RationalWiki talk:What is going on in the blogosphere?

What is going on?

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A little quibble

“”Price rises in these products for consumers in rich countries at the end of the supply chain are minor inconveniences. Coffee, tea, cocoa and chocolate between them make up comfortably less than 1 per cent of the consumer price basket in the UK, for example. Sharp price rises in those products last year didn’t stop overall British consumer price inflation going down — as indeed it has in the US, where consumer food price inflation is now below the overall rate.

As usual, this ignores the human element. You can bet your ass off there will be mass shootings if people don't get their coffee. We live in a high stress world, and many people need coffee just to make it through their bullshit job.

Look at how people reacted to such a minor inconvenience as wearing a mask during a literal apocalypse plague. You think people won't riot over coffee being more expensive and/or scarce? That's absurd. Carthage (talk) 22:44, 2 September 2024 (UTC)

This isn't hard to grasp, the answer is in your quote. If that was the case, then people would spend more on coffee, tea, cocoa and chocolate than 1 per cent their income (see budget constraint, consumer choice, substitution effect, Slutsky equation and monotone preferences). Also comparing wearing masks with this sounds ridiculous to me since as far as I'm aware people just opposed to them because of propaganda. If people will "'riot over coffee being more expensive and/or scarce", where are the riots? I am a coffee addict (kind of) and I haven't seen any. GeeJayK^{Where all evil dwells} _{Where every lie is true} 22:59, 2 September 2024 (UTC)

How much stress are you in? Minor inconveniences add up. Do you seriously think that, if, say someone who's already armed, is in a lot of stress, is in a society experiencing severe challenges, say that it's a record heatwave outside and people are dropping dead from heatstroke, you think that person wouldn't snap under that pressure? Carthage (talk) 23:02, 2 September 2024 (UTC)

Oh, I don't doubt they add up. But has the rise of the price of coffee resulted in such stress? I'm not saying that this isn't possible, just that we don't have evidence that this happened. I think the that the best way to see if this issue actually affected the lives if to see if coffee now represents more of average price basket than it used to. Since, along with tea, cocoa and chocolate, it represents, according to the FT post, less than one per cent of the their price basket in the UK, I doubt this is a major issue for most people. Another way to test this hypothesis is to see if there were riots, as you suggested yourself. In 2022, when global supply chains were disrupted, we did have riots (Wikipedias has a list of them [1]). I'm not aware of any riot that was caused by the rising price of caffeine, but even if I'm wrong, I doubt that disrupting global trade would make prices go down. If you want my opinion, the price of olive oil is far more concerning[2] and the most serious omission on the article, especially considering that it's possible that prices won't go down due to the effects of climate change in Spain. GeeJayK^{Where all evil dwells} _{Where every lie is true} 23:42, 2 September 2024 (UTC)

Maybe not right now? But in the future? The climate's only gonna get worse. Labor rights here in the US at the very least seem to be getting worse. The rich only keep getting richer. There are more mass shootings every year. Democracy is on a backslide. All of that is pretty stressful. Stress, plus guns? That's a recipe for disaster already. I don't see it getting better in the near future. Carthage (talk) 00:56, 3 September 2024 (UTC)

I call this the 'Falling Down' effect; that a small shitty thing [refusal for change for the payphone] tips someone over the edge into doing something major [wrecking the shop with a bat]. It's one of the reasons why poorer people have more stressful lives; that their poverty means they've got more 'small shitty things' on their backs constantly - stresses about being cold, poorly nourished, in ill-fitting clothing, bad feet due to worn-out shoes etc. While I agree with Gee that shortages of coffee alone is hardly going to cause disorders, if it was a part of a backdrop of general privation where everything seems to be such a fucking chore to achieve [and success is doubtful at best] and they are aware of 'better times' you will end up with a population who are pretty short-tempered - even more so if it's a society where some are still enjoying that SoL. KarmaPolice (talk) 15:56, 3 September 2024 (UTC)

┌────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘ Coffee production is being negatively affected by climate change: [3] Carthage (talk) 08:44, 14 October 2024 (UTC)

Political lesbianism

Has anyone noticed?

