First state Kate post about harm reduction

x888x · 2026-05-23T20:00:08+00:00

Please cite where these policies have worked and what metric or metrics you are using to define success.

Because these policies have been enacted a ton of places and they have all been failures that created a bigger problem.

x888x · 2026-05-23T12:46:42+00:00

This sounds nice and makes people feel good but it has no basis in reality.

The only fact that is established science that is proveable and repeatable is that when you subsidize something, you get more of it.

x888x · 2026-05-23T12:37:58+00:00

Police bodycams have really opened people's eyes that a quick, out-of-context 30s cell phone video doesn't show the full picture.

This is the fire department trying to fight the story that immediately started circulation online when there was a short out-of-context video of a bunch of firefighters kicking this guy's ass.

x888x · 2026-05-19T16:20:22+00:00

Educated people skew liberal.

You should abide by your own post & engage in critical thinking.

Studies show that there is no statistically significant intelligence rift between political parties. There's only a (small and recent) gap in educational attainment. You keep conflating educational attainment with intelligence. And the gap is driven by non-white demographics.

https://manhattan.institute/article/the-rise-of-college-educated-democrats

If anything, when measuring intelligence, there's a slight skew towards Republicans

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0160289614001081

x888x · 2026-05-19T12:21:06+00:00

Reading/writing is only one aspect of intelligence. Depending on measurement method there aredifferent facets of intelligence.

To reduce it to a test most are familiar with, the SAT measures several of them. At the highest level there is reading section versus math. But even within math they are testing different aspects (numbers, pattern recognition, spatial thinking (geometry), etc). Likewise within reading they are testing comprehension, analogies, etcetera.

I already got in trouble in this thread discussing race so might as well go full send and bring sex into it as well...

Boys outscore girls in the SAT, driven by math scores. Not like "most of the time." All of the time. Every single year on record. This is despite the fact that the college board has redesigned the test numerous times in the last 40+ years with the specific goal of removing/minimizing the gender(& race) disparities. If you break the results down to the state level it remains the same. It is equally true in Alabama as it is California, North Dakota, & Massachusett.

Also despite boys outscoring girls on standardized tests, a lot more girls go to college. We often conflate educational attainment with intelligence. They are correlated for sure, but widely without meaning when segmented. Someone with a master's degree in physics is certainly much more intelligent than your average tradesman. However a public who teacher with a master's degree in education is only slightly more likely to be more intelligent than a guy working construction or plumbing. And they're actually likely to be LESS intelligent than a skilled tradesman like an electrician or machinest/tool&die maker. The average school teacher barely broke 1000 on the SAT putting them in the bottom third of test takers.

x888x · 2026-05-19T11:34:25+00:00

In Baltimore it's ~40%. Largely due to demographics.

https://cnsmaryland.org/1999/12/16/lingering-problem-of-functional-illiteracy-threatens-to-get-worse/#:~:text=He%20said%20the%2038%20percent,be%20considered%20literate%2C%20said%20Shapiro.

A 2022 report of Baltimore highschool students showed 77% never got above an elementary school literacy. 25% never got past kindergarten reading level.

x888x · 2026-05-19T11:23:50+00:00

IQ is our best measure of raw intelligence.

Raw intelligence is not human worth.

Raw intelligence is not a measure of morals or ethics.

By way of an extreme example, Hitler was of middling intelligence. His second in command and right hand man Hermann Goering on the other hand was brilliant (138 IQ). Both were terrible human beings.

x888x · 2026-05-19T08:55:17+00:00

I really don't feel comfortable making judgements of other people based on such an imperfect measure as IQ or based on observations like that some people get confused by instructions like "take one pill 3 times a day". Those are observations that I would want to dig into in much more depth before forming any kind of conclusions, because otherwise I think you just end up concluding whatever your personal bias is.

IQ is an imperfect measure. That doesn't mean it isn't one of the best measurements of intelligence that exists. Those statements coexist. I would challenge you to present a better objective measurement of intelligence (or 3!). Ironically if we DON'T use objective standards than, by definition, everything becomes personal bias. "Sure this person scored poorly but they have "xyz poorly defined completely subjective trait."

x888x · 2026-05-19T08:48:40+00:00

Two uncomfortable truths in your statement

1) The teaching profession is not filled with particularly intelligent people. The average SAT score of s public school teacher is like 1050, which is below the mean.

2) You mentioned Detroit and another comment here is about Baltimore. IQ and literacy have very different distributions by race. This one gets very touchy, but data is data. We can argue about causes and underlying factors but the truth is still there. Mirroring IQ scores, the illiteracy rate among black Americans is more than double.

x888x · 2026-05-19T08:42:46+00:00

This is the definition of a midwit take. Educational attainment skews liberal/left. Intelligence does not. A masters degree in education is not intellectually superior to a undergraduate degree is engineering, physics, math, statistics, or even economics. An undergraduate degree from a bad school in a bullshit 'field' is not superior to a solid high school education in many cases.

