an_angry_tiger's recent activity
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Comment on The abundance delusion (gifted link) in ~society
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Comment on The abundance delusion (gifted link) in ~society
an_angry_tiger Link ParentIt's based on a book called Abundance, published this year, written by Ezra Klein (one of those liberal columnists whose name you see pop up a lot these days) and Derek Thompson:...It's based on a book called Abundance, published this year, written by Ezra Klein (one of those liberal columnists whose name you see pop up a lot these days) and Derek Thompson: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abundance_(Klein_and_Thompson_book)
Basically the latest rebranding attempt for the dems plans, focused around the main problems in America being that there's too much redtape and we need to be building way more houses. Probably gaining traction from people who really don't like the further left leaning idea of "hey maybe we should take power back from rich people and have the government do good things for people directly", which liberals generally seem to not want to do, presumably because it involves taxing wealth and turning away from "liberal" ideas.
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Comment on The abundance delusion (gifted link) in ~society
an_angry_tiger Link ParentYeah one of those things I wanted to look at as part of his "studies show that progressives like violence" paragraph, but already wrote too much. He draws up two studies (well, articles that might...Yeah one of those things I wanted to look at as part of his "studies show that progressives like violence" paragraph, but already wrote too much. He draws up two studies (well, articles that might be connected to studies) that seem to say that "progressives", or left-leaning or whatever term, now agree with political violence, but one is a paywalled article that I don't want to bother bypassing, and the other is a study from a seemingly conservative think-tank that afaict focused on only one side of the political compass.
As we all anecdotally seem to know, there's plenty of appetite for political violence sentiment-wise across the whole spectrum, but of course we're "measuring" that by reading tweets random people make. People do seem to uniquely agree with Luigi though, there's something about that that people really seem to like, across the aisle......
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Comment on The abundance delusion (gifted link) in ~society
an_angry_tiger LinkHonestly a weird article and I'm not sure how to take it but I'm not a fan. Reading through it, here's some odd choice quotes while I wait for the payoff of the title "Abundance Delusion": So off...- Exemplary
Honestly a weird article and I'm not sure how to take it but I'm not a fan. Reading through it, here's some odd choice quotes while I wait for the payoff of the title "Abundance Delusion":
Back in July, following an eight-month fetishization of Luigi Mangione on the far left, another gunman in New York City killed several people, including a mother of two school-age kids who happened to work at—uh-oh—Blackstone. It was, unambiguously, a horrifying tragedy. But on the Luigi Left, reaction to the gruesome murders was not only neutral, or ambivalent, but celebratory, and explicitly supportive of the killer.
This was no small group of crazies, either. Some version of the reaction was shared thousands of times across X, Threads, and Bluesky on the grounds that cartoonish caricatures of “the rich” were, in a sense, physically harming the poor.So off the bat it does that thing we all love nowadays where it goes "wow look at these people on social media who have very extreme opinions", without really naming who they are or why they would matter. You can find all kinds of extreme takes on social media on anything you want, from serious topics, to flat earthing and vaccine skepticism, down to opinions on food. Are these people in any way influential? Is "shared thousands of times" a high bar to meet? Do these people have any meaningful motivation behind their takes, or is it the same amount of thought I put in when I send out a post about taking my morning dump?
Partly this is because of structural issues innate to our political system, and partly this is because large swaths of the left, which Abundance Dems need to win elections, are actively and often publicly fantasizing about sending Abundance Dems to the guillotine.
Yeah I wonder why they'd want that....
I want a bullet train that rips across the country from San Francisco to New York in half a day. [...] Fuck it, let’s throw in a robot bartender. I want genetically modified hydroponic gardens. I want special economic zones for manufacturing, for rare-earth-metals mining and processing, for rocketry and electric vehicles, and every other high-tech project you can think of, a reality in which Americans are liberated from local regulations that kneecap our industrial output -- [...] I want weather modification. I want geoengineering. I want to terraform Mars into a habitable world. I want a giant “Justice” statue, to complement the East Coast’s “Liberty,” on Alcatraz Island. I want this statue to depict an objectively hot person. Finally, Moon should be a state, and no I won’t be taking any further questions.
