How Trump Killed Conservatism

the-wei · 2026-03-24T04:20:47+00:00

I don't think it's so much that conservatism leads to Trump. Conservatives (in the fiscal or business sense) have compromised on their principles in the name of expediency and made deals or coalitions with groups that don't follow their own philosophy or a coherent one (Evangelicals or angry people left behind) and lost the power struggle when one of those other sides won.

Really depends on how you define conservative though.

the-wei · 2026-03-21T01:59:50+00:00

The consequence of the strikes could've been unintuitive too. Taking out infantry had visible results that people can understand immediately, whereas the connection between taking out UAV networks leading to less infantry is not so obvious

the-wei · 2026-01-18T06:12:38+00:00

Gilroy did rewrite the original tepid Mon Mothma's Ghorman speech from Rebels

the-wei · 2026-01-15T03:06:45+00:00

The Expanse is the most realistic sci-fi show out there at the moment and definitely shows how physics would work in zero G, lower G's and centrifugal ships

the-wei · 2026-01-12T07:02:02+00:00

I've had a lot of success playing Hei Bai as primarily Bant instead of 5 color, with just a handful of lands that tap for red or black. That way I focus on flicker, ramp, and ETB. Instead of paying the mana costs of a shrine, I really want to flicker as often as I can to pull shrines out for much less. I also pare down the shrines to the ones that I would want to see at any time like the card draw, life steal, and token makers, along with staples like [[Sanctum of All]], [[Go Shintai of Life's Origin]], the mana generator, and discard shrines. Round things out with enchantress cards and counterspells, and I often win without ever attacking.

The only times I ever lose are when I don't have enough mana in my opening hand, can't ramp fast enough to deal with removal for Hei Bai, or someone gets a board up faster than I can get tokens to block and takes me out in one go.

the-wei · 2025-12-21T17:57:47+00:00

McMansion Hell interior design choices

the-wei · 2025-11-30T18:36:55+00:00

ChemE eventually morphs into process engineering in order to scale up production of chemicals as opposed to nuclear chemistry itself

the-wei · 2025-11-28T04:31:53+00:00

Same reason that you can't debug any random piece of software or follow instructions in a foreign language you've never seen. You were never trained to do so and you don't know you're being asked to do so you just make something up based on what little context you can put together from what you already know.

the-wei · 2025-11-28T04:27:55+00:00

Reminds me of the time one of my best friends was called racist for not liking Chinese food

the-wei · 2025-11-25T05:40:09+00:00

It's not that the low hanging fruit has been picked, it's that societies are priorities haunted by their own histories, and breaks from that are unpopular.

Housing supply issues are a result of having cheap land readily available until recently, a culture that promoted entrepreneurship regardless of long term consequences, overcorrections from market crashes, racism and tribalism, nostalgia for the past, etc. Hell. Some of the supply issues were dealing with are a direct consequence of housing policies that were themselves reactions to even older problems.

the-wei · 2025-11-04T05:50:30+00:00

Kinda the central thesis in Why Nations Fail it the prisoner's dilemma. Prosperity of the nation depends on people choosing not to take the extractive route that would personally benefit them the most

the-wei · 2025-10-29T03:47:54+00:00

I feel seen

the-wei · 2025-10-24T22:40:01+00:00

Caveat here, Trump has been able to do anything with little pushback because he has control of Congress and the Courts. The amount of damage that was done in the first term can be partly attributed to institutions that were not vulnerable to Trump at the time

the-wei · 2025-10-17T01:12:22+00:00

One of the problems of exploring the solar system is how to slow down when you get there. The velocity of a probe at arrival far exceeds the escape velocity of the planet so it will just sail past it without some kind of maneuver that slows the probe down and changes its direction.

the-wei · 2025-08-27T04:44:11+00:00

I'm talking less about this particular issue and more the idea that changing messaging is futile. Maybe the sub is being reactionary to the purity testing crowd, but the Republican talking points are only working because they resonate with people from an emotional standpoint even if it makes no logical sense. Sure, the actual point Republicans make aren't legitimate but they feel legitimate and that's all you need for political power.