Maybe the post should read "NPR reports some people on social media are talking about political lesbianism over the last few days". London Grump (talk) 20:42, 8 November 2024 (UTC)

I wouldn't be so flippant. The existence of phenomena like the alt-right shows that what happens on social media can have very real consequences for meatspace politics. Carthage (talk) 20:50, 8 November 2024 (UTC)

There is little comparison between the well organised, billionaire and autocrat funded, alt right and a grass roots progressive movement. Taking an optimistic stand, let's report it when it actually happens. Until then, let's avoid hyperbole. This is RATIONALwiki. London Grump (talk) 10:06, 9 November 2024 (UTC)

Newton's Third Law as applied to politics/culture - 'every action shall have an opposite and equal reaction'. Just like a group of men have become convinced that 'most women' are manipulative, cock-teasing shrill bitches who simply want to use you, a group of women can become equally convinced that 'most men' are violent, bigoted fuckwits who can't ever think of a woman as being anything approaching an equal. In some respect they get high off each other, as they use the other's mere existence as 'proof' for their fuckwit views.

I'll add the 'Camus Corollary' to this also; 'the slave begins by demanding justice and ends by wanting to wear a crown'. There has always [esp in British second-gen feminism of the Greer stamp] been a distinctly misandric tone to their views - 'all men are rapists' etc - to the point they end up orbiting somewhere close to Female supremacy [this is why so many of them are TERFs; they cannot compute even the possibility that 'a man' would want to 'become a woman' which wasn't sexual in motivation].

And yes, we have to remember that online is a partial mirror of 'actual society'. And they influence each other. KarmaPolice (talk) 21:42, 8 November 2024 (UTC)

Newton's doing some heavy lifting there. Apparently there's been a 450% spike in discussions of 4B online. What's 450% of not a lot?

Point zero of 4B is the 5th century BC: Aristophanes' Lysistrata. One of my best friends was a political lesbian back in the 1980s (and yes, there was a definite misandric element to her thinking. She shifted because she missed het sex.). It's 2024, the age of the individual. The idea is unlikely to snowball on social media, with its targeted segmentation, where it failed to gained traction in more collective times.

I could be wrong. But let's report the comeback when it happens. London Grump (talk) 10:06, 9 November 2024 (UTC)

Yeah, this stuff isn't going to get half as far as the manosphere crap because there's currently not a lot of money behind it but never say never - as Orwell noted, Christianity was once a tiny fringe religion and the Nazi party had about 20 members when Hitler joined it [which I extend to noting that a lifestyle of vegetarianism, no booze/smokes and frequent trips to the gym was in Orwell's day to be the signs of a crank]. KarmaPolice (talk) 09:42, 11 November 2024 (UTC)

At present, the other Wiki estimated that the number of participants numbered, at most, 4000. (Though this estimate was from 2019, I bet the movement is still tiny.)

One of the things that is becoming more obvious in American politics (should've seen this after Gamergate I suppose) is that, in a more diversified America, tilts to the manosphere are one of the ways the Republicans are replacing / enhancing the Southern Strategy of getting the rubes to vote against their own economic interest. Hence the ruling class is very much into keeping the manosphere smoke-and-mirrors going. This mirrors South Korea at least to some extent; politicians like Yoon Suk Yeol leaned on anti-feminism in order to get into office. (That being said, I'm not familiar enough with South Korea politics to know if there's quite the same dynamic, e.g. if the People Power Party is in reality the political party of the authoritarian capitalism leaning corporatists, like the Republicans are. Wouldn't be surprised though.)

"Never say never" but, many of the radical second wave feminists ended up finding an Other to occupy their time and thus became TERFs, of whom ironically are half-aligned with the alt-right these days. And the Wiki article on the 4B movement notes that the radical South Koreans in that movement there tend to *also* be transphobic and homophobic. It's hard to be an effective opposition movement if you half agree with your "enemy". BobJohnson (talk) 14:53, 11 November 2024 (UTC)

Trump's Mass Deportations...