I moved to San Francisco in 2011, and discussions of our world “post-scarcity,” or in “superabundance,” were standard among “techno-utopians,” a common media pejorative. Such ideas were shared throughout the Bay Area by optimistic young men and women of every political affiliation. This was the language of AI enthusiasts, of Burning Man libertarians, of effective altruists.
Which turned in to a project to create tech monopolies and oligarchs that then turn around and pay tribute to the current administration.
But what I’m saying is, I hear you. I get it. We’re banking on the openly violent left over MAGA moms who voted for Trump because their preschool teacher told little Sally she might be a man. Also, the eggs were really expensive.
Again, the openly violent left so far seeming to be......random people on twitter and bluesky?
But here's where the article starts making a very strange turn,
Mamdani is a Karl Marx–quoting nepo baby who (after failing to find success as a rapper) just defeated Andrew Cuomo on a platform of government-run grocery stores, a $30 minimum wage, and rent freezes. Yes, The New York Times would like you to know that democratic socialists aren’t really socialists because they believe in democracy (truly, they argued this). But I was still living in the Haight when our local chapter was holding literal Mao Zedong reading groups as the city hemorrhaged jobs and businesses during the pandemic. Mamdani’s own housing adviser believes private property—and especially housing—is “a weapon of white supremacy” and should all be seized. Oh right, and he has referred to himself as a socialist.
Housing is a major issue for the DSA, and has been for many years. But the DSA’s focus is, as one would expect from an openly socialist party, radical: the elimination of all misdemeanor offenses and the closure of all jails; opposition to homeless shelters in favor of government banks to finance government housing (also known as free one-bedroom apartments), which the public will fund forever, for anyone who wants it, including every drug addict in every city in the country; tenant rights to the point that eviction is functionally impossible; and opposition to market-rate housing construction on the grounds that it leads to gentrification. In other words, these people are the actual reason we can’t have nice things.
[...] Or, who knows, maybe the Abundance Dems truly did convert him. But my sense is that he’s just looking for rhetorical cover from the center left to make his actual Marxism more palatable to people who aren’t insane, and the center left is beginning to accept him because their only other choices are a loser criminal and a loser pervert. That means, yet again, the crazy local Democrats are playing the thoughtful wonkish local Democrats, not the other way around. The thing is, I’ve already seen this movie, back in San Francisco, and I can tell you with some confidence: The socialists are lying.
Nobody wants the label of “NIMBY,” and not even the far left wants to leave the impression that it stands in the way of new construction. It’s just that the far left defines affordable housing as 100-percent-government-subsidized housing for poor people, and they will dutifully stand in the way of everything else.
But then it ratchets up even more,
You need policies that make building easier. You need to kill policies that make building more expensive. And then you have to build.
Fortunately, we do have examples of American men who prioritized building.
Robert Moses was born in 1888,
Uh huh,
This one man completely reshaped New York City, and he is the last American who ever effected this degree of material change in our country. Probably, there should be a holiday in his honor. But, as we are living in the clown world, he’s incredibly controversial—especially on the left.
If you haven't heard of Robert Moses by the way, here's a choice quote from "The Power Broker",
“Roosevelt wouldn't interfere even when he found out that Moses was discouraging Negroes from using many of his state parks. Underlying Moses' strikingly strict policing for cleanliness in his parks was, Frances Perkins realized with "shock," deep distaste for the public that was using them. "He doesn't love the people," she was to say. "It used to shock me because he was doing all these things for the welfare of the people... He'd denounce the common people terribly. To him they were lousy, dirty people, throwing bottles all over Jones Beach. 'I'll get them! I'll teach them!' ... He loves the public, but not as people. The public is just The Public. It's a great amorphous mass to him; it needs to be bathed, it needs to be aired, it needs recreation, but not for personal reasons -- just to make it a better public." Now he began taking measures to limit use of his parks. He had restricted the use of state parks by poor and lower-middle-class families in the first place, by limiting access to the parks by rapid transit; he had vetoed the Long Island Rail Road's proposed construction of a branch spur to Jones Beach for this reason. Now he began to limit access by buses; he instructed Shapiro to build the bridges across his new parkways low -- too low for buses to pass. Bus trips therefore had to be made on local roads, making the trips discouragingly long and arduous. For Negroes, whom he considered inherently "dirty," there were further measures. Buses needed permits to enter state parks; buses chartered by Negro groups found it very difficult to obtain permits, particularly to Moses' beloved Jones Beach; most were shunted to parks many miles further out on Long Island. And even in these parks, buses carrying Negro groups were shunted to the furthest reaches of the parking areas.
