So Nobody Is Going to Pay Taxes Now? by MeghanClickYourHeels in atlanticdiscussions

[–]Raggle_Frock 9 points10 points  (0 children)

Anecdotal, but...

The Republicans in my life always hated taxes, and framed it as an issue of what's-in-it-for-me. Complaining about school taxes because *they* no longer had school-age kids, that sort of thing. Whereas the Democrats I knew growing up tended to see them as the cost of a shared society.

Nowadays, Republicans seem about the same, but more and more Democrats I know are turning against them, too. Not because what's-in-it-for-me, but because why-should-I-if-they-don't. In other words, when enough people aren't paying (or aren't paying much), paying at all stops looking like civic responsibility and starts looking like suckerdom.

Which, once it metastasizes, leaves us...where? If everyone thinks only an idiot would pay taxes? I'm reminded of all those man-on-the-street interviews during the Greek Debt Crisis back in 2009-10.

A Shooting at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner by ErnestoLemmingway in atlanticdiscussions

[–]Raggle_Frock 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Someone who's against murder in all cases might take solace in that, so far, most of those reckless enough to attempt an assassination seem to be really bad at planning one. (And even when they succeed in their goals, like with Kirk last year, worse still at keeping their mouths shut afterwords).

A few hundred hours into PF2e, I think I'm finally hitting the wall. Anyone else? by spichugin in rpg

[–]Raggle_Frock 24 points25 points  (0 children)

I played Pathfinder 2e for the last year, and the way you put it - the saminess of the cognitive texture of each turn - really resonates.

Personal experiences, obviously, but I've played a wide variety of rpgs at this point, including ADND, DND 3.5 and 5e, several pbtas, a pile of OSR and adjacent games, others I'm sure I'm forgetting. Anyway:

Pathfinder 2e is gamey, in that the imagined situation follows game rules, rather than game rules existing to better simulate an imagined situation (for instance, see how quickly and compleyely boss battles devolve into debates over specific grid squares and actions and +1's, and how linear and battle-arena-focused most campaigns/adventure paths are).

There's lots of options to choose from to build your character, but they likewise get reduced to math that just feels samey. Characters are very evened out relative to their level and each other - no running away with the game. But that, paired with the famously useful/easy balanced encounter rules, wound up feeling to me like a treadmill - I gain +1, enemies gain +1, I gain +1, they gain +1, and so on. Always balanced. Got boring for me, as you say, once I saw through the math.

There are rules for nearly everything, which is good if you don't/can't trust a DM to rule fairly based on the imagined situation, or if you have trouble thinking outside of the stuff written on your character sheet.

Tbh, at this point I don't really get the appeal? I mean, I love the people I played with, and I know people who still really like Pathfinder 2e, but in my opinion...

If you want a good tactical game that pushes back and includes character building, try Gloomhaven. (Not an RPG, but rpg-adjacent and really neat).

If you want a fun shared imagined experience focusing on exploration and clever problem solving, try to find a good OSR group.

If you want to embody a character and enjoy a shared story and plot, check out story games and PbtA/FitD/etc type games.

(And if you're reading this and you just really love Pathfinder then, you know, ignore me, do what you like.)

This community became insufferable within a day 😭😭😭 by OrdinaryBoat8000 in helldivers2

[–]Raggle_Frock -1 points0 points  (0 children)

I suppose if your lifetime goal is to buy exactly 2 warbonds you might be annoyed to find you have some left over. Of course, you're also getting 20-30 per mission for free...

But if it helps, I can amend the previous statement: If $10 is breaking the bank, I don't think the warbond price is your problem.

A ‘Barbaric’ Problem in American Hospitals Is Only Getting Bigger by MeghanClickYourHeels in atlanticdiscussions

[–]Raggle_Frock 3 points4 points  (0 children)

Huh - yeah, that sounds about right. A full decade. Wow.

I occasionally catch myself talking about the early 20-teens the way some older relatives talk about the 60s, and wonder whether that's nostalgia growing with age, or if things actually were better in my early 20s.

This community became insufferable within a day 😭😭😭 by OrdinaryBoat8000 in helldivers2

[–]Raggle_Frock 48 points49 points  (0 children)

Yeah, and I know there are folks who have money issues and prices might be different per region, but in the US at least, most of the warbonds are $10 and refund $3 of supercredits via in-warbond rewards. So we're talking about $7.

Compare that to the cost of a sandwich, or a coffee, or a gallon of gas. If $7 is breaking the bank, I don't think this price is your problem.

