

The first is the obvious one, artificial intelligence. AI increases the dimensionality, the richness of the response, of machines in production systems. This makes capital, as controlled by AI, more like labor.

It is the opinion of Samo Burja that automation will not arrive fast enough to outpace tightness of labor supply caused by collapsing birthrates, which are falling all over the world.

The second big change is genetic engineering.

While people weren't paying attention, the FDA have approved multiple monogenic gene therapies. The costs are staggering now, running a range from around $500,000 to $3 million dollars, but if it's anything like gene sequencing costs, which fell from $100M to $1,000 per genome over about 25 years, it will fall rapidly towards the price of surgery.

If the price does fall, this means that a gene is no longer a life sentence. Something that's genetic will be more likely to be something that can be changed. Most major ideologies right now are based on the assumption that genes can't be changed. Gene therapy has not yet reached the periphery of people's social networks, so, mentally, people still treat it as "sci-fi."

So that's my assessment. The blue candidate is low-variance short-termism. The red candidate is high-variance medium-termism. You have to decide how comfortable you are with risk. You have to estimate what you think the current rate of burn is.

If you can't bring yourself to accept either of them, you can still vote and leave the "President" portion of the ballot blank.

The good news is, both vice presidential candidates are smarter and more civilized than both presidential candidates. For what it's worth, my read is that Vance is smarter and more focused on long-term issues than Walz.

[bredforloyalty]

well not every shift is good it took me a while but i have taken notice of this

[skrunksthatwunk]

kinda drives me up a wall when people go "hey i think x action in a war/combat scenario is inhumane and cruel and shitty" and someone responds with "oh but within the laws of war it's allowed or there's procedure for it etc etc". it doesn't have to be a war crime to be unforgivable man it's a shitty rulebook anyway

[microwaving-tesilid-argente]

head in my hands im trying to come up w prinzhes headcanons but i literally cannot because prinz is like. a pink and less tragic and less headache-inducing version of tesilid.

they're both very gentlemanly, they both can fight, if someone is unfair to them they're more likely to smile and try to smooth it over than to fight back. if hestio is going to find prinz attractive then he'd have found tesilid attractive too, but if he isn't nursing a massive crush on tesilid by the time he meets prinz then it means that tesilid gave him so much blood pressure problems that they're no longer his type.

so anyway in conclusion teshes solos- wait what? how did this turn into teshes propaganda

[toytulini]

i made an oc thats at least nicknamed "Stupid" and im constantly thinking about what a power move that is tbh

[coffee-at-annies]

But Pittsburgh was open spelled without the h in its early days as a city, no? I suspect the tweet writer was incorporating that knowledge into their joke about ye olden dayes

Nah. I think the person spelled it wrong. There’s several cities named Pittsburg so spellcheck won’t catch it and it’s twitter, people don’t give a shit about historical accuracy they care about making a quick joke and staying under the character limit.

[ex-vespidae]

the worst kind of gjinkas is when people take a fucking canonically ancient character and make them into the most bland looking anime teenager-looking person

hhh

[six-of-ravens]

lmao building manager called me to get more details about The Incident yesterday (even though I emailed her everything last night lol) and said she "doesn't have access to her cameras because they're being worked on" so that is extra creepy. one of the benefits of living in a building full of paranoid old people is that there's like 30 security cameras in the common areas, driveway, parkade etc.

however i did get treated to another one of her rants about how much she hates "the new people" and "there are not good people living here nowadays."

[giantkillerjack]

As time goes by, I find I am less likely to wake up in the middle of the night to needlessly hate on myself for some random awkward harmless thing I did 10 years ago.

I'm still up in the middle of the night feeling a deep primal urge to needlessly hate on things from years ago, but now it's more just things like

MAN I SHOULD PROBABLY MAKE ANOTHER POST ABOUT HOW MUCH I HATED BLY MANOR HUH