Back to the article,
He bulldozed entire neighborhoods when necessary, and he built.
I wonder which neighborhoods.....which commonalities you'd find.....
Liberal values might be reduced to something like democracy, equality, and progress. But the far left’s definition of progress is primarily social—in that democracy, or the performance of democracy, along with material equality, by which the far left means a flattening of outcomes, are more greatly prized than material change. And progress defined as something more like material change—meaningful change that improves the lives of everyone, permanently—is impossible without hierarchy, vision, and power. This means, first, that the left’s values are fundamentally in conflict, which is how we so often wind up having conversations about, for example, the cost of a bus ride in New York, which Mamdani believes should be free.
I wouldn't say that at all and I'm not sure at all why the author thinks so.
Wonks who value the existence of the subway understand that more revenue—like, say, the millions of dollars annually that come from rider fares—means more resources for ride improvement and policing, which increases ridership, which in turn keeps the entire system alive.
The MTA's budget is public by the way, you can look up the details. Fares contribute 26% of the budget in 2024, dedicated taxes provide 44%, and in an interesting turn, 13% of the budget comes from tolls of all places.
I looked up the budget for the TTC to get a comparison of another city, and in Toronto the passenger revenue accounts for 38% of the total, with "City Funding" accounting for 49%.
More honest wonks will even admit that a slight barrier of entry improves the ride dramatically for most people. But the far left fundamentally does not care about this. Ideologically, its adherents do not believe that an amazing transit system that only an overwhelming majority of people can afford is preferable to a grossly degraded system that everyone, technically, can access. This belief extends to roads, housing, schools, everything.
There is no slight barrier of entry, people hop the turnstiles all the time. They've put in new turnstiles with paddles, I doubt it's going to do anything. They've put spikes at the top of the turnstile machine to discourage people grabbing on them to hop it, again I doubt that's doing anything. The worst thing they did was make the emergency exits locked until you press the bar forward for some absurd amount of time, to discourage people exiting through those exits, or letting people in. In the end I think desperate people will just crawl under, over, or scrounge up the 3$ to sleep on the train for the entire day, it's not much of a barrier.
Abundance is not a democratic project. Abundance inherently requires authority, and accepting trade-offs that are very much at odds with the socialist project, or at least as that project is currently imagined by American socialists. In the U.S.S.R., they did—you really have to give it to them—have infrastructure. They just also had the Holodomor. But Democrats will need to pick a lane here, the endless performance of “democracy” in every aspect of our lives, or building shit that works.
So now we move on to "remember communist atrocities" while ignoring like, any of the other ones from this country over its history.
There's a paragraph in there about the Empire State Building's construction and how we just can't build anymore, and saying Biden's infrastructure bill didn't set out to do anything, with a link that's funnily enough a 404.
But the reality is that the Democratic base isn’t actually voting for abundance. The voters who make up the backbone of the party, representing everything from government and private-sector unions to NGOs, are voting for steady work paid at a bloated premium (and in perpetuity for those lucky enough to score a pension), not to fix any of the problems their jobs ostensibly exist to solve. We have the country we have today because this is what the voters requested. This is democracy.
Feel like that's implying that dem voters are only freeloading government types who just want to enrich themselves, which feels like a massive overstep to paint the whole voting base as that.
This means that even if Abundance libs are somehow able to survive an alliance with the Luigi Left, which will never—I’m really very sorry—ever take orders from Ezra Klein, they will still have to contend with the fact that nobody in any position of power, be they Democrat or Republican, is structurally incentivized by our political system to build.
Now this part I agree with, I don't believe abundance libs are actually going to accomplish much beneficial.
Abundance Democrats can have abundance or they can be popular in Brooklyn, but they can’t have both, which is why my sense today is that the movement is made up entirely of well-meaning but hopelessly naive optimists, and very clever propagandists who understand that the project is hopeless, but communists need better branding.
