• 0 Posts
  • 16 Comments
Joined 11 months ago
cake
Cake day: August 2nd, 2023

help-circle



  • The obvious counterdemonstration would be for me to start calling you names and yelling at you to change your mind.

    I won’t bother with that since it’s fairly clear to me that such tactics would be entirely wasted.

    Am I wrong? Do you actually believe in this tactic enough to claim that it would also work on you? If not, why do you think it works in one case but not the other?




  • I should clarify then.

    There is currently some percentage of people who plan to vote for Biden, some that plan to vote for Trump and some who are undecided.

    Most polling shows that, if there was an election today, Biden would lose pretty badly.

    If you simply agree or disagree, is that likely to change anyone’s planned voting behavior? If you continue to insult the people who do not currently plan to vote for Biden, do you think that will change their minds?


  • What’s the argument that it does?

    Do you think that this disagreement is likely to change anyone’s mind?

    Take a fairly famous example. Bassem Youssef has very publicly embraced the sentiment I’m describing. How does your agreement or disagreement have any impact at all?

    I’d argue that it will only have an impact if you choose an action that’s likely to induce change. He very clearly says that he considers the threats that “If you don’t vote for Biden you’re voting for Trump,” messages to be a form of blackmail.

    He finds it unconvincing so it fails to work on him. As near as I can tell, his attitude is fairly representative of a significant number of voters.



  • I took some time to look at who the 2020 Biden voter are who are considering not voting for him.

    While there are a growing number of such groups, one of the biggest is Muslims. They get that Trump is a racist and hates Muslims. They’re also currently watching Biden going out of his way to support Israel in their genocide. To them, Biden doesn’t just represent monsters, he is a monster. They’re logic is essentially, “We’re fucked either way. Let’s get rid of the monster in front of us and then we’ll worry about the next monster.”

    It doesn’t matter if you or I agree with that. They’re not asking for permission to feel that way. If the Democratic leadership doesn’t address those concerns with significantly more empathy than, “don’t be stupid”, the likely outcome is that Biden will miss out on many of those votes.

    Unfortunately Biden has been racking up voter groups that feel betrayed by him. My preference would have been for Biden to find some other Democratic candidate, retire gracefully and strongly back the new candidate.





  • It’s a fluff piece. They briefly describe some of the circumstances but don’t explore any reasons behind them.

    The one conjecture they do make, “some supermarket leaders may perceive low-income urban areas — particularly those inhabited by people of color— as higher-risk due to concerns about crime, vandalism or social instability” is contradicted later in the article. They cite 2 cases where supermarkets opened stores in these neighborhoods and operated them (one of them for 5 years). They would have had no need to guess. They had the balance sheets, income statements and cashflow statements so they would have known the answers down to all these questions down to the penny.

    That said, the answer is fairly obvious. Companies want money. Companies close stores when those stores aren’t making them enough money. As the article states, these companies regularly open stores in poor neighborhoods, they just close them quickly. That strongly suggests that they think they might be able to make money and when they try the are unable to figure out how.



  • tl;dr I was wrong.

    I used to go to a restaurant that I was sure was a front.

    Years ago I was walking home from the gym and I got peckish. I was in one of the less fancy areas of Manhattan so I didn’t think twice about just walking into the first place I saw.

    The second I walked in I decided it was a big mistake. This place looked fancy. Nice place settings, real wood furniture, etc. I was dressed like a bum and probably smelled bad.

    But the head waiter came out and treated me like royalty. Fresh baked bread, a sauteed flounder that he filleted right at the table and all around baller service at a very reasonable price. I was the only person there but it was early so I didn’t think much of it. I figured that if their food and service was this good when they thought I was a bum this is the place for me. I dropped a 100% tip and decided I’d go once a week and if I ever found a date I’d impress the hell out of her when we roll into a nice restaurant and the head waiter greets me by my first name and treats me like a big shot (aside: the first and only girl I brought there didn’t like their vegetarian options but ended up marrying me anyway).

    Ever time we went the place was practically empty. This was one of the less fancy areas of Manhattan but they were still paying Manhattan rent. The food was always top notch and did I mention how awesome the service was? Mooci, the waiter once came back from vacation and insisted that I try some of the moonshine from his Sicilian Mother. Constant freebies too.

    We decided there’s no way they could be turning a profit and assumed it was a mob front. Some older NYers may remember when the story broke that SPQR was a mob front, so it seemed pretty likely.

    Well a few years ago we went back after moving out of state. The restaurant was under new management and everything sucked. Crappy place settings, shitty generic food and I didn’t recognize anyone there. It turns out they weren’t a mob front. They were just great cooks that sucked at running a business and ran out of money :(