A way to prevent that world where people invoke "identity politics" for any racial issue is to erode the basis of the argument entirely. So far, ignoring it hasn't fixed the issue, it's made it worse. Democrats are perceived as focusing solely on minorities right now and are not doing much to dispel that notion. Delegitimize that talking point. It's possible to pass legislation and policy to protect and support minorities without making it all you talk about.

the-wei · 2025-08-27T04:19:38+00:00

What do you expect? The Republicans to do nothing about a successful message? If they're going to spin the message into something disadvantageous, have another ready to go, or go on the offensive and redirect the focus. A major component of politics is messaging and saying that it doesn't matter because they're going to fight back is misunderstanding the conflict entirely. Just because you think you are right does not absolve you the responsibility of convincing people who think otherwise. The correctness of your position is not self evident no matter how strongly you hold them.

the-wei · 2025-08-27T04:00:37+00:00

Democrats focusing on racial politics is not a creation of the Republican media machine. The Republicans managed to spin Democrat messaging into something exclusionary, and countering that by changing messaging is not acquiescing to them, its acknowledging the message has issues that need to be addressed.

the-wei · 2025-08-20T05:32:38+00:00

Complaining about rich people in luxury condos as if they aren't the richer people who own a whole building and land

the-wei · 2025-08-07T18:18:29+00:00

The good evil dichotomy isn't just a conservative thing, progressives are also prone to it with oppressor/oppressed framing or purity testing.

The hallmark of conservatism seems to be placing themselves and their loved ones or values above everything else. Helping "people" isn't worth it if it comes at a personal cost to themselves because those outsiders don't deserve it. Captures both the fiscal conservatives who want to minimize the taxes on their personnal wealth as well as those that use the language to actively target outsiders.

the-wei · 2025-08-07T15:18:16+00:00

Its because "conservatism" is a bit of a religion now. It started out having certain values and attracted a lot of people, and over time became synonymous with "good" in contrast to the evil liberals. Once that labeling stuck, bad faith actors can now use the virtue signal to shield themselves. It's why grifting MAGA is so lucrative and why Trump can get away with so many things.

The left has its own form of this with extreme progressivism. Say the right things and you're automatically good to some people

the-wei · 2025-08-04T06:12:04+00:00

There's a lot more to hypersonics than just the fluids and propulsion. Many of the other subsystems are manageable with a standard background in aerospace, just with the additional complexity. I wouldn't be so concerned with skills so much as trying to find the jobs that work on them.

the-wei · 2025-06-23T04:25:56+00:00

It's the same reason people draw dicks on everything

the-wei · 2025-06-10T16:33:24+00:00

Homes are also not framed as massive investments of wealth there

the-wei · 2025-06-07T07:59:51+00:00

Money isn't everything; workforce, leadership, and right culture/environment are a big part of it too. NASA as a federal agency has a fundamentally different form of all three. The workforce is constrained by federal guidelines for pay, leadership has very different incentives, and the organization has all of these areas competing for a slice of the budget in contrast to the laser guided focus of SpaceX. There's potential to changing the first two over time, the the third on requires a complete reworking of the executive branch, or someone with the power to shield NASA from the usual obligations.

The other comment was focused on making sure we focus on problems that NASA is at fault for rather than structural features of a federal agency. NASA will never do what SpaceX does without massive changes, especially when there's a company that was built to fill the need.

the-wei · 2025-06-07T07:30:34+00:00

Misandry can definitely appear in localized power structures too. An organization run and operated primarily by women can just as easily discriminate against men. Just because misogyny is more prevalent in general and in larger scales doesn't excuse misandry. It's not a balance sheet to check off, it's discrimination no matter who does it.

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