And look, “Abundance!” is a good brand. Or, it’s better than cheering for murder. But the brand alone can’t build a bullet train, and if the socialists win, there won’t be any bullet train fast enough to save us.
Which funnily enough, man fuck this guy.
If you're wondering who he is by the way, I didn't recognize the name,
As right-leaning tech investor Mike Solana put it on X: “And so, as foretold, the great tech right/populist right-wing schism of 2025 begins.”
I reached out to Mike Solana, one of the most insightful (and irreverent) voices in tech right now, to explain what Dorsey’s resignation means.
Mike is a vice president at Founders Fund—Peter Thiel’s venture capital firm, which has invested in transformative brands like AirBnB, Stripe, and Lyft—and he writes one of the sharpest, punchiest, funniest Substacks in all the metaverse: Pirate Wires. — BW
So a Peter Thiel associated tech guy who, here's an article with The American Conservative where he says how he only loves America and wants to see it's expansion: https://www.theamericanconservative.com/the-thought-of-american-greatness/
In terms of foreign intervention, there are people who see horror in every American act abroad. This reeks of ideology to me, and I am no longer an ideological person. For me, there’s just one question I ask before I make my mind up about a policy, whether here or anywhere around the world: does this help us? If it helps us, I am in favor. If it neither helps nor hurts us, I am ambivalent, and lean against action. If it hurts us, I am against. And increasingly I can’t for the life of me understand how anyone could see it any other way.
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Comment on Conservative activist Charlie Kirk shot and killed at Utah college event in ~society
an_angry_tiger Link ParentMuch like that church shooting, and the NFL guy, and Luigi, and the trump shooter, and whatever latest school shooting of choice, and etc. etc., everyone will scramble to assign it to their...Much like that church shooting, and the NFL guy, and Luigi, and the trump shooter, and whatever latest school shooting of choice, and etc. etc., everyone will scramble to assign it to their political enemies while the reality probably lacks any coherent ideology.
Bunch of people who find themselves in an uncaring world in a crumbling empire, and get to make a name for themselves. Worked well for them so far, their names and faces are published all over the place, we remember who they were and what they did, they went out with a bang (literally) and the takeaway they're going for seems to be: lol
Well, except for Luigi, who seemed very clear that they were doing it for one reason: healthcare here sucks, but the rest?
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Comment on Charlie Kirk shooting: US President Donald Trump says suspect in custody in ~society
an_angry_tiger Link ParentNah no worries didn't think you did.Nah no worries didn't think you did.
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Comment on Charlie Kirk shooting: US President Donald Trump says suspect in custody in ~society
an_angry_tiger Link ParentDon't think people give enough of a shit to deploy some LLM point-pushing thing here, or at least I really hope not. Otherwise you can tell from my rushed typing and general lack of polish, or...Don't think people give enough of a shit to deploy some LLM point-pushing thing here, or at least I really hope not.
Otherwise you can tell from my rushed typing and general lack of polish, or maybe that's just what my creator added to the system prompt 👀
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Comment on Charlie Kirk shooting: US President Donald Trump says suspect in custody in ~society
an_angry_tiger Link ParentIt's truly bizarre that people just accept it, maybe it's willful delusion so they can use anecdotes about hypothetical posters as fuel for their cause? But like, we have LLMs now, hugely popular...It's truly bizarre that people just accept it, maybe it's willful delusion so they can use anecdotes about hypothetical posters as fuel for their cause?
But like, we have LLMs now, hugely popular ones, that can mimic human speech good enough. We already see them on social media, we've known countries around the world already use social media as outlets to promote their agenda for a decade now, we've known platforms like reddit have been astroturfed since before LLMs were even a known term, and yet people still act like they should believe things they read.
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Comment on 2025 NFL Season 🏈 Weekly Discussion Thread – Week 1 in ~sports.american_football
an_angry_tiger LinkBills.Bills.
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Comment on Denmark ending letter deliveries is a sign of the digital times in ~society
an_angry_tiger Link ParentHalf of my mail is junk, the other half is the last person to live in my apartment's mail, and the last half is junk mail intended for him. I barely check my mailbox in the first place (not in...Half of my mail is junk, the other half is the last person to live in my apartment's mail, and the last half is junk mail intended for him. I barely check my mailbox in the first place (not in Denmark), I don't see the point.