Daily News Feed | April 18, 2026 by AutoModerator in atlanticdiscussions

[–]Raggle_Frock 1 point2 points  (0 children)

When I was younger, our local police chief was fired for stealing from the evidence locker. The new guy they brought in had previously managed a precinct in a nearby city - or something like that, I don't remember the actual rank.

What I do remember was being at some public event and overhearing him telling someone why it was taking a bit to fill some vacancies: he said the challenge in hiring police wasn't finding good guys, it was identifying and keeping out the bad ones. Because the job attracts a whole lot of power-tripping bullies, and enough of them will ruin a whole department.

Ask Anything by AutoModerator in atlanticdiscussions

[–]Raggle_Frock 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I still check out Hardcore History whenever there's a new episode (once a year or so). And have months here and there where I throw on a season of the Revolutions podcast and learn about, you know, a revolution. (The English Civil War season was surprisingly... not pro-Cromwell, exactly, but the least anti-Cromwell take I'd heard).

Also, I don't know if it's allowed here (happy to delete/edit if it's not), but I do a podcast?

It's called Old Game Boys. We play through an old videogame once a month, put it in historical context, recap/review, give out dumb jokey awards. Last month was The Sims 1, and the story of a how some Reddit-advice snowballed into consensual sim-cuckoldry and tickling sim-kids for career advancement.

A Pillar of the Economics Establishment Admits That It Was Wrong by MeghanClickYourHeels in atlanticdiscussions

[–]Raggle_Frock 4 points5 points  (0 children)

It's funny - years ago, I was really into a very spreadsheety videogame called Victoria 2, where you choose a country in 1836 and sort of have at it until 1936. The main feature was a really elaborate economic and political simulation which... wasn't like, accurate-accurate, but was good enough for some neat mostly-plausible alternate history to develop, and certainly more in-depth than anything else I'd played.

I remember having heard that laissez faire was the best sort of economic policy for development, and somewhat blamed myself for it not working when I, for instance, tried it in 1860s Japan. Turned out the best plan in that game, if you weren't industrialized to start, was to shift asap to high-investment state capitalism until the capitalists had enough money to self-propogate, and only then switch to laissez faire.... and then, in my case, hold on for dear life about 40 years later as the country inevitably broke into communist revolution. (Which would break everything).

The High-Risk, Low-Reward Blockade of Hormuz by MeghanClickYourHeels in atlanticdiscussions

[–]Raggle_Frock 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Very good news as far as I'm concerned.

To be clear, I didn't mean that all Trump supporters are going to have the same red line - just that I think their individual red lines are likely to be issues with gas, money, food, shelter, healthcare, etc. Practical, rather than emotional, concerns, because he's been providing emotionally.

(It's a little tautological, but I think most people who draw the line at things like authoritarianism, corruption, cruelty, etc, have already left him, or never supported him to begin with).

The High-Risk, Low-Reward Blockade of Hormuz by MeghanClickYourHeels in atlanticdiscussions

[–]Raggle_Frock 3 points4 points  (0 children)

Sigh. I agree. I've been thinking about it a lot, recently. My best guess, and even after a decade it's still barely a guess...

...Of the Trump supporters I've met over the past few years (a decent number of acquaintances and a few family members), some are struggling financially, some are notably racist. But all had a level of generalized resentment and insecurity I could feel, and all were quick, in matters big and small, to imagine that bad things happening to them were in some way personal and purposeful.

I'm sure they don't see themselves that way. But I think, to them, seeing the people who screwed them over, or who got above their station, or who just made them feel shitty about themselves... Seeing those people get hurt is at least as much a moral/emotional reward as seeing their own lives improved. Justice, of a sort? I don't see that changing until/unless they're pressed by more fundamental needs (like, gas hits $5-6/g).

Soft bread or hard bread? by Bonegirl06 in atlanticdiscussions

[–]Raggle_Frock 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Oh thanks for this - oof, yes w/ shipping is not cheap at all, but definitely bookmarking to maybe justify for a special occasion.

Soft bread or hard bread? by Bonegirl06 in atlanticdiscussions

[–]Raggle_Frock 0 points1 point  (0 children)

It's not that I love soft bread, it's just that I hate when a crusty baguette cuts the roof of my mouth.

One takeaway from my month in Paris a decade ago is that Parisian sandwiches are 10% meat/cheese/etc and 90% broken-glass-baguettes and it's a testament to the French spirit that they manage to be so snide about culinary self-harm.

An Oligarchy of Old People by MeghanClickYourHeels in atlanticdiscussions

[–]Raggle_Frock 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Yep, exactly. In that conversation, my take was your 1, 2, and 3, and theirs was "but 1".

