Maestro's recent activity
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Comment on Children to no longer be prescribed puberty blockers, NHS England confirms in ~lgbt
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Comment on Children to no longer be prescribed puberty blockers, NHS England confirms in ~lgbt
Maestro Link ParentAs someone who doesn't really follow any of these topics, I really did find the linked video to be rather weak. The entire section you linked to is, as far as I can tell, a lengthy debate over...As someone who doesn't really follow any of these topics, I really did find the linked video to be rather weak. The entire section you linked to is, as far as I can tell, a lengthy debate over language and Rowling's double-speaking, mainly on her Twitter (a linguistically dead platform). But lying is not a logical fallacy, and trying to apply a logical fallacy argument to a linguistic fallacy is just not at all compelling.
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Comment on A Star Citizen player has jumped to a new system for the first time ("server meshing" test) in ~games
Maestro (edited )Link ParentAs someone who's played quite a bit, it's more similar to a tech demo than an actual game. There are a lot of game loops that are very cool, like the asteroid mining, and those are a lot of fun to...As someone who's played quite a bit, it's more similar to a tech demo than an actual game. There are a lot of game loops that are very cool, like the asteroid mining, and those are a lot of fun to just play around with. But there's not really a unifying "goal" or "purpose" to the game. And it's quite unstable and buggy. But if you're a fan of the "space game" genre, it's a remarkable look at the future.
EDIT: If you're curious about what the game is fundamentally capable of, here's a very well-made video that's received quite a few views that's showing off one of the in-game events.
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Comment on Donald Trump built a national debt so big (even before the pandemic) that it’ll weigh down the US economy for years [published 2021] in ~misc
Maestro Link ParentI've often seen this sort of partisan blame gaming around the national debt, and it's honestly very puzzling to me. Maybe it's just an information problem? US tax receipts as a percent of GDP have...I've often seen this sort of partisan blame gaming around the national debt, and it's honestly very puzzling to me. Maybe it's just an information problem?
US tax receipts as a percent of GDP have been quite stable since the second world war: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/FYFRGDA188S
What's changed is government spending. And that's not the discretionary spending, where the vast majority of the partisan bickering happens. It's in the mandatory spending (Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security). Mandatory spending's share of the federal budget has gone from ~50% of the budget to ~70% over the last 50 years. And those huge mandatory spending increases are primarily just a natural product of the population pyramid changing. There's also the dramatic increase in medical costs, but if you look at those costs over the long term, that's mainly because people are living longer and there are more treatments available, so they're more expensive.
As far as getting this mandatory spending under control, anyone who's tried (a few politicians from both parties, perhaps most recently/famously, Paul Ryan) has discovered that this is a political third rail. It's just so publicly unpopular to discuss changes to the retirement age or medical cost sharing, that no one has ever been able to make any progress on it.
Regarding Twitter, my point is that by stripping down the language on the platform to a few words, you require the readers and writers to impart a huge amount of implicit meaning in every post. It's just not a good way of communicating anything meaningful - it works for jokes and memes where differences in interpretation are perfectly fine, but not for complex subjects where misinterpretation is not. Much of the video you linked is analyzing tweets and phrases, but short phrases like those inherently require additional context that isn't being provided in the tweet itself.
To maybe put the last sentence in context - Rowling certainly loves to use TERF catchphrases. And Rowling is certainly committing some linguistic abuse by being intentionally vague or lying in her usage of those catchphrases. But being intentionally vague or lying are not logical fallacies. Those are ways of avoiding staking out a logical claim altogether.