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Comment on McDonald’s is cutting prices of its combo meals to convince customers it’s affordable again in ~food
an_angry_tiger Link ParentUsed to be two different banh mi places right next to each other in Toronto's Chinatown, selling banh mi's for like 2$. $15 just seems insane.Used to be two different banh mi places right next to each other in Toronto's Chinatown, selling banh mi's for like 2$. $15 just seems insane.
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Comment on Five major misfires that derailed Russell T Davies' second Doctor Who era in ~tv
an_angry_tiger LinkThat bit at the end, gave me a chuckle considering the show already did get cancelled for 20 years after low ratings. I'd imagine the future felt more uncertain back then than now.That bit at the end,
RTD’s second era was meant to be a triumphant return. Instead, it has stalled under the weight of its own ambition, nostalgia and misjudged tone. The future of Doctor Who has never felt more uncertain now.
gave me a chuckle considering the show already did get cancelled for 20 years after low ratings. I'd imagine the future felt more uncertain back then than now.
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Comment on <deleted topic> in ~tech
an_angry_tiger Link Parentohhhhhhh fuckkkkkinnng AAAAAAAAAA I played Noctis a little bit ages ago and could never remember what it was called or figure out how to find it again. You just solved a mini mystery I've been...ohhhhhhh
fuckkkkkinnng
AAAAAAAAAA
I played Noctis a little bit ages ago and could never remember what it was called or figure out how to find it again. You just solved a mini mystery I've been having for so long, thank you.
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Comment on Professional wrestler Hulk Hogan dead at 71 in ~sports
an_angry_tiger LinkNo mixed feelings for me, screw you hulk! Bad person.No mixed feelings for me, screw you hulk! Bad person.
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Comment on Transit passes are better but free fares are good too in ~transport
an_angry_tiger Link ParentFunnily enough there is one transit authority in New York that does own real estate: the Port Authority! Most notably they own the World Trade Center area, and a good amount of their revenue comes...Funnily enough there is one transit authority in New York that does own real estate: the Port Authority! Most notably they own the World Trade Center area, and a good amount of their revenue comes in from that.
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Comment on Classic movies in ~movies
an_angry_tiger LinkTCM (Turner Classic Movies) is basically the reason (ok sports too) I pay for youtube tv, just a string of curated old movies with no commercials. Makes for great background viewing, and a lot of...TCM (Turner Classic Movies) is basically the reason (ok sports too) I pay for youtube tv, just a string of curated old movies with no commercials. Makes for great background viewing, and a lot of the time, getting invested in something on in the background, and then ending up sitting there watching the whole danged movie.
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Comment on TikTok is being flooded with racist AI videos generated by Google’s Veo 3 in ~tech
an_angry_tiger Link ParentI don't find the ones in the video from the article funny, but I do find them....fascinating? Intriguing? There's something about them that, for a bunch of slop pushed out by AI with little...I don't find the ones in the video from the article funny, but I do find them....fascinating? Intriguing? There's something about them that, for a bunch of slop pushed out by AI with little effort, it captures attention somehow.
I think part of it is the surreal aspect -- of these clean sanitized models, producing an "averaging" of all the media fed in to it as training data, akin to stock footage and how meaningless and devoid of life or agency -- it's the contrast of the appearance of footage these models produce to their content. All the advertising for veo (and of that ilk) is going to be as sanitized as possible, with the tech companies behind it desperately trying to avoid an appearance of anything offensive, and here is that "cleanness" turned on its head directly, in a way completely at odds with the tech companies' public intentions.
There's another aspect of the videos where the "actors" involved (they're not real, the fake characters in the clips) are portrayed with full sincerity, or at least, since they're not real and can't have genuine beliefs or feelings, portrayed without any hint of irony of what they're involved in. If you wanted to make one of these videos before veo (or other models), you would have to gather real people to portray the parts, and presumably the only people who would want to be on camera saying racist things are people who either genuinely enjoy/believe it, or do it with a mask of irony (in an attempt to separate them from the direct meaning of the sentiments). The AI doesn't generate footage that captures that, the "actors" involved in the ai-generated video have no conception injected in to them that there's something taboo about what they are saying, or the situation they are in. It is complete perfect straightmanning of something that wouldn't really be possible with humans, that's novel.