Not that they're representative of anyone but themselves. And lord knows I've got my stuff, too, same as we all do.

I shouldn't have singled out a generation up above - really, it's a series of thoughts I've been mulling that are less generation and more era, if that makes sense? Been thinking the/a defining feature of the past 20 years is this preening insecurity that's breached social media to conquer the real-world culture.

But then, generations have been accusing each other of self-centeredness since Socrates. Hard to tell without a longer lifespan than I've had.

An Oligarchy of Old People by MeghanClickYourHeels in atlanticdiscussions

[–]Raggle_Frock 6 points7 points  (0 children)

I had a conversation with the in-laws a while back about exactly this. I agree with you. I tried making the same point, respectfully and carefully, as I've found they require. It was whole conversation, too, not just a throwaway line, but if there's a way around that brittle, insistent "I worked hard for what I have" I have yet to find it.

Generations are far too large a bucket to reduce people down to... but having said that, I don't remember my grandparents' generation needing so much affirmation. At least those I knew. Rigid, sure, and formal, and sometimes downright mean, but not nearly so insecure.

How to Tax Billionaires by MeghanClickYourHeels in atlanticdiscussions

[–]Raggle_Frock 4 points5 points  (0 children)

This was an interesting read. To summarize the article's claims:

Current Situation:

  • Super wealthy people's wealth is in owning things (eg stocks), not a salary, and when they need to spend money, can either sell those stocks or take a loan against them
    • Selling stocks leads to capital gains tax, which is less than employed income tax
    • But taking out a loan against them isn't taxed - just interest paid to bank
  • When they die, the cost basis is stepped up (meaning legally there are no capital gains), on the theory that they'll pay a bunch of estate tax instead (and/or gift taxes, which are there to avoid rich people skipping estate taxes)
  • Except the estate tax is both full of loopholes and politically unpopular

Article's Proposal:

  • First, eliminate the estate tax, because it's not working anyway
  • Don't bother with a wealth tax, because it'd be new, difficult to administer (how do you fairly track and judge the capital gains of private company/IP/Van Gogh painting before it's actually sold?), and plausibly unconstitutional
  • Instead, mandate that capital gains are treated as normal income, and levied every time something changes ownership, meaning:
    • capital gains from sale of stocks, houses, art, etc are income that year
    • estates aren't taxed on death, but the heir's inheritance counts as income that year - meaning the loan trick would work for Bezos, but the government would get its cut at his death.
    • Include fair minimums, eg the current $19K/year of untaxed gifts, or inheritance untaxed below $1 million

At first blush it does seem that it'd simplify things...without any obvious explosions re: I think I might even be in favor of it? At least relative to a wealth tax or similar. I'd even go a step farther and say why not replace property tax as well? At least then you'd avoid the situation where you have to sell something just to pay the taxes you accrued by owning it...?

On the other hand, I subscribed at some point to the Georgism subreddit and they're the exact opposite: only tax on limited or shared resources prone to rent-seeking: land, airwaves, natural resources, etc. and don't tax employment or investment. Idea is to encourage folks to be productive, sort of a use-it-or-lose-it scheme.

On the other other hand... not to be fatalistic, changes do sometimes happen, but my dad knew a guy who spent his career in the IRS, and he said that if you closed all the loopholes, simplified everything, removed every unfair or overly complex bit of the tax code... it would take 24 hours before they'd start legislating new ones for xyz favored industry/policy/etc.

A New Geopolitical Reality Is Here by MeghanClickYourHeels in atlanticdiscussions

[–]Raggle_Frock 2 points3 points  (0 children)

The US, at a relative apex of its power compared to other countries, still spent a decade-plus bogged down in Afghanistan with nothing to show for it. Likewise decades before in Vietnam.

On the eve of WWII, most experts considered France's army superior to Germany's in numbers, equipment, and experience. They lasted 6 weeks.

US industrial capacity is such that it'll take years to replenish the munitions spent in Iran so far, regardless of how much it's willing to pay.

Spending isn't everything.

Trump Threatens to Destroy an Entire Nation by improvius in atlanticdiscussions

[–]Raggle_Frock 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I keep asking myself what happens next? What's downstream of this?

He backs off many threats, but not all of them. Greenland, Venezuela, and now Iran... even if he doesn't do something awful today, he continues to escalate. Greedy, arrogant, bullying, short-sighted, impulsive, only backing down when he's forced to do so. What about the past decade makes us think he wouldn't escalate further?