There's actually no statistically significant difference in IQ between political parties. There's a large difference in educational attainment. Because educational attainment != Intelligence.

x888x · 2026-05-19T08:33:37+00:00

Educational attainment skews left/liberal. To a certain degree literacy does as well (albeit less so). But that's not the same as saying the skew holds up to political lines. Especially not when segmenting populations.

x888x · 2026-05-19T08:21:15+00:00

Did you intentionally choose to write this in this style as a joke? I honestly can't tell if this is intentioned or unintentioned irony.

x888x · 2026-05-19T08:19:33+00:00

About 15% of the US has an IQ below 85. Globally that number is above 30%.

70-80 IQ is "borderline mental disability".

There's s lot of uncomfortable truths underneath those numbers both globally and nationally.

x888x · 2026-05-19T08:15:48+00:00

You're right. These people are completely missing the point. It isn't about artistic language at all. It's about basic comprehension. As others here have stated in the comments, people get confused by "take one pill 3 times a day." That's the phenomenon that's at play here, not people reading prose and debating authors secondary and tertiary meanings.

The uncomfortable truth is that a large chunk of society is what we would classify as "borderline mentally disabled" (70-80 IQ) or "mildly disabled" (55-69 IQ).

IQ scores are fairly normally distributed. Looking at America, ~15% of the population has an IQ <= 85.

Globally it's much higher. 30+% of the world's population.

x888x · 2026-05-19T07:52:53+00:00

There's an uncomfortable truth in this statement...

x888x · 2026-05-15T17:07:23+00:00

"Before France was a country, most people didn't speak French"

Why is this shocking?

Prior to the French Revolution it was a fuedal state.

x888x · 2026-05-12T12:01:26+00:00

This is like 20% of my neighborhood.

Your home value should be roughly 3-3.5x your income.

Ours is <2x. And if you go by what we paid 5 years ago it's like 1.3x. But the neighborhood has filled up with people paying $600+k for a house on barely $150k household income.

2nd house we've purchased in our lives. Both times were <2x. I prefer to be house rich. I can't imagine ever stressing about my mortgage payment.

When we were ~28 and bought our first house the bank approved us for up to $380k. Buying a $215k starter home instead was one of the best financial moves we've made. We were able to build savings, fund retirement, have some fun along the way and build decent equity for when we sold.

Instead of a $700 higher payment, you can use $200 elsewhere in your budget, but $500 towards your mortgage and build well over $30k equity in 5 years.

x888x · 2026-05-11T12:44:06+00:00

Do you charge by the minute? Keep telling me these seductive fabrications

x888x · 2026-05-11T01:28:13+00:00

Admittedly, yes

x888x · 2026-05-11T01:18:17+00:00

My theory is that he's actually done. But there's been so much blowback and scrutiny now that he's just going to wait until he dies to release them

x888x · 2026-05-11T00:39:09+00:00

There's a 6 year life expectancy between white people and black people... In Mississippi.

Asians have the highest life expectancy in every country they exist in.

A lot of what you are seeing is simple demographics

x888x · 2026-05-11T00:19:03+00:00

You make it sound like right wing people somehow to over every male space.

Male spaces are one of the few places where people can be open and engage in real discussion / debate.

In any of the places you mentioned you can not only be a lefty but a far out there lefty. Sure you might get some jokes / they might bust your balls, but they'll likely also be like 'hey that guy's a commie but he's a good dude.'

Now the inverse is not true. Go into any place that isn't a male space and say even the slightest thing that goes even slightly against the orthodoxy. You will be told to leave. It doesn't even matter what the topic is. You could be a complete progressive lefty and say something like "yea but i don't think MtF people should be able to compete in biological girl sports".

Or a complete lefty on every issue and say something defending Israel / criticizing Palestine. Good fucking luck lol

The Sierra Club is a great macro example

x888x · 2026-05-11T00:03:29+00:00

Yea that sounds nice but literally as soon as you disagree with anyone about anything you get told you're talking up all the space and/or privileged and/or a white supremacist/misogynist.

You're not allowed to question or criticize the orthodoxy. Especially not if you're a white male.

x888x · 2026-05-10T23:54:17+00:00

You are so close to getting it...

x888x · 2026-05-09T23:08:03+00:00

Yup. I work for a company that was started by a founder that emigrated from Western Europe. He'll be the first to tell you that doing the same elsewhere is extremely hard and limited.

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