@Carthage. Not happy that the desc for the last link is like 25% of my PC screen, hate to think how much screen-space it takes up on a phone. If you don't condense said description to say, half or less of current, chances are I will do that cutting when I'm a bit less pissed. Pretty please? KarmaPolice (talk) 22:45, 18 November 2024 (UTC)

Thanks [belatedly]. KarmaPolice (talk) 19:02, 24 November 2024 (UTC)

That Times article

That is a normal, conventional political message. Trump’s ads attacking Harris’s past support for taxpayer-funded transition surgery for people in prison and immigration detention were also an appeal to the mainstream, an effort to label Harris as extreme.

It's hell-world where bigoted spew can be described as an "appeal to the mainstream." A "normal, conventional political message." The guy who wrote this piece, David French, is an self-confessed homophobe according to his Wikipedia article. Why are we platforming this clown? This should be in clogs, not blogs. Carthage (talk) 13:16, 21 November 2024 (UTC)

I didn't know that he was a homophobe. I still liked the article, but I'll remove it from the page then. GeeJayK^{Where all evil dwells} _{Where every lie is true} 13:34, 21 November 2024 (UTC)

Thank you. We all make errors. I know I've added a few shitty WIGOs. Carthage (talk) 13:37, 21 November 2024 (UTC)

Yeah, apparently the guy used to write for National Review before going to the NYT last year. Hiring this guy was just more MSM centrist stupidity. GeeJayK^{Where all evil dwells} _{Where every lie is true} 13:47, 21 November 2024 (UTC)

Alas, 'opposing taxpaper-funded transition surgery' very well could be 'mainstream opinion' in America right now, if the polling I've seen is correct - I'd define it as somewhere around 'cool tolerance' because they showed that while they were okay[ish] with private transitions and not actually harassing trans folks they weren't okay with them actually having to do anything, and 'paying more taxes for it' would cross that line. Which bodes well in Sarah McBride's ability to use the ladies when she rocks up at Congress next year, bad for that trans person currently 'in flux' and the whispers at work say said flux and 35% monthly premium increases are directly related.

Plus, as factcheck points out Harris did support this. This is actually kinda rare that something the Orange One actually said did have basis in fact. But as factcheck notes, is utterly missing all context and details, such as how many trans people actually exist. While I don't have stats, I bet the vast majority of 'trans costs' in prisons and deportation camps are in fact the supplying of hormones to people who went into there already on them. KarmaPolice (talk) 16:30, 21 November 2024 (UTC)

FiveThirtyEight

Some decent analysis but doesn't mention a whisper that part of the 'surge' of minority support may in fact be due to a lower turnout [2024 raw voting numbers 4.9m smaller than 2020] meaning that a lot of the 'secure the border!' minorities were near the same number last time, but from a smaller total number [and thus a larger % of it].

Smells a little like they're sniffing the MAGA vapours that 'we were getting huge minority swings'. KarmaPolice (talk) 19:02, 24 November 2024 (UTC)

some commentary on the cuba article

we don't have quite as many blog entries as we normally would at this time of the month, so i decided to add this article. i know some of you guys might think that it's biased (or that i'm biased), but the reasons i added it are twofold:

1. it was written by an anonymous independent journalist on the island who works in hiding out of fear of retribution and reprisal from the regime, so i wanted to use this opportunity to amplify their voice. (this is mentioned in a disclaimer linked to the article, but it's in spanish. i translated/paraphrased it for those of you who don't speak the language.)
2. it falls in line with our mission to explore authoritarianism and dictatorships (hence my link to the article on the latter).

now for the elephant in the room: yes, i'll concede that the embargo is conspicuously absent, but as i've already explained, that's not the point of the article. that said, that perspective is welcome here, if you can find a blog article covering it. The G (talk) 16:10, 22 December 2024 (UTC)