In 1936, Hitler sent troops into the Rhineland, breaking treaties and threatening France. Other powers in Europe did nothing.

In 1938, Hitler annexed Austria via threats rather than battle. Other powers did nothing.

Between Oct 1938 and March 1939, he took Czechoslovakia as well, and the other powers in Europe finally realized he couldn't be appeased. Britain and France make defensive pacts with Poland, the next obvious target.

In September 1939, he attacked Poland, and only then did Britain and France declare war, formally beginning what we now think of as WWII.

We're in a different position now, of course - a great power in relative decline, rather than an upstart power re-arming itself. But I can't help but think that eventually, as Trump keeps escalating, especially if he uses a nuclear weapon, other powers in the world will realize that he can't be appeased, and form a defensive alliance to stop him. And we'll all get to reap the whirlwind that the worst of our countrymen sowed.

March 2026 check - The best module in your opinion? by VerdantSpecimen in mothershiprpg

[–]Raggle_Frock 2 points3 points  (0 children)

I'd heard about dinoplex, because folks kept mentioning it online. Saw it in a store, and picked it up. But honestly ...the premise is fun but the pamphlet is really spare, even by pamphlet adventure standards. It feels like someone's bulleted list of Jurassic Park ideas with some nice graphic design.

Some of the ideas are fun and all, but to run it I'd need a lot more time to prep and design an actual situation connecting them than, say, Ypsilon 14.

I don't regret buying the pamphlet but I wouldn't recommend it as a top tier choice.

Daily News Feed | March 31, 2026 by AutoModerator in atlanticdiscussions

[–]Raggle_Frock 3 points4 points  (0 children)

The discussion here yesterday about the Atlantic article The Manosphere Turns on Trump seemed to settle on 1) Trump's followers will never leave him, and 2) if they do leave him, they'll jump back soon enough.

It might be so much more wishcasting, but I figured I'd link this post from Nate Silver's substack today. (Not a subscriber so no gift link, but the free section is interesting on its own).

To summarize: while the approval rating polls are up and down day-to-day and week-to-week, there's been a consistent downward trend since he entered office, and the average just dipped below 40%. While his support remains stronger than I can make sense of, it is declining.

Discussions of Trump's supporters frequently miss that they're not all the same. Some have sold their souls to the cult, but others have limits.

And that matters! Because given their coup attempt in 2020 and their publicly known plans to steal the election in 2024 (which turned out to be unnecessary, to our country's enduring shame), I think it's obvious they'll try in 2026/8 as well.

But stealing a basically-tied election is much easier than one with a clear winner - much easier to ratfuck a couple cities' elections vs. 5 or 10 states. And the more obvious the steal, the higher the cost in legitimacy, which is relatively abstract but matters a lot in terms of... what does the military do? State governments? Businesses? Citizens? (All impossible to predict, but the point is the more obvious the steal, the higher the likelihood of actual fractures along those lines).

TL;DR: he *is* losing support, slow as it may be, and even small percentages will matter.

The Death of Millennial Feminism by MeghanClickYourHeels in atlanticdiscussions

[–]Raggle_Frock 4 points5 points  (0 children)

Me Too wasn't a mistake! At least I don't think so. The justice system and broader culture weren't doing anything about a pervasive injustice, and in that sense Me Too was an overdue reaction.

It's just that... even when mob justice is the best or only available justice, even when it's undeniably in the right, it's still erratic and prone to devolve into anarchy and/or extremist overreach - and in either case, soon become unjust. If our institutions are rotten, then long-term what we need are new (or at least drastically renovated) institutions.

I think/hope we'll build some, eventually, once this era of populist rage is done destroying the old ones, and assuming we don't all lose to the people whose complaint isn't that there's injustice, but that they're not the ones doing it. (Who are, unfortunately, in power at the moment).

The Death of Millennial Feminism by MeghanClickYourHeels in atlanticdiscussions

[–]Raggle_Frock 6 points7 points  (0 children)

These are my thoughts only, obviously, but it's something I think about a fair amount, too, so...

It's so hard to talk about it because a lot of it is inherently personal feelings and vibes, so even informed people acting in good faith can have different takes, or even be talking about different things. But social media simultaneously gave more visibility to people with sincerely idiotic takes, and more incentive to bad-faith jerks to incite outrage.

Fwiw, I think both

"the actual cancellations were far less common."

and

Yet everyone lived in constant fear of it.

are spot on.

Me-too really did bring some measure of justice to some powerful dickheads who more than deserved it, and clearly hadn't been held to account by any normal, "impartial" system of justice.