I've seen some other videos of the like on tiktok, most of the ones I've seen actually had genuine punchlines at least, as offensive as they may be. The ones I've seen at least tried to have some kind of subversion or twist that you didn't see coming, unlike the ones in the article, that just end with a stereotype being said or portrayed as-is.
Then again, none of these videos are worse than many comments I've seen on tiktok or social media in general, and certainly not any worse than what I'd seen on the old internet before, say, the SomethingAwful forums circa the early to mid 2000s, where "ironic" or unironic racism and sexism and anything offensive that could be said was lobbed around like a beachball at a baseball game. Back then it felt like a response to the "prudishness" and sanitized media of the time, where most media consumption was dominated by the TV networks, movies (with the MPAA enforcing ratings), music (with things like Nancy Reagan endorsing content advisories), radio, etc., and those outlets would never want to be seen doing something as straight up brash and offensive as what you could say on the internet. Looking back, I don't really find those things funny now (not sure how funny I found them at the time either, although I was young), but maybe that's just hindsight.
Anyway to sum it up: my theory is that people are finding it captivating (not wanting to necessarily say they find it funny) because of the contrast between how taboo the content is and its clean, sanitized, unironic portrayal.
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Comment on Managers say they are having trouble finding candidates for nearly 400,000 US manufacturing and technical jobs in ~finance
an_angry_tiger Link ParentIt's the same process for valid green card applications too, even if a company already has an exceptional talent being paid comparable to American candidates, the PERM process requires you to...It's the same process for valid green card applications too, even if a company already has an exceptional talent being paid comparable to American candidates, the PERM process requires you to demonstrate that you couldn't find American candidates who fit the bill.
As a company you'd preferably rather keep the person who has already been working for you, fits in to the environment well, has knowledge and experience in that role, and has no ramp-up time because they're already working for you. So what do they do? You put out the job listing, tuned to your candidate, and you put it out in some form that's unlikely to be seen, maybe a newspaper ad buried deep somewhere.
From the immigrant's point of view, yeah that's life, immigration to America sucks and is huge shitty hurdle, congress doesn't seem to be in a rush to fix it (or anything), there's only so many ways to do it and the main valid ways require you to do this.
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Comment on Most US exhibition execs think traditional moviegoing has less than twenty years as ‘viable business model,’ according to new survey in ~movies
an_angry_tiger Link Parentto be fair to them, I don't know if its a lack of creativity, from their viewpoint the idea of making back a big film's money from theatres seems to be dying out, which is what they presumably...You’re strictly correct that I’m not offering a path forwards without any changes, fwiw. I’m attempting to riff on OP’s point, though: the execs lack enough creativity to see what comes “next” in the industry of giving-people-a-place-to-enjoy-films. Definitionally what comes afterwards isn’t identical, but by no means must it be unrecognizable.
to be fair to them, I don't know if its a lack of creativity, from their viewpoint the idea of making back a big film's money from theatres seems to be dying out, which is what they presumably care about as people financing movies. For the theatre owners, pivoting towards more independent films may work, but still requires changing their business model away from big theatres in expensive areas with expensive real estate.
What I take the article to mean, and the execs musings on the fate of the industry to mean, is we've all left the world where you financing multi-million dollar movies by doing it first-run in cinema, and theatres built around big first-run draws have a short lease on life. There's still room for some kind of movie theatre industry out there, but not to the degree that an executive looking to recoup an investment will be happy with.
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Comment on Phoenix Suns trade Kevin Durant to Houston Rockets in blockbuster deal in ~sports.basketball
an_angry_tiger Link ParentThey were doomed as soon as they considered Beal, I still have no idea what they were thinking with that and his NTC, all they can do now I think is wait out his contract.They were doomed as soon as they considered Beal, I still have no idea what they were thinking with that and his NTC, all they can do now I think is wait out his contract.
I'm not going to read the book, so I could be wrong and someone can correct me, but it's more like: cut down on government regulation and have the government encourage building.
Big projects, lotta growth, everyone building things, gotta bring back whatever era people envision in their mind when they think "America!", etc. The problem isn't "x", it's that there's too much redtape and we need to build more houses, they posit.
I think, because again, I haven't actually looked deeply enough to say it more confidently than that.