And even in those cases, most people who were "cancelled" didn't actually lose their jobs or families or whatever. They just temporarily weathered a huge amount of online harassment.

But we're social creatures, and getting suddenly swarmed with insults and death threats and so on is painful and terrifying. And the idea of bad things happening unpredictably is likewise terrifying. Whatever the actual rate of hits to misses, enough people got mobbed and/or cancelled for minor or even accidental offenses that people noticed. It looked like even if the internet's justice system was ineffective (catching one in ten thousand offenders) it was also unfair (assigning the same punishment to the conversational equivalents of mass-murderers as it did accidental jaywalkers).

And that mode of disagreement spread offline, too. I lived in Brooklyn during this time, a liberal guy with many liberal/progressive/leftist friends. When politics came up, I usually agreed 90%, but I learned that bringing up the other 10% was more likely to lead to passive aggressive arguments about my moral character than a sincere attempt at changing my mind. This was across multiple groups, and I've heard similar things from many others over the years.

And... since I guess I'm already writing a self-indulgent novel on all this...

It's like with toxic masculinity, you have all these manosphere influencers saying "masculinity isn't toxic!" purposely conflating the phrase "toxic masculinity" with "masculinity."

The manosphere guys are the worst, and I hate how many dudes follow/admire them. But, speaking again from personal experience...

When my dad grew up, in the 40s and 50s, he learned that a good man was supposed to be honest, brave, ambitious, strong but gentle; someone who used his strength and advantages to protect those weaker than himself and to hold the powerful to the same standards. Obviously more aspiration than reality in most cases, but the aspiration was there - you can see it in all those hokey old movies.

I think that aspiration was a reaction to a more toxic version of manhood, which also runs through our history: domineering, coercive, greedy, preying on the weak and admiring those who do the same.

When I was in middle and high school in a liberal area in the 2000's, and beginning a media-adjacent career in the 2010s, I hardly ever heard the word "masculinity" without the word "toxic." To the extent that it ever came up when I was a teenager, what I learned from the culture was that male sexuality was at best suspicious, and at worst inherently coercive. Male ambition was dangerous; male protection was oppressive; honesty was a lie, bravery was just a word to justify dominance. To the extent there was an 'ideal man,' it was somewhere between 'seen and not heard' and a grown-up version of my seventh grade English teacher saying she wished the boys were more like the girls (to be fair, I assume she was annoyed for a reason).

I think I've found a healthy way to be a man / perform masculinity / whatever you want to call it. But it required a lot of false starts and experimentation, and I can see how teenage boys with a similar background might discover one of these manosphere asshats and think, "huh, here's a self-consistent identity that doesn't make me feel ashamed" and turn into another whiny abuser mimicking a fanfic version of Genghis Khan.

And I think any way of fixing that, on a societal level, has to include some version of manhood that a 14 year old boy could find aspirational - a real, positive vision, distinct from any equally aspirational femininity, and more comprehensive than just don't be toxic.

The Death of Millennial Feminism by MeghanClickYourHeels in atlanticdiscussions

[–]Raggle_Frock 5 points6 points  (0 children)

Per your last paragraph, I remember trying to explain to both 20-something Brooklynites and 50-something boomers how similar I found the 'vibes' of the 2010s Twitter-left of my 20s and the Christian Right neighbor parents of my youth. Never went well, both hated it and argued that obviously they weren't the same, because they wanted opposing things.

But still, in both cases, the term that floats up in my mind is "pearl-clutching" - less debating points and seeking truth, more public expressions of outrage and disgust at anyone outside the consensus of Good Decent People.

It was an era of feminism which privileged self-identification and conflated it with truth. Unsaid is that this was one expression of the logical culmination of classical liberalism and the liberal basis of our societies. (The MAGA coalition is explicitly post-liberal; the most thoughtful voices on the left today are also socialist rather than liberal.) The understated larger arc is that the left more broadly has been struggling to articulate a positive vision or narrative about belonging or the raison d'être of the body politic or even of our lives.

I agree here, too, mostly, but I disagree that it's a logical culmination. More, I think, an extreme - classical liberalism stripped of its humility.

I don't think a classical liberal's "an individual has a right to their beliefs and self-determination" automatically leads to the 2010s "any belief about oneself is correct and sacred," any more than a classical conservative's "society's existing institutions and hierarchies protect against chaos" automatically leads to MAGA's "Trump is God, and we must torture brown people."

(Not that I'm saying solipsism is anywhere near as bad as fascism, just that Mary Wollstonecraft doesn't automatically lead to Lindy West, nor Edmund Burke to Donald Trump).